Do you hate guns?

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I think they're neat. The mechanical design of them and the history of how they have evolved. Some of it is really clever.

<---- Take a wild guess...

Yes.

Reasons:

1. They serve no useful function whatsoever. Their primary purpose - their ONLY purpose, really - is to cause death.
2. In the hands of lunatics they end up causing a great deal of harm and suffering (ex. Breivik in Norway, the Port Arthur massacre, and others too numerous to mention).
3. They are loud (I hate loud noises).
4. No one, apart from the armed forces and law -enforcement, has any good reason to posses them. Farmers can make do with shotguns, but they don't need M-16's or AK-47's. Actually, NO ONE (again, apart from the army) needs an AK-47 or M-16, and so they should not be allowed to own them.

1) Shooting at targets isn't killing. I also have a lamp I made with a Kalashi that was battle-damaged in such a fashion, it wasn't worth fixing (the outside looked fine; the interior components, not so much).
2) So do bombs, knives, corporations, religion, NBC agents (which are surprisingly easy to obtain). Even ideas in the hands of a lunatic are dangerous - look at Hitler, Shiro Ishii, Stalin, etc.
3) So are motorcycles, lawnmowers, some trucks, crowds, loudspeakers, factories and concerts.
4) Nobody needs a car, phone, computer, television, bed, dresser, dishes, shoes (people in Africa and some parts of India walk barefoot all the time), jewlery, video-games, toys, and other non-necessities. By your logic, we should not allow responsible citizens to own these things either? There are civilian versions of the weapons you mention. Very few civilians own fully-automatic weapons. The ones I own (Browning M2, Soviet-era AK-47 with milled receiver and the Flak 36) were "grandfathered in" by virtue of their age and have been used in expos, where people fire them at targets for mere enjoyment. Plus, it would be rather conspicuous to tow in the Flak, set it up in front of some bloke's house and try to rob the place. Imagine the APB put out on that: "Subject appears to be a white male, driving an olive drab vehicle with an anti-aircraft gun on a trailer." I don't imagine getting past a block before being apprehended.

Point No. 1 My observation that they 'serve no useful function' is still valid even if you only ever use the gun to shoot at inanimate targets on a rifle range. It may be a lot of fun to do so, it may be your hobby and there are certainly other activities that could be described as not being constructive or productive (too many to list), but it has to be said that the development of firearms from the beginning was to inflict harm; that is what principally drove their evolution and development.
Point No. 2 Bombs and knives do cause deaths, but if by 'bombs' you mean explosives in general, then it can at least be said that they are useful to the extent that they can be used by engineers to clear away obstacles in the path of, for example, new construction sites. Knives are also very useful as a general cutting tool, cooks use them on their vegetables all the time. Corporations and religion are not inherently 'dangerous' either, although they can (like politics, which you don't list) be manipulated to serve selfish and sinister ends. Demagogues like Hitler only ever became dangerous because they had A) the mass support of the people, and B) the support of the armed forces behind them. Without either of these Hitler would only ever have been just another deranged windbag, the object of ridicule and jokes.
Point No. 3 Yes, all of those are noisy too, and I try to avoid them as much as I can. This is not really possible most of the time, but I try.
Point No. 4 Actually, I need a car. Where I live, if I did not have one I would be stranded at home and unable to get to work (there is no ready access to public transport), and if this happened I would no longer be able to support myself. I guess what is 'needed' by most people is subject to how one defines the term itself - 'need'. I did not know about the 'civilian versions' of the weapons you mention, where I live (Australia) the possession of assault weapons being illegal for civilians full-stop, without exceptions.

I hate gun owners

I fired a fully-automatic assault rifle on Friday, and that's a rare opportunity (without breaking the law). It was a Steyr Aug; belonging to my father-in-law. He has a VERY hard-to-get license from the Fed Gov't to legally have fully automatic weapons in private keeping.

Loved it!

Charles

Ted Nugent would call that rocking and rolling..lol. Must be nice to have such a licensee in the family. Now could see where buying all those bullets might be a strain on the average budget.

Don't hate guns, who the evil mofos who use 'em.

Actually, the point of contention lies not within your opinion on what constitutes usefulness, but the statement regarding their "ONLY purpose." That cannot be validated, though it is their primary use.


BTW, I live in the U.S., which allows most people to own the "civilian versions" I mentioned earlier. Ownership of fully-automatic weapons or other weapons (my AA gun) is restricted with some exceptions (states also have their own laws regarding ownership), most notably manufacturers, dealers (who must have the appropriate licensure), bonafide collectors (usually museums) and private owners who have models that were "grandfathered in" on account of their production dates being prior to May 1986 (I fall into this category).

I worked for a guy that was licensed as a dealer in order to own post '86 weapons, he had multiple walk in safes in his garage just stuffed with guns, and did machinegun events to subsidize his hobby, but I don't think he ever sold a gun. I want to say a dealer in destructive devices license runs north of 3k a year, plus the cost of the guns and ammo, so it wasn't a cheap hobby by any measure, but the guy's day job was a VP at Apple Computers, so I guess he could afford it. That's his G36 I'm shooting in my avatar, somewhere I've got video of me shooting his MG42 from the shoulder, that was fun... Less fun was his USAS12, thing fired *just* slowly enough that you felt every round.

I saw someone above saying that people don't need shoes. That's not the case. One can't go to lots of public places, get on public transportation or go to work without having shoes on.

Perhaps if Canadian citizens were allowed to be armed, he wouldn't have felt so confident about being able to pull off the robbery like that.

There is some evidence for that line of reasoning; Canada and the UK have higher rates of home invasion burglaries vs unoccupied burglaries than the US, and inmate interviews confirm it's because burglars fear armed homeowners more than the police.

No, I don't hate guns, and would in fact like to own one.
A nice Walther PPK, of course.
Or a snubnose Colt 38 caliber.
Or one of those German pistols that the Nazis had.
In Arizona USA, they have tours for foreigners where they drive out to the desert and put a 38 caliber pistol in your hands and have targets set up. It's quite the excitement.

Yes.