Quote:
Originally Posted by Culverin
Gun control works to keep guns away from the average person.
If I ever got crazy angry at somebody, and all I had lying around was a baseball bat, I'd think twice about rounding up the boys to go lay the smack down. It's way too personal.
But if I had a gun handy, all I need is 1 boy to do a drive by.
Also, in the heat of anger in a domestic situation, no gun means less murder.
It works.
Just not to protect us from criminals.
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Some false
assumptions here.
First of all, what is an "average person"? Why can't an average person own firearms? You imply that only the police and military are the only ones that should have guns, which is a very scary thought because that means the people have no power or the means to defend themselves, if the need arises. Owning guns and doing targeting shooting, is no different than owing cars and driving fast on a race track. With proper training anyone can do it, but with IMPROPER use, anyone could become a murderer.
Also, why do you fear that you would use your guns to hurt someone if they somehow looked at you funny. No gun owners I know behave or think that way and many of them have owned guns for 10, 20, 30 years. Their wives, kids, and grand-kids certainly don't agree with you on that. Guns do not automatically make someone go crazy and do crazy things - crazy people USE guns to do crazy things. There is a big difference there.
Then, you mentioned that no guns in domestic disputes = safer. Again you're implying that gun owners are more likely to commit murder in domestic disputes, than say, kitchen knife owners, or baseball bat owners. Hate to tell you but that is completely false. As an example, the Ontario Office of the Chief Corner did a report on Domestic deaths in the year 2008 for the province of Ontario:
http://www.crvawc.ca/documents/DVDRC...28FINAL%29.pdf
and found that 27% of deaths of women were caused by stabbing, 60% were "others" (choking, hitting, etc), and 13% were by gun shot wounds (table 9, page 13 of 51 in the PDF). Meaning, women are twice as likely to die from knives (of any kind) in domestic disputes, than by guns. If you look at the 5-year number, deaths by gunshot wounds is nowhere near as common as stabbing deaths. Check out Table 4 on page 11 of 51 for another stat for the years 2002~2007, where 34% were stabbing deaths, a combined 45% for stragulation/other, and 21% shooting deaths.
In the heat of the moment, ANYTHING can be used as a weapon to hurt the other person. Your statement of "guns at home = more deaths during dispute" is completely false, and is supported only by perception generated by the media (anytime a gun is mentioned, it's bad news), and not by facts. I can google more official government stats for your viewing but you will only see more of the same numbers.
Lastly, I do agree with you that gun control doesn't work to protect us from criminals, and the ironic thing is that IF you had the ability to carry firearms with you, the likelihood of you being a victim can be lessened. Handgun ban lifted in Washington and Chicago = crime rate went down. Prior to the ban being lifted? Both had some of the highest violent crime rates in the USA.
Look, I'm not trying to tell people that they're wrong about how they think of guns and gun owners, but sometimes it's hard to argue with facts when they are so blatantly obvious that objects should NEVER be the center of attention in tragedies like the recent shootings.