Need some Assistance

[visaveteran1 33]

all estimate there are somewhere around 200 million guns.

Hell, I know guys who have that many in their closet!

Edited January 4, 2012 by visaveteran1

[Dave-n-Oksana 49]

Again I want to thank everybody for their replies.

I'll be honest that I have never been one to concern myself with gun control issues before, but after reading the numbers from both sides of the issues, the anti-gun experts are really starting to scare me. I guess that is their entire purpose.

Instead of factual representation on the statistics, they provide results off of incomplete or innacurate data. They also behave as if every gun owner has no impulse control and would gladly shoot up the town if the laws were not there to prevent us. And lets not forget the biggest lie....That Gun Control Laws have reduced violent crime in the United States.

I like to believe that I am a fair person and will listen to both sides of an argument, but when you take credit that have no right to, or spout incomplete information as facts, I have a big issue. So I guess I am off the fence.

[baron555 934]

Again I want to thank everybody for their replies.

I'll be honest that I have never been one to concern myself with gun control issues before, but after reading the numbers from both sides of the issues, the anti-gun experts are really starting to scare me. I guess that is their entire purpose.

Instead of factual representation on the statistics, they provide results off of incomplete or innacurate data. They also behave as if every gun owner has no impulse control and would gladly shoot up the town if the laws were not there to prevent us. And lets not forget the biggest lie....That Gun Control Laws have reduced violent crime in the United States.

I like to believe that I am a fair person and will listen to both sides of an argument, but when you take credit that have no right to, or spout incomplete information as facts, I have a big issue. So I guess I am off the fence.

Yep

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Again I want to thank everybody for their replies.

I'll be honest that I have never been one to concern myself with gun control issues before, but after reading the numbers from both sides of the issues, the anti-gun experts are really starting to scare me. I guess that is their entire purpose.

Instead of factual representation on the statistics, they provide results off of incomplete or innacurate data. They also behave as if every gun owner has no impulse control and would gladly shoot up the town if the laws were not there to prevent us. And lets not forget the biggest lie....That Gun Control Laws have reduced violent crime in the United States.

I like to believe that I am a fair person and will listen to both sides of an argument, but when you take credit that have no right to, or spout incomplete information as facts, I have a big issue. So I guess I am off the fence.

Just to warn you...one of the more common claims of anti-gun people is that a gun "is more than XX times likely to kill someone in your family than to kill an intruder"

Yeah. So what? They get this from comparing total deaths "caused by" firearms including suicide and accidents and compare them to the number of intruders KILLED by homeowners. Which is admittedly very small. They do not consider the hundreds of thousands of times that a gun prevents a rime by merely being present nor all the crimes which are prevented by the rpesence of guns in society.

whether a gun is present in your home or not, the people in your home are FAR more likely to die of an accident or suicide than to be killed by an intruder anyway. Accidents and suicides combined outnumber homicide. This is a big surprise to someone?

As you state, incomplete and misleading data. When people use incomplete and misleading data to support a position it can only be because they understand their position is fundamentally flawed.

[slim 1,514]

Hell, I know guys who have that many in their closet!

anti-gun experts

Huh? What are those?

whether a gun is present in your home or not, the people in your home are FAR more likely to die of an accident or suicide than to be killed by an intruder anyway. Accidents and suicides combined outnumber homicide. This is a big surprise to someone?

Whenever I argue with anti-gunners I ask them if they'd like to "save" over 3,000 people a year. They always answer, "Of course I would." I then ask them why they're not working so hard on banning swimming pools or, if they're super zealous, water. "Without water, we'd have far fewer tragic deaths each year." They say that's silly because people know the dangers of swimming pools and you'd never leave your kids unattended next to a swimming pool, etc.

If they haven't caught on yet, I ask them if they'd like to prevent death and serious injury in the home - especially to children - and again, they answer in the affirmative. I ask them to call their town commission or city council and ask that only single-story buildings be approved. "Stairs are a leading cause of injury in homes. If all homes were single-story we'd be a lot safer." They say that's pretty stupid because everyone knows you should be careful around the stairs and not let your babies crawl there, etc. I agree.

Then I ask them if they'd give their toddler the keys to their car and sit them in the front seat. "Well, I wouldn't. That's just stupid." I agree with them again.

If they're still not picking up what I'm putting down I explain to them in all the cases I've presented there's a common theme. It's outrageous for us to ban something because some people do stupid things with them. We wouldn't ban cars because people speed. We wouldn't stop DUI by telling everyone without a DUI they they can only drive a certain car. We'd never try to "close the car show loophole" because someone could buy a car without a license. Yet for some reason, when it comes to guns, certain people think the inanimate object - not the stupidity of the people involved - is to blame. When a child drowns in a swimming pool we don't say, "Gosh, if that water wouldn't have been there that kid would still be alive today." Yet with guns, we've been trained to blame the gun. Why don't we blame cars when people get DUIs?

If guns cause crime then pencils cause misspelled words.

I never hear the antis crying about how many people are killed in car crashes every year. Where's the outrage? Why are there still cars on our streets?

[baron555 934]

Common Sense

the antis

Non-equivalent

[james&olya 1,121]

And lets not forget the biggest lie....That Gun Control Laws have reduced violent crime in the United States.

OK, lets look at a hypothetical situation that may help you understand why gun-control laws don't show any results on violent crime. Let's imagine a corporation owns a horse and keeps it in the corporate barn. The door is left open and the horse leaves the barn and cannot be located. The corporation board, in a split decision, decide to issue a new policy on keeping that barn door closed to prevent the horse leaving. The horse, nonetheless, remains at large. The critics of the policy point to this as proof of the fallacy of having a policy requiring the barn door be kept closed! Do you see any problem in their logic (or lack of it)? And do you see any analogy in the fallacy of concluding that gun control laws cannot help reduce violent crime by using the example of the experience of certain jurisdictions that have passed such laws here in the US?

Lets face reality, the vast numbers of guns throughout our society make it next to impossible to see significant reductions in gun violence for a very long time even if gun control was universally the law of the land here. That doesn't make gun control a bad idea in theory but it does make it impossible to work very well as a practical idea in our society. Over a very long period of time it might eventually work but I don't think the political will is ever going to be there for that to happen.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

OK, lets look at a hypothetical situation that may help you understand why gun-control laws don't show any results on violent crime. Let's imagine a corporation owns a horse and keeps it in the corporate barn. The door is left open and the horse leaves the barn and cannot be located. The corporation board, in a split decision, decide to issue a new policy on keeping that barn door closed to prevent the horse leaving. The horse, nonetheless, remains at large. The critics of the policy point to this as proof of the fallacy of having a policy requiring the barn door be kept closed! Do you see any problem in their logic (or lack of it)? And do you see any analogy in the fallacy of concluding that gun control laws cannot help reduce violent crime by using the example of the experience of certain jurisdictions that have passed such laws here in the US?

Lets face reality, the vast numbers of guns throughout our society make it next to impossible to see significant reductions in gun violence for a very long time even if gun control was universally the law of the land here. That doesn't make gun control a bad idea in theory but it does make it impossible to work very well as a practical idea in our society. Over a very long period of time it might eventually work but I don't think the political will is ever going to be there for that to happen.

Yes I see problems in the logic.

1. The horse at large is causing what problem for anyone?

2. In other areas that do not close barn doors, they have less problems with wild horses than the areas that require barn doors to be closed

You can review the crime stats in MY state, the lowest in the country, continent and western hemisphere for any political jurisdiction larger than a zip code...but better yet, maybe even in your home state. The laws are the same for firearms use and ownership in the UP as they are in Detroit. Is there a difference in crime rates between the UP and Detroit? What causes the difference? What does a gun law do to address those differences?

One can list the social ills that cause crime ad infinitum but none of them are addressed by gun control.

Gun control, thoughout its history has largely been a matter of race control in its earlier years (not sure how far the OP wishes to go back in time but the first gun laws were clearly racist) and eventually ended up being nothing but a cheap excuse for politicians to LOOK like they were doing something at the expense of a relative few people. The last major gun control measure, the Assault Weapons Ban, was the pinnacle of that brilliance. The "Assault Weapons Ban" actually "banned" nothing (think of a ban on horses that did not round up the wild horses) and actually put a moratorium on the manufacture of bayonet lugs. There were -0- functional differences between a "pre-ban" and a "post-ban" rifle. The AWB could not possibly have reduced ANY crime. Yet it was hailed as some sort of miracle cure. It failed, was not renewed and rsulted in the Democrats losing control of Congress for the first time in nearly 50 years, so all in all, not a bad deal.

The most ironic thing was that Clinton goaded congress into passing the bill before their summer recess because "criminals do not take a vacation" and then he himself went on vacation and did not sign the bill until September 14. Funny, right? Wrong. The magazine manufacturers shifted into high gear, turned on their stamping and injection molding machines and did not turn them off for two months. They made enough high capacity magazines "under the wire" to provide an uninterrupted supply during the 10 years of the "ban" The pricves of high capacity magazines did not even increase very much over that period, such was the glut of them due to Clinton's vacation.

Now you may say the reason it did not work is because the horse was out of the barn, but when the law, at best, did not ban horses, did not round up horses but only said "no more breeding of horses with long tails" you see that there really never was any chance of fixing the "horse problem"

Gun laws cannot work, they do not work and there is never any intent for them to work. The intent is symbolism over substance, smoke and mirrors. Comparing the crime results of other countries and ignoring the cultural differences of countries is ridiculous. "Canada has less crime than the US" So what? They have less jaywalkers also. But Canada does not have less crime that Vermont. Holy smokes! How did that happen? Vermont has plenty of jaywalkers though, mostly UVM undergrads.

The causes of crime exceed the prevelence of guns and laws aimed at guns cannot address the cuses of crime. It is like a "war on poverty" that only feeds poor people and does nothing to prevent poor people needing food. Nothing to eliminate the cause of poverty. It is treating a symtom and not the disease. The result is every bit as successful.

Your scenario can better be described as

1. Problem: the roof is leaking

2. Result: the floor is wet

3. The fix...put a bucket under it.

THAT is gun control.

[slim 1,514]

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Pretty simple right there. Regardless of how you, I, or anyone feels about guns, gun control, crime statistics or whatever, our rights shall not be infringed. The fact that they have been infringed is a slap in the face to everyone who's ever sacrificed for our country.

[baron555 934]

The causes of crime exceed the prevalence of guns and laws aimed at guns cannot address the causes of crime.

One can list the social ills that cause crime ad infinitum but none of them are addressed by gun control.

Correct, crime and the number of guns are really not related. If there were no guns, then criminals would use clubs and spears and arrows, like they did before guns existed. It is hard for the Sheep Public to comprehend because they are so afraid of the inanimate metal objects; their "leaders" have hypnotized them to this.

Gun laws cannot work, they do not work and there is never any intent for them to work.

Gun control, thoughout its history has largely been a matter of race control

So gun control is really only about Control? Again, it is difficult for the Sheep Public to understand that their "leaders" would be so anti-democratic, so anti-social. It is not their fault because they are Sheep.

Here's a couple of links, the first to the story of the Sheep, the Wolf and the Sheepdog.....where do you fit in?

The second is a recent treatise using these terms and examples of everyday life....the Public will deny these statements for sure, because they can not believe them to be true.

Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs

Sheep or Wolf or Sheepdog?

[baron555 934]

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Pretty simple right there. Regardless of how you, I, or anyone feels about guns, gun control, crime statistics or whatever, our rights shall not be infringed. The fact that they have been infringed is a slap in the face to everyone who's ever sacrificed for our country.

But the majority Sheep Public are afraid of guns, those inanimate metal objects, so they do not see any issue with those rights being taken away.......

and their "leaders" prey upon their fears and erode those rights..........until the Sheep are all penned up with no rights left....then they will cry.

[visaveteran1 33]

Look to "Great" Britain to see the most horrid, mindless, crazy, ridiculous weapons control one can attempt to imagine. You can not carry a sharp stick in England without going to jail for 5 years. If you somehow manage to get permission to own a hunting rifle, the local police will make surprise visits to your home to see that you have stored the rifle properly and that the ammo is stored in another area. Any slight violation and the gun is confiscated, you will be fined and perhaps go to jail. This is no exaggeration.

It's Stalinism in the land of the Magna Carta. No wonder young rioters trash London at will. What have they got to fear...those silly-azz "Bobbies?"

[james&olya 1,121]

Yes I see problems in the logic.

1. The horse at large is causing what problem for anyone?

2. In other areas that do not close barn doors, they have less problems with wild horses than the areas that require barn doors to be closed

You can review the crime stats in MY state, the lowest in the country, continent and western hemisphere for any political jurisdiction larger than a zip code...but better yet, maybe even in your home state. The laws are the same for firearms use and ownership in the UP as they are in Detroit. Is there a difference in crime rates between the UP and Detroit? What causes the difference? What does a gun law do to address those differences?

One can list the social ills that cause crime ad infinitum but none of them are addressed by gun control.

Gun control, thoughout its history has largely been a matter of race control in its earlier years (not sure how far the OP wishes to go back in time but the first gun laws were clearly racist) and eventually ended up being nothing but a cheap excuse for politicians to LOOK like they were doing something at the expense of a relative few people. The last major gun control measure, the Assault Weapons Ban, was the pinnacle of that brilliance. The "Assault Weapons Ban" actually "banned" nothing (think of a ban on horses that did not round up the wild horses) and actually put a moratorium on the manufacture of bayonet lugs. There were -0- functional differences between a "pre-ban" and a "post-ban" rifle. The AWB could not possibly have reduced ANY crime. Yet it was hailed as some sort of miracle cure. It failed, was not renewed and rsulted in the Democrats losing control of Congress for the first time in nearly 50 years, so all in all, not a bad deal.

The most ironic thing was that Clinton goaded congress into passing the bill before their summer recess because "criminals do not take a vacation" and then he himself went on vacation and did not sign the bill until September 14. Funny, right? Wrong. The magazine manufacturers shifted into high gear, turned on their stamping and injection molding machines and did not turn them off for two months. They made enough high capacity magazines "under the wire" to provide an uninterrupted supply during the 10 years of the "ban" The pricves of high capacity magazines did not even increase very much over that period, such was the glut of them due to Clinton's vacation.

Now you may say the reason it did not work is because the horse was out of the barn, but when the law, at best, did not ban horses, did not round up horses but only said "no more breeding of horses with long tails" you see that there really never was any chance of fixing the "horse problem"

Gun laws cannot work, they do not work and there is never any intent for them to work. The intent is symbolism over substance, smoke and mirrors. Comparing the crime results of other countries and ignoring the cultural differences of countries is ridiculous. "Canada has less crime than the US" So what? They have less jaywalkers also. But Canada does not have less crime that Vermont. Holy smokes! How did that happen? Vermont has plenty of jaywalkers though, mostly UVM undergrads.

The causes of crime exceed the prevelence of guns and laws aimed at guns cannot address the cuses of crime. It is like a "war on poverty" that only feeds poor people and does nothing to prevent poor people needing food. Nothing to eliminate the cause of poverty. It is treating a symtom and not the disease. The result is every bit as successful.

Your scenario can better be described as

1. Problem: the roof is leaking

2. Result: the floor is wet

3. The fix...put a bucket under it.

THAT is gun control.

The greatest fallacy in the arguments about gun control have to do with the premise that the gun control laws themselves could have any correlation with violent crime statistics. It is the actual presence within the population of firearms, not the laws regarding them, that might have correlation. My point is that, regardless of your point of view of the desirability of guns being so numerous, there is no possibility within our society of ever getting that number reduced to where it would possibly make any difference. There is simply such an overwhelming number of guns in existence! Living in a jurisdiction that has tough gun control regulations will have zero effect as long as guns can be easily purchased outside that jurisdiction and transported in. And once they are in how could you ever get them out without sacrificing some of our most basic and precious rights? Why isn't this obvious?!! So everyone had better just learn to live with it and try to find the upsides to the situation. That teenaged mom in Oklahoma was a great example.

[slim 1,514]

Like all other violence, if you eliminate the underlying causes, you can eliminate the crimes. For some reason there are people in this country who feel they can stop gun violence by getting rid of guns.

You'd see an increase in stabbings if you did.

[james&olya 1,121]

Like all other violence, if you eliminate the underlying causes, you can eliminate the crimes. For some reason there are people in this country who feel they can stop gun violence by getting rid of guns.

You'd see an increase in stabbings if you did.

There really is a difference in risk though. I actually have an ex that is so narcissistic, greedy, and vengeful that I do worry a little about being a target of gun violence. I would not be worried about being a target of a knife attack, I am quite confident I could effectively defend myself. Guns, for better or worse, really are an equalizer!