Time to take the gun from the American public!

Originally posted by OptimusSubprime
reply to post by AwakeinNM

 

edit on 4/4/2012 by Klassified because: Nevermind

reply to post by rcanem


And by living in the past, people fail to move forward towards a better future.

And nothing is stopping you from voting out a Government you fail to trust, or starting up your own lobby group to lobby the Government. And remember, the NRA, plus numerous Weapons/Defence Companies have their own Lobby Groups, that spend millions on lobbying the Government to do things the way they want it.

If you want change, sometimes the best way to do it is to start the change yourself.

Unfortunately, there are very poor checks and balances in regards to the sort of people that own weapons. Many of these massacres have happened with registered guns, by people with known warning signs and conditions leading up to them.

Also, although you have a very "cocky" group of people here who claim they'll blow you to bits if you dare step on their property, or sneeze the wrong way in their company (they really love their right to bear arms), the truth of the matter is that when it matters, most people under pressure won't be able to use their weapon. When taking martial arts, I found that many people who trained when in a real life situation, fall apart - they can't use what they learned effectively. They have specialized schools for that - to put you in life-like situations to train you to use them when you need to use them. Same goes with guns.

Also, a huge # of people that have guns are possibly the last group of people I'd actually want with a gun in an emergency. When I lived in a backneck-woods type of town for a few years, the number of incredibly irresponsible gun owners was staggering.

As ex military, I appreciate the need for people to have guns. I do think it's a right. I just think many people are naive in regards to owning weapons. In regards to the sort of person that perhaps should not own a weapon at all, to responsible gun training. Many of the people I knew who had guns (including many "not legal" sorts), collected them and used them because they had an infatuation with the power in their hands. Had nothing to do with the constitution or protecting against the "evil government." They had a blast blowing up critters, shooting structures, and showing off their hardware. That's the reality. You'll get people here who turn a blind eye to all that. They believe it's everyone's right no matter what, and ignore the dangers.

Damn... I picked a good time to buy my first gun. Just try and take our guns, bastards. This is America.

Try it. See what happens

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
Here is the funny thing. We Americans think that these little guns can help fight the government...really? How are you gonna take down an m1 tank charging you with your little rifle, or how about an apache attack helicopter? These guns are useless and are only a tool of appeasement.

Maybe you should take some time and read ALL of the posts in this thread. Your snarky comment is foolish, and exhibits a fundamental ignorance of the role of firearms in this country, and the lengths to which the people will go to protect it. VERY capable people indeed.

So many hyped up idiots here saying 'come on bro, try take em see what happens'. Well let's evaluate what will happen ok.
Most people would comply with this weather they like it or not, but if you are one of the brave posters here who are saying 'see what happens if you try and take my guns'. Well armed officers of some sort come to your door. You refuse, they come in and take them. If you try and shoot at them you will be shot down and then your fire arm will be removed from your dead hands.

Has no one heard of opportunity crimes, and if you are a dangerous soon to be criminal with a gun, the gun makes it a whole lot easier.
Or lets say you get into a fist fight with someone, being American you both legally carry guns, one of you pulls a gun and so does the other, one of you shoots, one of you dies.
One more example, you see a robber trying to break into your shop, you pull a gun on him, he freaks out and tries to pull his out, you fire at him and you could either hit him and kill him, or you could miss and maybe hit someone else accidentally.

Reviewing those situations, if no body carried a gun, nobody would die. In the fight situation someone would walk away with a fat lip and bleeding nose, in the robbery situation you may get robbed but at least you didn't nearly die or hit someone else. The police would catch the robber anyway and you would get your money back.

I don't understand the mentality of people who feel they need to carry a weapon designed to kill in order to keep peace. In my opinion that makes less sense than what your government you always moan about does.

I support gun ownership and at the same time I realize the problems associated with them.

What bugs me are the people who have watched too many movies and think even our armed populace could do anything if we truly had a tyrannical government LOL!

Our government is beyond gun wars with us...if it came down to that YOU and all your GUNS would be wiped out and it wouldn't even be a fight. All that hickish, "Come take my guns from my dead hands..." if they wanted they could achieve it very easily.

Blue Goblin and DZAG - EXACTLY!!!! The problem though, is that some people struggle to grasp these kinds of concepts.

And to be honest, that's what annoys me. The ones that scream the loudest about something, are usually the ones that kick and scream the most when the complete opposite happens.

A prime example of this would be the ones that scream "YOU CAN'T TAKE MY GUNS!!!! PRY THEM FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS!!!" Yet when they wind up dead, because someone DID try it, and they got shot in the process, or they end up in court on Assault/Murder charges, they scream the loudest about "OH WHY DID THEY END UP DEAD???" or "But I was only defending myself!!!" while they get sentenced to 10 or more years in Prison.

As the saying goes - You can't have your cake and eat it too.

reply to post by Meekbot2000


The free-world? Unless there are other nations around the world that have a constitution that is identical to the Constitution of the United States of America, they are not part of the free-world. The USA is the last and final harbor of freedom in the world.
Your premise is misguided as many peoples in many nations desire firearms for themselves for the very same reason the US has them, to ward of tyranny.

"A well armed society is a polite society."

Originally posted by TerribleTeam2
reply to post by rcanem

 

And by living in the past, people fail to move forward towards a better future.

And by ignoring the past you fail to learn from it. Remember the past,live in the present and always look to the future. It is a very simple and elegant concept.

And nothing is stopping you from voting out a Government you fail to trust, or starting up your own lobby group to lobby the Government. And remember, the NRA, plus numerous Weapons/Defence Companies have their own Lobby Groups, that spend millions on lobbying the Government to do things the way they want it.

If you want change, sometimes the best way to do it is to start the change yourself.

Agreed, in my opinion ALL lobyist should be run out of Washington, and it should be illegal for a politician to accept money from any corporate entity. The next obvious question is "How do we accomplish this?" But that gets totaly off the subject of weather anyone has the Right to Bear Arms. In this country at least, we do.... for now.

I guess i was just hoping that people would have begun to realise that having a population of 313million arming itself with guns is not really a good idea.

People are talking about if you take my guns , only the criminals will have guns.
I am talking about removing all guns from society. Yes, i know it would be difficult. Its not impossible.

I also just cant get over how many are so obsessed with the constitution. I am really not meaning to offend people who view this as sacred but it is a historical document. Should people be living by something that a group of men came up with for a tiny population compared to todays population?

And as for keeping the government 'in check', well you are not really keeping informed. That horse has bolted long ago.

And cars. This thread is not about how dangerous cars are. I am talking about guns. Car deaths need to be addressed in the US. There is no doubting that. You have well over 350,000 people die in car accidents from 2001-2010. (There was approx. 3000 people killed in 9/11 and the US government thought this was good enough reason to invade and destroy 2 countries.) You think this would wake people up to looking at the car for transport. But just like the constitution , why bother changing anything?

I do find it kinda of funny that the majority of repsonses to taking the gun out of society leads to the response that said gun will be used to kill the person trying to remove it. Its depressing that sums up the attitude of many pro-gun folk. There solution to a probelm is violence and death.

Take guns away from people. Now that sounds like a good idea and we did just that in both England and the United States. What were the results of dis arming the people?
------------------------
658 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy [Vol. 30
1980s and 1990s. During these two decades, while Britain and the Commonwealth were making lawful firearm ownership increasingly difficult, more than 25 states in the United States passed laws allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed handguns. There are now 40 states where qualified citizens can obtain such a handgun permit.
28
As a result, the number of U.S. citizens allowed to carry concealed handguns in shopping malls, on the street, and in their cars has grown to 3.5 million men and women.
29
Economists John Lott and David Mustard have suggested that these new laws contributed to the drop in homicide and violent crime rates. Based on 25 years of correlated statistics from all of the more than 3,000 American counties, Lott and Mustard conclude that adoption of these statutes has deterred criminals from confrontation crime and caused murder and violent crime to fall faster in states that adopted this policy than in states that did not.

What happened in England as a result of disarming the populace?
In the late 1990s, England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban of all handguns and many types of long guns. Hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated from those owners law‐abiding enough to turn them in to authorities. Without suggesting this caused violence, the ban’s ineffectiveness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had so increased that England and Wales had Europe’s highest violent crime rate, far surpassing even the United States.
19
Today, English news media headline violence in terms redolent of the doleful, melodramatic language that for so long characterized American news reports.
-----------------------------
No. 2]   Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?
To conserve the resources of the inundated criminal justice system, English police no longer investigate burglary and “minor assaults.”
23
As of 2006, if the police catch a mugger, robber, or burglar, or other “minor” criminal in the act, the policy is to
release them with a warning rather than to arrest and prosecute them.
24
It used to be that English police vehemently opposed the idea of armed policing. Today, ever more police are being armed. Justifying the assignment of armed squads to block roads and carry out random car searches, a police commander asserts: “It is a massive deterrent to gunmen if they think that
there are going to be armed police.”
----------------------------
So now you understand just how England cooks its books to make it look better. Simply do not arrest the gangsters and keep your books cleaner. What a sham.

Originally posted by DZAG Wright

Our government is beyond gun wars with us...if it came down to that YOU and all your GUNS would be wiped out and it wouldn't even be a fight. All that hickish, "Come take my guns from my dead hands..." if they wanted they could achieve it very easily.

Never underestimate the power of a bunch of pissed off people.

I can assure you, there will be nothing easy or good about it, for either side. But tptb will not just up and take the guns away without a fight. It would be a logistical nightmare all the way around. They can say or do anything they want, but when the time comes to actually confiscate them will be a whole new story.

Originally posted by TerribleTeam2
reply to post by rcanem

 

And by living in the past, people fail to move forward towards a better future.

And nothing is stopping you from voting out a Government you fail to trust, or starting up your own lobby group to lobby the Government. And remember, the NRA, plus numerous Weapons/Defence Companies have their own Lobby Groups, that spend millions on lobbying the Government to do things the way they want it.

If you want change, sometimes the best way to do it is to start the change yourself.

If you are going to reply to someone at least reply to what they said. There is a distinction between 'living' in the past and 'remembering' it, just as there is a distinction between 'living' in the future and working to better it.

Originally posted by Blue Goblin
So many hyped up idiots here saying 'come on bro, try take em see what happens'. Well let's evaluate what will happen ok.
Most people would comply with this weather they like it or not, but if you are one of the brave posters here who are saying 'see what happens if you try and take my guns'. Well armed officers of some sort come to your door. You refuse, they come in and take them. If you try and shoot at them you will be shot down and then your fire arm will be removed from your dead hands.

.

Thank you for this!

As much as I enjoy my guns, I'm not disillusioned to believe I could ACTUALLY fight the government (whoever they are) if they were actually collecting guns from the public.

reply to post by Skewed


Really? I doubt it. There was a Russian general, whos name I cant recall, who said Russia had a foolproof plan to topple the American Military and take over America. Reason they didnt? He said they feared not the US military, but the MILLIONS of armed citizens.
Keep your ignorant gun grabbing babble in your dictatorship, thank you.

reply to post by lacrimaererum


The only thing you would accomplish by outlawing guns is making it harder for law abiding citizens to obtain guns for themselves, whereas a criminal is going to get a firearm regardless of the laws. In fact, criminals already buy guns off the black market after being convicted.

There are too many guns already in circulation in the US, it's futile to even try to ban them.

In fact, I'm pretty sure after the gun-ban in Australia crime has gone up, or homicide at least. You'll have to take that at face value, or verify that for yourself because I am far too lazy to actually look it up.

Also, if everyone was armed there would be no crimes. I read this story about some dummy trying to rob a gunstore, only to be shot down with no other casualties. "A polite society is an armed society". I could get really into all of the different applications firearms are used for, but you've heard them all, no doubt.

Firearms are so ingrained in the way of American life, that they'll never be taken away (at least I hope).

ETA: Although the quote is debated if he actually said it, but supposedly, a Japanese Admiral named Isoroku Yamamoto said something along the lines of "You could never invade mainland America, there would be a gun behind every bush."

Switzerland also stayed neutral during the course of WWII, due to their laws about conscription and the fact every citizen owned a rifle.

It will never happened. Here's why: 1)The American Government sees the massively armed public as more of a defense strategy. With a large percentage of citizens owning at least one gun, it would be very difficult for anyone to invade and take over America. 2) There are simply too many guns here now. When you outlaw guns for the law abiding citizen, that makes life easier for the non-law abiding citizen because they will still own and use guns but won't have to worry about as many people shooting back at them.

Originally posted by JayFlores
reply to post by Skewed

 

Really? I doubt it. There was a Russian general, whos name I cant recall, who said Russia had a foolproof plan to topple the American Military and take over America. Reason they didnt? He said they feared not the US military, but the MILLIONS of armed citizens.
Keep your ignorant gun grabbing babble in your dictatorship, thank you.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree.

I am all for giving people more guns, not taking them away.

reply to post by fleabit

Unfortunately, there are very poor checks and balances in regards to the sort of people that own weapons. Many of these massacres have happened with registered guns, by people with known warning signs and conditions leading up to them.

And who determines what those checks and balances are? Or who is showing "warning signs and conditions"?

Also, although you have a very "cocky" group of people here who claim they'll blow you to bits if you dare step on their property, or sneeze the wrong way in their company (they really love their right to bear arms), the truth of the matter is that when it matters, most people under pressure won't be able to use their weapon. When taking martial arts, I found that many people who trained when in a real life situation, fall apart - they can't use what they learned effectively. They have specialized schools for that - to put you in life-like situations to train you to use them when you need to use them. Same goes with guns.

This is true. I've seen it first hand. Fantasy and reality are two different worlds here.

Also, a huge # of people that have guns are possibly the last group of people I'd actually want with a gun in an emergency. When I lived in a backneck-woods type of town for a few years, the number of incredibly irresponsible gun owners was staggering.

This is an interesting comment. I was raised in both big city and in the backwoods. I now live in a small town. I have known more responsible gun owners in this little hick town, than I ever did in the big city.

As ex military, I appreciate the need for people to have guns. I do think it's a right. I just think many people are naive in regards to owning weapons. In regards to the sort of person that perhaps should not own a weapon at all, to responsible gun training. Many of the people I knew who had guns (including many "not legal" sorts), collected them and used them because they had an infatuation with the power in their hands. Had nothing to do with the constitution or protecting against the "evil government." They had a blast blowing up critters, shooting structures, and showing off their hardware. That's the reality. You'll get people here who turn a blind eye to all that. They believe it's everyone's right no matter what, and ignore the dangers.

There's some truth to this. But I believe these people are a minority among citizens. I was raised and trained with firearms my whole life. And I never got into this kind of idiocy. I believe everyone has a right to own a firearm. But I also believe everyone should have to be trained in their proper handling and use extensively.