Thread: Americans and their guns...the right to kill.

Originally Posted by surasak

Guns which are illegal in the first place (imported and sold without a license). Guns that never were registered with anyone, guns that were never legally imported, guns that were never known to exist to the government.

I highly doubt that the majority of murders are done with such "overseas" weapons. Maybe you could get those stats for us to make your point. Most guns I will bet are stolen from "legal" sources or "seized" from the manufacturer directly. Those manufacturers are US mostly.

Originally Posted by surasak

What will happen is the cheap $30 revolver made in China will start selling for $50 instead. Profits go up, people commit a little more crime to pay for their weapons, and nothing is solved.

In this current environment, I am ready to bet that those "illegal" arm shipments have come to a halt. It's probably close to impossible to ship such items these days with the controls out there unless you are a CIA undercover op.

Originally Posted by surasak

How much clearer do I have to be: ban handguns and regulate long guns

certainly a good start.

but how do we get the tens of millions of hand guns off the streets? it's not so easy to get the toothpaste back inside the tube.

Originally Posted by surasak

The FBI keeps clear statistics on weapons used in homicides.

But that's not the issue here. Stop making guns legal, it will stop production. Less production means less guns out there to steal or to mask. It's that simple. The manufacturers know that, that's why they are campaigning hard with the IRA to keep those ridiculous constitutional rights. They can't afford to have "americans" stop buying guns. The "illegal" side for them is just advertising for people to buy more guns to protect themselves from those "illegal" guns. You have to stop the vicious circle and the only way to do that is to change the laws. Enforcement or cracking down on illegal guns is not going to work.

Originally Posted by raycarey

but how do we get the tens of millions of hand guns off the streets? it's not so easy to get the toothpaste back inside the tube.

don't overestimate the longevity of those guns. Once used illegally, they are being disposed, or when not used and not maintained, they just don't work after a while. Also, bling bling fashion will dictate the weapon du jour. With a 5 yr old gun in your hand, you won't look so hot with all your bling bling on your chest.

Hey Butterfly ... in regards to a thread discussion we had several months ago ... would you consider this to be a "Social problem" ?

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Hey Butterfly ... in regards to a thread discussion we had several months ago ... would you consider this to be a "Social problem" ?

That rings a bell, but I can't remember the context in which we discussed those social problems.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by raycarey

but how do we get the tens of millions of hand guns off the streets? it's not so easy to get the toothpaste back inside the tube.

don't overestimate the longevity of those guns. Once used illegally, they are being disposed, or when not used and not maintained, they just don't work after a while. Also, bling bling fashion will dictate the weapon du jour. With a 5 yr old gun in your hand, you won't look so hot with all your bling bling on your chest.

People will begin to smuggle replacement parts. Domestic machine shops will tool them to make money on the blackmarket. Even if the rifling is worn out, up close the gun will be accurate enough and can still be used for the visual and audio effects of generating fear. .

The bling bling thing is just your french-canuck sense of humor right? There's nothing like a classic military issue Colt 1911 .45 ASP to roll with your classic 71 Plymouth GTX

The gun used to shoot Reagan originated in Germany, was imported into Florida, finished in a small factory, and sold in another state. There is a law called "922r" that regulates importation of firearms and firearms parts. If a firearm contains 10 or more regulated imported parts it cannot be imported. If it contains 9 then it can be imported and completed with local parts. Or you could import a gun with 7 parts under the law and another with the remaining parts and get one working gun out of it.

The flaw of the argument to ban an entire class of product is that bans have never worked in the United States. Americans as a whole simply are too individualistic to give up personal rights in the name of the greater good (especially when one's legal right to enjoy something poses no threat to anyone else). Never once has a ban solved a social problem. Products which are restricted simply flow from a place of less restriction to one with more restriction (like osmosis). When we banned alcohol during prohibition liquor was made in secret factories or imported from Canada or Mexico which resulted in the growth of powerful crime organizations and an increase in crime. You're also assuming that because a law is passed that people will voluntarily comply. How many laws do you think the average person breaks on a daily basis? Speeding? Run a red light? Download a movie or album? Burn a copy of a piece of software? Punch in the wrong code at the self-service checkout? Driving in the HOV lane when there's only one person in the car? People aren't going to comply with such a law that asks them to give up something they paid for without some form of compensation. Even then you may get a 50% compliance rate. That still leaves 100,000,000 guns, and, since only 10,000 a used per year in homicides those guns would last a very long time. What do you do about the people who repair, build, and fix guns? Are you going to ban the sale of 1" steel pipe so nobody makes their own shotgun?

Really, be honest, if the U.S. government passed a law outlawing all guns just how many do you think will be voluntarily turned in? How many do you think will start flowing from other countries? What about enforcement? How do you enforce such a law? Will the drug cartels in Mexico and much of Latin America become the source along with the cocaine they ship and sell here?

Even if you ban handguns (like I support) there is absolutely no possible way to guarantee any amount of enforcement of such a law in the United States to make it effective when we cannot even control the flow of drugs or control people speeding on the freeways. Hell, Washington D.C. has very restrictive laws regarding ownership and possession and it has an extremely high murder rate involving handguns. We have over 20,000 laws on the books here regulating firearms and the more we restrict the higher the murder rate goes.

Without a means of enforcement yet another law simply is a waste of time.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by surasak

The FBI keeps clear statistics on weapons used in homicides.

But that's not the issue here. Stop making guns legal, it will stop production. Less production means less guns out there to steal or to mask. It's that simple. The manufacturers know that, that's why they are campaigning hard with the IRA to keep those ridiculous constitutional rights. They can't afford to have "americans" stop buying guns. The "illegal" side for them is just advertising for people to buy more guns to protect themselves from those "illegal" guns. You have to stop the vicious circle and the only way to do that is to change the laws. Enforcement or cracking down on illegal guns is not going to work.

Even if you stop production here it won't affect production elsewhere. There's as much chance of that as forcing China to pay their workers $5 per hour. Most of your cheap guns that get imported come from China (mainly from Norinco which produces most of the cheap AK series knockoffs, the cheapo SKS rifles, and other handguns some of them based on old Soviet designs). They've been caught before shipping unlicensed fully automatic rifles into the U.S. well after the 1994 ban was in place. Smuggling is a huge business and very profitable. It's physically impossible for customs to inspect everything that comes through our ports.

And, of course, who is the number one arms seller worldwide? There's your answer as to why nothing will change.

Originally Posted by surasak

There's as much chance of that as forcing China to pay their workers $5 per hour. Most of your cheap guns that get imported come from China

There will not be imports from China if there is no "legal" fucking buyers. No buyer, no production, no imports. Illegal imports will always happen but it will be a minority as it is always. There will not be "legalized" cover-up operations to do the "illegal" imports. With no business, there will be no volume. The volume is the problem, not the odd "illegality" of a few imported guns.

The U.S. had guns long before "Big Gun" even existed. Guns were common even in England during the 1500s. When the colonies were rather homogeneous there was no written record of gun related murders. Hell, where I live gun murders are very rare despite much of the state having a high rate of gun ownership (Oregon also happens to be nearly 95% white as well). You're going to have to do better than that.

What I find odd here is the obvious disconnect in political theories: some of you want to ban guns in the U.S. (when you don't even live here) to preemptively prevent more gun murders but simultaneously oppose the U.S. preemptively invading Iraq to prevent the possibility of Iraq obtaining WMDs or using chemical weapons again on the Kurds.

Seems strange, that's all. In the U.S. we don't tend to punish people who are exercising their right to enjoy a privilege if it's proven they can be responsible and comply with the law. Maybe we have it backwards. Maybe we should automatically lock people up who go into bars because they 'might' get into a car and kill someone. In contrast you automatically assume I'm going to be a criminal or I'm going to lose my gun, therefore, despite proven responsibility you don't think I can be trusted. I just think that's backwards.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by surasak

There's as much chance of that as forcing China to pay their workers $5 per hour. Most of your cheap guns that get imported come from China

There will not be imports from China if there is no "legal" fucking buyers. No buyer, no production, no imports. Illegal imports will always happen but it will be a minority as it is always. There will not be "legalized" cover-up operations to do the "illegal" imports. With no business, there will be no volume. The volume is the problem, not the odd "illegality" of a few imported guns.

Pray tell how do you propose to ensure that nobody will ever want to buy a gun when we can't stop people from wanting to buy other things that are illegal? You know what a black market is, don't you? Is the black market going to trade in everything illegal but when it comes to guns the perps will say "Oh, homey, that shit's illegal...we can't be trading guns." What are your plans to enforce such nonsense?

Butterfly is willing for the govenment to take tough measures in enforcing the law.

Using guns I wonder

Scenario: U.S. government passes law to ban ownership of firearms. Citizens refuse to give up firearms. Will the government then use lethal force to enforce the ban? The irony.

What are you going to do with your guns when you move to Thailand surasak ?

One of the reasons I love Japan is everybody doesn't have guns here.

Probably sell them using a FFL holder.

Notice how the countries with high murder rates tend to be in warm climates? Countries with low murder rates are in cool climates? The murder rate in Oregon isn't much different from the UK despite a widespread ownership of guns.

^ That about sums it up.

seems to be, after wading through again, that the american legal/social system is fucked.
surasak, why don't you issue all gun owners with dummies/ pacifiers. sorry, forgot you be an american, with rights.
still, the right to use statistics, to justify weapons of md.(intrpret that how you will)
it is a social issue, an issue that has affected many social tiers.
just a question. would you be willing to give up your semi auto, fully auto weapons, if you had to.? long arms that is. or are all your weapons bolt action? secondly. do you own a hand gun?

Fucking Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. If you really read through the thread you'd know the answers to those questions.

I have several semi-automatic rifles and a shotgun (which was given to me by a now deceased grandfather). I don't own a handgun, I never have, and I never have had a desire to (I could if I wanted but choose not to). I lock them up when not in use, I keep them unloaded, and I keep the ammo separately. Nobody is taking my stuff unless they carry a portable steel cutting apparatus to cut into my gun safe. I don't support the sale of handguns and I believe the Swiss model is a good reference for the rest of us who are capable and responsible.

The only social and legal issue here is keeping weapons out of the hands of those who otherwise are still murdering idiots. The fact that the combined murder rate of using hands, feet, knives, and hammers still exceeds the per capita murder rate of a relatively gun-free societylike the UK illustrates the futility of taking away something that isn't the root of the problem. You gotta fucking solve the issue of why people here are killing each other first, solve that, then think about banning what I own for my own self-defense. It's not like I carry 5 or 6 rifles with my when I go about my daily business (I have other means of protection when in public). But if I'm at home I have the right to defend my home. That is one of the oldest traditions in the Western world and it originated in England long ago. It is one of three inalienable rights of human beings: the right to self-defense. Taking my guns from me does nothign to make the streets and neighborhoods of a city thousands of miles away from me any safer. The problem isn't where I live: it's the bigger cities of the south and east that are the problem where gangs dealing with drugs commit many of the murders. So, just because some tit in Los Angeles or some wanker in Miami is getting a gun illegally why the fuck should I give mine up when law abiding citizens are not the issue here? Law abiding citizens aren't the ones killing people for Christ's sakes.

Do you know what the murder rate by firearm is in Manchester? 10 per 100,000. In some neighborhoods it's 140 out of 100,000. That's worse than the worst places in America. And you're suggesting that we adopt the same laws? It won't fucking work here. This isn't one country with one ethnic group and a monarchy where there's a 1000 year tradition of civility. This is a hodgepodge of 50 states with 50 different sets of laws where it's generally a free-for-all. You can't rely on the police to be here right here and now if someone is threatening your life. That might be true in the middle of Manhattan but it sure isn't true where I live. So, who the hell becomes responsible for protecting my family in my house. The police? 15 minutes away? There is no national police force here so if the U.S. govenment decides to ban a certain weapon who's going to enforce that? How do you remove weapons from people's home that are declared illegal? You can't, you fucking can't expect 300,000,000 people to voluntarily comply with such nonsense. People here rountinely disobey laws which they consider a nuisance. So, then what? Use force? Organize the military to force compliance? For Chrissakes it's just not fucking workable in a country this big.

Fuck me, I can't be arsed to debate this any further. It's getting rather fucking boring.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I think you missed my point entirely. I recommend you re-read my posts and reflect on them without putting your gun-loving blinds first. The black market exists because it is supported by a big WHITE market.

So where is the white market that supports the black market of illegal drugs here? We never had legalize cocaine, heroin, or marijuana that I know of. People didn't take this stuff regularly and then suddenly it got cut off. There was a market generated for the stuff and suppliers naturally came in from other countries to fill the need. Do you honestly think that if the guns were taken off the legal market that criminals would automatically go "Damn, we can't use guns any longer because they're illegal." They're going to come from somewhere else because as long as there's a need someone will fulfill that need no matter how difficult it may be. Prostitution is illegal in almost all of the U.S. but there's still a market and still women supplying their bodies.

^^ LOL, MM. Gun nut alert !!!