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| Renegade |
| quote: | | At the end of the day gun control would stop murders being commited some nutjob who gets the piss taken out of him at school who picks up his dads assualt rifle and sprays a group of classmates. Will also stop the guy who finds his wifes been ing her boss for year from killing two ppl in a fit of rage, It will stop Mr Joe Average from killing however as I said before the criminal element will always have access to weapons. |
That's a good point actually. I don't think that gun control could ever eliminate premeditated murders, but it will certainly serverely cut down those "heat of the moment" murders that we hear so much about. For instance:
| quote: | | When looking at the risk of a woman being killed at the hands of a spouse, intimate acquaintance, or close relative, the authors found that having one or more guns in the home made a woman 7.2 times more likely to be the victim of such a homicide. |
| quote: | | ...family members that had a history of buying a handgun from a licensed dealer were twice as likely to die in a suicide or homicide as were persons similarly situated who had no such family history of gun purchase. This increased risk persisted for more than five years after the handgun was purchased. |
| quote: | | Other studies have looked specifically at the narrow question of keeping guns in the home for self-defense. One, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that having a gun in the home made it nearly three times more likely that someone in the family will be killed. This risk is particularly high for women, who are more likely to be killed by a spouse, intimate acquaintance, or close relative. An Archives of Internal Medicine study found that, with one or more guns in the home, the risk of suicide among women increased nearly five times and the risk of homicide increased more than three times. |
I think a ban on handguns that prevented Joe Suburbs from having a gun in his house would prevent the majority of crimes like this.
The only genuine argument for keeping guns, I feel, is self-defence("recreation" just doesn't cut it - no recreational pursuit is worth the destruction guns are so obviously responsible for) but even then I think that the risks far outweigh the benefits. For instance:
| quote: | | But how often do people use guns successfully to protect themselves from criminal acts? Does it justify the deaths and damage that comes with guns? Apparently not. Most studies have found that guns play a relatively minor role in preventing crime but a major role in facilitating it. For example, the US Department of Justice study found that, on the average, between 1987 and 1992 only one percent of actual or attempted victims of violent crime, or about 62,000 people, attempted to defend themselves with a firearm. On the other hand, criminals armed with handguns committed a record 931,000 violent crimes in 1992. Data from the FBI's Crime in the United States reveals that for every time in 1999 that a civilian used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 48 people lost their lives in handgun homicides alone. |
The NRA would have you believe that the second gun laws are tightened you'd have homes broken into, with the average person now helpless to prevent crime like this, when - in actual fact - the stats say that guns were rarely used for self-defence in the first place. As I said before, a tightening of gun-laws (which involved the sensible banning of weapons such as semi-automatic rifles - no one needs to unload 40 rounds/second for self-defence) in Australia reduced armed robbery and homocide rates, and theft and violent assaults were relatively unchanged. It's no coincidence that the country with such lax gun-laws has the highest homocide rates in the western world, and if these people - who seem to have a worrisome emotional attachement to their weapons (perhaps Freud would have something to say about that :D) - could just put one and two together and put aside their extreme paranoia for a second, perhaps we could see the end of unnecessarily tragic domestic homocides like the ones described above.
All quotes taken from:
http://www.prairienet.org/cchcc/gunrp.htm |
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| occrider |
| Studies ... sources ....logic ... common sense ... Now that is a well put together argument! :toocool: |
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| occrider |
| Btw it's nice to have a thread longer than a page that doesn't talk about the middle east or the US. |
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| Izzy |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Btw it's nice to have a thread longer than a page that doesn't talk about the middle east or the US. |
ya kinda refreshing....
about the topic, in all generality i agree that there should be strict gun control, even to the point of not allowing civlians, other then those who go through rigourus gun schooling or are some part of enforcement agency... |
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| montie |
well theres already a load posted here, but hey i gotta throw my 2 cents in also.
I'm all for stricter regulations on guns, but I don't think these regulations will cause a drastic and immidiate drop in crime.
First of all there is absolutly no need for citizens to have hand guns or automatic weapons.
protection? bah. from what. In case the germans come? or even worse those evil neighbors to the north, the Canadians, WHAT IF THEY ATTACK?
Please. the sad thing is there are actually militias out there that train in case of certain events.
now being less sarcastic. if someone is so worried about an intruder entering their home or is so scared to walk down the street, they can get some pepper spray or a tazer. If everyone had a gun to protect themselves there would be much more accidents than actual events where the gun is used to protect someone in a life threatening encounter. Besides, someone who is entering your home to just steal your belongings, as horrible as that is, does not deserve to be killed. Police in England don't have guns for self protection and they get along pretty well (any people out there in england want to prove me wrong go ahead, im not too knowledgeable in english crime).
Now I do believe guns do have some uses. Huntings guns should be available for those who are properly liscenced.
For those who really like guns like handguns and automatic weapons and want to shoot them, they should have gun clubs where they can go and use AK47's, colt AR 15's, uzi's, 9mm and whatever else type of gun that was made to kill people, to shoot at targets. The guns would not be allowed to leave the location.
Now back to my previous statement. I don't think regulations like this would immidietly cause a sudden and drastic decrease in crime in America. For crime to get as low as other countries, it will take alot more change in American culture and an end to many social problems here such as poverty, the drug war, our "culture of fear" etc..
I do think these regulations would save lives though. (don't you think it would be worth it to give up your gun if it could save the life of one innocent person? You don't need them that badly). Regulations such as these would be a good compramise for those who really want to hold on to their guns. And they would be a start at lowering our high murder rate. |
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