About the only thing I can add to the other responses is this: it seems like someone who was insane enough to kill dozens would not be sane enough to think "gee, where are the guns," yet look how often places with a no-gun policy are attacked, and how much plotting the crazies go into to make sure they can kill the maximum number with the minimum risk. (since they generally shoot themselves as soon as someone with a gun shows up and takes a shot at them, I really can't understand it)
Then look at the church shooting-- where the shooter thought that there wouldn't be guns, because there hadn't been before; they'd asked for volunteer armed guards.
((I'm tempted to try to argue your interpretation of the second amendment, but I'm dang near sick of it since I'm listening to the arguments being hashed and rehashed.))
I have guns in my house, I believe that the Second Amendment means what it says, and I beleive that in a Republic the citizenry should be armed. Therefore, I'm akin to a hysterical homosexual.
With regard to this comment, I guess I have to retract my earlier statement to fpb that the comments to this post would not contain vitriol. Sorry fpb, you were more right than I thought.
It was the tone of your whole comment which I found inflammatory. For one thing, you made it personal. You took fpb's essay as an affront against you because you have guns in your house. Essentially you vindicated fpb's first few paragraphs about the knee-jerk response whose purpose is to shut down debate. Nothing you said answered any of his points, you just ridiculed it.
The argument quotes me in several places, but does not actually give my side of the argument, nor really address the points raised by serious gun-owners
( ... )
None of the things you refer to, with the possible exception of robot technology, has to do with the direct ability to kill people. And if you want to insist that there is no difference between owning a single-shot musket and a semi-automatic gun with a telescopic rifle, I really do not know what to say to you. As well to argue that the existence of the atom bomb - or, for that matter, of the million-man conscript army - makes no difference to warfare, so that we can consider it in the same spirit as a border raider from the fourteen hundreds. But while countries have become more responsible - so that we will not see a war of great powers again, because every side knows that it would not have winners - it seems to me that the rhetoric within countries is growing ever more irresponsible
( ... )
Assuming that someone wants to be able to legally carry a concealed firearm so that they may assault or murder people more easily is unfair. There is no higher rate of gun crime in states where permits to carry a concealed weapon will be issued to anyone who is not prohibited from doing so, than in states where this permit is issued at the discretion of local law enforcement or not issued at all.
In any event the idea behind "an armed society is a polite society" isn't that everyone is a potential murderer, rapist, or robber. It's that the minority of people who are monsters will fear to attack someone who might harm the monsters themselves, and if everyone can be presumed capable of defending with deadly force no one is an appealing target. As far as I know there's no society like that, and I don't know how sound the concept is, but that is the idea - not to live in fear, but to make the monsters too afraid to be monstrous
( ... )
On a tangent, related to your caliber statement...I was horrified when I found out that the VT shooter had used a *twenty-two*. And no-one had stopped him.
I'm a small woman, and the biggest weapon I pack often is tiny little lady's pocket knife, but I could take a shot or two and take down some SOB with a bloody *.22*.
Because I haven't got a CC license yet, the only weapon in my home is the two and half foot long ornamental sword I got for my husband's Christmas gift.
Thing is, I HAVE had suspicious characters follow me from the mailbox late at night. I HAVE had to pull out my little knife and hide it in my hand, just in case that guy who is a foot taller than me, and half a foot wider, isn't friendly. I have pulled out my phone and pre-dialed 911 with that little knife in my other hand. That was when I decided to put in for my CC license.
Yeah, just because the state of Texas doesn't let you get a CHL with a .22 doesn't mean that a .22 isn't, you know, a gun that can kill people, if with more difficulty than smaller mammals.
I'm not getting a CHL because I'm fairly sure I could not harm anybody even if I had absolute knowledge that they had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill me. I just couldn't. That doesn't mean I can't make nice little holes in targets, though. (And I have used, and if I had the will to do so, have the ability to use, the pistol my husband plans to carry once he has a CHL.)
Just to correct something you have said. Guns are not banned in Britain. The situation in the UK is similar to what you describe as being the position in Italy. Many, if not most, farmers have shotguns with permits that must be applied for. Permits for firearms can be applied for by anyone else, and will often be granted. It is even possible, if quite rare, for people to apply for a weapon to be kept for self-protection. More common in the 'bad old days' in the part of Britain that I live in (Northern Ireland) than now. There is an almost complete ban on the ownership of hand-guns, which is probably what you were referring to.
One other point, whatever the rights and wrongs of gun-ownership, why is it that America appears to have more serious abuse of firearms than other countries with similar levels of gun ownership - Canada, Switzerland for example?
I know, but don't try to have a rational argument on this matter with Americans. I learned my lesson. I wrote this article to show that gun ownership was a matter on which the state must legislate according to need and expediency, and that there was nothing in the original writing of the US constitution to prevent them doing so - and almost everybody perceived me to want to tear their guns from their cold dead hands. Reason is not necessarily a part of politics.
As for gun ownership, the law may be similar, but somehow the situation is different. Perhaps because the Italian police are armed, nobody in Italy finds it strange to see, for instance, a private security guard carrying a handgun in a visible holster. But having worked as a security guard in the UK, I know for a fact that this practically never happens here. It may be different in NI, but I doubt it. I also suspect that the percentage of the population that is either rural or with close rural links is rather higher in Italy than in Britain; in particular, I would be surprised to find that Britain had, as Italy does have, about two million registered sports hunters.
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it seems like someone who was insane enough to kill dozens would not be sane enough to think "gee, where are the guns," yet look how often places with a no-gun policy are attacked, and how much plotting the crazies go into to make sure they can kill the maximum number with the minimum risk. (since they generally shoot themselves as soon as someone with a gun shows up and takes a shot at them, I really can't understand it)
Then look at the church shooting-- where the shooter thought that there wouldn't be guns, because there hadn't been before; they'd asked for volunteer armed guards.
((I'm tempted to try to argue your interpretation of the second amendment, but I'm dang near sick of it since I'm listening to the arguments being hashed and rehashed.))
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How's the well-poisoning these days?
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In any event the idea behind "an armed society is a polite society" isn't that everyone is a potential murderer, rapist, or robber. It's that the minority of people who are monsters will fear to attack someone who might harm the monsters themselves, and if everyone can be presumed capable of defending with deadly force no one is an appealing target. As far as I know there's no society like that, and I don't know how sound the concept is, but that is the idea - not to live in fear, but to make the monsters too afraid to be monstrous ( ... )
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I'm a small woman, and the biggest weapon I pack often is tiny little lady's pocket knife, but I could take a shot or two and take down some SOB with a bloody *.22*.
Because I haven't got a CC license yet, the only weapon in my home is the two and half foot long ornamental sword I got for my husband's Christmas gift.
Thing is, I HAVE had suspicious characters follow me from the mailbox late at night. I HAVE had to pull out my little knife and hide it in my hand, just in case that guy who is a foot taller than me, and half a foot wider, isn't friendly. I have pulled out my phone and pre-dialed 911 with that little knife in my other hand.
That was when I decided to put in for my CC license.
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I'm not getting a CHL because I'm fairly sure I could not harm anybody even if I had absolute knowledge that they had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill me. I just couldn't. That doesn't mean I can't make nice little holes in targets, though. (And I have used, and if I had the will to do so, have the ability to use, the pistol my husband plans to carry once he has a CHL.)
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One other point, whatever the rights and wrongs of gun-ownership, why is it that America appears to have more serious abuse of firearms than other countries with similar levels of gun ownership - Canada, Switzerland for example?
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