Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2007 - 01:46am PT
|
Wasn't it in 1933 that Hitler confiscated all privately owned firearms and then made a speech about how he had made Germaby "safer"?
Crap!
You made me hijack my own thread!
This was supposed to be about guns on campus. Here in Utah the legitimacy of state issued CCWs is now well established.
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 01:47am PT
|
Dmalloy writes:
"Reports from various media, including the NY Times, indicate that one can purchase a handgun at a gun show in Virginia with no background check or license."
Do you have a link to your source?
I'm asking because what you describe is a violation of Federal Law.
Nice *strawman argument* though. Points for that.
Dmalloy continues:
"So tell me - what are we, as a society, gaining in exchange for allowing the free access to handguns by almost anyone?"
Amother bogus argument. That's three by my count, just in the last hour. Trifecta!
We most certainly are NOT "allowing the free access to handguns by almost anyone". When was the last time you bought a handgun? Go try it, then come back and report how "free" the "access" is.
If you would like to agrue intelligently, let's roll. But don't think you can just make up sh*t and pass it here.
|
|
Mimi
climber
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 01:48am PT
|
People kill people. Suggesting disarming the populace is faulty logic. It's just like immigration. Enforce the laws on the books and quit ignoring how FU our society is.
Crime and killings would be much worse if the government took all of the law abiding people's guns away. In a population of 300 million complex people including foreigners, there will be weird crimes like this. If he would've used another method of homicide, we'd be talking about that.
|
|
MisterE
Social climber
RimDweller, AZ
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 01:50am PT
|
I do think "times have changed" since the original gun laws were passed.
The rub is that (with marijuana, limiting access, owners associations, etc. as well), once the dam of precedent has been broken all hell breaks loose, so folks tend to stick with what has worked in the past...
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 01:50am PT
|
Hey, I'm surrounded by guys with guns on them and in their cars everyday.
What's the big deal?
|
|
Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2007 - 01:53am PT
|
Hey!
What happened to Heimie Town?
|
|
dmalloy
Trad climber
eastside
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 01:57am PT
|
sorry Mimi, no sale.
A person with a knife kills one person, maybe two or three if he is highly trained (in which case he is unlikely to decide to kill people, unless we have put him through the horror of war). "If he had used another method of homicide"....please, name one that could have been so effective, and can be easily procured for $600, including the ammunition. A car bomb? You know how long that and how much engineering knowledge something like that takes? With a couple of handguns it is a trip to the gun show and a few trips to the range, and voila, 33 dead.
"People kill people".
And you call *my* logic faulty? Your rationale is a bumper sticker. You call it logic, but it really is just your desire to continue to feel like a powerful being, when you are as powerless as all the rest of us.
Please bring me something more meaningful, I am eager to learn.
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:03am PT
|
The Manson Family did all their killing with knives.
Keep tossing me the soft ones, It feels like batting practice.
|
|
dmalloy
Trad climber
eastside
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:05am PT
|
" The Manson Family did all their killing with knives. "
Number of perpetrators? Number of murdered? Number of murdered in any one instance?
I don't see the comparison to today's tragedy or other shooting sprees.
"you almost dragged me down" edit - besides which, you still fail to answer the question -
What are we gaining by allowing free access to handguns?
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:13am PT
|
For the third time now, WE DON'T ALLOW FREE ACCESS TO HANDGUNS!
Ask a question based in reality and you'll get a reasoned discussion.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:14am PT
|
Yes, we do allow essentially free access to hand guns and that's reflected in the stats. Our manufacturing, distribution, and lack of control of hand guns amounts to "free access". Period. The current paper facade of ineffectual controls on hand guns is a sham perpetuated by the gun industry and the NRA.
Restricting handguns alone would greatly reduce the problem - and keeping handguns out of the hands of 15-25 year olds would vastly reduce it. If nothing else were done relative to control of weapons other than a program to get handguns off the street and out of the hands of young people we'd have far less of a problem. And for you gun owners out there - a ballpark 35% of weapons used in crimes are stolen, which means a percentage of gun owners are directly contributing to the problem.
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:20am PT
|
Do you think that the percentage of us who have had our climbing gear stolen are contributing to the problem of stolen gear?
|
|
Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:20am PT
|
Gun control and violence are complex subjects, about which many have strong emotions and opinions. There is also a lot of irrationality about the subject.
Perhaps it helps if people can vent about this on an internet forum. I'm not sure. My personal view is that there is a strong tension seated in the culture, history, law and mores of the U.S., between authoritarianism and liberty. There is also a deep-seated insecurity. (There are many other elements to this, of course.) There are no simple answers.
Ron: "Here in Utah the legitimacy of state issued CCWs is now well established." The LEGALITY may have been established, but I somehow doubt the LEGITIMACY has been.
It has always seemed very strange to me that when events of this kind occur, the name and motives and background of the murderer are gone into in great detail, but not that of the victims. Few of the names of the victims at Virginia have been released yet, so I can't post them, in their memory. Instead, I'll post the names of 14 young women, promising scientists and engineers, who were murdered at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6th, 1989.
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:28am PT
|
Stolen climbing gear doesn't kill people - stolen guns do. You're not contributing to the act of stealing guns, you're contributing to a third of the crimes committed with a firearm.
|
|
MisterE
Social climber
RimDweller, AZ
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 02:36am PT
|
Don't shoot me for this:
Can't we all just get along? ;-P
|
|
Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2007 - 02:59am PT
|
I bet for a lot less than $600 I could kill a lot more people if I had a sociopathic feather up my butt.
Cost is a poor argument. If you have a creative homicidal mind and a new idea that, say, involves a boxcutter, who knows what you can do.
The weapon is only the tool. It takes the hand of a criminal to commit a crime.
Does a gun facilitate a crime? It can.
Does a gun facilitate the deterence of a crime? It can.
Andersemantic,
you have the legitimate right to carry a concealed weapon on campus if licensed by the state.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 03:10am PT
|
Ron, I'd say from the stats the real questions worth asking are:
Do handguns facilitate violent crime? Clearly.
Do handguns facilitate the deterence of a crime? Not so clearly.
The cost/benefit stats of interest, which I can't find (Crimper?), would be the ratio of how many crimes are committed with a handgun for every crime prevented by a handgun. If the statistics were available I would be more than willing to bet that it is a very high ratio that illustrates the [romantic] idea of handguns preventing crime has all the validity of the Marlboro man.
|
|
Trusty Rusty
Social climber
Tahoe area
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 04:42am PT
|
"CCW" 'Concealed Carry Weapon'. . .assert the right to own & carry a magnum smoke wagon. Every American family should have at least one. The law is for the lawless, our right to bare arms protects us from those who dont consider law.
|
|
paganmonkeyboy
Trad climber
the blighted lands of hatu
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 09:29am PT
|
tough subject. this one's been on my mind for a while now, ever since the utah mall shooting...
1) Not sure this was 'free access to guns' - black market isn't going to prevent someone from getting a weapon illegally if they really want one, not at all...a ban just guarantees that people that want one legally won't be able to get one...
2) been trying to find crime stats for the UK and Australia - I'm honestly not sure either country is any safer overall since the gun bans they have in place were instituted - just lower gun related crime while knife and baseball bat crime rises. In doing this search I saw a federal study indicating that the overall violent crime rate in the US has dropped while the number of guns has risen. Yeah its an NRA website, grain of salt not included but still :
http://www.nraila.org/CurrentLegislation/Read.aspx?ITNDrop=2445-L
3) It is far too easy to knee jerk react when something like this happens. However - in this months alone I suspect more people will die due to prescription drug misuse than gun crime - either bad reaction or mistake in dispensing - I say this to provide a sense of perspective here. Yes - this is a horrible tragedy. Terrible. But this is still one isolated incident and not to be taken as a general harbinger of the state of violent crime in the nation, IMHO...
It is not the guns - It is the people, and the brain inside that big ball of fat on top of the neck that is the problem...if you are going to tell me what I can and can't do based on the actions of one person acting far outside the norm of behavior, then where does it stop ? Is one person running a bus through a crowd of people on the sidewalk a reason to take buses off the roads ? Is arson a reason to ban all fire ? Slippery slopes...
one monkey's opinion...
edit to add - and lovesgasoline - excellent post...I'm not discounting points made by the gun control side either - but IMHO the issue of gun control is addressing the symptoms and not the issues underlying the violence.
Does anyone feel the availability of guns is what makes a person do something like this ? It might make the actual act easier, make it easier to affect more people in a short period of time, but would this person have *not done anything but guns were available so they went off* ???
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 17, 2007 - 09:55am PT
|
You're right. I don't trust "we the people" with a loaded grigri let alone a 9mm handgun...
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!