Wal-Mart gun purchase program, soon to be copied at Weapons World Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Hunh. And since you don't store your firerms in some sort of safe to be able to access them quickly, your kids can find them and shoot themselves while playing with an item they see their father handling like it was some sort of applicance and don't really understand how dangerous it is. Brilliant way to protect your family.

Arr, matey, sterotypes ahoy!

EDIT: I try to cram bread into a Mossberg 500 every morning and am puzzled why it doesn't taste good when it comes out. And when my hair is wet I like to take a Ruger P97, point it at my head, and pull the trigger.

EDIT 2: ZOMG AMERICANS LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL http://www.txroadrunners.com/images/pics/F...ss_army_gun.jpg

[IQ Zero]

Hmmm ... not a bad idea kzt. Maybe I can try that out on my players?

I wonder, what would happen, in a neighborhood where EVERYONE owned several guns. One result could be massive increase in violence, another could be that everyone becomes more polite, specially as you know that everyone else packs guns.

Thanks kzt.

[Fuchs]

I thought I'd heard you guys just got a law passed saying no ammo can be stored in homes (or that such a law was being worked on, or something). Any news on that?

I haven't heard anything of that. We can still buy ammo in any quantity, and store it at home. The issue was just with the 50 rounds every soldier was required to keep at home, that is now collected. But since we've got a lot of hunters, and range shooters, and lots of personal weapons, ammo is wide-spread.

Heck, when I was a teenager, we got assault rifles ("Do not switch it to full auto like this, ok?") to keep at home during the summer "young marksman course". No one made a fuss - although my teachers did comment when I walked past school on the way to the range once.

With the recent strings of break-ins at ranges, where weapons were stolen, I think the whole "No weapons at home" movement may lose some wind as well - after all, collecting weapons for storage at a range is silly if that just means criminals can get dozens of weapons in one break in.

@Hermit: That's why you keep the weapon in a place kids can't get to until they are old enough to understand the dangers.

[kzt]

Hunh. And since you don't store your firerms in some sort of safe to be able to access them quickly, your kids can find them and shoot themselves while playing with an item they see their father handling like it was some sort of applicance and don't really understand how dangerous it is. Brilliant way to protect your family.

50 kids age 5 and under drown in 5 gallon buckets every year. Seriously, I'm not making this up. 28 kids aged 10 and under get killed every year in accidental shootings. Clearly we should ban water to SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

[Wounded Ronin]

LOOK ITS ME: http://media.pegasusnews.com/img/photos/20...2/chimp_gun.JPG

ITS SO OBVIOUS, ISN'T IT HERMIT? IF ANYONE DISAGREES WITH YOU THEY MUST BE A CHIMP.

[Fuchs]

I wonder, what would happen, in a neighborhood where EVERYONE owned several guns. One result could be massive increase in violence, another could be that everyone becomes more polite, specially as you know that everyone else packs guns.

I'll tell you what happens: Nothing.

In Switzerland, we've had, for decades, no weapon laws in half our cantons. Everyone could walk around with a weapon until the 90s in half the country. Almost every male citizen had an assault rifle at home - the rest had pistols - since everyone was in the army. And everyone in the army was (still is) required to shoot once a year with the rifle, you get fined if you miss that.

Anyone ever heard of Switzerland being the Wild West? Of having shoot outs daily? Didn't think so.

Theories abound, and people talk stupid all day about weapons, but empirical evidence shows that guns don't cause crime.

[IQ Zero]

Hmmm ... not a bad idea kzt. Maybe I can try that out on my players?

I wonder, what would happen, in a neighborhood where EVERYONE owned several guns. One result could be massive increase in violence, another could be that everyone becomes more polite, specially as you know that everyone else packs guns.

Thanks kzt.

I'll tell you what happens: Nothing.

In Switzerland, we've had, for decades, no weapon laws in half our cantons. Everyone could walk around with a weapon until the 90s in half the country. Almost every male citizen had an assault rifle at home - the rest had pistols - since everyone was in the army. And everyone in the army was (still is) required to shoot once a year with the rifle, you get fined if you miss that.

Anyone ever heard of Switzerland being the Wild West? Of having shoot outs daily? Didn't think so.

Theories abound, and people talk stupid all day about weapons, but empirical evidence shows that guns don't cause crime.

When I spent time in Switzerland (almost 3 years), I did notice how polite the people were, and yes, I do agree, guns don't cause crime. However, in other areas of the world (RL), people seem to think that owning a gun is a license to kill. I'm talking of course about the Philippines where life is cheap.

[Critias]

Hunh. And since you don't store your firerms in some sort of safe to be able to access them quickly, your kids can find them and shoot themselves while playing with an item they see their father handling like it was some sort of applicance and don't really understand how dangerous it is. Brilliant way to protect your family.

1) No kids have arrived yet, thanks. It's me, and my wife (a Texan), and a couple dogs (no thumbs). As such, my Glock is loaded and chambered at all times, and is either on my hip or on the nightstand next to a flashlight. OMG, my gun hasn't got an external safety and it's not in a safe and I keep it loaded and I keep a round in the chamber! Any day now it will fly around on its own and murder my wife, convince me to use it to kill myself, or zip out the window to a local convenience store to commit a crime all by itself! It's a miracle I've made it as long as I have, since I have a loaded AK, here in the house, too!

2) Rather than locking guns up and making them magical boom-sticks that children will invariably find, and then will have no idea how to handle safely (since they've only ever seen them handled in action flicks, thanks to irresponsible parents trying to keep them ignorant), I think you'll find most responsible gun owners teach their kids about guns just like most responsible parents teach their kids about everything else. I was four when I first handled a firearm. My grandfather and my father taught me where to hold it to carry it somewhere, which end not to point at anything I didn't want to die, what to do if I found one, what not to do if I found one, etc, etc, and I got my very first BB gun for Christmas. My dad kept a loaded .38 special in the nightstand right next to the bed, and a loaded shotgun in his bedroom closet -- when I found them, a couple years later, I carefully looked over, under, and around them for the GI Joes I was expecting for my birthday, then went back to searching other nooks and crannies. You'll find an awful lot of similar stories in the childhoods of like-minded, responsible, gun owners.

Just like an awful lot else in this life, you don't actually protect children by sticking their heads in the sand and pretending like dangerous things don't exist. To do so does them a disservice, leaves them ignorant and vulnerable, shows how little faith and trust you have in them, and sets up whatever taboo item you're ignoring -- be it sex, drugs, guns, knives, matches, whatever -- as something magical and wondrous and easy for them to then make horrible, tragic, mistakes with.

Just because some families don't teach their children about firearms, don't assume no families do. If you take two kids, one brought up to respect and understand guns, and one who doesn't, and then have both of them stumble across a loaded firearm -- which kid do you think is likely to be safe about it, and which do you think will twirl it around his finger like a cowboy and kill himself?

I'm not some punk that walks around with a gat in his waistband and has a half dozen kids from a half dozen baby's mamas crawling around a shitty apartment, with loaded guns wedged into couch cushions and an illegal sawed-off behind the door, all so I can protect my meth lab in the bathroom. I -- and millions of other people that don't make the news every day -- am responsible and mature with my firearm ownership, safe in how I handle them, and serious about why I own them. Those are all traits I'll be doing my best to pass on to my children when we do have them.

[hermit]

Yeah, the endemic violence of Switzerland due to the tens of thousands of automatic weapons that they foolishly allow their citizens to possess is known worldwide. It has a horrible murder rate of 0.9 per 100000. Unlike the civilized UK with its the draconian gun laws, where the rate was 50% higher. Or France, where it's only 95% higher. So clearly, as these examples show, more gun control reduces gun crime.

Still far from what gun crime is in the US. How come, then?

As for teaching kids to responsibly handling firearms: youa lso tech them to effectively kill with them then. If the kid ends up troubled, odds are lots of other students are gonna end up dead. Does even a month pass without a school shooting spree anymore?

@Hermit: That's why you keep the weapon in a place kids can't get to until they are old enough to understand the dangers.

Uh-Hunh. In an easily accessible place wheree you can draw it the instant you think someone is breaking into your home, but your kid can't. Please explain how you do that.

When I spent time in Switzerland (almost 3 years), I did notice how polite the people were, and yes, I do agree, guns don't cause crime.

Funny. I didn't think them to be particularily polite, but then again, most German Swiss seem to have a stick it to them mentality towards Germans. Also, guns don't cause crimes, but they DO make crimes all the more dangerous, deadly, and violent. See the US, South Africa, or Paris' Banglieues (where illegal firearms are a major problem that's hard to solve when the state passes laws forcing it to ingnore there is a problems with the Banglieues to begin with).

[Critias]

As for teaching kids to responsibly handling firearms: youa lso tech them to effectively kill with them then. If the kid ends up troubled, odds are lots of other students are gonna end up dead. Does even a month pass without a school shooting spree anymore?

Are you fucking serious? You're going to go there, from a comment about how responsible parents teach their children how to be safe with a firearm? You think little kids get commando training or something?

There were more than 132,000 attempted teen suicides in 2002, and I think it's safe to call every one of the little fellas "troubled," don't you? So, 132,000 attempts to kill themselves, and the same year there were...there were...there were two school shootings, both at the post-secondary level, one at a law school one at a nursing school (one of which, by the way, was stopped by two or three armed students, not the cops). So, yeah. "Odds are," of by "odds" you mean "1 in 66,000."

You know full well there's hardly a school shooting a month (though the media would love it if that were the case). It's also ridiculous to blame such school shootings on parents teaching their children how to handle firearms safely, or even on firearms at all. Maybe you should blame it on the sociopaths that do it, instead? Or on the gun free zones that do their best to disarm the other students and the faculty? Or on the media, for glamorizing and immortalizing the otherwise completely normal, everday, forgettable losers that perpetrate this sort of madness on their peers?

I seriously can't believe that's your counter-argument to teaching kids to be safe and responsible around firearms. It's boggling to me that that comment is the next logical step to teaching firearm safety, in your head. I suppose, to you, teaching children not to play with matches turns them into pyromaniacs, teaching children how to whittle will make them grow up to be machete slaughterers, and giving little Johnny a talk about what to do if a grown up touches him in a bad place will turn him into a pedophile.

[Riley37]

Let's work extra hard to keep this polite. My original post was meant to point out trends that could become stronger, or not, in 20X6; I didn't intend a debate on the merits of RL laws or policies.

Hermit asks "Uh-Hunh. In an easily accessible place wheree you can draw it the instant you think someone is breaking into your home, but your kid can't. Please explain how you do that."

Straightforward answer: height. I'm a tall adult and can reach things on the top shelf. The children in my household cannot.

There are, of course, possible complications involving children unsupervised for long enough to find a way up there, but a) in the household I live in, I don't see the children ever unsupervised for that much time, b) I myself don't own a gun, c) I'm making a point: if you ask for an explanation, please be open to actually getting an explanation.

[hermit]

Or on the gun free zones that do their best to disarm the other students and the faculty?

Oh, nice, so instead of one shooter, we'd have several, all firing at any perceived threat, none really trained how to act in a firefight. That sounds like it's good for a damn lot of collateral damage and death from friendly fire by students shooting at anything that carries a gun and isn't them (since I doupt the original shooter will carry some sort of sign to identify himself, or the students are interlinked and fed accurate information regarding the shooter by some sort of student squad command). Yeah, the best solution to gun crime is to arm up more and more. Because people always act reasonable while being fired upon, or hearing shots, seeing dead, and seeing someone running about with a gun.

Anyway, the bestway to prevent idiots from shooting someone with a gun is to prvent them from having a gun in the first place. And if you can legally buy military-issue weapons openly, odds are some nutcase WILL use them on people. After all, that's what these weapons are for.

And yes. Teaching kids how to shoot and kill means you teach them to shoot and kill, and does NOT ingrain them with some sort of identify hostiles program. It just teaches them to consider killing people a viable way to solve a problem.

It's not the next logical step in firearms safety, it's the next logical step in teaching kids to properly use weapons. Now you may be also teaching them to properly use that gun only when feeling cornered, but with how schools often turn out, that CAN indeed turn out to mean - for the kid - to gun down some bully who keeps harassing them, which just happens to be first degree murder.

Hermit asks "Uh-Hunh. In an easily accessible place wheree you can draw it the instant you think someone is breaking into your home, but your kid can't. Please explain how you do that."

Straightforward answer: height. I'm a tall adult and can reach things on the top shelf. The children in my household cannot.

That's hardly easily accessible, of course. Besides, children CAN climb chairs. But yeah, that might work. Also a locked night desk drawer you keep the key to on a neck to the chain, nwo that I think of it, but that all gets in the way of ease of accessability in case of soemone breaking into your home. Of coruse, Burglars might consider this and first enter the bedrooms to secure or just kill the (dizzy becasue sleeping) home owners, as a preemtive measure, so keeping yourself wella rmed and the weapon close isn't the solution to all your burglary problems, but might only escalate things.

[Fuchs]

Still far from what gun crime is in the US. How come, then?

If I knew that I'd be rich. It's not the guns though.

As for teaching kids to responsibly handling firearms: youa lso tech them to effectively kill with them then. If the kid ends up troubled, odds are lots of other students are gonna end up dead. Does even a month pass without a school shooting spree anymore?

We let people learn how to drive, even though lots of people die because of speeding, and drunk drivers. The idea is that most people won't abuse it, and we'll deal with the abusers.

Uh-Hunh. In an easily accessible place wheree you can draw it the instant you think someone is breaking into your home, but your kid can't. Please explain how you do that.

As was mentioned, height. Once the kid is old enough to reach the height, it's old enough to understand about it.

Funny. I didn't think them to be particularily polite, but then again, most German Swiss seem to have a stick it to them mentality towards Germans. Also, guns don't cause crimes, but they DO make crimes all the more dangerous, deadly, and violent. See the US, South Africa, or Paris' Banglieues (where illegal firearms are a major problem that's hard to solve when the state passes laws forcing it to ingnore there is a problems with the Banglieues to begin with).

Keyword: Illegal guns. Trying to crontrol gun crimes by making guns illegal is not working, since most guns used in crimes are illegally acquired already.

Some Swiss have an attitude versus Germans. Some Germans have an attitude versus Swiss. Some German officials trying to tell us how to run our country doesn't help, of course. But seeing as Germans are among the most numerous foreigners in Switzerland, I'd say it's not half as bad as the German press makes it out to be. Not noticably worse than the usual attitude countries have towards other countries.

[Fuchs]

Oh, nice, so instead of one shooter, we'd have several, all firing at any perceived threat, none really trained how to act in a firefight. That sounds like it's good for a damn lot of collateral damage and death from friendly fire by students shooting at anything that carries a gun and isn't them (since I doupt the original shooter will carry some sort of sign to identify himself, or the students are interlinked and fed accurate information regarding the shooter by some sort of student squad command). Yeah, the best solution to gun crime is to arm up more and more. Because people always act reasonable while being fired upon, or hearing shots, seeing dead, and seeing someone running about with a gun.

Anyway, the bestway to prevent idiots from shooting someone with a gun is to prvent them from having a gun in the first place. And if you can legally buy military-issue weapons openly, odds are some nutcase WILL use them on people. After all, that's what these weapons are for.

And yes. Teaching kids how to shoot and kill means you teach them to shoot and kill, and does NOT ingrain them with some sort of identify hostiles program. It just teaches them to consider killing people a viable way to solve a problem.

It's not the next logical step in firearms safety, it's the next logical step in teaching kids to properly use weapons. Now you may be also teaching them to properly use that gun only when feeling cornered, but with how schools often turn out, that CAN indeed turn out to mean - for the kid - to gun down some bully who keeps harassing them, which just happens to be first degree murder.

As I said, Switzerland did and does all this. We've got military weapins at home, and almost all of us are trained in their use. I dare to say we've got less of a crime problem than Germany, and not because we have or use the legal weapons, but because they simply are not a major factor in crime.

Kids use illegal weapons, switchblades, knucklers, and such stuff. Criminals use illegally carried weapons. Strangely, they don't stop carrying them just because it is illegal.

[hermit]

Switzerland has no problem with crime? Strange that Blocher was so successful campaigning on that basis, then.

[Fuchs]

I said less of a problem than Germany. Blocher has a lot of success because his party had a monopoly on some topics other parties tried to hush up, and because he hit the people's nerve on various issues. Media hype did the rest.

But, and this most foreign medias do not get, in Switzerland, politics is much more democratic than in other countries. Elected officials and the parliament can't just decree, anything of importance has to pass a popular vote, which tempers most stuff.

So, people can vote for Blocher or anyone else, and still vote for the exact policy on any important issue they want. I can vote for a left liberal party and then vote for a harder stance on crime. I can vote for a conservative executive, and vote for liberal laws. I can vote for or against new taxes no matter what people I voted for. And during elections, I can mix and match candidates, no matter their party.

Most other countries don't have this system, and so any politician, once in power, has a lot more power to shape the country.

[Critias]

Oh, nice, so instead of one shooter, we'd have several, all firing at any perceived threat, none really trained how to act in a firefight. That sounds like it's good for a damn lot of collateral damage and death from friendly fire by students shooting at anything that carries a gun and isn't them (since I doupt the original shooter will carry some sort of sign to identify himself, or the students are interlinked and fed accurate information regarding the shooter by some sort of student squad command). Yeah, the best solution to gun crime is to arm up more and more. Because people always act reasonable while being fired upon, or hearing shots, seeing dead, and seeing someone running about with a gun.

Except that that's just plain not what has happened in the past when that very same scenario has popped up.

I already mentioned one instance where a school shooting was stopped cold by a pair of law-abiding people with concealed firearms (it's only a shame they had to run to their cars to get them, the shooter might have been stopped faster if they'd been allowed to keep their weapons on their person). It's also happened (more than once) in other public shootings (twice in malls, once in a church), where a law-abiding citizen with a concealed firearm confronted a bad guy, and no one made any hare-brained mistakes that turned the once-lopsided massacre into a confusing gunfight. The bad guy was unloading a weapon into innocent people, the good guy presented and confronted him. Neat, tidy, one-two-three.

Those are just the instances I'm pulling right off the top of my head, if I thought even for an instant you were open-minded enough to be interested, I could find you dozens, if not hundreds, of more cases where a law-abiding citizen with a firearm has stopped a criminal and saved lives. As it is, your mind is so very obviously made up there's not much point.

And yes. Teaching kids how to shoot and kill means you teach them to shoot and kill, and does NOT ingrain them with some sort of identify hostiles program. It just teaches them to consider killing people a viable way to solve a problem.

Now you're just making things up in order to support your position, whole-cloth. I said "teaching kids how to handle a firearm safely." You've, somewhere along the line, turned that into some sort of urban combat training you think every American gives to their pre-teen children, with tactical rolls, automatic fire, and balaclavas.

I've never said a think about "teaching kids how to shoot and kill." I've been talking about "teaching kids how to carry a firearm without it going off, how to tell if a firearm is loaded, how to treat one with respect, how NOT to handle one, where NOT to point one," etc, etc. I understand that you have no idea what any of this means, but please stop projecting. I'm not talking about every kid in America getting tactical pistol training. I'm talking about telling them about firearms so they can handle them safely if they find one in your house, in the exact same way you teach them about safe sex, how to drive a car safely, what not to do with matches or lighters, etc, etc.

When you teach a fifteen year old how to drive a car, you teach them how to park, to use the mirrors, not to overdo it pulling away from a red light, and basic traffic laws. You don't teach them J-turns, you don't teach them stunt driving, and you don't go over the tactical applications of several tons of Detroit steel, do you? THIS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND, but it's quite possible to do the exact same thing with firearm safety and handling. You can teach anyone how to handle a firearm safely without turning them into an SAS sniper. If you're ever in the States, I'll be more than happy to take you -- or anyone else reading this, if they're ever anywhere near me -- to the range, on my dime, to show you what I'm talking about.

I'm sure your argument is easier to make when you talk for both sides, filling in any gaps in your limited understanding with your crazy Euro-imagination, but please stop doing that.

[Fortune]

I dare to say we've got less of a crime problem than Germany, and not because we have or use the legal weapons, but because they simply are not a major factor in crime.

Switzerland has no problem with crime?

Do you actually read what people write, or just make shit up?

[Fuchs]

I've never said a think about "teaching kids how to shoot and kill." I've been talking about "teaching kids how to carry a firearm without it going off, how to tell if a firearm is loaded, how to treat one with respect, how NOT to handle one, where NOT to point one," etc, etc. I understand that you have no idea what any of this means, but please stop projecting. I'm not talking about every kid in America getting tactical pistol training. I'm talking about telling them about firearms so they can handle them safely if they find one in your house, in the exact same way you teach them about safe sex, how to drive a car safely, what not to do with matches or lighters, etc, etc.

We do teach those 15 year olds who want to learn how to shoot at a range of 300 meters with assault rifles. And most males get tactical combat training in the mandatory military service as well, at 19 to 20. We've been doing this for decades. So, kids here can get training with and access to military weapons. Strangely though, we don't see them abuse this daily.

Unfortunately, gun control freaks are on the move here as well, taking a few medi cases as "proof" that guns kill people - against empirical evidence of decades.

It would be far more effective to get more cops (We've got much less cops per capita than Germany, for example), but then, that' s costing money, and many of those "gun control" freaks don't like cops at all to begin with,

[hobgoblin]

Hmmm ... not a bad idea kzt. Maybe I can try that out on my players?

I wonder, what would happen, in a neighborhood where EVERYONE owned several guns. One result could be massive increase in violence, another could be that everyone becomes more polite, specially as you know that everyone else packs guns.

Thanks kzt.

hmm, i think i ones heard that statement made about usa in the 30's, or something like that.
from what i understood the .22 handgun of some make or other was quite popular. it wasn't really that powerful compared to larger weapons, but packed enough in a small frame that one could put it on a pocket while out on the town.

hell, the walking stick was in fashion in europe at one point. the interesting thing is that it made for a very nice club without making the carrier look armed.

i think thats the big issue here. when people hear about home defense they envision someone standing on the doorstep with a double barrel shotgun, or maybe something pump action. or a large handgun (maybe as large as a .50 phallic replacement). all this while the surroundings are white picket fences, well kept lawns and similar nice neighborhood styling.

but what if we have the same person stand there with his hands in his pocket? then its all peace and quiet, right? but what if he is hiding a .22 in one of those pockets?

i guess the trick is to be armed without looking like it, and dont be to overt about it either. problem i see is that the culture is switching from being every laid back and polite to being very offensive and direct. as i write this i keep seeing myself as the grumpy old geezer but it worries me that more and more kids act and talk as if they are the boss of the 'hood, with a golden .45 under each arm pit and a cigar in his mouth.

[hermit]

Fortune, I am referring to a populist politican who won a majority in Switzerland's parliament on the 'stand firm against rampant crime' ticket. If there was no rampant crime in Switzerland, and it had less problems with crime than Germany, I DO wonder why Blocher could win as he did on that grounds.

Critas: Okay, obviously, Americans raise kids drastically different than I am used to. And 'handling' an item doesn't only mean carefully dealing with it so that it wont put holes into your anatomy where none belong, it also means using that item (like, hunting deer with a rifle), which IS firearms training that is sufficient to kill people. Actually, knowing to aim and dealing with recoil is sufficent (I tried that myself with american relatives once, having had no previous firearms training, shooting practice targets). If you did NOT mean that by handling, I guess I misunderstood. And yes, I guess it IS possibel to teach kids how to deal with firearms found without teaching them how to use them.

Also, teaching fifteen year olds to drive cars? Well, maybe, with your virtually turnless roads and sluggish top speeds, that might work, but wouldn't that still be underage driving? Besides, would you let your kid drive unsupervised? I know I wouldn't, but when I was last in the states, I noticed people driving incredibly passive, slow, and carefully, so that might work there (it'd be sending your kid to certain death here though).

Finally, yes, in an open space, maybe everyone keeps their act together, but both were the heroic gunwielding civilians damn lucky not to get shot themselves, they also seemingly knew each other aqnd coordinated. I doupt that would work in a Virginia Technical University scenario, where there's lots of panic.

It would be far more effective to get more cops (We've got much less cops per capita than Germany, for example), but then, that' s costing money, and many of those "gun control" freaks don't like cops at all to begin with,

In a country with an ethnical makeup more like Afghanistan than the usually ethincally relatively homogenous Western countries, that's a pretty tough challenge. I doupt a Deutschschweitzer would accept a francophone cop. But yeah, more cops would propably do, though still, I wonder why if crime isn't much of a problem in Switzerland.

[Critias]

(EDIT: This was in response to IQ Zero and Hobgoblin.)

I missed this branch of conversation, earlier -- for those wondering what might happen in a community where everyone owned a firearm, and more specifically those who are curious about how it might play out in America rather than overseas (given some cultural shifts, etc, between nations), google "Kennesaw, Georgia" some time. It's an Atlanta suburb that passed an ordnance in the early 1980's, requiring every household to keep and maintain a firearm and ammunition (with exemptions possible for concientious objectors).

Their crime rate, compared to that of their neighbors -- Atlanta itself included -- is pretty impressive. They've got a fairly respectable 2,500 or so people per square, mile, too, last I heard. It's not some rustic little rural hole-in-the-wall, but a good sized town.

EDIT TO ADD:

Also, teaching fifteen year olds to drive cars? Well, maybe, with your virtually turnless roads and sluggish top speeds, that might work, but wouldn't that still be underage driving? Besides, would you let your kid drive unsupervised? I know I wouldn't, but when I was last in the states, I noticed people driving incredibly passive, slow, and carefully, so that might work there (it'd be sending your kid to certain death here though).

Lots of kids learn how to drive at fifteen, so they can go get their driver's license as soon as they turn sixteen. But, hey, way to toss in yet more little jabs, insinuations, and insults about Americans and how they drive, in that paragraph. In fact, it's kind of funny that you're so desperate to explain why Americans need to be saved from themselves (by disarming everyone), while in the next breath talking down to us about how restrictive our traffic laws are and what timid, emasculated, drivers we are (when traffic accidents kill many, MANY, more people every year than firearms).

As far as the rest, I think I'm just kind of done talking to you about actual firearm control. Smarter people than us have talked about it in a lot more depth than we're going to be able to here, and your mind is obviously pretty made up. You think guns are innately bad and kill people, I think killers are innately bad and kill people, and I'm not going to change your mind and you're certainly not going to change mine.

[Cthulhudreams]

If I knew that I'd be rich. It's not the guns though.

It's obvious though. We already know what controls crimerates. It's not particularly hard - affluent societies with strong social safety nets, good healthcare and high educational standards have low crime. More police reduce crime.

Switzerland is a very affluent society (with very high average salaries, considerably higher than the european average), a very strong educational system and a strong healthcare system, a very strong social safety net (for swiss citizens) and a fairly strong police force. Thus the crime rate is very low. Funnily enough well educated well off people are unlikely to haul off and stab some bloke for money.

America's poorer people is one of the few sections of society in the 'western world' not to benift from the huge increase in real living conditions over the last 40 or so years. Sure it's got better, but nowhere near as much as workers in other countries, particularly europe.

Given the high levels of poverty and the number of people without a social safety net, a poor education and no healthcare fall backs, crime is higher in America.

Gun control just reduces the number of crimes commited with a gun, criminals are still likely to be come criminals, which makes people much less likely to get shot. Switzerland doesn't particular benift because it's starting from a great place, but other countries can benift considerably

[Fuchs]

Fortune, I am referring to a populist politican who won a majority in Switzerland's parliament on the 'stand firm against rampant crime' ticket. If there was no rampant crime in Switzerland, and it had less problems with crime than Germany, I DO wonder why Blocher could win as he did on that grounds.

In a country with an ethnical makeup more like Afghanistan than the usually ethincally relatively homogenous Western countries, that's a pretty tough challenge. I doupt a Deutschschweitzer would accept a francophone cop. But yeah, more cops would propably do, though still, I wonder why if crime isn't much of a problem in Switzerland.

Uh... please check your sources. Blocher's party did not get any majority, anywhere. It got a bit above 30 % in the best case, and Blocher himself was voted out of the government half a year ago. Blocher's party never had any majority in any parliament. And "populist" is a touchy term - over here, the citizens are the sovereign power. All parties need to convince the people that their proposals are ok, every time something comes up for a vote.

And I don't get your post about our cops. Francophone cops are recruited for francophone cantons, german speaking ones for german speaking cantons. Shouldn't be hard to recruit more in either area if we paid them more. It's not as we have a centralised police and would send cops from one area to the other. That would be pretty stupid - cops need to understand the people in the area they work in.

As far as why we don't have more problems with crime - I don't know. I just know that guns are not a major factor. Most people didn't get a gun and even less carried one when they could do so. The ability for people to get and carry guns was simply not a factor. I guess it's more about society as a whole - most of our criminals are foreigners, most of them either illegally here (Drug dealers are mostly illegal immigrants looking for work and not getting any, thieves are often "crime tourists" coming from poorer countries, and just visit to steal stuff) or not very integrated (which is the case in the majority of the vandalism I encountered in my work at court.)

[Fuchs]

It's obvious though. We already know what controls crimerates. It's not particularly hard - affluent societies with strong social safety nets, good healthcare and high educational standards have low crime. More police reduce crime.

Switzerland is a very affluent society (with very high average salaries, considerably higher than the european average), a very strong educational system and a strong healthcare system, a very strong social safety net (for swiss citizens) and a fairly strong police force. Thus the crime rate is very low. Funnily enough well educated well off people are unlikely to haul off and stab some bloke for money.

America's poorer people is one of the few sections of society in the 'western world' not to benift from the huge increase in real living conditions over the last 40 or so years. Sure it's got better, but nowhere near as much as workers in other countries, particularly europe.

Given the high levels of poverty and the number of people without a social safety net, a poor education and no healthcare fall backs, crime is higher in America.

Gun control just reduces the number of crimes commited with a gun, criminals are still likely to be come criminals, which makes people much less likely to get shot. Switzerland doesn't particular benift because it's starting from a great place, but other countries can benift considerably

We've got less cops than Germany. Far too few to handle big events like the Euro 2008, or the WEF - we usually need the army and borrow cops from France and Germany for those.

And, not to bust any illusions: Most of the crimes committed with guns are done with illegal guns. Trying to ban more legal guns won't change anything. Certain foreigners are not allowed to own weapons in Switzerland, for fear of continuing civil wars from their country over here, yet many of them still own a weapon, carry them illegally, and commit crimes with them.

So, based upon my experiences, I can honestly say that gun control, as in "keep weapons out of citzen's hands by making them illegal" won't cause crime to go down. Legally owned and carried weapons simply do not cause more crime. On the contrary.