Australia: land of kangroos, people that need to lighten up

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Acceptable risk is the term I'd use. Life is dangerous. If you want to preach about firearms in regards to public safety, you have a long list of things that are more dangerous that come first [that also aren't "needed" to live] and are legal (smoking for example).

But they can still own pools. Why don't they just ban private pools and only have public ones monitored by trained individuals? There's no reason to own a private pool. In fact, there's no reason to have a public pool (too dangerous), and there's no reason for us to open the beaches to anyone (too dangerous). There's no reason to own a private car. Trains and buses for everyone.

One problem with keeping firearms in a single place is that they're easy targets for theft. A pistol club here in Brisbane had a heap of pistols stolen several years ago. Keep them at a police station you say? Most illegal firearms actually come from the police here.

What you say about "nutcases" in response to Dox47,

Did you know that someone in the police or military can easily "snap" as much as anyone else (they have access to the most potent weapons)? Many actual rampages in countries that have very strict firearm laws have this happen. Police and whatnot are under a lot of stress daily....

That article does not factor in the ending of the crack epidemic, variations in the economy, variations in the education system, law enforcement involvement in a community, or any other number of factors that are a lot more significant than gun magazine subscriptions.

Furthermore, states that made concealed carry an option in the '90s saw a faster and more dramatic decline in homicides and overall crime than the national average.

The model community with high gun ownership is Kennesaw, Georgia. A year after they passed a mandatory gun ownership ordinance (with a couple exceptions), cut their crime rate in half-- ~79% below the national average. They went 25 years without a murder. In the last 5 years there have been 4 (2 in 2010). 1 shooting was committed by a disgruntled employee and 3 were committed done by thugs.

Members of the armed forces and police are screened during the recruitment phase for serious mental flaws. Not foolproof but better than nothing. Perhaps similar testing needs to be done before issuing gun licenses to civilians involved in sports shooting.

Sorry this town is unrepresentative of the rest of the USA. Kennesaw is a predominantly white town where they have a museum dedicated to (and celebrating) the Klan and strong membership of the KKK. The town was also successfully sued by three public works staff over hostile work conditions created due to their non-white ethnicity. Sounds like a pretty rotten place.

Secondly data suggests that mandatory gun ownership in Kennesaw has had no effect on crime when examined over a number of years*

* Hemenway, David (2006). Private Guns, Public Health. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press.

You're in luck. In Oz, those who apply for a license have to go through all of the same background checks, in addition to a safety course run by the police. If someone has a license, you can reasonably say they're at least as safe as the government requires. The actual rate of firearm accidents is higher among the police force than the licensed public, just FYI and all.

Of note, I'm a big fan of the mandatory safety course (not a fan of other restrictions, but not everyone agrees with me there). I don't trust people to learn things on their own properly.

On this we can agree then. But background checks will only bring up prior records if the person had a criminal record right? what about mental profile? potential to have a brain snap because of a mental illness (not talking here about autism, rather bipolar, schizophrenia and personality disorder etc).

An all-encompassing Federal and State background check. They have access to everything, even private records (it even says such on the application). Exclusions are wide; you can appeal them, but it's most likely not worth it in the end regarding the bother.

I'm also a fan of a background check. I can see the desire for lots of the exclusions; I wouldn't want someone who had drunk driving as an offense to handle firearms, as that shows a lack of responsibility.

I wouldn't want someone with a drunk driving offense to drive a car either, but they're pretty lenient there.

So how is all this mutually exclusive from gun rights? You can't have all those things along with gun rights? Any sort of system is too big and massive to efficiently cater to individual needs, so it only makes sense that people should have an individual means of protection should the system fail. Fire departments don't eliminate the need for fire extinguishers, so why should the police departments eliminate the need for guns?

You retract your statement and yet you still show the same condescending attitude that led you to saying most gun owners are probably abusive parents. (Redacted)

Can any mod PLEASE explain why my post above got edited while cyberdad gets absolutely no s**t for his conduct at all?

Your post included a personal attack on him. Someone else reported it publicly in the place to report this things and I had to remove the personal attack.

I cant find any personal attack on his posts

I won't deny that I straight up attacked him. I did call him a POS. But any one of his posts can easily fall under personal attacks:

Sounds a lot like that "Are you gonna shoot me?" crap, and this is after he retracted his disgusting little bs about gun owners being abusive fathers.

He thinks merely owning a gun is a sign of primitive and violent thinking. Does that not go beyond attacking an opinion, belief, or philosophy?

Those posts werent reported until now(they only reported the last page). I´ll look into them now

Thank you. I tend to assume that the moderating here works by cruising through threads but I guess it mostly works on the basis of reports.

He is just giving his opinion on the subject same way we have to allow heavy criticism towards any religion we have to allow heavy criticism on any topic .
I cant find any post where he actually says that anyone owning a gun is an abusive father which would be unacceptable yes.

Imagine if he said "being a Muslim" rather than "gun ownership". To your credit though, the "Are you gonna shoot thing?" has been addressed. He already retracted the abusive parents thing too so anyways I'm just gonna drop it. I just get cranky about these type of things because I get too much condescending crap from people IRL who think I'm a knuckle dragger just because I do MMA and that somehow makes them so civilized and sophisticated. I can see more of this crap coming once I apply for a gun licence. They think being sophisticated and civilized is about looking down on things rather than conducting themselves respectfully, which I think is hypocritical and repulsive since I am a lot more respectful towards people than they are. I judge people's civility based on conduct, not based on how "intellectual" their hobbies are.

Arming people (civilians) with weapons to the point the community is awash with guns has a knock on effect that goes beyond making the community unsafe. It also creates a culture that teaches the next generation that problems can be solved using violent retaliation. Not a healthy environment.



Not picking on you specifically but none of the pro-gun posters here have provided evidence that a mild mannered accountant with a gun is going to magically turn into Chuck Norris if faced with 2-3 armed intruders.