Another Gun Control Thread

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Feminist Apologist? Or merely someone who has been in enough fights and stopped enough to know that women can and do cause as much, and sometimes more damage than men? Size, weight, muscle ratio, it can all be panned by aggression, adrenaline, surprise, and a myriad other factors. Too many to say that she couldn't damage someone just because she's a girl.

Sand wrote;

You apparently don’t know all that much about firearms and what types are available and have been available even in your own lifetime.
The initial purpose behind the development of the earliest firearms was, in fact, to do harm to others, offensively or otherwise. That was in the medieval era and in the centuries since there have been firearms designed exclusivity for sporting purposes in addition to those that weren’t sporting in nature.
Saying that they were designed for nothing other than killing people is like saying all cars are build strictly with NASCAR in mind.

Those that weren’t designed for sporting purposes have their uses just the same.
The Glock 23 in my desk drawer less than a foot from my hand was meant for personal protection and/or police duty and I don’t have a problem with it because I have it for personal protection. Firearms as a whole have many purposes and are very diverse.
I have no “illusions” on this, as a lifetime student of firearms I do know what is and is not.

Having a firearm handy doesn’t give me a false sense of anything. It only makes me better prepared, same as wearing seatbelts in our cars or having a spare tire in the trunk.
That “false sense of security” thing is an old, liberal, anti-gun lobby plea that doesn’t hold water in the real world.

You mentioned training, another anti-gun lobby piece of false rationale.
Just what level of training do you think it takes? Every day in the U.S. people with little to no training protect themselves from assault, home invasion, and death.
Training is not only good but very good, however, it isn’t always necessary to win the day.

Good for you that you’ve never needed a firearm, count yourself lucky. I’ve never been in a bad enough car accident to need my seatbelt but I still wear them anyway just to be prepared.
I stay away from areas with a high potential for trouble, too, but sometimes trouble finds us in generally safe areas.
The assumption that fighting back will only make matters worse is a pure sheep state of mind. I refuse to be a sheep and I refuse to submit myself to being eaten.
Wake up!

There are words in English and ways of using them that cloak reality. "I keep a gun for personal protection, not to harm anybody" like the term "collateral damage" are words to hide reality. Your intention to "protect yourself" is an intention to do so by making it extremely easy to do extreme damage to people you assume will harm you. That assumption has proven, over and over and over again to cause horrible accidents and damage to entirely innocent people because people continuously mistake intentions and occurrences. Of course guns alone don't kill people. But people with guns certainly do and do so inappropriately to the tune of thousands of deaths every year by people with lousy judgment. I am sure that some people can use guns wisely in appropriate situations but, for my taste, that is an extreme minority. Case after case of trained policemen with professional training appear regularly in the news where unarmed innocent people are killed for no real reason at all. Why should I trust your judgment when my life is at stake?

So when you say "I support sane, common sense gun control" I should interpret it as "I want to outlaw all privately held guns"? Or are you saying that you are out of ideas for arguing your position and rather than conceding the point you are going to attack us as having used some sort of rhetorical "trick" or other "unfair" argument?




The only person doing any assuming here is you. By your own admission you've never carried a gun on the street, so anything you have to say on the matter is pure speculation from the outset. I can tell you with complete certainty that using a firearm or any other weapon based on an "assumption" will get you thrown in jail in the US at least as quickly as in any other country, you have to be in immediate and extreme danger to even legally draw. As you yourself point out, the police themselves are a major perpetrator of "mistaken intent" shootings, I would argue the major offender even, yet I doubt that you are proposing to disarm them.



To address the first part of this, people manage to kill each other just fine whether guns are present or not, this has been amply demonstrated in previous posts. Doing away with the guns would not do away with the violence, and if anything would make ceratain groups more vulnerable, since guns are an equalizing weapon.

As to the second part, why should I trust your judgment either? I may be biased, but I can at least claim some expertise on firearms and their usage. You don't show any particular grasp of the subject, provide no supporting information, and don't even live in the US and so cannot provide an accurate picture of the reality of living here. To paraphrase Nick Naylor, you don't sound like much of a credible expert, which puts you in good company as far as the gun control movement seems to go.

As most gun enthusiasts are eager to say, " Guns don't kill people,people kill people". I agree with that completely. So the problem resolves around the psychology of people, not the mere possession of a gun. Your immediate jump to the interpretation of recommending common sense gun control is therefore that all privately guns should be banned. It's a revealing indication of your defensiveness and fear that you would not be qualified to carry a gun. You reiterate continually that you are competent in all directions to carry a gun. Why the irrational and determined anxiety over proving competence?

When I point out to you that defense with a gun means using a gun to commit violence even though that violence may be justified you accuse me of some sort of trickery as if injuring or killing someone attacking you is not an act of violence? In no way is a gun a peaceful instrument whether used properly or otherwise and your anger over that designation is clearly not rational.

Further along you indicate I am not competent to comment on carrying firearms because I do not carry a gun. You accuse me of speculation because I cite the thousands of people injured and killed by a gun every year in the USA as a matter of clear record which you cannot deny. If you really think anyone merely carrying a gun illegally is automatically thrown into jail why are you so afraid of someone coming after you with a gun and carrying an illegal weapon? Or are you contemplating using a gun against someone who is legally carrying one? That's an odd thought. I wonder what you have in mind.

We both agree that the police are frequently incompetent in the use of firearms even though they are under tight legal restrictions in their use and are legally required to prove themselves competent at regular prescribed intervals. Are you or any other non-police gun carrier under the same restrictions? I sincerely doubt it. Yet you are equally or more dangerous with a gun since you can have huge psychological problems with your wife or girl friend or boss and get drunk or just totally pissed off and still carry that gun. Don't tell me it doesn't happen. These things are regularly in the news and you know it as well as I do. But you are really going off the deep end when you hint I believe the police should be disarmed. But there's no denying the dangers.

Going back to the problem of people killing without guns, do you seriously believe a guy with a sharp toothpick, a boy scout knife, or a sharp razor blade is equally as dangerous as even a fourteen year old with his father's fully loaded automatic pistol? And what would you do if a kid with what may be a realistic cap pistol pointed it at you in some sort of wild kid joke? Would you put a bullet into his head in your expert manner? Do you really think you could think that clearly if it was an Arab or black kid goofing around? Could I trust you? Could you trust yourself?

I was born in New York and spent the first 40 years of my life there. I spent two years in the US Army. I was in Manhattan when the Twin Towers were knocked down. I had black friends in Harlem and visited there frequently. I was in Tennessee in the early 60's and had a cross burnt on my lawn by the KKK. I was in Israel during the Six Day War working for the UN and visited Arab territory with Arab friends right afterward. I was in Berlin during the Russian encirclement in 1962 and my Finnish wife visited East Germany to visit a library there when the Vopos were acting up. I was in Grenoble, France during the Algerian uprising. I never needed a gun and if I had one I probably would have been in great trouble. There is nothing sure in life and a gun is very rarely a solution.

A gun indicates a very frightened insecure person unless it is part of professional equipment.

A gun indicates someone who is prepared to deal with dangerous people who at most will also have a gun. If they do not they would be crazy to try to harm you.

Opposing gun ownership indicates a very frightened insecure person.

Should all persons who own a gun be qualified to use it? Certainly. But if you were a criminal with a gun in a country where gun ownership was banned what would you fear? Who could stop you if you were confident about avoiding the police (as you would have to be before attempting criminal action in the first place)?

Sand wrote;

We’re always hearing about this need for “common sense gun control” even though we’ve had gun control in one form or another, federal, state, and/or local level for over a century.
People die despite the existing laws and all the sudden you say we need more. When that doesn’t work, and it won’t”, you scream for more gun laws.
These buzzwords like “assault weapon” or “cheap, easy to get handguns” to name just a few get thrown in there by those that can’t even put an accurate definition what they’re talking about.
About all gun control has ever done is to keep firearms from the law abiding. Most big cities are an example; plenty of guns but in the wrong hands.

Obtaining a concealed carry permit in most states requires some form of training or proof of former training. It has become accepted as an acceptable infringement if there is such a thing.

Requiring individuals to prove competence just to own a firearm is a road leading to at least partial prohibition since the authorities can up the requirements and fees to a level unreachable by people of moderate means.
In short, it contradicts “shall not be infringed” part of the 2nd Amendment to a level that is not only unacceptable but arbitrary.




Yes, there are a lot of people that die or are severely injured due to gunshot wounds and no one can deny that. However, these deaths are very low when you take into account ALL of the things that bring about death other than old age. Attacking guns is like picking one turd out of a cesspool and blaming it for all of the odor. That’s irrational!



Everyone has issues in their minds they’re carrying around, some more intrusive than others, but that does not make one unstable to the point you are implying.
I’ve been very upset while I had a gun close by or even on my person and never thought to draw it simply because I know right from wrong and I accept that most all others do as well. There are exceptions but we cannot fix everything in the world.




Yes, a firearm is generally a better killing tool than a knife or ball bat. User skill and determination shapes the outcome a lot of times but overall I have to agree that a firearm is the tool of choice and for good reason.
Pointing a realistic looking toy gun (most of them aren’t very realistic looking) at someone you don’t know or might not know you’re playing is stupid. So is riding a bicycle into oncoming traffic. You cannot save all the stupid people from themselves, kids and adults alike.
It might seem cold but this really accounts for too small of a percentage of fatalities in the overall scheme of things to take into consideration.
Refer back to my single turd in the cesspool analogy.



Gee, you sure get around don’t you? Carrying a pistol in a foreign country is dangerous in itself for legal reasons and I can’t say I’d recommend it without reservations.
We’re talking about the United States, though, where we can carry in most of the states.
I can pull up all the actual accounts of citizens successfully using their firearms to protect themselves and families that you want to read about and then enough to fill volumes. It happens every day that someone was damn glad to have that concealed pistol in the waistband holster or the shotgun in the bedroom. Just because you’ve been lucky, and that’s all it’s been, doesn’t give you the right to preach to others that their luck will hold out as well. I’ve never had an auto accident bad enough that seatbelts saved my life but I sure as hell don’t go telling everyone else not to bother with them because of my good fortune. It would be irresponsible of me.



Wrong! It indicates a prepared person who takes some responsibility for themselves and refused to be the sheep for the wolves to eat at their leisure.
I find it ironic that someone who claims to have been to all those dangerous places and seen what you claim to have seen and done can be so naïve and still breathing.

But whatever, if you want to trust your fate to the “professionals” who’s duty it is to protect the public as a whole and NOT the individual go right ahead.
I know better so I’ll do it the way I know best.

We can go on and on about this topic like we have in other like threads and your side of the argument can never come to the table with anything that I or others in this thread can’t easily shoot down.

Most of what I wanted to say has been said by others already, so I'll just reiterate my earlier attack on armchair psychology. Namely, that it really smacks of desperation when all you can do is try to psychoanalyze your opponent rather than actually attack their arguments. It also seems fairly typical of the superior attitude so often displayed by anti gun advocates, their view is "just common sense" or "obvious to anyone" or "sane", whereas anyone holding an opposing view must be crazy, or have some sort of "issues". I won't even bother to go into refuting anything about myself, anyone who has followed my many debates on this board on this subject can easily see the logical consistency and reasoning behind my arguments, if their minds aren't too clouded by preconceived notions.

Like Raptor said, no one has stepped up with a good argument for gun control yet, just the usual emotional BS and hysterical hand wringing by people who don't know any better. The competition was a little better this time than usual I must admit, at least I got more than a sentence here and there to sink my teeth into.

With that, it's back to the shop for me, I'm in the middle of modifying a .177 air rifle to accept a .40 caliber blow gun barrel so I can shoot darts at high velocity, hence my long response times. Why would I want to build a high velocity dart gun, you might ask? Because I can! Why else?

Very well said, Dox47.