NYT: Americans With Assault Rifles Should 'Give Them Up For The Good Of Their Fellow Citizens'

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
All you need to be the owner of your very own pre-1986 full auto firearm is a whole lot of cash.

Wrong.

Nope. Oh, you'd need to pay some taxes I believe. That's about it.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
Staying on the right side of the fence and oppose less strict gun laws. If the Japanese (for example) would have less strict gun laws, their suicide rate would skyrocket. No guns = no death by guns. Simple.

Is that you John Titor? Any other future predictions you want to make?

They have a skyrocketing suicide rate in Japan and South Korea with strict gun control.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
Nope. Oh, you'd need to pay some taxes I believe. That's about it.

Wrong.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

No, not even remotely.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: ForteanOrg

Ummm, and if someone wants to kill people, they will also kill people. Even if they don't have firearms readily available.

So what's the point again?

Well, it's a lot more difficult to kill say 14 people with hammers, knives or pointy bamboo sticks. You well know that firearms are meant to kill people, automatic firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people and the sole purpose of firearms is - to kill people. I'm against killing people, so I'm against firearms.

Do you really hate guns that badly? Or are you just afraid of them?

Guns are just instruments. I don't hate instruments. I'm not afraid of them either. I'm simply doing the maths - and in my country, which has fairly strict gun laws, we have a lot less deaths by firearms per capita.

Most of the 1.38 million victims of Pol Pot were killed with blunt instruments.
All of the 9-11 victims were courtesy of box cutters.

originally posted by: ketsuko
Thing is that firearms, like alcohol, are a part of our national culture. They are a part of why this nation exists in the first place, and they are enshrined in the COTUS with their very own amendment.

It's a cultural thing - we agree (who'd 've thunk that!).

When it comes right down to it, wasn't the Netherlands one of the first nations to start throwing in the towel on that war on drugs thingie sort of acknowledging they could never get rid of or stop it through strict prohibition?

Actually, our laws still forbid even soft drugs. But it's the way we implement the law that changed.

However, drugs aren't meant to kill people (that would take away the income of the drug dealer) and most certainly not those that do not use the drug (with an exception for cigarettes, that drug pollutes other folks air too).

Weapons are just the other way around: they are meant to kill others, not you. Drugs might kill you, some drugs might keep you alive longer, they aren't all bad. Guns are.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

Your argument has some validity for homicides, but not with regard to suicides. And again, about 20,000 of those involve suicides, and as I've repeatedly pointed out to you, there's no evidence that a firearms ban will affect suicide rates. You can make the argument that they won't happen BY FIREARM but the evidence very strongly suggests that the will just occur by another method. Several western European nations, as well as Japan and South Korea, have overall suicide rates HIGHER than our own, despite much more strict gun laws.

a reply to: ketsuko

Read the article you refer to. It clearly says what I said: if you have sufficient amounts of money you can buy and own an automatic gun.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

Weapons are just the other way around: they are meant to kill others, not you. Drugs might kill you, some drugs might keep you alive longer, they aren't all bad. Guns are.

And that is entirely your opinion.

A weapon is a tool just as a drug is. What it ultimately ends up doing depends entirely on how it's used.

There are some hard drugs that have little legitimate purpose that I've been able to see, but I notice you've lumped them into the catchall of "drugs" so you can claim that "drugs" can have some good and some bad purposes.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
Read the article you refer to. It clearly says what I said: if you have sufficient amounts of money you can buy and own an automatic gun.

Nope. You obviously do not understand the various firearms laws in the United States.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: ForteanOrg

Ummm, and if someone wants to kill people, they will also kill people. Even if they don't have firearms readily available.

So what's the point again?

Well, it's a lot more difficult to kill say 14 people with hammers, knives or pointy bamboo sticks. You well know that firearms are meant to kill people, automatic firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people and the sole purpose of firearms is - to kill people. I'm against killing people, so I'm against firearms.

Do you really hate guns that badly? Or are you just afraid of them?

Guns are just instruments. I don't hate instruments. I'm not afraid of them either. I'm simply doing the maths - and in my country, which has fairly strict gun laws, we have a lot less deaths by firearms per capita.

First off, automatic firearms (or machine guns) are illegal in most states. In some states you can get a Class III license and pay a tax stamp, but you have to register with the BATF and there are strict regulations on its use.

Second - the strict gun laws didn't stop the mass shooting in Norway or France as of recent. What about the Oklahoma City bombing? Or 9/11? Guns weren't used in any of those mass casualty events.

Third - you're using the same logic that anti-muslim people use, i.e. due to a tiny fraction of a percent of firearms being used in a homicide you want to punish legal firearm owners despite the fact that the remaining hundreds of millions of legally owned guns in this country have never been used in a crime.

Firearms have numerous uses, I use mine in IDPA competitions, hunting, target shooting, as well as if God forbid I was forced to use it in self defense. The only thing I've ever killed with my guns were wild turkeys, deer, wild boar, dove, and ducks. Here in Texas, if you're out hog hunting you will want a semi-automatic rifle with at least a 20 round magazine. Hogs can travel in groups, some of them up to a couple hundred pounds and they are mean SOBs (not to mention they destroy crops / ranch lands).

My wife and I also have Concealed Handgun Licenses and carry almost every day (unless I'm hitting the bars with buddies at which point all the guns stay locked home in the safe).

One other anecdote - my mother is a card carrying Boston/Irish liberal who voted for Obama twice. As a result of all the recent events she has expressed interest in learning how to operate firearms and get a concealed carry permit in Virginia. Every time Obama has opined about 'gun violence', gun sales have soared.

Point being, you can make your opinions based in emotion heard to those of us across the pond, but they will never make a difference. US Culture is based on independence, while yours is based on dependence to the State.

a reply to: vor78

We're moving in circles. Again: death by firearm is death by firearm. My reason for posting in here was the blatant lie of one of the members here that "just" 3000 people died annualy by firearm. I believe I have sufficiently proven that that number should be tenfold. Regardless if people would (or would not) find other ways to kill themselves or others in any other way - which has to be seen first! - taking away firearms brings down the amount of kililngs by firearms to zero. That's my point.

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
a reply to: ketsuko

Read the article you refer to. It clearly says what I said: if you have sufficient amounts of money you can buy and own an automatic gun.

Then you must not have been reading the same article I posted because sufficient amounts of money do not even begin to cover it.

I, as the average citizen, no matter how wealthy I might be, cannot legally own an automatic weapon unless I fall under certain, specific legal circumstances. But continue to go on creating that fiction.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
Read the article you refer to. It clearly says what I said: if you have sufficient amounts of money you can buy and own an automatic gun.

Nope. You obviously do not understand the various firearms laws in the United States.

Well, I'm not a lawyer. I simly read the article one of the pro-gun members here referred to.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: ForteanOrg
a reply to: ketsuko

Read the article you refer to. It clearly says what I said: if you have sufficient amounts of money you can buy and own an automatic gun.

Then you must not have been reading the same article I posted because sufficient amounts of money do not even begin to cover it.

As a result of the closed registry, we cannot get new machine guns. We simply trade the ones that have been out there for years. This has resulted in very high prices. For example, one can get an AR15 for $600-700 in the USA, but I have seen converted automatic AR15s sell for $17,000. Factory Colt guns can go for $25,000+. Uzis which were a few hundred dollars back in the day are now bringing $12,000! This has created a small fiat driven marketplace for an extremely low amount of goods with an insanely high demand. - See more at: www.thefirearmblog.com...

a reply to: ForteanOrg

I have not disputed that you are, indeed, correct that the number is closer to 30,000. I'm only pointing out that there's a problem with conflating suicides with homicides, namely that US suicide rates are comparable or even lower than many western nations. This type of gun control argument based in comparisons of homicide statistics works, at least to some degree, but its very problematic with regards to suicides, as the data suggests that they happen as frequently elsewhere irrespective of the gun laws.

a reply to: ForteanOrg

You missed all the preceding legal hurdles I have to clear, including legality where I live.

Let'e be honest: Pot has a pricetag in the states too, but it doesn't matter to me because it's not legal in my state.

originally posted by: ketsuko
You missed all the preceding legal hurdles I have to clear, including legality where I live.

Precisely.

a reply to: Kryties

If that's true, then there's a very easy way to break that cycle. Stop talking about gun control and inciting these gun buying panics. The gun industry wouldn't have sold nearly as many firearms in the last decade, especially 'assault rifles', if the left would quit stirring the pot.