Are owning a gun a bad thing?

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Cannada has less gun violence PER CAPITA than the USA.

The saint valentine's day massacre was executed with tommy guns- the favorite tool of 1920's gangsters.

The Valentine's Day Massacre was an execution. The hit men captured their victims and executed them. Gangsters with Thompson submachine guns often missed moving targets and drew unwanted attention to themselves. The professional hit man draws no attention to himself. He quietly shoots his victim with a small pistol or strangles the victim. He does it in a quiet place or if that s not available he may kill in a crowd. After killing, the hit man melts away into the astonished crowd on onlookers.
Not all assassins are that professional. Many were clowns and braggarts who carried impressive weaponry to impress their audience. They were usually caught.

Being able to own a firearm is a Good Thing if the requirements for self defense so dictate.

We sure as hell can't depend on the Police. They are too busy snarfing donuts and taking bribes.



ruveyn

Firstly there is no such thing as a guarantee when dealing with firearms. I have never seen a trigger awareness ND, though they do occur in alot in vehicles. Most of the ND's I have witnessed occurred during during weapons clearances and unload procedures. The most common of all is the person who, in haste removes the magazine after releasing the working parts forward; then when they ease springs they fire off the round they didn't know they had chambered.

@Dox47

I am not talking about conceal and carry (though I think it is a relatively silly idea). I am talking about owning concealable weapons at all. Incidentally the United States also has the highest number of unintentional deaths per 100,000 people of any developed country.

I cannot speak for SOPs in the US military but any ND in the ADF is an automatic charge (it also has about a 100% conviction rate).

Off topic:
Also, I did not enjoy shooting the Desert Eagle, I mean it looks harder than Dirty Harry and Stallone's love child but if I were to own a pistol, it would be a P229 chambered for .357.

How the hell can you classify a gun as "essential"?

By your logic, we should all have bombs. So what if a bad apple uses it for his advantage?

That is straight up negligence. You NEVER wanna leave a bullet in the chamber if you aren't firing the gun. And what exactly are "working parts"? The only thing I can come up with that moves forward is the forward assist on an AR-15.

@ Asp-Z: Logic without context is like an airplane without wings; it doesn't fly. How about taking into context the fact that bombs are overkill for self defense purposes, are purely offensive weapons, and are something that have to be set up rather than locked and loaded?

I'm planning on planting some land mines in my yard. So that if the neighbor's dog comes over for a whizz, that will be his last whizz.

Aren't there studies which show that, if you buy a gun for defense, like a paranoid lunatic, you're more likely to shoot a member of your own family than a criminal?

@ pandabear: You should throw a barbie doll in there, it would be perfect for luring little girls into their last step

Those studies skewed it up. Those statistics took people who murdered a family member to imply that you will somehow be more likely to accidentally shoot a family member.

And get off your high horse, just because you feel the need to own a gun it doesn't make you a paranoid schizo or point to having some sort of neurosis. The same people who accuse gun owners of being paranoid are the same people who call every rifle a machine gun, think a pistol grip makes it easier to shoot from the hip, think a "military" style rifle is more capable of killing people than a hunting style rifle since it looks scarier, and one dumbass official even wanted to ban barrel shrouds without even knowing what it is.

Social skills and street smarts are bigger factors to your safety when you're outside than a gun, but to take both of em as absolute guarantees to your safety is foolish.

You have a fairly ret*d concept of what constitutes "mentally ill". People who post on this forum are "mentally ill" by some yardsticks, and they own and operate firearms all the time. Not everybody "mentally ill" is a vegetable, or a childlike special needs type.

Whilst on the subject, has anyone else noticed the two extremes exemplified in this thread on the pro-gun ownership side? I think it would be hard to argue that Dox47 is an irresponsible or dangerous gun-owner, or that he is trigger-happy or dangerous or likely to cap a passerby at little or no provocation. RichardBenson however, gives all the impression of being exactly the sort of trigger-happy pillock who would eventually end up gunning down some children in a fit of pique, and exudes exactly the sort of mentality people don't want given the power of instant life or death over other people. Just saying, if I had to give a gun to one of them...

Of course there is another example, but as that poster thinks using gay people to clear mines is a good idea, I think he falls into the "lets not give you the bang-stick" group,

I thought Canadians had guns out the a**?

Yeah, 31.5 guns for every 100 people isn't rare at all. There's also a strong hunting culture in Canada...

Do you know how they conducted those studies? They hunted through the paper for reports of certain crimes, then called up the victims and asked them if they owned a gun. Think about that for a moment, and how it might skew the results of a study towards a pre-determined conclusion.

Go back and read the earlier part of the thread; I mentioned that my guns behave themselves when I carry them in public, and you asserted that this was dangerous due to the possibility of accidental discharge. I provided stats showing the unlikeliness of that possibility, so now you've moved the goalposts with a different set of your opinions.

You may think CC is a silly idea, but in every US state where it's been adopted crime has not gone up but down. I'm not even going to try and correlate the two, but merely point out that allowing CCW not only does not raise the crime rates in any way, but that it is provable fact that that all the anti gun rhetoric about the return of a wild west environment because of concealed carry is utter BS.

I am certainly no fan of unregulated firearms ownership, but I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing in gun ownership per se that correlates with firearms violence.

Comparing Canada and the United States (which are highly comparable jurisdictions), we see that there is a strong correlation between accidental injury from firearms and firearms ownership. (Americans possess approximately 3 times as many guns as Canadians, and their rate of accident is roughly 3 times the Canadian level.)

However, when we look at firearms homicides and suicides, the rates no longer correlate. Canadians are about half as likely to use firearms in suicide (with only 1/3 of the firearms per capita) and have a firearms homicide rate of only 11% of that in the USA. Meanwhile, South Africa, with vastly fewer firearms per capita, has a firearms homicide rate vastly in excess of that found in the United States.

Intuitively, this suggests to me that deaths and injuries due to accident are tied quite closely to the simple fact of ownership, but that other factors have a greater impact on the use of firearms in suicide or homicide.

It is, to my mind, foolish to leap to firearms ownership as a solution to firearms violence. If there are other factors in play, surely those factors must be identified and addressed in any public policy approach to stemming firearms violence.

That being said, while I support firearms ownership, I do not favour unregulated firearms ownership. I believe that a useful policy parallel can be drawn with motor vehicles. We require training, examination, licensing and insurance for the operation of a motor vehicle. I believe that similar kinds of limitations around the use of firearms is a more meaningful approach to this complex issue.

I see you've properly drawn the distinction between ownership and use; one does not need to register a car or obtain a license simply to own it, those requirements only come into play when you want to use it on public roads around other people. Guns are actually regulated in a similar manner, ownership generally requires simply proving that you've not been disqualified from purchase, while public carry requires a license of some sorts in most places.

The comparison is not perfect though, carrying a gun is actually a fairly passive activity compared to driving a car, the gun only poses a danger to bystanders when drawn from it's holster, while the car requires constant attention to operate safely. Given the infrequency with which the average licensed carrier is likely to draw their firearm (most never do), a fairly simple training regimen of basic gun safety is sufficient for the vast majority of people.

Intriguingly, John Lott did a study on states that require CCW applicants to undergo training vs those who simply require a background check, and found no increase in accidents or misuse of firearms in the no training states. Given my own experience, I'd attribute this to the self selecting nature of CCW permit holders who choose to go through the time and expense to be able to legally carry a gun in public; they tend to be serious people who aren't looking to cause themselves any unnecessary trouble.

There is also the political dimension, to my knowledge there are not highly committed anti-car groups who might someday use a master list of automobile ownership to confiscate cars; while the same can not be said of firearms. England is but one example, but even Canada has had some harsh political fights over registration of certain long guns, and later using those lists for purposes of prohibition. Plenty of otherwise reasonable people such as myself would strongly resist registration, which in my case often means voting for illiberal politicians who I would otherwise not support in order to minimize the likelihood of down the road regulation.

The whole GWB administration can actually be termed gun control collateral damage, which the Democrats seem to have belatedly realized...