Guns don't kill?

Firstly, let me say that I am saddened and appalled by what occurred yesterday.

However, the fact remains, that if guns were not so freely available, then this sort of crime would happen less frequently.
To say that guns don't kill people, people kill people is a fallacy.
To say that a gun is a tool, same as a hammer or a knife, is a fallacy.
A hammer or a knife, is not made for the express purpose of firing a high velocity projectile at another living thing. Yes, you can kill a person with a hammer or knife, but can you kill over 30 in a crowded area? I think not.
U.S. gun enthusiasts will bleat about the right to bear arms etc written in the constitution, but I believe that this is out-moded, and that people have guns because they WANT them - and they want them because they believe in an obsolete expression of freedom - oh, and to shoot things.

Here in the U.K. after the massacres at Hungerford and Dunblane, tough new laws were brought in - these mass shooting crimes have not happened since.

I uphold an individuals right to protect himself, but not at the expense of society as a whole, where it has become a kind of arms race.

www.neahin.org...

www.ojp.usdoj.gov...

Some figures show a decrease in violent and gun crime, however I would argue that this has more to do with zero tolerance policies than anything else.

The fact remains that if guns are so freely available, then there will always be crimes of this nature.

The rise of gun crime in Britain is drug-related and has more to do with the Labour party being unable to settle on proper policing methods and political correctness gone mad. Yes we see gang related shootings and stabbings, but it has been many years since we witnessed this kind of massacre - and that has to do with military type weapons not being available generally.

Guns don't kill, people do... but guns certainly make it easier.

I say we replace bullets with tranquilizers of some sort. Sure you could put someone to sleep and then easily hack their head off... but the possibility of obtaining the means to mowing down dozens of people would be greatly reduced.

Originally posted by budski
However, the fact remains, that if guns were not so freely available, then this sort of crime would happen less frequently.

Check out this post, which provides a counter-argument. It happens VERY frequently in the US that the presence of armed honest citizens prevents or lessens these kinds of disasters.

Appalachian Law School, 2002

Let me tell you why "guns don't kill." I can lay a gun on a coffee table, a loaded one mind you, and it can lay there for years and never harm anyone. Then one day, some knuckle head comes along and picks it up and blam!! Now, do you blame the gun or the one in possession of it? I personally blame the one in possession, not the gun.

Originally posted by Open_Minded Skeptic

Originally posted by budski
However, the fact remains, that if guns were not so freely available, then this sort of crime would happen less frequently.

Check out this post, which provides a counter-argument. It happens VERY frequently in the US that the presence of armed honest citizens prevents or lessens these kinds of disasters.

Appalachian Law School, 2002

I'd really like to see figures of just how often this happens, versus the number of shootings per year.
This just sounds to me like an excuse to justify carrying a deadly weapon, and if enough people carry them than a fair percentage will use them in violence against another person.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Let me tell you why "guns don't kill." I can lay a gun on a coffee table, a loaded one mind you, and it can lay there for years and never harm anyone. Then one day, some knuckle head comes along and picks it up and blam!! Now, do you blame the gun or the one in possession of it? I personally blame the one in possession, not the gun.

I blame the fact that the gun was lying around, waiting to be used for it's designated purpose - and that purpose is to kill a living thing - it has no other legitimate use. It is expressly designed to kill.

Your argument is like saying cigarettes don't cause cancer, smoking does. But like guns, cigarettes kill when used in expressly the way they were designed for.

If someone had had a firearm on his person when this shooting spree began, that moron could have been stopped well before 32 individuals died a needless death.

This is the value of a responsible, armed populace.

Waiting for the authorities to act was exactly what led to the second shooting spree.

"An armed society is a polite society."
--Robert Heinlein

www.nraila.org...

www.guncite.com...

www.pulpless.com...

In 1996, the most comprehensive "gun control" study of all time was published by John Lott of the University of Chicago Law School. Fifteen years of FBI files from all 3,054 counties in our country were analyzed regarding the correlation between the occurrence of violent crime and the prevalence of concealed weapons on law-abiding citizens. Invariably, where responsible, law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry firearms, the rate of violent crime plummeted. The criminals were afraid to attack those who "might" be armed.

JOHN LOTT

www.largo.org...

Professor Gary Kleck is a life long (self-avowed) liberal democrat, author of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. He had expected the research involved in that writing to infer negatively on gun ownership. He discovered a vast amount of violent crimes were prevented by firearms usage. Even though this was contrary to his original premise, he had the integrity to stand by his research. Although that book was awarded the best book (of 1993) on criminology by the American Society of Criminology it was largely ignored by gun control advocates such as most medical journals and our Government's Justice Department and Center for Disease Control.

GARY KLECK

www.largo.org...

[edit on 2007/4/17 by GradyPhilpott]

Originally posted by budski
I'd really like to see figures of just how often this happens, versus the number of shootings per year.

The numbers I find range from 2.5 to 3.6 million cases per year. These figures are disputed. The FBI uniform crime report does not include this statistic (or at least I haven't been able to find it).

Here is one source, with full acknowledgment of the bias of the author.

Did you know that defensive gun use prevents far more crimes than the police? National polls of defensive gun use by private citizens indicate that as many as 3.6 million crimes annually are prevented by armed individuals.

In 98 percent of the cases, the armed citizen merely has to brandish his weapon. As many as 400,000 people each year believe they saved a life by being armed. Contrary to Handgun Control's propaganda, in less than 1 percent of confrontations do criminals succeed in taking the gun from the intended victim.

Did you know that the testimony of incarcerated felons supports the large number of defensive gun uses? Thirty-four percent of felons said they were scared off, wounded or captured by victims who turned out to be armed.

Convicted felons say that they are more deterred by armed victims than by the police. In the United States, where roughly 50 percent of households are armed, only 13 percent of burglaries occur with residents at home. In contrast, in Britain, where homeowners are disarmed, 50 percent of home burglaries take place with the residents present.

Gun-control zealots claim that the availability of guns is the primary cause of homicides. Between 1973 and 1994, the number of guns in private ownership in the United States rose by 87 million. During this period, both the homicide rate and the percent of homicides committed with firearms dropped.

Source

Originally posted by budski
I'd really like to see figures of just how often this happens, versus the number of shootings per year.

Yes. I would too, but as you can see, the media is hesitant to report this. Many people buy into the hysteria heard on the news. (I used to until I really got educated about it)

Originally posted by budski
I blame the fact that the gun was lying around, waiting to be used for it's designated purpose -

The designated purpose of a gun doesn't matter to the gun. It doesn't matter what it was made for. Someone can use it as a tool of death or not. The person behind the gun (or car or cigarette) decides how it is used.

Cigarettes are not designed to kill, either. They are designed to provide pleasure. Which they do, when smoked.

and that purpose is to kill a living thing - it has no other legitimate use.

It does have a legitimate use. It is also designed to PREVENT death. It's designed to protect people against the nutballs out there.

Your argument is like saying cigarettes don't cause cancer, smoking does.

Exactly. Cigarettes, guns and cars are inanimate and cannot kill people. It takes the cooperation of a person to kill someone with these objects.

Accidental Deaths in 2003:

41,650 deaths related to motor vehicle accidents,
17,229 in falls at home and on the job,
3,306 from water in drowning,
19,457 from poisoning, in the same year,
3,369 due to fire or burns,
3,200 due to choking, and
900 from guns
Source

Accidental Death Statistics

People need to realize that taking the guns away will take them away from lawful citizens. There is NO WAY the guns can be gathered up from the criminals. They will get more. Fewer guns means fewer guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. The criminals will still have them.

Point taken, however, my argument is that guns are intentionally lethal by their very nature, and that for this reason should be very tightly controlled.
How many criminals are armed with guns that have been stolen from a law abiding person, or armed with guns that they bought themselves?
If guns were outlawed or better still, if citizens of any description had never had such open access to them, these kind of things just would not happen.
The BBC reported that there are approximately 200 million guns in the U.S.
This kind of availability means that anybody can get hold of one - and we are not just talking handguns - we are talking semi automatic assault type weapons, and to my thinking there is simple no need for a person to have this kind (or any other kind) of weapon.

It is a want rather than a need - the U.S. is never going to be invaded by a foreign power (at least for the foreseeable future), so why should the average citizen need a weapon of such power.
I also don't altogether agree with the citizen vs. criminal argument - if gun controls were tighter for all, then there would be no need for this kind of vigilante.
How many murders and woundings are committed each year by drunken spouses, people with a personal grudge or indeed people with a mental imbalance?

www.vpc.org...

www.webmd.com...

www.ichv.org...

[edit on 17-4-2007 by budski]

Originally posted by budski

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Let me tell you why "guns don't kill." I can lay a gun on a coffee table, a loaded one mind you, and it can lay there for years and never harm anyone. Then one day, some knuckle head comes along and picks it up and blam!! Now, do you blame the gun or the one in possession of it? I personally blame the one in possession, not the gun.

I blame the fact that the gun was lying around, waiting to be used for it's designated purpose - and that purpose is to kill a living thing - it has no other legitimate use. It is expressly designed to kill.

If the knuckle head is a kid then I blame the person who put the gun there where a kid can get it but if the knuckle head is a ground adult that gun didn't force the knuckle head to kill he or she just wanted to

Originally posted by budski
Point taken, however, my argument is that guns are intentionally lethal by their very nature,

So are swords and airplanes.

How many criminals are armed with guns that have been stolen from a law abiding person, or armed with guns that they bought themselves?

They don't steal their guns from law abiding people. They get shot by law abiding people. They buy their guns on the black market. It's a HUGE business. Guns are smuggled in from other countries and sold to criminals.

If guns were outlawed

Then ONLY outlaws would have guns. And they'd have plenty.

if citizens of any description had never had such open access to them, these kind of things just would not happen.

But this is not the world in which we live. If no one had guns, this crazy student would have built bombs or used poison or some other means to wreak havoc. He was determined to kill people. The tool doesn't really matter. What matters here is that if only one other student had been armed, it could have prevented many deaths.

The BBC reported that there are approximately 200 million guns in the U.S.

There is no way to know how many guns are in the US. No way to track how many illegal guns are here or how many wear out. The 200K might be how many legal guns are here. They might be the "good guns". The only means to deal with the illegal ones.

semi automatic assault type weapons,

Do you know what that phrase means???

the U.S. is never going to be invaded by a foreign power (at least for the foreseeable future),

What? How can you know that? And many of our rights are to protect us from our own government.

You would have to fully understand the foundation of this country to understand the 2nd amendment.

I also don't altogether agree with the citizen vs. criminal argument - if gun controls were tighter for all, then there would be no need for this kind of vigilante.

You mean if criminals were held to tighter gun control standards??? Do you realize what you're saying? They're CRIMINALS! They already OWN the guns ILLEGALLY. ANY gun control WILL NOT APPLY to them.

How many murders and woundings are committed each year by drunken spouses, people with a personal grudge or indeed people with a mental imbalance?

I suggest you do some real research. It took a while for me to change my mind about firearms and firearm ownership. Talk to people you know who support firearm ownership.

Originally posted by budski
How many criminals are armed with guns that have been stolen from a law abiding person, or armed with guns that they bought themselves?

I'm having trouble finding exact stats on these, and I don't have time right now for an extensive search. I will stipulate that both these numbers are > 0.

If guns were outlawed or better still, if citizens of any description had never had such open access to them, these kind of things just would not happen.

This is not actually true. Illegal drugs, for example, are very tightly controlled and anyone who wants them can get them. The same would hold for firearms.

and to my thinking there is simple no need for a person to have this kind (or any other kind) of weapon.

Couple of points, here. If we lived in a perfect society, you would be correct... there would be no need. However, we do not live in such a society, and the need for honest citizens to have access to arms for self defense has been well-documented.

Second, we need to separate ownership from use, and especially inappropriate use. Nobody has a need for golf clubs, or baseball bats or fast cars or racing bicycles, either. There were a couple of years way back in the 1970s when there were more homicides in Chicago from clubs (golf and baseball bats) than from firearms (again, trouble finding the source... that was way before the internet). Fast cars have often been used inappropriately. Racing bicycles, probably not so much...

so why should the average citizen need a weapon of such power.

For the security of a free state. That includes both external and internal threats to freedom.

I also don't altogether agree with the citizen vs. criminal argument - if gun controls were tighter for all, then there would be no need for this kind of vigilante.

You don't agree that criminals are more afraid of citizens than they are of police? I'm not sure I'm following you, here.

When a citizen acts in immediate self-defense, or defense of another person, that is not vigilantism... it is a citizen exercising basic rights.

Benevolent Heretic,

I have done the research, but what you continue to do is to cherrypick parts of an argument that be refuted easily - you are failing to argue the point as a whole and trying to use this tactic to prove your point.
Give me an example of a foreign power that is ready to invade america anytime soon.
Give me an example where it has been shown that gun control does not work (at least to a large degree.
Give me an example where it is necessary to own a semi-auto type weapon (yes I do know what they are - I was in the T.A. for 6 years)

Now address the points raised in the links I provided, without cherry picking and without taking parts of my statement out of context.

[edit on 17-4-2007 by budski]

Originally posted by budski

I blame the fact that the gun was lying around, waiting to be used for it's designated purpose - and that purpose is to kill a living thing - it has no other legitimate use. It is expressly designed to kill.

So, you don't believe people are responsible for their actions? Sadly, personal responsibility or the lack thereof,I should say, is why civilization is going to hell in a hand basket.

2nd amendment reads, according to wikipedia:
“ A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ”

also,
"The tradition of securing a military force through a duty of universal military obligation for all able-bodied males follows from the Elizabethan era militia in England.[1][2]

The English Declaration of Rights (1689) affirmed freedom for Protestants to "have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law."[6] When Colonists protested British efforts to disarm their militias in the early phases of the Revolution, colonists cited the Declaration of Rights, Blackstone's summary of the Declaration of Rights, their own militia laws, and Common Law rights to self-defense. While British policy in the early phases of the Revolution clearly aimed to prevent coordinated action by the militia, there is no evidence that the British sought to restrict the traditional common law right of self-defense. Indeed, in his arguments on behalf of British troops in the Boston Massacre, John Adams invoked the common law of self-defense.[3]

Some have seen the Second Amendment as derivative of a common law right to keep and bear arms; Thomas B. McAffee & Michael J. Quinlan, writing in the North Carolina Law Review, March 1997, Page 781, have stated "... Madison did not invent the right to keep and bear arms when he drafted the Second Amendment--the right was pre-existing at both common law and in the early state constitutions."[4]

Others perceive a distinction between the right to bear arms and the right to self-defense; Robert Spitzer has stated: "..the matter of personal or individual self-defense, whether from wild animals or modern-day predators, does not fall within, nor is it dependent on, the Second Amendment rubric. Nothing in the history, construction, or interpretation of the Amendment applies or infers such a protection. Rather, legal protection for personal self-defense arises from the British common law tradition and modern criminal law; not from constitutional law."[5] Heyman has similarly argued that the common law right of self defense was legally distinct from the right to bear arms.[6]

The potential connection between the right of self defense and the new constitutional protection of a right to keep and bear arms contained in the Second Amendment depends on the distinction whether 'keep and bear arms' is synonymous more broadly with the right of individual self defense or does 'keep and bear arms' pertain more narrowly towards use of arms in a military context, or, in the case of the Common Law while still under the British, in service of the king and country. This distinction was not subject to serious judicial notice until the first gun control laws were passed in the Jacksonian era. Judges in the nineteenth century split over how to interpret this connection; some saw the Common Law right and the protection of a right to keep and bear arms contained in the Second Amendment as identical; others viewed these as being legally distinct. Texts from the era of the Second Amendment are largely silent on this important question."

Can you tell me where the need for this well regulated militia is today?

And does it not raise the question of why people still feel the need to own high powered weapons?

Does it not seem necessary in our modern world for control of weapons infinitely more powerful than ones available when the document was drafted, in a country vastly different from the one that exists today?

Is it not reasonable to assume that the drafters of the document could have no conception of the world NOW, and that it is time that the document was re-visited, with a view to bringing it up to date as happens with many constitutional documents?

www.sacred-texts.com...

read the link, and tell me there isn't a case for the repeal of much of whats written - my point is that some things are out moded in todays society.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth

Originally posted by budski

I blame the fact that the gun was lying around, waiting to be used for it's designated purpose - and that purpose is to kill a living thing - it has no other legitimate use. It is expressly designed to kill.

So, you don't believe people are responsible for their actions? Sadly, personal responsibility or the lack thereof,I should say, is why civilization is going to hell in a hand basket.

Yes I do believe that most people are or should be responsible for their actions. However, if you leave deadly weapons lying around, you are asking for trouble - and I include swords, machetes, crossbows, bows and other non-cooking related weapons which ALL should be tightly controlled,

Yes, yes by all means. Let's make the ownership of handguns illegal. That way, no one would have them.

You know, like we did with drugs and that worked so well...

Wait a minute...

You know, we are living in a society where most people are looking for things to blame.They say, "Well, it's the violence in the media that caused it," or, "It's because we don't have tighter laws," or, "He/she was mistreated in their youth." The list goes on and on and on for the excuses that we try to find for these individuals who commit atrocious acts. Rarely do I ever hear anyone put it simply as it is. They are,the people who commit these atrocities, SICK people who under their own JUDGMENT decide to commit these acts. A movie didn't make them do it. A gun or other object didn't make them do it. God didn't make them do it. Satan didn't make them do it. Moomy or Daddy who abused them didn't make them do it. Their own perverse minds and judgments made them do it. It's really that simple. I am tired of trying to find excuses for the inexcusable acts of sick minded people.

[edit on 17-4-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

[edit on 17-4-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
You know, we are living in a society where most people are looking for things to blame.They say, "Well, it's the violence in the media that caused it," or, "It's because we don't have tighter laws," or, "He/she was mistreated in their youth." The list goes on and on and on for the excuses that we try to find for these individuals who commit atrocious acts. Rarely do I ever hear anyone put it simply as it is. They are sICK people who under their own JUDGMENT decide to commit these acts. A movie didn't make them do it. A gun or other object didn't make them do it. God didn't make them do it. Satan didn't make them do it. Moomy or Daddy who abused them didn't make them do it. Their own perverse minds and judgments made them do it. It's really that simple. I am tired of trying to find excuses for the inexcusable acts of sick minded people.

[edit on 17-4-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

www.abovepolitics.com...

This is a thread I recently posted, showing that I agree with some of your views.
I also believe that it is NOT necessary for high powered weapons to be owned by the general populace.