"First of all, set aside the fact that hammers and kitchen knives and cars are useful things outside of their capacity to maim, banning them would have tremendous negative impact on our economy and lifestyles. Guns, on the other hand, are designed specifically, primarily and exclusively for one purpose - to kill things. They have no other purpose, and heavily restricting their use would have no obvious impact on the economy or modern life" This is exactly the argument I make when people talk about banning tools, or fertilizer, or anything else used to kill people. Glad to hear someone else using it, and another person using it.
I have heard this argument made with respect to swords: Bows and spears are tools of the hunt, axes are used to chop wood, and knives have many other uses, but the sword is only an instrument of death and killing
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Those states which have made concealed handgun permits easy to obtain have experienced significant drops in violent crime.
First off, I'm still dubious about these claims; I've seen so many of them which were achieved by cherry-picking the data or playing weasel-words with terminology and definitions.
Second... is anybody keeping track of the rates of lethal domestic violence in those states? Because it's not just stranger-crime we're talking about here -- it's also people who blow away their families, or their neighbors, or their buddies, because they're in the middle of an argument and there's a gun handy. I will bet you a meal at a good restaurant that THOSE death rates have gone up.
Treyvon Martin wasn't a victim of "violent crime" in the sense that you're using it here -- but he'd be alive today if a racist idiot hadn't had easy access to a gun.
There was a time in my life where I would have been kind of a snot about my belief in the right to keep and bare arms. Now? Well I recognize that other people have well thought out reasons for the things they believe in (well at least most people do, or so I'd like to think). I respect that you don't like guns Tom, and truth be told I don't like them either. I don't like them for the very reason that they are only designed to kill
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I would love to find a way to shut them up. There are lots of responsible people who own guns, but it's the Lanzas and the McVeighs and the whatever-the-hell-his-name-was-in-Scandahoovia people who make the news
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Fortunately, the 1st Amendment stands to protect the 2nd Amendment.
The one way to shut me up as a member of the Pink Pistols is to stop trying to steal my stuff and endangering my tribe by denying us access to the tools of self defense.
I also would favor some real controls. Let's start by enforcing the Gun Control Act of 1968 -- settled law, nothing to dispute -- and every convicted felon who touches a firearm does twenty years of making large rocks into small rocks.
Never-mind the fact that Cracked is billed as a "comedy" website. It's been an absolutely fascinating resource for sociological and psychological ideas for at least as long as I've been reading it. It makes you think in the good "Oh, now I see..." way. (Assuming you can get past the toilet humor...)
I've been finding that Cracked is a lot more invaluable than many straight news sites. It's becoming one of several alternatives to The Daily Show for the intertubes.
I have come to the conclusion that anyone whose primary purpose in wanting to own a gun is to be able to kill other people if they deem it necessary should not be allowed to have one
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The phrase "law abiding, sane, responsible gun owners" is a logical fallacy known as "no true Scotsman". Basically it's "anyone who embarrasses the group is automatically and instantly kicked out of the group retroactively" like there's some membership card that vanishes the second they do something bad. I see it mostly being used by pro-gun people and religious folk who are trying to distance themselves from their extremist breathern. Personally, I'm sick of it because, as you said, we don't know who the next ex-"sane responsible gun owner" is going to suddenly decide he doesn't like someone's race, religion, politics, sexuality, taste in music, etc and start shooting.
I was a gun owner for 26 years. I went shooting 3 times the year I got the gun. Then I never fired it again. I passed it along to the next generation as it had been given to me. But I only had possession of the gun for 9 years. Because after that time I developed suicidal ideation. I knew that people that think about killing themselves are twice as likely to die if there is a gun in the house (odd statistic from Psych 101). So I had a family member keep the gun at their house. During this time I had to move the gun three times. It was a minor hassle. But it did some small part to keep me alive. See law abiding and responsible gun owners don't have to be sane they just have to be law abiding and responsible.
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*Luke ducks and runs away*
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This is exactly the argument I make when people talk about banning tools, or fertilizer, or anything else used to kill people. Glad to hear someone else using it, and another person using it.
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First off, I'm still dubious about these claims; I've seen so many of them which were achieved by cherry-picking the data or playing weasel-words with terminology and definitions.
Second... is anybody keeping track of the rates of lethal domestic violence in those states? Because it's not just stranger-crime we're talking about here -- it's also people who blow away their families, or their neighbors, or their buddies, because they're in the middle of an argument and there's a gun handy. I will bet you a meal at a good restaurant that THOSE death rates have gone up.
Treyvon Martin wasn't a victim of "violent crime" in the sense that you're using it here -- but he'd be alive today if a racist idiot hadn't had easy access to a gun.
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The one way to shut me up as a member of the Pink Pistols is to stop trying to steal my stuff and endangering my tribe by denying us access to the tools of self defense.
I also would favor some real controls. Let's start by enforcing the Gun Control Act of 1968 -- settled law, nothing to dispute -- and every convicted felon who touches a firearm does twenty years of making large rocks into small rocks.
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http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html
Never-mind the fact that Cracked is billed as a "comedy" website. It's been an absolutely fascinating resource for sociological and psychological ideas for at least as long as I've been reading it. It makes you think in the good "Oh, now I see..." way. (Assuming you can get past the toilet humor...)
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