Is it WRONG to own guns, rifles, swords, knives, etc.?

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interestingly, i saw my first real live armed copper close up only a few weeks ago. The only other time (excepting tv etc) was from a distance in Tunisia.. and both times it unnerved me to hell and back. I am really not comfortable with a law officer having the power of instant life and death over me. They are more than capable of making mistakes, and I would dearly prefer it to involve something much less lethal. By extension, I am infintely more uncomfortable with that concept when it involves someone who probably hasnt had extensive training in the application of the law OR firearms. Its bad enough that that "someone" could be a member of the criminal fraternity. Its even more unsettling when it could be ANYONE AT ALL.

Wahey! Here's my favourite gun-toting right-winger!

You don't actually keep ammo for the Mauser, do you?

Yeah, that is just irrational fear though. The fact of the matter is that when law officers have weapons, they really have to make sure that they use them correctly, there is so much red tape and concern over the use of firearm that they will not be reckless. Unless you are dealing with insane people, you are not likely to be shot, and if I were around insane people regardless of gun-ownership then I would be afraid.

Having said that.. I rather like guns.. even own a few non-firing replicas. I have a tidy collection of edged weaponry as well. Spose that makes me a teensy bit hypocritical. But hen again, I'm not often inclined to crime. I suppose it grinds down to the fact I'm against morons having guns. Actually, I'm against morons in general, armed or otherwise. So my position on whether the Americans should have the right to bear arms rather depends on whether or not I think they are morons or not...

An interesting dilemma methinks. The jury, as they say.. is out.

Let the moronification be proven.. (or not.)

It seems to me that this debate is not about guns and whether they are good or bad or not, but about the philosophy of a society that believes in guns as a form of power.
The attacks on each others national character based on spurious 'opinion' polls are irrelevant.
The reason I dislike the US attitude towards weapons is because I dislike the US attitude towards achieving it's goals through force and whether or not an abundance of guns in the public arena is a good idea given that kind of absolutist thinking.
For the record the only people who have ever threatened me online, told me my country deserved nuking or whatever were all white Americans, what does that say about the US character and it's potential for violence.
I live in a really quite violent country, we are failing as a society to operate as a society, I am glad we don't have the means at the fingertips of Joe public to escalate that situation. Given our propensity to violence we would probably have worse gun killing stats than anyone, peace j

Yeah, peace when the New Zealand Army declares marshall law and you have no way to stand up for yourself.

I have been to San Francisco, LA, and NY before, and I can tell you that you have a very inaccurate view of the places. You must watch too much of the news.

Well, I think everyone here acknowledges that guns provide power. The debate is really about whether the dispersal of power in the form of a gun will be good or bad.
Well, many of those polls were not opinions. National character really shouldn't have been the issue at hand, but it did get into this matter given the comments on national character that I initially got involved because of.
The US definitely has a form of absolutist thinking within it. I do not think that any new development would happen though because of US gun ownership. We have had it for years, sudden change would really be outside of the expected range.
Probably not too much given that a disproportionate amount of them were probably hot-headed young people. I suppose Americans are more hot-headed than most people, however, I do not think it ends up being a majority of the populace that is incredibly dangerous.

So much for the hypocrite who was out of here earlier on....

NZ army turning on it's own? Like the Australian army turning on IT'S own? Oh, I suppose you are thinking of the 19th century, well that never actually happened, because both the Australian and NZ armed forces never actually existed (correct me if I'm wrong cuz) before the ANZACs were formed before the Great War of 1914-18. Nor did either turn upon their own residents. Yours may have, snake, but only because of insurgences from your own people (such as Kent State in 1970 and the riots of 1965); and the government themselves ordered the army to quell those insurgences. So before you have a go at Australian or NZ, look at you own inglorious past; then see why we are saying that the lunatic 2nd amendment was a mistake to begin with, and arming the populace should only occur if they are willing to join the armed services. Vigilantism is the civilian population taking the law into their own hands, and killing people because they have pissed them off because they failed to let the police handle it is vigilantism at it most stupid. As I said, the only people who need weapons are the police and armed forces, and if society worked properly, then even thy wouldn't need them. Civilian militias in this day and age are an anathema, and should never be suggested in 21st century society. Anyone who thinks so is more dangerous than the people they think are threatening them in the first place.

Wait, what is wrong with our inglorious past? I mean, neither of the events you mention warrant being called insurgencies, they were both riots. An insurgency seems to imply a rebel party that is trying to fight the government, in the situations mentioned there was no Civil War, in fact in Kent State the students might not have had any guns at all.

Societies never work properly. Vigilantism is a citizen going off to pursue non-legal justice, however, gun ownership does not require that or presume it, as self-defense or defense of others is hardly vigilante justice. Some people might want civilian militias though, I don't see a problem with them really. Some might be more dangerous than their opposition, however, I would think that much of the drive to form these organizations would be a mixture of civic pride and camaraderie.

Whether the students at Kent State were armed or not, the government saw fit to order the army in to break it up, and people got killed. Had they had weapons, then the killing would have been of a far bigger scale, and the army may have razed it to the ground. Same with the riots in '65. You may think that people have the right to be vigilantes when things go pear shaped, but fortunately that is not their decision to make. Call the police if you are in trouble; or if you really have to and you have no choice, find some way to defend yourself. But remember, self-defence is bloody nigh impossible to prove in court, and if it can be proved that the supposed victim claimed self-defence after tracking down the perpetrator, then they are in even more trouble. As I keep saying, you are not in the wild west, or Al Capone's Chicago; nor has martial law been imposed. Let the police do their job, and the courts theirs, and things will work themselves out. If civilians keep interfering, then the problem will only get worse.

QFT.

People who stick to their guns because of a stupid amendment that has long since become outdated have no respect for human life. It's a different matter if they are used for actual hunting or kept as collector's items, but keeping a gun for potential self-defence when you clearly do not need it is imbecilic. Anyway, memes hurt governments more than guns.

^ Agreed.

It's not that I don't have respect for human life, it's more that I also have respect for the rights and freedoms my forefathers fought and died for, and I'm not taking them for granted.
Nothing last forever, as much as you might want to think things will never change and they'll always stay like they are now, this is not reality. Rome had an empire 4 times as long as America has existed as a nation. I'm sure many Romans felt the same way "Rome will never die". Well it did.
American freedom and democracy is no exception to this. If we're not willing to defend our freedom, it will get taken away.
Just because "it's the 21st century" does not mean peoples' attitudes have evolved that much. Most people are just too stupid to realise when theyr repeating the same mistakes history has already made, and this is why history repeats itself.
I agree, a world where no guns are necessary would be a better world, but that's not reality, it's a delusional hippy pipe dream, unless of coarse you don't value having rights and freedom.

The world is too crowded for that kind of thinking.
If you want a less violent environment you need a culture of trust.
If I am thinking, 'I need a gun to defend myself from the potential actions of my neighbours...' well that isn't trusting is it?
That shows that I expect my neighbour to show me little respect or even to threaten my life?
Perhaps it is deep, set into your individualistic culture to think like that? but in societies where people seldom get so desperate they feel the justification to harm another to provide for their needs, in a society where people feel they have an obligation to help rather than hinder the progress of their brethren and sistren? well....
Most of the violence that is occurring in my country and it's increase can be directly related to other cultural changes that have seen us quite consciously emulate US American culture and policy as a result of immense neo-imperialistic pressure guised as various things, from free trade to cold war security and ultimately 'US Hegemony'.
I don't think this debate is about guns, more about gun culture and the greater culture in which that subculture occurs.
I am not scared of guns, or even nuclear f*****g bombs, no I am scared by the mentalities that wield them.
peace j

The world isn't too crowded for individuals to cease looking out for themselves. In order to get a less violent environment, one needs a culture of responsibility, trusting the wrong people leads to problems.

If it were an absolute need then you would be correct and if we were concerned necessarily about our next door neighbors without knowledge of them then ditto, however, usually guns are to handle unknown variables such as strangers and bad neighhbors.
It is very set into our individualistic culture to seek individualistic control. We do not seek to harm others to provide for our needs and we have lots of progress in our society.
Well, your country must be doing a better job at being American than we are as I have already spouted out a statistic that shows that Australia has higher levels of crime in many areas. I don't buy much into imperialism except as the usurpation of control over a region by another region in order to directly gain resources in a permanent fashion, and perhaps to take up the "white man's burden" of civilizing areas. Given that I consider many of the acts in the Cold War to not take up that end so much as fall into a more realist category of seeking to deny power to an enemy, I do not see US actions in the Cold War as truly imperialist. I also do not see true free trade as an imperialistic motion, I think that some managed trade issues might fall more into that category but they become more desirable to some extent because of non-neo-liberal populism more so than the neo-liberal drive for trade, especially given that some neo-liberals are critical of the management often found in "free trade" deals. The neo-liberals really want nations to cut taxes, and the economists that tend to comprise the movement are not nationalists and have no care for culture and such but simply see other variants of trade as reducing efficiency. The neo-liberals and the more nationalist groups actually have some conflict even, they are on some level bound together by the fact that the left hates them both.

The debate is about guns. You might be more interested in gun culture, but I don't even think that gun culture is strongly dangerous and perhaps that might be due to the fact that I live in a red state, and even know a preacher who owns a lot of guns and carries concealed weapons but who I would find trustworthy.