Piliger wrote: » 20 toddlers slaughtered as a direct result of ordinary people being able to buy guns for no valid reason.
clairefontaine wrote: » There is something to this, visibility and fame and making your own movie with you as the big hero and the gun.
aaakev wrote: » criminals will get a gun if they want one wether they are banned or not
"Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes," Wachtel said. Because when they want guns they want them immediately the wait is usually too long for a weapon to be stolen and find its way to a criminal. ... Responding to a question of how they obtained their most recent handgun, the arrestees answered as follows: 56% said they paid cash; 15% said it was a gift; 10% said they borrowed it; 8% said they traded for it; while 5% only said that they stole it. ATF officials say that only about 8% of the nation's 124,000 retail gun dealers sell the majority of handguns that are used in crimes
According to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and crime, there were 41 homicides using a firearm (less than 7% of all homicides) in England and Wales. By contrast, in the USA in the same year, there were some 10,300 homcides using a firearm (almost 67 percent of all homicides).
Originally Posted by SparksHe didn't say he was a drunk driver. He said he drank and that he was a driver, not that he was doing both at once. I don't mind a glass of wine every so often either, but I'd never drive after one. Does that mean I don't give a hoot about kids who are killed by drunk drivers?
Originally posted by Piliger I believe so, yes. Absolutely.
Piliger wrote: » This is the kind of twisted and perverted thinking we don't want in our country.
Manic Moran wrote: » The concept of personal responsibility is twisted and perverted thinking?
fryup wrote: » they sure do love their guns.....
Sparks wrote: » Arf. Nope. It was not as a direct result of people buying firearms, and "no valid reason" is also wrong. Those kids are dead because a mentally ill person who was barred successfully from owning those firearms killed his own mother and stole her firearms. What law do you think would have stopped him if he was that messed up? Do you think a law banning all legally-held firearms would have stopped him? It didn't stop the Troubles over here, did it? It wouldn't stop bombings, arson, poison, or any one of the methods used for mass killings in the past fifty or sixty years. If someone is that deranged, no writing on a piece of paper is going to do much good in preventing them from doing harm because by that point, it's way too late. Your problem, your direct cause, was mental health, and the lack of adaquate mental healthcare before he snapped and killed everyone. Not the tools used by the lunatic involved. You want to play whack-a-mole banning everything you could possibly use to do something heinous like this, you'll be at it your whole life and you still won't get everything, and people will still be dying because you won't look at the root cause of the problem.
Grayson wrote: » There have been no mass shootings like there are the the US.
Grayson wrote: » It's my assertion that a mentally ill person would not be able to walk into their mothers house and pick up a semi automatic weapon.
Grayson wrote: » So your assertion is that firearm laws have no bearing at all?
But according to you
Also, you said it didn't stop all the mass killings etc over here.
Problem is that it did. There have been no mass shootings like there are the the US. Any killings occurred because large criminal/terrorist organisations made a large effort to import these weapons or steal them from the government.
MadsL wrote: » Gonna go out on a bit of of a limb and suggest that in fact more people have been killed in the Troubles than have been killed in mass rampage shootings in the US. Just a hunch. ...and I'll just leave this here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18510327[/QUOTE] You're not really comparing a "war" situation to kids in school are you?
haydar wrote: » That Jones fella is a nut job. I wouldn't want to come across him when he's angry with a gun! I don't think I'll be going to the US any time soon.
haydar wrote: » I don't think I'll be going to the US any time soon.
haydar wrote: » I probably will go some time. It just scares me to see people like him and other lunatics freely able to go and buy automatic weapons etc
MadsL wrote: » That's like judging Kerry by the Healey-Raes. Come over, we really don't bite.
clairefontaine wrote: » Personal responsibility can only take you so far. The facts are gunshot wounds are the number one killer of teenage boys in America, that if you have a teenager [male or female] and a gun in the house they have twice the chance of committing suicide than without a gun in the house. Let's say you are responsible and teach your kids how to shoot and handle a gun, that you keep the gun locked in cabinet, and the gun itself locked. Let's say you have a child or teenager with invisible mental illness or just pissed off one day, or depressed one day or he or she has a friend who comes over one day. If they want that gun, they will get that gun. Lots of people dont lock their guns even with kids in the house. Personal responsibility has its limitations.
Will you have legal culpability if anything happens to your child with the gun you keep in the house or if you child has access to the gun and harms someone else?
Manic Moran wrote: » An interesting suggestion just crossed my desk. Apparently a Vermont politician has noticed that the State Constitution says that if you don't want to carry a gun, you don't have to, but you may have to pay a cost in exchange (Article 9). He proposes a $500 tax on the choice to not own a gun. For background, Vermont does not require any permit for a person to carry a firearm, and has the lowest murder rate of any State in the Union.
Manic Moran wrote: » No, it has no such limitations. You are responsible for what goes on with your guns in your house. Not the kid. Not the burglar. You. If you don't know your kid well enough to think he's having troubles, or if you have a kid who's mentally ill and you still leave the gun around for him to get ahold of, it's your bloody fault, and one should not attempt to get around it. Where I am, it can happen. California Penal Code 12035: Criminal Storage of a firearm. Defined as if he or she keeps any loaded firearm within any premises that are under his or her custody or control and he or she knows or reasonably should know that a child is likely to gain access to the firearm without the permission of the child's parent or legal guardian and the child obtains access to the firearm and thereby causes death or great bodily injury to himself, herself, or any other person It does have an interesting exception: (6)The child obtains, or obtains and discharges, the firearm in a lawful act of self-defense or defense of another person, or persons. That's the parental responsibility clause. If you think your kid is responsible enough to use the firearm correctly, then you, as the parent, get to make that call as to the access that he should have.
