Knife Control is coming to Scotland

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Maybe I'm missing something or maybe you left out part of your reasoning, but if you see that banning guns does not stop gun crime, then what reason is there to ban or regulate their ownership by law abiding citizens?

Banning guns would eventually lessen some crimes including muder dramatically. All the statistics for countries with strict gun control suggest this. However you would have to put up with rising crime rate for at least a decade or so while many street punks have guns and law abiding citizens dont.

This would be an unpopular proposal and would require long term thinking so relax, its rather unlikely to happen.

No it wouldn't Criminals would just use knives or their bare hands.

With knives and bare hands people have to get their hands dirty and have less sucess. Hardened criminals have guns here too but they mostly just use them to shoot other gangsters. In places that guns are readily available then street punks and kids will use them with dramatic consequences.

You can argue this till your blue in the face but most statistics dont back your case. By making Guns readily available you are raising the stakes. Police officers are given guns and are very quick to shoot people. Do you think nerds like the columbine kids would have had acess to guns here? They would probably realise they would come off second best if they got physical so them using knives are unlikely.

Lets face facts. The countries that have guns readily available have higher murder rates in general. Obviously other factors come into it but claiming that guns arent at least part of the problem is being blinkered. Take into account that child murderers are much rarer in countries that guns arent available because with a gun death comes easier.

I hope nobody is going to argue that without cars people will just get knocked down with horses(yes it does happen but is less likely and cars raises the stakes and death rates) but at least a car provides a useful function and great benefits to those who use them. Guns are for shooting practice and killing people. Shooting sounds and for a lot of us is fun but im sure people would generally manage to get by without having them in their homes.

I already posted some facts about how crime has risen dramatically in countries that have gun bans, but you conveniently ignored those facts.

I don't argue with you that gun related crime drops if guns are banned, but crime overall goes up. This is because guns are an equalizer which puts elderly women and the crippled on an even footing with hardened criminals. Anyone with a gun is equal to anyone else with a gun. You take guns out of the picture and then it's the law of the jungle where the strong can prey on the weak with ease.

You have conveniently posted an article that is obviously pro-gun and has boosted your case a little but im sure you could have found loads more of statistics that back my case. I dont argue that crime would go up in the short term in states that introduce more gun control. Even the article you sent doesnt dispute that murders are higher in country's with lax gun controls. Gun's dont seem to equalize in all cases like columbine, that sniper guy etc. The fact is that if someone is a half-decent marksman and wants to kill loads of people then he will no matter how many OAP's or cripples think they might be safe with a shooter.

But criminals can still get guns even if they are illegal. The Columbine shooters, for example, had guns illegally and it was illegal to bring them to school, obviously, but that didn't stop them. Laws don't stop criminals because they will just ignore the laws... all the laws do is deprive law abiding citizens of the means to protect themselves.

When I think of Columbine I wonder how things would have been different if one of the teachers had a gun in his car and could have killed the shooters before so many children were killed. Or, think about 9/11.... imagine if the pilots or some of the passengers had guns. Imagine how things could have been different.

http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/new ... etail.html
http://www.11alive.com/news/news_articl ... ryid=66810

Here are two examples of citizens shooting intruders who wanted to either rob them or harm them. In the USA you hear about crimes prevented all the time thanks to guns. In your country where no one is allowed to have guns an intruder can break into a woman's house, rape her, torture her, and kill her. But in the USA it is possible that the woman might have a gun and could save her life.

I do agree with you that we should try to deprive criminals of guns, but we should do that in such a way as to not deprive innocent people of them. I would support laws making it illegal for violent criminals to have or purchase guns, while still allowing the law abiding citizens to do so.

That's a good point, I was kind of expecting that, and this isn't meant to be an argument against what you are saying, but I guess it just explains my reasoning a bit. I guess I've just figured that if one is a law-abiding citizen, then they shouldn't have any trouble obtaining guns even with background checks and other regulations, so it can't possibly hurt, and I guess it's the principle of the thing too-if there were no regulations, people who had been convicted of gun crimes or other violent crimes could obtain a gun easily and legally, and it just seems wrong to me. In addition, keeping assault weapons legal is keeping legal something that is meant to kill people, violently, period. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I seriously doubt anyone goes hunting with an assault weapon, and I doubt most law-abiding gun owners would have use for one. I know that in practice, criminals can obtain guns by other means, but I just think regulation and control doesn't hurt law-abiding citizens since those are the types of people who would still be able to obtain guns legally anyway. Also, I may be wrong on this as well, but it seems to me it would be easier and cheaper for criminals to obtain guns without gun control than it would be with gun control, so perhaps at least it's contributing to peoples' safety that way. I'm not saying they should be banned outright though-there could be many serious problems with this in a country with high crime rates such as the U.S.