Firearms???

[Don Gwinn]

First of all, I asked for a problem caused by firearms. A person killed with a firearm could easily be killed with just about anything else, including butterflies, daffodils and cute little puppies. Therefore, the gun did not cause that death. Ever read the accounts from the crusades of entire towns put "to the sword" and the streets "running in blood?" Those were literal accounts--thousands of people killed with swords, fire, spears, bows, diseases--all before firearms as we know them existed. Firearms did not and do not CAUSE anything. This may sound like sophistry, but it's not, and the reason is that removing an item that is not the CAUSE of the problem will not stop the problem.

 

Did you even bother to read my whole post above? Violent crime and murder in the US would be higher than the rates for Japan and Canada COMBINED even if every gun in American magically disappeared. How can you say with a straight face that guns caused that problem if they can be removed and the problem comes back? It's like banning silverware so people won't get fat.

 

We believe that controlled and banned are equal because we have been shown over and over that "control" and "registration" and "common-sense gun control" are only precursors to confiscation. Think about it for a minute--if I didn't know from long experience that the people asking to "control" firearms in America are really after a ban, why would I object to filling out a license every once in awhile? That would be a small price to pay if it ended there.

 

Places where "registration" and "control" became bans:

 

California ( so-called "Assault weapons")

 

Chicago (Registration law passed, then citizens not allowed to register. Presto! De facto gun ban for the last 20 years)

 

Australia (Gun owners register after being promised that the registry is all the antis want. A few years later the lists are used to round up hundreds of thousands of guns which are stolen and cut into scrap. Crime skyrockets.)

 

Britain (Gun owners get licenses after being told that licensing is common sense and no big deal. After Dunblane, licenses are used to track gun owners and steal their weapons (compensation is promised, but most never see a dime)

 

New York (Licensing law passes, gun owners register, guns are taken away.)

 

Germany (Weimar Republic gun licenses required as a "common sense safety measure" used by Nazi regime to round up gun owners and steal their guns)

 

Turkey (Gun licenses used to round up guns and take them. Then ethnic minorities, now unarmed since they don't control the military and had only their own arms, are slaughtered by the million.)

 

I can go on, but I hope I've made my point. We're simply not dealing with honest people.

 

Sarah Brady: On one hand, she says she wants only "control." Then, while speaking to allies in the Senate but still in public, she declares that "gun owners have no rights" and "the sale of firearms must stop now." BS.

 

Violence Policy Center: On one hand, they castigate pro-gunners for opposing "limited, common sense control." However, their "scholarly" reports, each and every one, conclude with a call for a ban on all firearms beginning with handguns.

 

Million Mom March: Before their first rally, they talked about wanting common sense safety measures. The NRA offered to put in one million dollars for any gun safety training program for children that the MMM might choose. It did NOT have to be an NRA program, only accredited by any state or the federal government. IF the MMM had not been lying about their numbers, this should have been less than one dollar per person and they would have had complete control of a $2 million dollar gun safety program! They refused. At the rally, they led chants of "No more guns! No more guns!" on the Mall.

 

Shenanigans!

[Don Gwinn]

Yes, that must be it. Too many rights, not enough privileges. Americans are bad people because they don't have to grovel before a nanny state government as much as the enlightened Europeans.

 

The short answer on short-barrelled shotguns is that they are legal. However, they are "controlled." The reasoning gets pretty long and involved; many legal gymnastics were required to overcome the plain simple language of our nation's highest law:

 

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

 

If you prefer privileges to rights, fine. Continue to ask permission to be a human being. It's not for me.

 

 

[Iron Arahat]

Intresting that this day that Walmart is concerned that the majority of the guns it sells are used to commit criminal offences.

 

A person killed with a firearm could easily be killed by a butterfly or a daffodil and cute puppies? I'm sure that nobody during an argument is going to grab their butterfly collection, and try to kill someone, or beat someone to death with a flower. Access to lethal means can have lethal results.

 

When somebody is in the mourge, it is diagnosed cause of death...gunshot. So how can that not be caused by a gun.

 

Sawed-off shotguns are usless with maybe the exception of committing crime. They can't be used to hunt, shoot targets, the accuracy is terrible. Its just good for shooting at close range. I'm sure the reason for control in the US is for this reason.

 

Privledges in society are for the benefit of society as a whole. Why do we have to take driving tests, shouldn't driving be an absolute right?

 

 

[Don Gwinn]

Intresting that this day that Walmart is concerned that the majority of the guns it sells are used to commit criminal offences.

 

I'm sorry. I know I'm new here, and I don't want to be a jerk, but I have to call BS on that one. That can't possibly be true; anyone who has spent any time on this issue on either side in the U.S. would be shocked. It would be front page news. It's practically impossible.

 

Do you have a source? This is mine:

 

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119922

 

The source I have not only doesn't mention that, but says that Wal Mart doesn't release its stats. For the majority of Wal Mart's sales to be used in crimes, they'd have to have found that almost ALL their guns were used in crimes. Practically no one else in the nation could have sold a gun used in a crime. The number of guns used in crimes is that infinitesimal compared to the total number in circulation and the number Wal Mart must sell in a year. If you're going to make stuff up, I'm not sure why I'm bothering with this.

 

We take driving tests because we are going to operate vehicles in public on the same roadway used by everyone else. If you want to drive your car on private property (yours, the racetrack, etc.) no test, license, insurance or anything else is required. Next?

 

The point is that the average person bent on murder will find a way. If a firearm is available he will use it. If a knife is available, he'll use that. If a brick is available, he will use that. I don't know of anyone using a puppy or a butterfly, but the moment you declare it impossible someone will come up with a source. I know a cop who once had a man try to commit suicide by Emu in Texas:

 

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=95cb26b81ac8039ba5a205a193d3cf66&threadid=46160

 

(In fairness to the perp, he thought he was committing suicide by chicken.)

 

If nothing is available but his hands and feet, he will use those. You can keep denying this, but you're flying in the face of established fact. That should bother you.

 

 

 

Sawn-off shotguns are great tools for their designed purpose. They are close-quarters, powerful weapons. There's nothing wrong with the accuracy of a short shotgun, especially with slugs. Yes, this makes them useful for crime, along with about a million other things. It also makes them excellent weapons for good people to use to defend themselves. I'm told that self-defense is not a legally valid reason to own anything in the UK, but here it certainly is in most cases.

 

I repeat: do you want to hear the answer to your question about what controls there are on sawn-off shotguns and what the reasoning is? Or was that a rhetorical flourish?

 

 

 

_________________

 

____________________________________

 

* Ignorant Taekwondo beginner.

 

* Black Belt--Chow Yun Fat Gun Foo

 

* Master--Ralph Severe Method of Ninja Fatness

 

[ This Message was edited by: Don Gwinn on 2002-07-04 23:06 ]

[Don Gwinn]

"Privledges in society are for the benefit of society as a whole."

 

 

Uhhhh, yeah. And from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need, right?

[Iron Arahat]

You will have to call the radio station in Edmonton, Alberta to get their source I assume it was off the wire about Walmart. Apparently they are going to enforce an application to purchase program, and crime was their rationale.

 

An average person is not usually bent on murder, but in the heat of the moment with a tool such as a firearm the results are more likely to be fatal than attacking with your butterfly or puppy. Sure a person who is bent on murder can complete his task, but why make it easy.

 

As for the accuracy of a short shotgun, the accuracy is drastically reduced by shortening the barrell. Much as a long rifle is more accurate than a handgun.

 

I believe there was a gunner in LAX today who shot up the place. I guess if he didn't have a gun he could have killed as many people with his bare hands.

 

Or the guy who robbed the bank in LA with full autos that took half the force to take them down. These arn't problems at all. Legitimize the use of handguns, increase screening, have them for gun clubs, hunting clubs, I'm sure you'd see a difference.

 

 

[Withers M.A.A.]

I'm sure the guy who shot up LAX yesterday wasn't a LEGAL gun owner. However, thanks to a LEGAL gun owner this man was shot down and stopped lethally. So in this case a firearm stopped a crime before it became a mass murder. If the airport wasn't guarded with LEGAL gun owners this terrorist prob., not even an American citizen, would have prob. killed dozens of people. So see firearms are not all bad.

[Iron Arahat]

Legal gun owner being the police. An assumption on how the man got his gun, again you throw out assumptions Withers.

[Withers M.A.A.]

So what you are saying is that only police should be allowed to defend themselves with firearms?

[Don Gwinn]

Oh, man. This is starting to take longer and longer each time.

 

1. The LAX shooting. You're darn right he could have killed just as many with his bare hands. He killed two people. That is terrible, but HE did it. The gun was a tool in his hand. A paring knife or a boot would have done the same. Let me guess--you didn't bother to figure out how many people he killed before you posted that, did you?

 

The other thing that ticks me off on this story, and it's not your fault at all because you didn't say it, is the reporting that there was a "Three-victim shooting" at LAX. There were NOT three victims! There were two victims and one murderer who got killed while he was committing his crime. That last one is a Good Thing. To refer to that thing as a victim is ridiculous.

 

2. The LA bank robbery. I never said this wasn't a problem, I said it was not CAUSED BY GUNS. I will not respond to straw men. Unless Jesse James or feudal Japanese bandits used M16's, you're not going to be able to show that the guns used to rob that bank caused the bank robbery. Again, robbery and killing predate firearms of any type by thousands of years. How could firearms have caused these things if they existed when firearms didn't? It's like blaming global warming on time travel.

 

3. Short-barreled shotguns. Sigh. You keep switching your argument here. First of all, "less accurate than a longer barrel" is not the same thing as "the accuracy is terrible." The accuracy is not terrible. I've used them and I'm telling you this from personal experience. They aren't the same as a nicely customized SIG 220, but their inaccuracy and uselessness is a Hollywood myth.

 

4. Wal-Mart. Double sigh. They are NOT "starting a buying application program."

 

Wal-Mart is a Federal Firearms Dealer, which license you must hold if you sell firearms for profit in order to earn a living. When you buy a firearm from an FFL, ANY FFL, you must submit to a background check of the NICS system. If you pass it (no criminal record, no mental illness, no orders of protection against you, etc.) then you can purchase the gun. If not, then you cannot. In that case, it was a felony for you to attempt to purchase the gun, but this is almost never enforced. In the last year for which stats were kept, there were SEVEN people prosecuted out of a supposed 50,000 or so rejections.

 

If the check is inconclusive after three days, federal law says you can then go ahead with the sale. This clause was inserted to make sure that delays in the process couldn't be used to purposely deny purchases, as in "Justice delayed is justice denied."

 

Are you with me so far? Those are all matters of federal law. Now, Wal-Mart's policy has been to follow that law, which means they would sell to people if the feds took three days to do an NICS check and still couldn't come up with a conclusion.

 

Recently, a report alleged that a few thousand people who should have been denied were allowed to purchase because the Feds' NICS database is screwed up. Most of these were people with domestic violence convictions, which should be in the system but somehow aren't. Don't ask me how that happened, it's the federal government.

 

Now, Wal-Mart took a look and found out that about 5% of their gun sales were made after the three-day rule came into effect. They have now announced that from now on, they will not make a sale until the approval comes in, however long that takes. This is their right as a private business enterprise.

 

Now, let's look at your claims. So far, you've claimed that a majority of Wal-Mart's gun sales end up used in a crime and that Wal-Mart is thus adopting a new program wherein they will require applications to buy.

 

Claim 1:

 

Again, given the number of guns Wal-Mart can be estimated to sell in one year versus the number of gun crimes committed, even assuming that each gun is used only once, it's virtually impossible that the majority of Wal-Mart's guns were used in crimes in any year, ever. That's with the most favorable estimates; with realistic estimates it is clearly NOT possible, because the number of guns sold by Wal-Mart is so close to the number of guns used in crimes that it would mean that no one else could have sold guns used in crimes.

 

More to the point, if Wal-Mart's move came about because they think the majority of their sales are used in crimes, why are they only changing their policy on 5% of their sales? I haven't been in school in awhile, but as I recall, 5% is not a majority.

 

Claim 2:

 

This one is pretty easy. Just look it up for yourself in the source I gave you and you'll find out for yourself that Wal-Mart is NOT establishing some new program.

 

OK, last thing about sawn-off shotguns and other "evil, nasty" weapons. The same features that people like you cite as making a gun "useless for anything except crime" are the ones that people look for in a self-defense weapon. What a sawn-off shotgun has going for it is that it is generally simple, it is very powerful, it is easy to hit with (as long as you use it within its range--yes, it has "terrible accuracy" at 100 meters. So what? That's not what it's for) and easy to handle in close quarters. Clearly it's not useless. If it were, people would not want to use it.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to name a problem CAUSED BY GUNS.

 

[ This Message was edited by: Don Gwinn on 2002-07-05 12:17 ]