Gun Control

[Madang185]

From a Canadian Website

"Gun Control is not about public safety , it's about votes."

A correct statement in my opinion.

[deye243]

As it allways has been if you look at our gun laws it is all about inconvenience not public safety.
if it was about public safety there would only be 4 gun laws

[womble]

Pretty much, by public demand, after a mass shooting event. Anger in the polling gets high percentages.
As in Canada, Aus, NZ.
Although, NZ only got about 60% support. Perhaps they still have hope. Here it was around 90%

The US a slightly different story. By public demand, after a political leader was assinated. Kennedy’s, malcom x, Martin Luther king.
And then the attempt on Reagan was the kicker.
There was a mass school shooting in California early 90’s that got people riled up and more gun control enacted.
But then they kinda got used to the mundane school shootings.
Believe it or not, the NRA played a big role in gun control originally. They’ve been back peddling ever since.

[northdude]

Over here its been a massive arse covering exercise...and us firearms owners are the scapegoats..

[MtnMan]

.....and then there is Switzerland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h1s6S4kotE anything remotely like this would be inconceivable here in Australia. what's the difference? Societal attitude, nothing else. A gun is a gun. It's the people that are the ones to worry about.

Gun crime is reflection on the society in which it occurs. Guns clearly aren't the problem when you look at the Swiss .

[bigrich]

.....and then there is Switzerland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h1s6S4kotE anything remotely like this would be inconceivable here in Australia. what's the difference? Societal attitude, nothing else. A gun is a gun. It's the people that are the ones to worry about.

Gun crime is reflection on the society in which it occurs. Guns clearly aren't the problem when you look at the Swiss .

You can’t say that, it’s common sense with no political correctness.

[womble]

.....and then there is Switzerland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h1s6S4kotE anything remotely like this would be inconceivable here in Australia. what's the difference? Societal attitude, nothing else. A gun is a gun. It's the people that are the ones to worry about.

Gun crime is reflection on the society in which it occurs. Guns clearly aren't the problem when you look at the Swiss .

You can’t say that, it’s common sense with no political correctness.

Gun safety sure. Cow safety not so much.

[str8shutr]

Some interesting info from the BBC about the U.S. State of play:
America's gun culture - in seven charts
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081

[wrenchman]

if you notice they say common sense gun laws that tends to be ban guns to the media and democrats and no one else.
we in the u.s do not take care of the mental health well and the states that are the worse for reporting people to our back ground check system are the very states that want to take guns away they also are the very states that wont put people in jail for gun crimes and let them out on bail to repeat again before even going to court for the last crime.
also dont read to much into our gun deaths 30 percent is suicide and they count 18 19 20 and 21 years old as kids and and most are drugs and gangs involved

[wanneroo]

I think people have to look at it all from 50000 feet up.

At the end of the day, the malthusian oligarchs, WEF and big government are all about expanding their power and control while minimizing your freedom and liberty.

To do that they manipulate the populace with a variety of puppet shows of propaganda as they know many, especially women, default to emotion first rather than rational reason. They will also use what I call "the inverse agenda" in which they support all the wrongs and societal chaos while attacking anything stable and traditional.

If you look at gun laws in Australia for instance, they are not really about keeping people safe or anything they trumpet as a reason. It's all about keeping you under their thumb. In the end they don't want you to have any guns but they know they can't get them overtly without shattering the illusion people are free, so what they do is they mire you in thousands of regulations about who what when where and how you can have a firearm in your hand. It's all designed to keep you on the edge and on the point of losing them due to some silly regulation.

[wanneroo]

Believe it or not, the NRA played a big role in gun control originally. They’ve been back peddling ever since.

NRA has it's problems which is why I support GOA instead or the technically separate NRA-ILA. But yes at one point they began to realize it was all a slippery slope.

In the 1960's they supported various gun regulations but realized how the left really works and what they want.

If people bother to notice, once one gun law is passed they start immediately working on the next restrictive law. And if they get that one passed, they start working on the next. And so on.

How you know a movement is BS is when it has no spoken conclusion and the gun control people will never say when enough is enough. It's always on going and endless.

One thing totalitarians know is they gotta get all the guns because if people can fight back they can't go 100%.

[Ruin]

The gun laws in Australia are inconvenient, but I know a few people who I would not like to see a gun in their hand no matter what the circumstance.

[bladeracer]

The gun laws in Australia are inconvenient, but I know a few people who I would not like to see a gun in their hand no matter what the circumstance.

Can these people get them legally?
Can they get them illegally if they want?

[Lazarus]

I don't have a problem with the logical gun laws we have, like background, storage, registration etc.
Much as I'd love to have one for the hell of it, I can't for the life of me imagine a realistic use for a bullet hose like an AR15, other than the battlefield or the dark role they play in the US now as the preferred choice for mass infanticide, so I'm sweet with the prohibition of that class.

Same goes for handguns, I'd swap a nut for a 1911 but again, I'd have no real use for it so the tight controls on them is not a personal issue.

It's the nonsensical laws like appearance, suppressors etc that I object to most, they're just "Me too" political masturbation.

On self defence, the fact that a gun owner is not even allowed to use an unloaded gun in a show of defence is bloody ludicrous.
Whereas the alternative of anyone who wants a gun purely to defend themselves seems to lead straight to the circular problem the Americans face on that front; everyone knows that everyone they meet might be armed and a potential threat and nobody wants to be the guy who brought a knife to a gun fight so everyone's tooling up.
Mutually Assured Destruction.

[Pennsylvania Yank]

I don't have a problem with the logical gun laws we have, like background, storage, registration etc.
Much as I'd love to have one for the hell of it, I can't for the life of me imagine a realistic use for a bullet hose like an AR15, other than the battlefield or the dark role they play in the US now as the preferred choice for mass infanticide, so I'm sweet with the prohibition of that class.

Same goes for handguns, I'd swap a nut for a 1911 but again, I'd have no real use for it so the tight controls on them is not a personal issue.

It's the nonsensical laws like appearance, suppressors etc that I object to most, they're just "Me too" political masturbation.

On self defence, the fact that a gun owner is not even allowed to use an unloaded gun in a show of defence is bloody ludicrous.
Whereas the alternative of anyone who wants a gun purely to defend themselves seems to lead straight to the circular problem the Americans face on that front; everyone knows that everyone they meet might be armed and a potential threat and nobody wants to be the guy who brought a knife to a gun fight so everyone's tooling up.
Mutually Assured Destruction.

I can't ever imagine myself needing an AR15 to defend myself. But that's entirely beside the point. Simply put, it's not the Bill of Needs we respect and cherish in America. It's the Bill of Rights. A need's based system of Rights in which government entities alone decide what you need and don't need are not worth the paper they are printed on. Yes we can alter or change our Constitution and the Framers gave us this mechanism, but it is a very high bar and very difficult to accomplish. That is completely by design. Rights should never be able to be surrendered or taken away by a simple majority. In fact, our Founders were terrified of Democracy and the Tyranny of the Majority. They were well read scholars and learned from history. That is why they chose a Representative Republic as our system.

And I say all this knowing full well that virtually the entire civilized world other than the United States has little or no concept or care of what it means to have natural rights that government is duty bound to protect, rather than "rights" that are granted but can be easily taken away by government. Our right of armed self defense using firearms is extremely unique among citizens of the world. In fact, our entire Constitution is a radical outlier among nations, which I'm proud to say.

It really comes down to the experiment in Freedom that the United States undertook in 1776 versus the old way of thinking. Until the United States, every person in every country on earth was ruled by kings or queens or monarchs or royal families and had no choice in whether their leaders were brutal and venomous or kind and benevolent. It was a matter of chance or luck perhaps but whatever it was, the people had no choice in the matter.

I'm not saying this to be boastful or arrogant. These are simply the facts. It's not my job to make the world understand our gun culture or our worship of the Constitution and our freedoms. Much of the world has a rather cartoonish notion of what it means to live in America with gun rights. It's not the wild west here. Yes violent crime has risen but that is economic and political in nature, not due to guns, and it is still lower than it was in the early 1960's, that's also when Kids used to take guns to school with them and had shooting teams at schools, and anyone could walk into a hardware store or get a sears mail order catalog or newspaper and buy a shotgun or rifle with no questions asked. The difference today is that are having a gun and crime violence crisis in our cities because of the breakdown of our moral and cultural and patriotic values in this country, not because of guns.

[No1_49er]

I'm with you all the way, P.Y.
If only the "sheeple" would take the time to think about what most of the "leaders" of our modern world want us to believe. Nobody ever gave them any right to take away what should be every citizens rights, other than that "they" want to rule us like the tyrants of old had done.
"They" have to be reminded that we are their employers; "they" are our servants.

[northdude]

I dont need or have a use for a shotgun but I dont think just because I dont need one nobody else should either..

[Lazarus]

@Pennsylvania Yank

I didn't say that the guns were the problem, guns are merely tools, it appears from our safe remove to be a people problem that you have.

You state correctly that your constitution is a standout in making gun ownership a human right equal to freedom of speech and religion, but the USA is a standout for mass firearm violence as well.
This is a purely American phenomenon that has been occasionally copied by random lunatics overseas.

The biggest contradiction I see is Americans lauding their system as the world standard then arguing that they need to be armed to the teeth to protect themselves against that same system.

@Northdude

True, just because I don't have a use for something is no reason it should be banned, but that's not what I said. I said that as I can't see any use other than battle for an assault style rifle I agree with their ban and as I have no use for a pistol the tight controls on them "are not a personal issue", not that they should be banned.

[No1_49er]

I don't think it is reasonable, or fair, to state that the US "is a standout for mass firearm violence" without juxtaposing their data with that of other counties.
The problem is that the alleged extremes of firearm violence are reported ad nausea by an anti-gun news media, who unashamedly operate within their proprietors narrative guideline/s.
When did anyone last see any data from the likes of, say, South Africa or Brazil? You just might be surprised by their statistics. Have a look at this chart and you will see that the US ranks 16th lowest out of the 47 on that chart. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ntries.png
And don't forget to check whether or not those countries with the worst statistics actually allows the private ownership of firearms. In some of those jurisdictions it is absolutely forbidden. But that never stops the lawless criminals.

[Lazarus]

@No1-49er

"I don't think it is reasonable, or fair, to state that the US "is a standout for mass firearm violence" without juxtaposing their data with that of other counties."

Thats true.
Some juxtaposition:

19 Countries with the Most School Shootings (total incidents Jan 2009-May 2018 - CNN):
United States — 288
Mexico — 8
South Africa — 6
India — 5
Nigeria & Pakistan — 4
Afghanistan — 3
Brazil, Canada, France — 2
Azerbaijan, China, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Kenya, Russia, & Turkey — 1
https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

[bladeracer]

The fact is that 99.9% of the US is precisely as safe as 99.9% of Australia. The violence is limited to very small areas, in both countries. It's an issue of violence, not firearms.

@Pennsylvania Yank

I didn't say that the guns were the problem, guns are merely tools, it appears from our safe remove to be a people problem that you have.

You state correctly that your constitution is a standout in making gun ownership a human right equal to freedom of speech and religion, but the USA is a standout for mass firearm violence as well.
This is a purely American phenomenon that has been occasionally copied by random lunatics overseas.

The biggest contradiction I see is Americans lauding their system as the world standard then arguing that they need to be armed to the teeth to protect themselves against that same system.

@Northdude

True, just because I don't have a use for something is no reason it should be banned, but that's not what I said. I said that as I can't see any use other than battle for an assault style rifle I agree with their ban and as I have no use for a pistol the tight controls on them "are not a personal issue", not that they should be banned.

[Lazarus]

The fact is that 99.9% of the US is precisely as safe as 99.9% of Australia. The violence is limited to very small areas, in both countries. It's an issue of violence, not firearms.

@Pennsylvania Yank

I didn't say that the guns were the problem, guns are merely tools, it appears from our safe remove to be a people problem that you have.

You state correctly that your constitution is a standout in making gun ownership a human right equal to freedom of speech and religion, but the USA is a standout for mass firearm violence as well.
This is a purely American phenomenon that has been occasionally copied by random lunatics overseas.

The biggest contradiction I see is Americans lauding their system as the world standard then arguing that they need to be armed to the teeth to protect themselves against that same system.

@Northdude

True, just because I don't have a use for something is no reason it should be banned, but that's not what I said. I said that as I can't see any use other than battle for an assault style rifle I agree with their ban and as I have no use for a pistol the tight controls on them "are not a personal issue", not that they should be banned.

That's my point Blade, it's never been a "gun problem".

Switzerland has been used as an example so much it's becoming a cliche.

I have friends living in the states, they love it and wouldn't live anywhere else, but, they tell me that there's just a background worry that's always in their minds that they could walk into a shop or school or pretty much anywhere, and die there from gun violence.

The response to these events has become rote now, "Thoughts and prayers" and arming someone else to respond to the symptoms of the problem rather than admitting it's a social issue and doing something concrete.

Of course I say this with our own brand of social issues in mind where we are putting out band aid solutions worth little better than nothing.

[bladeracer]

I have friends living in the states, they love it and wouldn't live anywhere else, but, they tell me that there's just a background worry that's always in their minds that they could walk into a shop or school or pretty much anywhere, and die there from gun violence.

I don't think we're any different, it could happen here just as easily, or anywhere else.

[Larry]

Despite what a lot of the US posters say here. IMHO the US has a Violence problem one that is very much part of the culture. There was a poll this week on "Is violence acceptable in Political disagreements within the US. The majority of respondents thought that it was an acceptable response. .

[Lazarus]

I don't think we're any different, it could happen here just as easily, or anywhere else.

As people no, we're a very similar multicultural mixture from similar stocks with the exception perhaps of Latin America.

As a society we're very similar except for the level of piety.

You hear a lot of Americans talk of their rights as being "god given" and "enshrined" in the constitution as though they were divinely created rather than written by ordinary men who were the victors of a violent revolution, something bound to be a subconscious or concious influence.

It's a great document but I think(opinion only) that even though it says citizens rights to bear arms shall not be infringed, it doesn't say that it's mandatory.

That's where it gets crossed up with the "god given" rights and the idea that if you don't exercise a right you have somehow lost it comes into being.

Again it's easy to be an armchair expert from 15,000km.

[bladeracer]

Yeah, the God rubbish is pretty stupid, but I think that is dying out slowly.

Not sure what you mean about it being mandatory, not many places in the US insist you carry a firearm for defence.

The problem with not exercising your rights is that there are always people trying to take your rights away, if you don't exercise them these people will pass laws in secret and you end up discovering one day when you do exercise what you thought were your rights they don't exist any more. Same way we keep discovering state forests that have been secretly renamed as national parks when we weren't looking.

I don't think we're any different, it could happen here just as easily, or anywhere else.

As people no, we're a very similar multicultural mixture from similar stocks with the exception perhaps of Latin America.

As a society we're very similar except for the level of piety.

You hear a lot of Americans talk of their rights as being "god given" and "enshrined" in the constitution as though they were divinely created rather than written by ordinary men who were the victors of a violent revolution, something bound to be a subconscious or concious influence.

It's a great document but I think(opinion only) that even though it says citizens rights to bear arms shall not be infringed, it doesn't say that it's mandatory.

That's where it gets crossed up with the "god given" rights and the idea that if you don't exercise a right you have somehow lost it comes into being.

Again it's easy to be an armchair expert from 15,000km.

[bladeracer]

Despite what a lot of the US posters say here. IMHO the US has a Violence problem one that is very much part of the culture. There was a poll this week on "Is violence acceptable in Political disagreements within the US. The majority of respondents thought that it was an acceptable response. .

Yes, they do, but it is still _very_ localised. Lots and lots of Americans that don't travel to these hot spots can live their whole lives without ever experiencing violent crime. Much like here in Oz, if you don't live in one of the crime or drug hot spots life can run pretty smoothly.

[northdude]

Use it or loose it...

[animalpest]

From a Canadian Website

"Gun Control is not about public safety , it's about votes."

A correct statement in my opinion.

Yep, politicians make the laws. And politicians are voted in or out based on votes.

I don't understand why you seem surprised.

[mickb]

The US currently has an incarceration rate 4-5x higher than any other 1st world country. Until the early 70's though, they tracked about the same as all other countries. After that for some reason the incarceration rate and homicide climbed multiple times higher than anywhere else. Guns didnt cause this spike, since they always had as many guns, Actually they used to have even more gun freedoms if you consider the gun control acts of the 30's -60's placed limitations even on US ownership. You have to start looking at other reasons like the mass immigration policies at the time. Of course pointing that out gets you labelled a racist.

I watched an interesting youtube vid the other night. Some old 1950's game show where they had Virgil Earp as a guest, the nephew of famed marshall wyatt earp who was also a marshall himself. He was about 80 when it was aired and the host asked him if being a lawman was tougher in the wild west. He said yes because you had to do the whole job yourself from detective to arresting to jailing. He said the actual crime rates was far less though -quote ""peoples were much more honest, you could leave a hunk of gold in your home and it was safer than a bank vault"

And thats the wild wes he is talking about. Interesting to consider the gun controls of that era- probably zero. A gun in the corner of every kitchen, open carry up the street, park your horse outside the pub with lever action in scabbard.