day of retribution

[pinkmoon]

After the recent wonderfull advert for gun ownership in America do they need to do some thing about it.

[GUT]

G'day Pinkmoon

Simple answer Y..E..S..

But I'm not American as you might have guessed so it really is probably non of my business.

[pinkmoon]

As long as America let any Tom dick or Harry own a firearm then they will be viewed as a very retarded nation by a lot of people.

[GUT]

Remember though three were killed with knives!

[Limehouse]

As long as America let any Tom dick or Harry own a firearm then they will be viewed as a very retarded nation by a lot of people.

I don't support gun ownership but I do not think that a law against gun ownership would have prevented the events of yesterday. It was the act of an infantile, self-obsessed, unhinged person who could have achieved the same result with an illegal gun.

[c.d.]

As long as America let any Tom dick or Harry own a firearm then they will be viewed as a very retarded nation by a lot of people.

But here is the problem -- If Tom and Dick are law abiding citizens and can't legally own a gun, and Harry is a criminal who doesn't give a rat's behind about gun laws and therefore obtains a gun illegally, then Tom and Dick are at a big disadvantage if Harry decides to use his gun.

c.d.

[c.d.]

As long as America let any Tom dick or Harry own a firearm then they will be viewed as a very retarded nation by a lot of people.

...and those same people will be first in line to ask for America's help when the **** hits the fan and there is some dirty work to do.

c.d.

[Errata]

I'm pretty anti gun, but I recognize there is some value to civilian gun ownership. Not a lot, but some. So I think every gun should only have a two bullet capacity. And I think bullets should be insanely expensive. That way people can have their 15 round clips, but it costs $30,000 dollars to fill that clip.

[Cogidubnus]

So fine...wealthy members of the tea party can shoot who they chose, whilst the rest of us scrabble round the floor ducking the bullets...

[GUT]

A real cultural difference here huh.

American's as a whole, in my experience, love the right to own guns, it is in the constitution. I've never reconciled in my own mind how that means any type of gun when the constitution was written I doubt anyone remotely considered guns that could kill 20 people in 2 minutes. However the constitution does say for an effective militia so I guess single load guns wouldn't be much help.

The British on the other hand spent years not even arming the police.

In Australia we had, what was, and I think still is the most people killed by a single gunman outside of war 34 by gun in one day. After this we had a big gun buyback, and the banning of automatic weapons.

[c.d.]

I think we need to make a distinction between owning a gun legally and using a gun to commit a crime. Just because you own a gun doesn't necessarily mean you have done something wrong. In the same way, just because you own a car doesn't necessarily mean that you got drunk and drove that car 80 miles an hour through a school zone killing ten children.

c.d.

[c.d.]

"The British on the other hand spent years not even arming the police."

That makes me think of comedian Robin Williams' great line -- In England the police yell "Stop or I'll yell Stop again."


c.d.

[Beowulf]

The parents of one of the boys STABBED in the house by psycho Rodgers called for GUN CONTROL IN AMERICA!! ..so says ABC 7 News.

[GUT]

The parents of one of the boys STABBED in the house by psycho Rodgers called for GUN CONTROL IN AMERICA!! ..so says ABC 7 News.

Funny that isn't it. Where I live it is illegal to carry a knife, yes even a pocket knife, in public without a good reason. Next it will be against the law to carry rope, incase you are going to strangle someone, then I expect they'll outlaw hands for the same reason.

[kensei]

I grew up in rural America where guns are as commonplace a part of life as any other implement we had on our farm. I hunted both large and small game with my father, and though my adulthood has been spent as a city dweller and I've lost any desire to kill anything now I am a proud law-abiding gun owner and own a small number of both rifles and handguns. I still enjoy going camping and carry a gun for protection in case I run into a bear, and at home they are for home defense in the equally unlikely event that some criminal should ever come calling. (I don't have a concealed carry permit so I don't carry one around with me in day to day life, but that is an option for people here.)

It's hard, I understand, to divorce oneself from emotion whenever a tragedy happens. But I'd like to put forth some facts that are given very short shrift in the media. I don't have exact numbers in front of me so these will be generalizations. One, more guns equal less crime, and vice versa. It is the cities with laws that make it hardest for civilians to own guns- like Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C.- that have the highest crime rates and in particular the highest gun murder rates. In areas where civilian gun ownership is high, crime rates are low. I forget what state it's in but there is one town in America that requires every citizen to own a gun. Their crime rate is near zero. Two, many of these mass shootings that make headlines happen in "gun free zones," public places that forbid the carrying of guns. These are places where the maniacs who wish to commit these heinous acts know there will be no one there who can stop them. Three, whenever a law-abiding citizen with a gun stops a criminal (whether having to actually pull the trigger or not), it is woefully under-reported in the American media which is liberal and for the most part anti-gun. Such incidents happen on a regular basis. And four, there is an impression given in the media that there must be MILLIONS killed by guns in America every year. That is not true. The average annual number is around eleven to twelve thousand, in a country of over 300 million. That includes murders, suicides, and accidents. And what is the most under-reported of all is that the greatest percentage of those deaths are criminal gang-bangers killing each other.

People kill other people in a vast array of ways, but only with guns is there a demand to have the method of killing banned. ONE MILLION PEOPLE A YEAR die around the world in car accidents, yet there is no movememt to ban cars. I know it is horrible and harsh and ugly whenever these mass shootings happen. Of course it is, and I'm not trying to sound insensitive to that. But it is precisely for that reason that they make such big headlines and give the impression that they are more common than they are. They're not. They are isolated incidents of crazy people taking something that is supposed to be safe and legal and doing something unsafe and illegal with it.

And I know this is going long, but I have to say something about the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution. It had nothing to do with hunting or recreational target shooting. The language makes it quite clear- it was written by people who had just used weapons to win their freedom from a powerful nation and who realized that if their own government was ever to turn tyrannical that that would have to be done again, and for that reason the everyday citizen had to be allowed to own weapons. A lot has been said about how the founding fathers couldn't have known what kind of super sophisticated guns would exist in the future, but you know, they weren't stupid. They knew things would evolve. Their basic premise was that whatever the weapon of choice was for the soldier under the government of any future age, the citizens should be allowed to own the same thing. Like it or not, that was their meaning. It doesn't mean everybody should get to own rocket launchers or weapons grade plutonium, just a personal defense weapon that gives them a fighting chance against anyone that might mean them harm.

Rest in peace to the victims in California, and may the SOB that did it burn in Hell. Guns are not to blame. He is.