Barack Obama - Now More Than Ever Is The Time To Change USA Gun Laws

[Gilliver's Travels]

If truth be told, too many Americans have never quite got over "Gunfight at the OK Corral" syndrome, where the slightest sign of trouble soon has everyone whipping out their guns and taking potshots at each other.

It's more than faintly disturbing to see so many American men topping off ordinary clothes – or even a business suit – with a cowboy hat. Sign of the (old) times?

 

[dingodan]

Gun control is not crime control.

Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings.

Most of you have a very infantile attitude to this subject, and most of you appear to lack any basic reasoning and logic skills.

Better start another thread.

 

[pastafarian]

Gun control is not crime control.

Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings.

Most of you have a very infantile attitude to this subject, and most of you appear to lack any basic reasoning and logic skills.

Better start another thread.

dingo i hate to admit it ,i have seen your posts over the last few days and you speak some sense.......but i only actually agree with you up to a point

gun laws will never prevent gun related homicide ......that is correct
but gun laws could prevent mass killings

this would of course mean legislation to limit ownership to handguns and bolt action rifles only,i cant see it happening though
the culture is too ingrained to gun ownership and there are serious financial and job implications......loads of dollars at stake.

 

[Stat Brother]

I posted this elsewhere:-

[tweet]280711110485762048[/tweet]

Hardly:-



or

 

[Stat Brother]

Oh and how easy would it be for me, a UK passport holding, clean record, citizen to buy a gun in the US?

 

[W.C.]

so ingrained in the American way of life I imagine that it would take generations to affect any sort of change, but they should bloody start somewhere.

 

[vegster]

Gun control is not crime control.

Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings.
Most of you have a very infantile attitude to this subject, and most of you appear to lack any basic reasoning and logic skills.

Better start another thread.

Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings but it would significantly reduce them, which is the point. I have never fired anything other than an air rifle in my life and as such, if you gave me a gun I would not how to load it or arm it.
When a huge number of people have familiarity with using guns and have easy access or knowledge of where a gun can be found you will have a problem. It is a simple correlation and I'm surprised that you as a higher thinker and Dingo cannot see the link.

Oh, and gun control equaling crime control ? I don't think anyone has suggested that legislation on guns will cut crime, criminals will use whatever is at their disposal depending on their desperation or ruthlesness. But gun control will reduce the sickening list of mass killings.

 

[Half Time Pies]

Gun control is not crime control.

Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings.

Most of you have a very infantile attitude to this subject, and most of you appear to lack any basic reasoning and logic skills.

Better start another thread.

On the other thread you championed yourself as a critical evidence based thinker yet you make sweeping statements like 'Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings', where is your evidence for this other than the usual opinion based wiki, newspaper articles or youtube videos you post as evidence?

This whole issue is a very complex and there are are a number of methodalogical problems including access to accurate data the difficulty in taking in to account different legislative frameworks and capacity to enforce them however the evidence is quite consistent that there is a direct correlation between firearms in the home/ ownership and increased homicide rates. In the US for example places with higher levels of gun ownership have been found to have higher homicide rates.

This doesnt of course prove causation but it does suggest that any actions that decrease gun ownership will bring down Homicide rates and also flys in the face of the idea of increased gun availability as a detterent/ able to bring down homicide rates as championed by Libertarian nut jobs!

Firearm availability and homicide:A review of the literature

 

[1901Phil]

A majority of Republicans believe that
Guns are good, Healthcare is bad
God is reality Global Warming a myth

 

[dingodan]

dingo i hate to admit it ,i have seen your posts over the last few days and you speak some sense.......but i only actually agree with you up to a point

gun laws will never prevent gun related homicide ......that is correct
but gun laws could prevent mass killings

this would of course mean legislation to limit ownership to handguns and bolt action rifles only,i cant see it happening though
the culture is too ingrained to gun ownership and there are serious financial and job implications......loads of dollars at stake.

You can commit a mass killing with a hand gun. Or a rifle. Or a car. Or anything flammable, or poisonous...etc

The one restriction which is appropriate and reasonable, which already exists, is to be to ban the sale of firearms to those with certain criminal convictions.

I have a prediction. If strict gun laws/restrictions are ever implemented in the U.S. the black market in restricted weapons will grow, it will become more lucrative and all those dollars you mention will be lining the pockets of organized crime. And when they sell weapons they won't be running any records checks on the purchaser.

 

[APACHE]

I've just returned from the U.S. and if I'm wrong I,m sure the posters from the USA will correct me, there is now only 1 state left that doesn't permit the carry of a concealed firearm in public under license this will give you an idea of the mindset of those in charge of the law-making. With the money involved in the gun industry and the mindset of those who want guns as a right, I can't ever see any leader of the States getting rid of guns, there are too many out there anyhow.

 

[Was not Was]

And the constitution merely states....the right to bare arms

That's mental. Why on earth would the constitution guarantee people's right to inflict bingo wings on the rest of us?

 

[dingodan]

Gun laws will not prevent gun related homicide and mass killings but it would significantly reduce them, which is the point. I have never fired anything other than an air rifle in my life and as such, if you gave me a gun I would not how to load it or arm it.
When a huge number of people have familiarity with using guns and have easy access or knowledge of where a gun can be found you will have a problem. It is a simple correlation and I'm surprised that you as a higher thinker and Dingo cannot see the link.

Oh, and gun control equaling crime control ? I don't think anyone has suggested that legislation on guns will cut crime, criminals will use whatever is at their disposal depending on their desperation or ruthlesness. But gun control will reduce the sickening list of mass killings.

Dude. Correlation does not infer causation. How many times? You are making a very common and quite basic (sorry) mistake. I hear what you are saying, and I understand why you think it, but you are wrong.

Having a familiarity with using guns, and easy access to guns is neither here nor there, if you are a responsible, law abiding citizen. The one thing you would want when faced with a criminal who is armed, is a law abiding citizen in the vicinity who is armed also.

Why do you believe that gun control will reduce mass killings? Here is an example of gun control: Schools are Gun Free Zones. Here is an example of a seemingly difficult and common problem in the U.S.: School shootings.

I am not arguing that a school being a Gun Free Zone caused any shootings to happen (because correlation does not mean causation, you see?). But what we can say is that schools being Gun Free Zones has not prevented school shootings. It's also likely that if they had not been Gun Free Zones (which really applies only to people who will obey the rules), then perhaps some lives could have been saved.

 

[vegster]

Dude. Correlation does not infer causation. How many times? You are making a very common and quite basic (sorry) mistake. I hear what you are saying, and I understand why you think it, but you are wrong.

Having a familiarity with using guns, and easy access to guns is neither here nor there, if you are a responsible, law abiding citizen. The one thing you would want when faced with a criminal who is armed, is a law abiding citizen in the vicinity who is armed also.

Why do you believe that gun control will reduce mass killings? Here is an example of gun control: Schools are Gun Free Zones. Here is an example of a seemingly difficult and common problem in the U.S.: School shootings.

I am not arguing that a school being a Gun Free Zone caused any shootings to happen (because correlation does not mean causation, you see?). But what we can say is that schools being Gun Free Zones has not prevented school shootings. It's also likely that if they had not been Gun Free Zones (which really applies only to people who will obey the rules), then perhaps some lives could have been saved.

Well, isn't that a lovely little rule ? thats really a jolly good idea. I mean it must be so difficult with kids in the morning, checking they have done their homework,getting their sports kit ready, getting the right books, the lunch box.... " Oh, and have you packed your piece and spare clip Leroy ? "

Maybe, just maybe, it might be worth trying a country as a " Gun Free Zone " ? It isn't going to happen and this thread and this debate will slide in to the background until the next mass shooting.

I feel so sorry for all those young innocent lives snuffed out, for the teachers trying to save their kids and the parents facing the rest of their lives grieving.

Sadly nothing will change.


ps, please don't call me " Dude "

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Obama can't do one single thing if he can't get any bills passed.

There would be Democrats who's vote for it, but no republicans would thus it would fail.

 

[Dalos]

I'd look at it another way after hearing Morgan Freemans viewpoint.Most of the killers fit a certain profile-the loner,socially inept,maybe even bullied type looking to be noticed in anyway possible.I can't remember any of the killers being the high school football captain

If these guys are intent on suicide,they think I may as well go out in a blaze of bullets and get the notoriety they crave-otherwise they would hang themselves in their room and no one would ever hear from them.So essentially the media need to "controlled" ie do not report the names of these killers,all of the major news organisations come out now and say that they will not publish these names.People will say,but twitter etc but they have the technology to kill any feed with a specific word set.

 

[Mutts Nuts]

And the constitution merely states....the right to bare arms, not quite the same as owning an automatic rifle capable of the tragic scenes we are witnessing now. And you can buy ammo in the supermarket in some states!!!

Not disagreaing with you but the same could be carried out with a shot gun in this country,or an illegaly purchased semi automatic rifle,guns dont kill people, people do

 

[Robdinho]

Having a familiarity with using guns, and easy access to guns is neither here nor there, if you are a responsible, law abiding citizen. The one thing you would want when faced with a criminal who is armed, is a law abiding citizen in the vicinity who is armed also.

Surely you can see though, that if a criminal is armed, and no-one else is, then the gun is unlikely to be fired (obviously I'm not talking about the mass shootings here, but their motivation is quite different from the majority of gun crime). If the criminal is armed, and someone else is also armed and pointing a gun at them, then someone is going to get shot.

Why do you believe that gun control will reduce mass killings? Here is an example of gun control: Schools are Gun Free Zones. Here is an example of a seemingly difficult and common problem in the U.S.: School shootings.

I can see what your saying, in that these people possibly target schools because they think they are a soft target, but how can the answer possibly be more guns? Where do you stop? Should every child be armed and take marksmanship classes as part of their school day? If you put guns in schools then it is pretty much inevitable that at some point someone in the school uses that gun to kill someone else in the school. Surely it is better to reduce the number of guns owned by people who have no real need for them.

In the UK, if some sad, depressed, bitter loner kid had dark thoughts about killing his classmates then the chances are they wouldn't have the money, underground contacts or social skills to source a firearm to do it, and those feelings would pass without incident. In the US they just need to pop into the basement and borrow dad's.

 

[vegster]

I'd look at it another way after hearing Morgan Freemans viewpoint.Most of the killers fit a certain profile-the loner,socially inept,maybe even bullied type looking to be noticed in anyway possible.I can't remember any of the killers being the high school football captain

If these guys are intent on suicide,they think I may as well go out in a blaze of bullets and get the notoriety they crave-otherwise they would hang themselves in their room and no one would ever hear from them.So essentially the media need to "controlled" ie do not report the names of these killers,all of the major news organisations come out now and say that they will not publish these names.People will say,but twitter etc but they have the technology to kill any feed with a specific word set.

Interesting thought, there is indeed this kind of " going out with a bang " attitude from these people who feel that life has marginalised them and left them, in their minds, no other option.

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

In my book this is very simple. There is a vast difference between these two things:

1 - A small handgun in the glovebox of your car or under your bed to protect yourself/family with the odd shot or two.
2 - A massive assault rifle capable of killing multiple people in a matter of seconds.

This really shouldn't be difficult.