Are owning a gun a bad thing?

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@Dox47

Listing deaths that you can do very little about does not absolve you of responsibility for the things you can do something about. Interesting you mentioned handguns, you should have reached the conclusion that I do not care about handguns at all. I think anything semiautomatic should be banned.

When one googles School shootings United States there actually is a top ten list in the first five results. In India there are over 1bn people, they have had ONE US style (see if I call it that, everyone knows what I mean) school shooting. Australia has had two, even Lebanon has only had one. They happen so often in the US that no one really outside of the United States even reports them anymore, unless a lot of people are killed. For example two people were killed at Millard High School just over a week ago. There were three in California last October, that must just be a bad month huh (February had 4)? If we had a month like that in Australia, there would be no legal Gun ownership without MASSIVE background checks (even bolt action rifles would be lucky to remain if they had any magazine capacity).

Supporters of gun ownership here always assert that a gun is useful for self defense.

How many cases of successful self defense with a gun, particular against gun crimes are there? I have not heard a single case of school shooting where someone shot back to the shooter.

Well when you talk about school shootings specifically, kids usually can't legally get their hands on guns. You have to be 18 to buy a rifle and 21 to buy a handgun from a dealership(correct me if I'm wrong Dox) A more extensive background check would do nothing to stop most of those school shootings.

Schools are "gun free zones".

^^^

There are also the staff of the school.

Interesting that you bring this up. Almost all weapons used in school shootings are legal owned. Its funny how you don't see the obvious solution to the problem. How about a massively stringent law relating to the storage of the weapon (in Australia only the owner should know how to access a legal weapon, handguns are almost universally banned, and random police inspections check to see if your weapons are properly stored, immediate confiscation if they are found to be improperly stored). Or you could just ban handguns outright except for target shooters (caliber restrictions to .22 for most of those people) and security guards. When selling a firearm in Australia you can lose your retailers licence if more than one weapon is even on the counter.



Clearly not the de facto case.

Another point. While the gun involved in a crime may be illegal, the shooter is likely to practiced with guns legally (at least with somebody's legal gun). I would also think that having widespread legal gun ownership makes it easier to find the connections to obtain illegal guns (at least the criminals need more).

Society can never be made truly safe, all things need to be looked at as part of a balance. Gun crime stats look bad on paper and out of context, but in the real world they translate to a very small risk to any particular individual. Given my previously voiced feeling that the onus is on prohibitionists when it comes to proving the need for their restrictions and that they have failed in that, I see no need to change my views. I also don't particularly care what the numbers for the rest of the world are, I know that the numbers and the studies here don't show the guns/violence correlation that is so often claimed by anti, so I will continue to argue for stronger rights.

It's late and this is Ambien talking, so I'll to continue this another time.

@Jacoby, hit him with the principle who had to get the gun from his trunk, Paducah I beilieve. Also two armed students in Mass stopped a shooting, think it was a law school. Point out that schools are gun free under most laws, perfect targets and helpless victims.

So this is your answer, it can't be fixed, its not so bad, I don't care, you have proven nothing and I want more of the same.

Yep, I don't trade liberty for security, it's hardly a new idea.

I never understood why the principal or vice principals don't have guns, the children are in their charge yes? Shouldn't they be able to defend them against guns readily, some schools already have cops assigned to them and some might prefer this, cops however are not usually competent.

Any given American town can expect a massacre approximately once every 25,000 years. It's not a problem.


Guns are banned from and around school grounds, so there is almost never anyone in a position to shoot back. It really is mind-boggling how many gun control advocates think an invisible circle on the ground is going to keep guns out and keep them safe.

You sound pretty pleased with yourself. I must be wallowing in my lack of liberty in Australia and Canada must be the same

You can't miss what you never had. I enjoy my relative firearms freedoms, though I will continue to work towards improving them. I am thrilled that my point of view has mostly been carrying the day in the US lately, gun control had it's shot in the 80's and 90's and now it's time to slam the door on it once and for all.

What is your motivation for supporting gun control? If it's saving lives, there are much more productive avenues to which you could apply your time and effort, such as ending the war on drugs or supporting poverty relief that also wouldn't infringe upon the rights of others. Gun control is both ineffective at crime prevention politically divisive, so I have to conclude that for most ardent supporters it's not actually about safety or saving lives, but is more of an emotional thing.

Once again we have another Right to Bear Arms debate where those opposed can't bring anything to the table that amounts to much more than "gunz-r-bad".

It's good you recognize that it's an emotional thing. The next step is to recognize what that emotion is. It's fear. I do not go through life afraid and I do not need a gun.
Let me reiterate what I mentioned before.
I grew up and lived in New York for the first half of a rather long life. It was full of the American traditions of guns and gangs and random shootings. I am white and had black friends in Harlem and walked freely there in the day and night and never needed nor desired a gun. I lived in West Berlin and traveled through East Germany when the Russians were marching around threatening violence. A gun would have been a major liability for me there.
I am probably considered Jewish although I have no religion. I traveled through the West Bank with Arab friends shortly after the Six Day War and visited Arab villages and was treated kindly and with respect. The concept of having a gun never entered my mind,
While in Israel my son at the age of three was struck by a stupid careless Israeli driver and was rendered quadriplegic on a respirator for the rest of his short thirty two year life. A gun really would have been of no use there.
Both my parents and my wife and my injured son died miserably of medical afflictions. A gun was of no use there.
I mention these personal incidents to emphasize that my life has not been particularly smooth and probably will end relatively soon because nobody lives forever.
I shot guns for record when I was in the US Army in 1944 in WWII but I have never injured or killed anybody and the thought to do so repels me forcibly and possessing a gun is not anything that interests me or attracts me.
I am reasonably careful and stay away from dangerous situations as much as possible and do not tempt fate but life, for everybody, is a temporary condition and I can live it in fear or take it as it comes and deal with it as best I can. I do not need a gun.
The concept of living amongst frightened people carrying guns holds no attraction for me whatsoever.