Which is the reason why there is a statement about gun control... it's not about guns. It's about control.

You cannot (in most cases) as a mere citizen get a CHP / CWP in CA or NY. Those are reserved for the politically / financially / publicly connected, not the everyday Joe & Jane. Yet the very proponents of Gun Control in both states often have those permits. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) likes to shoot guns but wants guns out of the hands of citizens. There's no gun control suggestion that he doesn't like. Pelosi (D-CA) is just as bad yet *she* has a CHP / CWP.

They both have one thing in common. They like the concept of haves & have nots. They want to be the haves and put everyone else in the have not category.

Sadly what a lot of people don't realize is that gun control is all about control, power, and subjugation. You'll also find a lot of racist overtones in such legislation.

It's just like what happens when you have an entity itching to wage war. You demonize your opponent. You proclaim (insert_deity_of_choice) is on your side; that you have a divine mandate to wipe the heathens out.

It's the same tired concepts as used in war making, just with a velvet glove and called legislation.

You're doing a fair amount of demonizing yourself. I'm always suspicious of people who claim to know the motivations of people who disagree with them. I don't know anything about the handgun control bills that Schumer and Pelosi have submitted, but I do believe it's possible for someone to enjoy guns but believe that it should have a gun lock when it's not under your direct control. I can feel fine with citizens owning handguns and at the same time not want them to have access to stingers and AT4s.

I doubt things are usually as black-and-white as you portray them. I'm perfectly comfortable living in the gray area in-between.

Oh come on, that's like saying "Laws on murder have not made all homocides disappear, because murderers don't really care it it's illegal".


Race cars have completely mundane uses. How many civillian uses exist for CAS?



@Apathy: A 70s Stinger would only be good as a club today because the battery units will have expired a long time ago. And thankfully those can't just be bought on ebay.

That is what get's me is the VIPs, politicians, and hollywood nobilities who support gun control often have body guards and so forth to protect them. And you can bet they would be exempted from any form of gun control. That is what happened in britain, where the freemen originally were allowed/supposed to be armed, but eventually the restrictions left arms only in the hands of nobility (actually started in the late 1700's).

I would do some research on them. Schumer and Pelosi have written and supported some truly ludicrous bills. The best known involve banning weapons based solely on cosmetic changes - i.e. putting a pistol grip on your hunting rifle shifts it from a normal, unrestricted, largely untracked tool to a federally banned, highly illegal one. I'd argue they're simply ignorant, but then I notice these people WROTE the bills, they aren't just supporting them.

Presumably if you're writing a bill, you should know at least something about it, unless you're doing it for other reasons.





Only if you are using a strawman argument (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Making murder illegal has, by any counts I've seen, made murder less common. Making firearms illegal has made gun-based violence less common (it hasn't made violent crime less common, however). So my question is, is your goal to make violence less common, or to eliminate a particular method of exacting violence? Are you limiting access to A-10s because you don't want jetliners shot down, or because you don't want jetliners shot down by A-10s specifically?

If someone wants to murder/shoot down a jet/whatever enough that they're going to ignore the law, they're going to find a way to do it. You can incentivize some methods over others, but focusing on the tool rather than the act is simply wrong-headed.



Close Air Support? (I'm guessing?)

Simple. To fight a tyrannical government, or to defend against foreign invasion. In short, the same reason a state or national government would need it.

Considering the two people I specifically mentioned are avid gun control freaks and our own history shows them as such (as well as congressional records), I'm fairly certain my statements about them *ARE* black & white.

Your thoughts on a gun lock are exactly what got DC smacked around when they refused to let a retired police officer get a permit. They had such onerous conditions as to require a trigger lock (which has been shown to significantly raise the chances of getting a self-inflicted gunshot wound) as well as having the firearm disassembled AND under lock & key.

Think about that... trigger locked, torn apart, & inside a locked case.

The city of Chicago has a ban that is almost identical. It's currently up in front of the US Supreme Court. Prevailing opinion on both sides is that the USSC will invalidate Chicago's ban as well.

I'm of the opinion that what one does with their property while on their property is of no concern of mine or anyone else's so long as it does NOT infringe upon the rights and priviliges of others in the community. So if you want your guns locked up when not in use, go for it.

Do NOT however think to presume you know better than me how to store firearms for my needs.

To do so is to step down the path of the controlling socialist who wants to dictate the "one true way". There's more than one way to skin a cat. Just because your way works for you doesn't mean it will work for me.

It's funny though. I've had people castigate me for having firearms around my children (ages 13, 12, 8, & 2). I keep getting told my firearms are dangerous. (DM: Well duh. I wouldn't use a weapon to defend myself if it wasn't dangerous against those it would be used against) Funnily enough, my guns haven't jumped out of their cases or off my nightstand to shoot my children. I even went so far as to put an unloaded gun on the coffee table and sat there watching it.

Amazingly, it never once got up, loaded itself, and went on a shooting spree. But I've been assured by gun grabbers and anti-gunners that firearms do this all the time and that my guns will do the same. Perhaps I ought to return them as defective since none of my firearms will do that despite my best efforts to encourage them to do so.

(side note: my older 3 kids all like going with me to the range to shoot. It's fun, educational, and they get to spend time with Dad. Those happen to be three things many youth nowadays are missing in their lives.)

But it's just another example of the "lack of self-responsibility society" we live in. It's not the person's fault. It's the tool's fault. You cannot ascribe blame for an action on the part of the tool. The tool does what it's made to do, based on its human operator's desires. Thus when someone is a gunshot victim, the gun did NOT shoot them. The person shooting the gun did. But saying that doesn't advance an agenda designed to emasculate andd control the masses.

It's really nothing more than a multi-pronged effort to change us from citizens to subjects... just like what happened in the great nation of the UK. If you don't believe this, look at the governments (and the writings) of the greatest despots in history. They advocated strong, far-reaching limitations on their people being armed.

But if, even after all that, you (the reader) still believe in gun control... try this little mental exercise. Replace your right to keep and bear arms with freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, protection from unreasonable search & seizure, & self-incrimination.

Try restricting your freedom of speech the same way you are advocating restricting firearms. Thoughts & ideas are just as dangerous (if not moreso) than firearms. I suspect you'd cry foul if your speech was as restricted as some proposals against firearms would make things.

I dunno, who constinutes "The People" everywhere else in the Bill of Rights?

In the U.S. we DO restrict free speech. There are lots of laws governing reckless speech, seditious speech, 'hate' speech, libel and slander, flag desecration, and obscenity.

I think it follows the same line of thinking: you have rights, but your rights are not absolute because your actions affect others.

darthmord, I'm not picking you out of the crowd, you just happen to be the last person to have made some of the points to which I wish to respond.An anthropologist studying some people in Amazonia recently pointed out that the average North American boy spends 17 minutes a day with his father, whereas among the people he was studying a boy spent all day with his father, learning how to hunt, how to make tools, how to be a man. We have indeed lost something along the way, and good on you for trying to get it back.

Now, how many parents being not as conscientious as you, and not protecting their weapons properly, would it take for you to think something should be done? Some think even one makes gun control necessary. Some think even a thousand dead children a year is not too high a price for the freedom to bear arms no matter how stupid you are. That's the part that bothers me. I believe a lot of people are incapable of handling the power of a firearm properly. How does a compassionate, logical and free society come to a compromise that works?

Several people have used this old saw, and it is totally illogical. Despots of the last couple of centuries have also advocated a strong, capitalist market economy. This argument suggests that capitalism is a bad thing too, simply because despots like it.

As well, there are lots of despots throughout history, Genghis Khan, Attila, various Aztec or Inca emperors, Rwandan Hutu leaders looking to exterminate Tutsis to name just a few, who expected everybody to be armed to the teeth. Without a detailed count, there is no telling if even a majority of despots throughout history have tried to disarm their subjects.

None of those suggested freedoms, even the free speech one, can anywhere as directly harm others. I cannot directly kill you with my words, though I can incite others to do so. But I can shoot you to death in an instant with no effort at all. The consequences of failure or misuse are of totally different orders of magnitude.

I believe you are missing the point. YES we have laws that are illegal. YES we have laws that infringe on inalienable rights. THAT is the problem not the justification for more.

Do we have an example of an intact state where murder happens to be legal? If not then I'd say we are both arguing hypothetic scenarios. And complaining about strawmen only to compare gun crime (the "two people robbing a liquor store" kind) to stuff that people could do with an A-10, well....



The only other CAS I can think of wouldn't excatly make sense (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


Did that ever work out? No, of course not. Most tyrannical governments in history in fact did support a heavy militarization of society, with rifles for everyone and compulsory military training, and still were able to squash any civil unrest. Unless the army chose to switch sides.


See above. If you want to do anything productive in that event, join the armed forces.


Seriously, I have no problem if somebody tells me he owns guns for recreation, sports, or even just because. But if people break out that overly dramatic rethoric about how they need guns to protect their freedom or that without guns their home would be invaded weekly, my tinfoil allergy strikes.

whats wrong with wanting them for just incase cuba invaded the continent with russian support (oh yea all red dawn style)? as long as they dont infringe on anyone elses rights while doing so whats the harm? and if they do infringe on someones rights we have a court system for that.

The thing is, if you look at states where there are basically no limitations on firearms ownership, the number of firearms deaths isn't any higher in states where firearms laws are very strict. If this weren't the case, I'd agree, you have a point. However, things being as they are...



There's a difference between 'several' and 'most'. Stalin did not push capitalism. Nor Mao, nor whosit in North Korea, nor...

However, the vast majority of despots did what they could to make sure anyone they might be fighting against (hated minorities, general population, whatever) are disarmed legally first.

It's worth noting that the focus is on people who are tyrannical against their own people, as opposed to ones who invade neighbors. I don't think you're likely to see much correlation at all there (however, there is a correlation between that and strong central government).




We can compare based on how well it's followed up on. Take a country where police don't do their job compared to one where they do. Or you can look at historical examples. Generally, places where the law isn't in place, 'lawless' behavior is far more common.



Can you please give me an example where a tyrannical government said rifles for everyone, then defeated the civil unrest they had just armed?

This is also paired with the other bit of the COnstitution people forget - the US is not meant to have a standing army. It is only meant to be brought up in cases of emergency. Of course, we forgot that one almost as soon as the ink dried. But eliminate the standing army, make sure only citizens are armed, and now you don't worry about the government becoming tyrannical.

Uh, it never says anything about the US not being able to have a standing army.

Some of the state constitutions do, but not the US Constitution. What the US Constitution does is limit appropriations for the army to two years at a time (before they have to be reapproved by Congress).

New Orleans is a pretty good example of this for the years right after the storm. Kids figured out that their chances of getting caught for robbing someone was much higher than their chances for getting caught if they just killed the person and took what they wanted.
The result was that there were more citizens murdered in New Orleans than soldiers killed in Iraq.



Well, the US sold the AmInds pretty much all the weapons which they used to fight back. I guess that's one example.



Don't know that this proves anything.

Alright, let's check that. I haven't gone down the list country by country in the following links, Deaths by firearms and Gun Ownership (but see also this older survey which gives a closer figure for ownership statistics), but comparing our two countries, the United States with Canada which has a much stricter gun control system, the United States has 3 times as many guns per person, but 10 times as many murders by gun per person. Throw in accidental deaths as well, and the ratio rises to 5 to 1, USA to Canada.

There could be other factors involved, but I don't see support here for your argument.

OK, I didn't express myself clearly. Let me try again.

The argument is presented that because some governments use gun control laws to abuse their own population, gun control laws are bad and should be done away with. An argument used by gun control advocates is that because some people use guns illegally, guns are bad and should be done away with. Both arguments are of the form, "Some users use tool X to do bad things, so get rid of tool X." Yet, proponents of the first argument decry the second argument. There is a logical inconsistency there. If the rule applies in the first argument, it should apply in the second as well.

It's not a wand of Magic Missile. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

If I'm tied up on a chair 1 foot in front of you, maybe, if you don't forget to chamber a round.

But hitting your target (note how in many cases police mostly miss), operating the firearm efficiently, and getting a lethal hit requires a lot of dedicated practice.

OK, at least we can agree on the more direct lethality of weapon over words, can't we?

Mexico has extremely severe gun laws, the kind that the Brady Bunch dream about. Switzerland has minimal gun laws.

What's the comparative murder rate?
Switzerland has a murder rate of 2 per 100,000
Mexico has a murder rate of 13 per 100,000

It's obvious to the most casual observer that gun control causes vastly higher murder rates. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Yeah... maybe... Try baselining those numbers. Canadian and American prisons both have near identical limits on firearms. Yet American prisons have far more violence in them still. This is why I suggested looking at different states. Limit it to neighboring states if you'd like. Then you reduce the cultural and population density issues. Right now the US has a lot of factors which increase crime compared to Canada (racial and economic diversity, higher population density, lower moose-per-citizen ratio, inferior beer).

Look at Virginia vs. Maryland, or Richmond vs. DC vs. Baltimore. Look at California vs. Arizona or Utah. Compare apples to apples.



That's not the argument at all - more precisely, you're getting it backwards.

The argument is one of power and control. That the weakest party should have enough power that the strongest party can't roll over it - power of speech, power of voting, power of self defense. The argument is NOT 'some governments take away guns, then they do bad things', but rather, 'as long as the people have guns, they have a better chance of maintaining a fair stake in the political process'. We follow this in our division of power between branches and levels of government, in limits on government action and so on. We don't limit firearms for the same reason we don't limit habeas corpus - because once you start that power shift, you've permanently put a group at a serious political disadvantage, likely for the rest of the existence of that country.

I should have been more clear.

The Constitution establishes a permanent Navy, but only a temporary Army. The reason for this is explained in the Federalist - that a federal army should only be raised in cases of necessity, not as a permanent function (and we did not have a permanent standing army until much later). Why? Because militias don't become foreign aggressors, and don't enforce tyranny against its own eople (at least, not as often as a standing army does).

Well, that's the thing with monocausal explanations - they suck (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


No anarchy, in that case everything happens (and most people will be armed somehow). A civilized, orderly country were murder just happens to be legal.


Just from my corner of the world, German Revolution of 1848, 1918/19, various cases of civil unrest in the years afterwards, including Hitler's coup attempt. We could also count the various partisan armies in WW2, which didn't get their weapons from the government but still had plenty of firepower and archieved little more than brutal reprisals against the civil population (and in many cases, the partisans were not much better).



You mean like the Taliban?

Well, like I said, 'in theory' (or at least, 'less often'). There are a lot fewer (effective) Taliban-style organizations than there are aggressive government-run militaries.

The Taliban does, however, bring up the question as to whether the 2nd Amendment should be more limited now than it was before for the actual fear that the individual/citizen-level power may become more powerful than the government-level, shifting the balance of power in a negative manner again.


(I can't comment on your historical examples - they're outside of my range of study. However, anyone else who knows better is certainly allowed to jump in!)

And the 2nd ammendment can be legally limited without going against the constitution. I'm fine with people trying that. Course to do so it takes a very large majority agreement instead of 51%.

You know what, I was just thinking about this issue on my way to work this morning. Actually I wasn't think of a Colonial Marine Sergant trying to kill xenomorphs with harsh language, but rather about killing someone with, say, a hunting knife instead of a handgun. In some regards if you were just going to jump someone and murder them the hunting knife would be better.

If you're on the attack, the conventional wisdom is that you'll be able to leap forward and stab someone with a holstered handgun before he can draw and fire up to a distance of 20 feet. This was established in some police trials that are often cited. The point is that someone with a knife who isn't an idiot should be able to carve up even someone armed with a firearm as long as he can initiate his surprise attack within 20 feet.

In many ways the knife can cause more serious injurires per attack than many smaller-caliber concealable handguns. It's probably more likely to cause a lifelong debilitating injury by cutting tendons etc versus a small caliber handgun. The knife is also much more versatile in hand to hand combat range whereas the firearm is strictly a linear weapon that may misfeed or jam if it's fired while the shooter and his weapon are being grappled.

The knife is quieter so you're more likely to get away with your crime than if you shot someone and made noise.

People often say crap like, "If someone had a rifle with a 30 round magazine, pistol grip, and full auto fire that would be, like, 30 dead people right there automatically if he goes on a rampage." Like I said before someone who is unskilled would probably miss with many of those shots, and he's also run out of ammo in the magazine pretty quickly. I'm not sure that the firearm in that situation would produce more casualties in a pre-mediated massacre than, say, if someone took an axe, chainsaw, SUV, sword, or home-made bomb and used it intelligently in a situation where a large group of people were all bunched together. Think about how when there's a school shooting apparently the kids are supposed to sit in their classrooms with the teacher and close the door. If some sociopath walked through that door and there were 30 kids trapped in the room, he'd probably have a better chance of systematically killing all of them if he went through the room methodically with a machete Rwanda style than if he just stood at the entrance of the room and sprayed 30 rounds haphazardly left and right. Or look at Rwanda, the real world example. The people perpetrating the massacres initially shot at their victims with full auto AKs that presumably had 30 round magazines, but they had to finish the job and make the killing systematic by wading through the mass of their victims and hacking at them with machetes.

So, if someone wants to perpetrate a violent massacre, (as opposed to simply create as many casualties as possible by any means and not necessarily directly violent means) I don't think they're going to be greatly enabled if they have a rifle versus a machete, given that they're looking to massacre helpless victims instead of, say, an infantry platoon that can return fire.