| Guns | |
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Dicemaster - Student  |
So I went out in my backyard and did some trap shooting yesterday with my mossberg 12Gauge shotgun, (i'm 17 and it is registered to my name) and i decieded it would be interesting to see what the ppl here think.. I own my own gun, how many other ppl own there own guns, and how many ppl would get freaked out if i brought that fact up in normal conversation -Dice _______________ Dicemaster |
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Does it bother you that i'm 17 years old and I own my own gun, and could walk into a store and buy one and be out of the store with the gun in under 10 minutes (in certain parts of the United States, completely legal. Also its a shotgun, a pistol has a 10 day waiting period like anywhere else)
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Lord Exar Kun - Student 
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right. well imo there's something seriously wrong if you can get a shotgun when you're only 17 years old. in fact, there's something seriously wrong if you can buy a gun that easy. _______________ -Retired april the 19th 2004 |
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Dicemaster - Student 
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yes it is easier to get a shotgun then a pistol. The theory is we are a hunting state, so we can get weapons used for hunting a lot easier then for "target shooting" (pistol's) _______________ Dicemaster |
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Lord Exar Kun - Student
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yeah thats just soooo weird to me too bubu. but on the other hand, they cant get drunk while using their guns or driving their cars before the age of 21, so there some logic in there  _______________ -Retired april the 19th 2004 |
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Bubu - Hubbub 
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You can drive at 16, buy a gun at 17 (taken from the poll, might be even sooner), and yet, you can only drink at 21 !! Amazing.  _______________ make install -not war |
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Kueller - Student 
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So you can say the shotgun is more humane  _______________ Personal sleepness-nights-supporter of Virtue. Owner of the 1000th comment of Daidalus and 1943th comment of Gradius! Owner of the 300th comment of Carda! -Taught Gradius all his laming skills
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Lord Exar Kun - Student 
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but on the other hand you can blow a hole in someone's belly with a shotgun while a normal gun only leaaves a bullet and a lot of pain  _______________ -Retired april the 19th 2004 |
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Kueller - Student
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Maybe beacuse a shotgun is mostly used to hunt and not to really made to shoot ppl. _______________ Personal sleepness-nights-supporter of Virtue. Owner of the 1000th comment of Daidalus and 1943th comment of Gradius! Owner of the 300th comment of Carda! -Taught Gradius all his laming skills
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Halendor - Ex-Student 
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Yes, it's easier to get a shotgun than a handgun in some states I believe. I don't get why though  |
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Vaughn - Student 
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wait Dice... from the poll, are you saying that its easier to get shotguns than it is to get handguns? _______________ When you become an actor, you become the person, and you dont act anymore. You just are. - Tyler HP, Taught by Mr G Simpson |
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Shang Chi - Student 
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I have to say that right now in the world there is such a surplus of guns that banning them would not stop the criminals from getting them. There will always be a demand for illegical guns just like there will always be a demand for illegical drugs. Banning them from one segment of the population will not stop the ones who are criminals from getting them. You can't put the genie back in the bottle once it is out. Since the knowledge of firearms is available, someone would make them to make lots of money. Also, as far as guns in the home, I have mine locked up in a cabinet expect one which is in reach of my bed but is in a special locked box that requires a combination of finger pressure pushes to open. Your children can't get to it but you can open it in about 30 seconds. When Florida became the first state to allow the concealed carry permit, the media said it would be like the old west in america, people having shoot outs in the streets, but the opposite really occured. Their crime rates went down and have stayed that way ever since. Here is another article to enjoy. Firearm Safety In America 2003 The numbers of privately owned guns, gun owners, and Right-to-Carry states have risen steadily and are now higher than ever. Meanwhile, the nation`s violent crime rate has decreased every year since 1991 and is now at a 25-year low, the annual number of deaths involving firearms has decreased every year since 1993, and firearm accident deaths have decreased almost every year for decades. Statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, covering annual numbers and rates of death due to accidents and other reasons from 1981 forward, are available at www.nraila.org -- click on "research," then "accident statistics." Or, visit www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars or wonder.cdc.gov. Accidental death statistics from 1903 forward are available from the National Safety Council. Firearm-related deaths have decreased every year since 1993. Overall, they have decreased 49% since 1993. Firearm accident deaths have been decreasing for decades. Since 1930, the annual number of firearm accident deaths has decreased 76%, while the U.S. population has more than doubled and the number of guns has quintupled. Among children, such deaths have decreased 84% since 1975. Firearm accident deaths are at an all-time low, among the entire U.S. population and among children. In 2000, there were 776 firearm accident deaths, including 86 among children. The firearm accident death rate is at an all-time low -- 0.3 per 100,000 population. It has declined 92% since the all-time high in 1904. Firearms are involved in only 1% of all deaths, and in only 1% of deaths among children. Firearms are involved in only 0.8% of accidental deaths. Most accidental deaths involve, or are due to, motor vehicles (43%), falls (13%), poisoning (13%), suffocation (6%), drowning (3%), fires (3%), medical mistakes (3%), and environmental factors (2%). Among children, firearms are involved in only 1.5% of accidental deaths. Most accidental deaths among children involve, or are due to, motor vehicles (45%), drowning (16%), suffocation (14%), fires (10%), poisoning (1.6%), environmental factors (1.4%), falls (1.4%), and medical mistakes (1.2%). Education decreases firearm accidents. Voluntary firearms safety training, not government intrusion, has caused firearms accidents to decline. Nationwide, 57,000 NRA Instructors and Coaches conduct firearm safety and proficiency programs reaching more than 700,000 participants annually. Young Americans benefit from learning firearm safety early on, in NRA programs offered through civic groups such as the Boy Scouts, Jaycees, the American Legion, and schools. (See www.nrahq.org -- click on "Education and Training," or call 703-267-1500.) NRA`s Eddie Eagle® GunSafe Program teaches children pre-K through 6th grade that if they encounter firearms without supervision, they should "STOP! Don`t Touch. Leave The Area. Tell An Adult." Since 1988, Eddie Eagle has been used by more than 20,000 schools, civic groups, and law enforcement agencies to reach 17 million children. (See www.nrahq.org -- click on "Safety Programs," or call 703-267-1573.) Setting the Record Straight on Anti-Gun Myths and Deceptions Cars and Guns: "Gun control" supporters believe that government intrusion, rather than education, is the key to reducing accidents. They erroneously claim that driver licensing and auto registration caused motor vehicle accident deaths to decline between 1968-1991 and theorize that gun registration and gun owner licensing would reduce firearm accident deaths. They rhetorically ask, "We register drivers and license cars, why shouldn`t we require the same for guns and gun owners?" There are several flaws in the anti-gunners` theory. Vehicle registration and driver licensing laws were imposed to generate revenue, not reduce accidents. Nor was safety a side-benefit to the increased regulation. Most vehicle registration and driver licensing laws were imposed between the world wars, but motor vehicle accident deaths increased sharply after 1930 and didn`t begin declining until 1970. And despite more regulation of vehicles and drivers over the years, vehicle accident deaths have increased during the last decade. Point of fact, between 1968-1991, the years cited by the anti-gunners, the motor vehicle accident death rate dropped only 37% with vehicle registration and driver licensing, while the firearm accident death rate dropped 50% without gun registration and gun owner licensing. The truth is, "gun control" supporters want registration and licensing not for safety, but to erect the record-keeping apparatus necessary to make confiscation of privately owned firearms achievable in the future. Handgun Control, Inc`s. first leader defined registration as the second step in a three-step plan to confiscate handguns. (Pete Shields, quoted in The New Yorker, "A Reporter At Large: Handguns," July 26, 1976.) Another fundamental distinction between "cars and guns" is that the purchase and ownership of arms is a right expressly protected by the constitution, whereas operating a vehicle on public roads is a privilege. Note that a license and registration is not required to merely own a vehicle or operate it on private property, only to do so on public roads. Similarly, licenses and permits are not typically required to buy or own a gun, or to keep a gun at home, but are required when using a gun to hunt publicly-owned game or to carry a gun for protection in public places. Firearm accidents among "children": Handgun Control (now Brady Campaign) president, Michael Barnes, and longtime anti-gun senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) have teamed up to allege that 12 children die from gun accidents every day. President Bill Clinton campaigned for so-called "triggerlock" and "smart" gun laws, claiming that 13 children are killed with guns every day. Hillary Clinton said, "Every day in America we lose 13 precious children to gun-related violence." The HELP Network recently put the figure at "an average of 9 children" daily. Other "gun control" advocates have varyingly claimed 5,000 per year, 14 per day, or one every 90 seconds. In fact, on average there are 1.2 such deaths among children per day, including one accidental death every four days. The phony figures are produced by adding the relatively small number of firearm-related deaths among children to the much larger number of deaths among juveniles and young adults under the age of 20, and dishonestly calling the total "children." Sometimes, anti-gunners have counted anyone under the age of 24 as a "child" to get an even higher number. (For details, see www.nraila.org, click "research," "firearm safety," "Not 12 Per Day." The Oct. 1, 1997 Journal of the American Medical Association presented a study which concluded that so-called "Child Access Prevention" (CAP) laws (which make it a crime, under some circumstances, to leave a gun accessible to a child, if a child obtains and misuses the gun) imposed in 12 states between 1989-1993, decreased fatal firearm accidents among children. The article was written by individuals from the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, a group active in the HELP (Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan) Network, which is dedicated to "changing society`s attitude toward guns so that it becomes socially unacceptable for private citizens to have handguns." The study`s flaws: First, the decline in firearm accident deaths among children began in the mid-1970s, not in 1989, when "CAP" laws started to be imposed. Second, the decrease in fatal firearm accidents among children has been nationwide, not only in the 12 "CAP" states. Third, in 1989, NRA`s Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program&® was introduced nationwide. Posted: 9/8/2003 BB Guns & Gun Control ABCs By James O.E. Norell The Hidden Agenda Behind Gun Storage Laws By David Kopel Not "12 Children Per Day": Handgun Control, Inc. Misled Senate Judiciary Committee Firearm Safety In America 2003 Corzine-Kennedy "Consumer Protection" Bills Poor Smokescreen For Back-Door Gun Prohibition Sen. Boxer Proposes Trigger Lock Mandate Guns vs. Teddy Bears Confusion Skews School Gun Count President John F. Kennedy said: "The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities." (Speech to the 90th annual convocation at Vanderbilt University, May 1... Read More Home | About NRA-ILA | Issues | News | Current Legislation | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | Security & Privacy _______________ Thirty spokes converge on a single hub, but it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the cart lies. Clay is molded to make a pot, but it is the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the clay pot lies. Cut out doors and windows to make a room, but it is in the spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the room lies. Therefore, Benefit may be derived from something, but it is in nothing that we find usefulness. |
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DarkSider - Student 
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No they won't turn them in.... But how do they get guns from in the first place... In a country where are sold in supermarkets without any sufficient protection or so easily availible, that you can go and buy some cheap rifle and can take it home the same day, its very easy to get a gun, not only for all the worrying blokes who want to protect their families but also for the criminals. If guns are illegal, the criminals will still get guns but the amount of robbers who are armed will sufficiently decrease.... _______________ I know the pieces fit, 'cause i watched them fall away... |
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Buzz - Student 
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riiiight so in the US we go and make guns illegal. Turn in all your guns. Do you think the criminals with guns are going to hand in their guns? _______________ When you are going through Hell, keep going. -Sir Winston Churchill. Those who seek power and control of others, no matter the level, no matter the intentions, should never be given it. |
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Ulic |retired| - Student 
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Yes, but if it's harder to get your hands on a gun, crimerates would drop right? _______________ Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam |
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Buzz - Student
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Jello, the idea is that Crooks are Cowards. They prey on those that they perceive as being weaker than they are. So if they have a gun they think they are really powerful, but they don't want to face someone else with a gun. Now with a concealed carry law the crooks aren't going to know who has a gun and who doesn't. And its not like people walk around with their money in their hands. You're going to have to get it out, so why not pull your gun instead. Now how about a town where guns are illegal. A criminal knows that no one there has a gun, so he's the most powerful and he can prey on whoever he wants because no one should be able to pull a gun on him. _______________ When you are going through Hell, keep going. -Sir Winston Churchill. Those who seek power and control of others, no matter the level, no matter the intentions, should never be given it. |
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Jello` - Student 
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In Minnesota here, we just passed a law about 6 months ago, saying you can carry appropriate firearms in desginated areas. My comment: WTF. Its basically what DarkSider said. By the time you pull out your little pistola you wasted a grand amount of money on, your robber (or whoever) has already got his out, and is probably shooting you. Oh, way to defend yourself, you've now got a bullet in you somewhere. Dont get me wrong, I love guns, but theres a time and place for everything. Pistols are only used for killing ("defending" people, thats my opinion, you dont need one everywhere you go either. If I remember right, our law states you can bring them mostly anywhere besides schools, stadiums, malls, and other places with large amounts of people. Which makes me think of another point. If youve got a pistol, you've got to go through training or whatever, you cant just be shooting wildly at whoever your trying to hit, you'll shoot someones eye out Thats about all I have to say. Edit: I realize, if I had a gun I probably would have done some pretty stupid things by now (I've been suicidal a few times), and I'm in a depressed mood now, but I'm glad I dont have the ability to do something stupid to myself. Plus I'm not a wrists kind of guy _______________ Brady Brothers: Orion-Greg, Furi0us-Peter, Me-Bobby. Long lost cousin to Flash. Midbie Council #007. Ex-JAK. This comment was edited by Jello` on Mar 07 2004 01:51pm. |
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DarkSider - Student 
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I second what Java said.. I had some basic economy lectures last semester and we talked some time about this example. All the things people do, is based on incentives. Just like the thing with airbags, when you carry a gun, you are more likely to go through areas with a high crime rate, cause you are "protected" by your gun. If you don't have a gun with you, you won't go to such areas. And even if you live in an area with a crime problem, you are more likley to get shot. If you get robbed and you are armed, what are you going to do. You draw your weapon and try to defend yourself. Until you fumble out your weapon you are shot and robbed. When you are unarmed you will only get robbed and live on, which is the thing I would prefer. And to everyone who says i got to protect my home with my gun: your gun is more likely to hurt you, your partner or children, cause you if you want use the gun in defense you have the gun and the ammo handy. So one afternoon your son decides to impress his friends and gets your gun.... Whoosh your or another child got a bullet in his head.... I could write on and on and on with stuff like this.... So weapons are intended to hurt and kill people and they are far more risky too its owner than they serve him in protection. Edit: Halendor I didn't find a link for it, but try to borrow "Principles of Microeconomics" by Gregory N. Mankiw published at Harcourt College Inc. Somewhere in the first 2 chapters where the basic principles are explained you will find exactly the example with airbags and accidents... _______________ I know the pieces fit, 'cause i watched them fall away... This comment was edited by DarkSider on Mar 07 2004 12:41pm. |
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Halendor - Ex-Student 
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I don't think we can continue this discussion without some solid facts. Does anyone have a link or something?  |
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Ulic |retired| - Student 
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Fascinating theory _______________ Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam |
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JavaGuy - Student 
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Correlation does not necessarily imply causality, but in this case there is strong evidence to suggest that people with airbags do, in fact, drive less carefully. This should also jibe with common sense. And no, the death rate does not change, as I note below. Economist David Friedman once suggested that the best auto safety device would be a 12-inch spike pointing up out of your steering wheel. I mentioned this to my boss, and he suggested a better feature: Have the spike pointing down. Remember, the result of any policy is not determined by the intentions of the policy-makers, but by the incentives that policy creates. _______________ My signature is only one line. You're welcome. |
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Halendor - Ex-Student
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Quote: Child poisonings increased significantly where they were used. Same thing with car air-bags: The number of accidents increased! But the use of air-bags and the increase of car accidents aren't necessarily related to eachother, are they? Is the number of people who are saved because of air bags smaller than the number of people who died because they took more risk knowing that they had an airbag for 'protection'? |
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JavaGuy - Student
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The Fox News article was great. Right on point. One thing it mentions is the debate over gun locks. Remember when almost all medication had child-safety locks? It gave people a false sense of security: Child poisonings increased significantly where they were used. Same thing with car air-bags: The number of accidents increased! This is what economists call risk homeostasis--people have a certain level of (perceived) risk that they're comfortable with and are willing to inconvenience themselves to keep risk down to that level, e.g. keep medicines out of reach, drive carefully. When something decreases that risk for them, like safety caps or air bags, then they adjust their behavior to achieve (what they perceive to be) the same level of risk, i.e. they no longer bother with the inconveniences they no longer think necessary. Of interest is that while traffic accidents increased with the introduction of air bags, per-capita injuries and fatalities remained stable. People adjusted their behavior and ended up with the exact same level of risk they had before. So while there was absolutely no benefit to air bags, people are forced to pay for them because they are required by law, and there's more incidental damage to property, which we all pay for through insurance. But the politicians can be "heroes" for making them mandatory. They can point to individuals who were saved by air bags and not talk about how many accidents ocurred because of air bags or discuss whether fatalities and injuries have actually decreased because of their "heroism." And they don't have to talk about all the extra costs imposed on us. But they do get re-elected.  Child-safety caps are much the same story, except that thanks to advances in medicine, per-capita fatalities from poisonings declined even as the number of poisonings increased. The children are safer to begin with, so people are less careful with their safety. Another effect of safety caps on medications was that it made it hard for older people and people with arthritis to get into their medication. In many cases they busted open the containers and put the pills into ziplock bags where a child could more easily mistake them for candy. There were also a number of cases where adults got the pills mixed up because they were then in unlabeled bags--Darwin Award material, I know, but still a direct result of the government trying to protect people from their own stupidity. Any time you try to absolve people of personal responsibility, you're asking for trouble. Child-safety locks on guns will work much the same way. Burglars, however, who will remove the locks from their own guns prior to breaking into your home, will just love it if it takes you longer to get to your gun. The number of child shootings will increase as people get careless with their "safe" locked guns. Crime will be subject to risk homeostasis too. As child-safety locks make robbery safer for robbers, they will adjust their behavior to achieve the same level of risk as before: They will commit more robberies. [edit: fixed muddled sentence] _______________ My signature is only one line. You're welcome. This comment was edited by JavaGuy on Mar 06 2004 02:57pm. |
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Dicemaster - Student
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ok, a little stab for hunting pheasunt breading=hella fast our state would be over run with pheasunts without hunting (imagine driving down the interstate at 75 miles per hour and have a 2and a half to 3+ pounds bird smoke you in your windshild. I've had it happen at 10 miles an hour and it cracked the windshield. If we didn't hunt, the pheasunt population would overpopulate and this would be a problem also, our state is one of the lowest crimerates around. Thats because there aren't many of us, but also cuz we are raised right. I mean if you're raised to be able to shoot a gun at 5 years old, you're going to be pretty safe with that gun. Someone said its sick to kill random animals. Then you HAVE TO BE a vegiatrain, because if youre not you have inderectly killed hundreds of random animals. At least the pheasants in the field have a chance at getting away, unlike the cow thats taken to market. -Dice _______________ Dicemaster |
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Shang Chi - Student 
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Another article for your reading pleasure. Friday, January 02, 2004 By John R. Lott Jr. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107274,00.html People fear guns. Yet, while guns make it easier for bad things to happen, they also make it easier for people to protect themselves. With the avalanche of horrific news stories about guns over the years, it's no wonder people find it hard to believe that, according to surveys (one I conducted for 2002 for my book, "The Bias Against Guns," and three earlier academic surveys by different researchers published in such journals as the Journal of Criminal Justice) there are about two million defensive gun uses (search) each year; guns are used defensively four times more frequently than they are to commit crimes. The rebuttal to this claim always is: If these events were really happening, wouldn't we hear about them on the news? Many people tell me that they have never heard of an incident of defensive gun use. There is a good reason for their confusion. In 2001, the three major television networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- ran 190,000 words' worth of gun-crime stories on their morning and evening national news broadcasts. But they ran not a single story mentioning a private citizen using a gun to stop a crime. The print media was almost as biased: The New York Times ran 50,745 words on contemporaneous gun crimes, but only one short, 163-word story on a retired police officer who used his gun to stop a robbery. For USA Today, the tally was 5,660 words on gun crimes versus zero on defensive uses. Just take some of the 18 defensive gun uses that I found covered by newspapers around the country during the first 10 days of December: -- Little Rock, Ark: After the assailant attacked him and his son-in-law with a poker, a 64-year-old minister shot a man dead on church grounds. The attacker had engaged in a string of assaults in an apparent drug-induced frenzy. -- Corpus Christi, Texas: A woman shot to death her ex-husband, who had broken into her house. The woman had a restraining order against the ex-husband. -- Tampa Bay, Fla.: A 71-year-old man, Melvin Spaulding, shot 20-year-old James Moore in the arm as Moore and two friends were beating up his neighbor, 63-year-old George Lowe. Spaulding had a concealed weapons permit. --Bellevue, Wash.: A man shot a pit bull that lunged to within a foot of him and his family. Police said the man's family had been repeatedly menaced in the past by the dog. -- Jonesboro, Ga.: A father out walking with his 11-year-old daughter was attacked by an armed robber. The police say the father shot the attacker in self-defense and will not face charges. -- Houston, Texas: Andrea McNabb shot two of the three men who tried to rob her plumbing business on the afternoon of Dec. 1. -- Philadelphia, Pa: A pharmacy manager fatally shot one robber and wounded another after the robbers threatened to kill workers at the store. The wounded robber escaped. Part of the reason defensive gun use isn't covered in the media may be simple news judgment. If a news editor faces two stories, one with a dead body on the ground and another where a woman brandished a gun and the attacker ran away, no shots fired, almost anyone would pick the first story as more newsworthy. In 2002, some 90 percent of the time when people used guns defensively, they stopped the criminals simply by brandishing the gun. But that doesn't explain all the disparity in coverage. It doesn't, for example, explain why, in some heavily covered public middle and high school shootings, the media mentioned in only 1 percent or fewer of their stories that the attacks were stopped when citizens used guns to stop the attacks. The unbalanced reporting is probably greatest in cases where children die from accidental gunshots fired by another child. Most people have seen the public-service ads showing the voices or pictures of children between the ages of four and eight, never over the age of eight, and the impression is that there is an epidemic of accidental deaths involving small children. The exaggerated media attention given these particularly tragic deaths makes these claims believable. The debate over laws requiring that people lock up their guns in their home usually concentrates on the deaths of these younger children. The trigger and barrel locks mandated by these laws are often only considered reliable for preventing the access to guns by children under age 7. The truth is that in 1999, for children whose ages correspond with the public service ads, 31 children under the age of 10 died from an accidental gunshot and only six of these cases appear to have involved another child under 10 as the culprit. Nor was this year unusual. Between 1995 and 1999, only five to nine cases a year involved a child wounding or killing another child with a gun. For children under 15, there were a total of 81 accidental gun deaths of all types in 1999. Any death is tragic, but it should be noted that more children under five drowned in bathtubs or plastic water buckets than from guns. The gun deaths are covered extensively as well as prominently, with individual cases getting up to 88 separate news stories. In contrast, when children use guns to save lives, the event might at most get one brief mention in a small local paper. Yet these events do occur. --In February, 2002, the South Bend, Indiana Tribune reported the story of an 11-year-old boy who shot and killed a man holding a box cutter to his grandmother's neck. Trained to use a firearm, the boy killed the assailant in one shot, even though the man was using his grandmother as a shield. --In May, 2001 in Louisianna, a 12-year-old girl shot and killed her mother's abusive ex-boyfriend after he broke into their home and began choking her mother. The story appeared in the New Orleans Advocate. --In January, 2001, in Angie, Louisianna, a 13 year-old boy stopped for burglars from entering his home by firing the family's shotgun, wounding one robber and scaring off the other three. The four men were planning on attacking the boy's mother--an 85-pound terminal cancer patient--in order to steal her pain medication. As a couple of reporters told me, journalists are uncomfortable printing such positive gun stories because they worry that it will encourage children to get access to guns. The whole process snowballs, however, because the exaggeration of the risks--along with lack of coverage of the benefits--cements the perceived risks more and more firmly in newspaper editors and reporters minds. This makes them ever more reluctant to publish such stories. While all this coverage affects the overall gun-control debate, it also directly shapes perceptions of proposed legislation. Take the upcoming debate over renewing the so-called assault-weapons ban. This past summer CNN repeatedly showed a news segment that starts off with a machine gun firing and claims that the guns covered by the ban do much more damage than other guns. CNN later attempted to clarify the segment by saying that the real problem was with the ammunition used in these guns. But neither of these points is true. The law does not deal at all with machine guns (though the pictures of machine guns sure are compelling)--and the "assault weapons" fire the same bullets at the same rate, and accomplish the exact same thing, as other semi-automatic guns not covered by the ban. The unbalanced presentation dominates not just the media but also government reports and polling. Studies by the Justice and Treasury Departments have long evaluated just the cost guns impose on society. Every year, Treasury puts out a report on the top 10 guns used in crime, and each report serves as the basis for dozens of news stories. But why not also provide a report--at least once--on the top 10 guns used defensively? Similarly, numerous government reports estimate the cost of injuries from guns, but none measures the number of injuries prevented when guns are used defensively. National polls further reinforce these biased perceptions. Not one of the national polls (as far as I was able to find) gave respondents an option to mention that gun control might actually be harmful. Probably the least biased polls still give respondents just two choices: supporting "tougher gun-control legislation to help in the fight against gun crime" or "better enforcement of current laws." Yet, both options ultimately imply that gun control is good. But if we really want to save lives, we need to address the whole truth about guns--including the costs of not owning guns. We never, for example, hear about the families who couldn't defend themselves and were harmed because they didn't have guns. Discussing only the costs of guns and not their benefits poses the real threat to public safety as people make mistakes on how best to defend themselves and their families. John R. Lott, Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "The Bias Against Guns" (Regnery 2003). _______________ Thirty spokes converge on a single hub, but it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the cart lies. Clay is molded to make a pot, but it is the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the clay pot lies. Cut out doors and windows to make a room, but it is in the spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the room lies. Therefore, Benefit may be derived from something, but it is in nothing that we find usefulness. |
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Shang Chi - Student
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Concealed Carry laws allow the ordinary citizen after taking certain training courses be allowed to carry a firearm concealed on their person that is not viewable to the public. There are at least 38 states in the United States that now have these type of law. Almost all of these states have seen a decrease in crime after these laws came into affect. It is believed that criminals are less likely to attack people because they may or may not now be armed to defend themselves. As I see it, the criminals will never stop getting illegical firearms and will not follow any laws about their use. These laws at least seem to deter some of the criminal behavior because they seem to be just as afraid of being shot as everyone else. _______________ Thirty spokes converge on a single hub, but it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the cart lies. Clay is molded to make a pot, but it is the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the clay pot lies. Cut out doors and windows to make a room, but it is in the spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the room lies. Therefore, Benefit may be derived from something, but it is in nothing that we find usefulness. |
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Battlin' Billy - Student 
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If guns were taken out of the hands of the population (the legal ones), there's still the illegal guns left. Instead of worrying about your average, law-abiding citizens' guns, they should concentrate more on the guns that are gotten illegally. Drug dealers, mobsters and other criminals more often than not don't aquire their guns legally and any laws passed won't even effect them. _______________ Midbie Council Member #2 - Profile ID 2073 | Member of B@rtM@ulS@ar | Owner of Monty's 2000th comment & D@RtHM@UL's 8100th comment | Former Padawan of SilkMonkey & Arcuss JA Goaltender & NHL Fan | Fellow Rush fan to Axion|Plo Koon is my oldest JA friend Post your RL pics HERE! | Post you JK2/JK3 screenies HERE! |
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