Guns

[sailorjim]

I don’t like guns.

I spent most of my adult life with guns and around guns and using guns … I still don’t like guns.

However, I believe - and have long believed - the saying that “when owning a gun is criminal, only criminals will have guns.”  I believe that criminals, most criminals, certainly might have the wherewithal and connections to find and

Comments

[sevesteen]

I just read someone talking about suicide clusters--in an area where there is a publicized suicide, suicide rates go up, and mostly using the same method. That's a large part of what is going on--if there were no media coverage, there would be fewer of these incidents.

Even if we could get past the second amendment, the 'fix' of outlawing guns would be only temporary. Eventually someone would find another easy substitute that would kill as many people, and someone else would copycat, and the method would be perfected and improved.

While these shootings get publicity, criminal use of guns is a much bigger problem, and while mostly affecting other criminals not entirely limited. In order to save a relatively small number of lives, the entire country would be defenceless against criminals.

And we have already bypassed enough of the bill of rights, I won't assist in even more bypassing.

[sailorjim]

I don't want to bypass rights, I want those who demand their "rights" to start talking about (and accepting) some responsibilities as well.

We, as a nation and a race of men, have a responsibility to protect children ... period. Not if it's ours, not if it's easy, not if it doesn't risk something we like (such as our precious "rights"); a responsibility to both our nation and our race to protect them.

Until this nation starts talking more about responsibility and less about rights, it doesn't deserve the rights our founders planned on.

[sevesteen]

As a gun owner and carry license holder, I do have some responsibilities. I have a responsibility to take reasonable precautions to keep my guns out of the hands of children and criminals. I have a responsibility to not shoot innocent people, to only shoot those who are currently attacking innocents. I can't think of any other responsibilities--what else are you talking about? Am I responsible because a crazy person used a gun, and I have one

[eleri]

*You* understand, and practice those responsibilities, so do many other gun owners. But many don't- check out the kids shot in WA this year by other kids... both because a child got a hold of a gun that shouldn't have been available (and one of those parents was a cop!). That's where, for me, the question of compentency & safety training and licensing come in, as well severe concequences for negligence- as a *society* we have a responsibility to do everything we can to make sure that the people with guns are responsible, safe owners, just like we make sure the people driving cars meet a certain standard of safety, just like we make sure buildings meet codes and prescription drugs are actually going to do what they say without killing people.

No, that's not going to magically make shit like this stop happening, nothing will. But it *can*, like it has in other countries, help lower the overall incidence of gun violence.

[sevesteen]

I'm not convinced that mandatory safety training helps--the training required to get a carry license ranges from none to 12 hours including live fire at a gun range--but there doesn't seem to be a difference in results between the various requirements. (Training is a good thing--but if you are forced into training you wouldn't be doing otherwise, you aren't likely to learn)

I'm also very nervous about having tests and licensing before exercising a right. Chicago uses training as a means to reduce ownership by making it as difficult as legally permissible--requiring use of a gun range, but forbidding gun ranges in the city. Would it be OK to require licenses for reporters and news outlets, or have a literacy test for voting? The constitutional argument matters more to me than whether or not I personally can own guns