Originally posted by theconspirator
After doing some research about the number of unregistered or illegal guns in the US, I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to know just how many are out there, but the number is in the millions.
So, very real question to the people who want to ban guns, or promote gun control. (And lets keep this civil and educated)

How will having much tighter gun control laws, prevent a person with the intent to do harm, from doing so? Keeping in mind it is very easy to get your hands on an unregistered gun in the US.

Control control fans, lets hear some "cause and effect". Enlighten me.

I come from a country where guns are highly regulated. In my everyday life I have never seen anyone holding a gun or even talking about shooting a gun (except army stories). I think that's why even criminals don't use much guns, because it's something that is hard to get AND out of their comfort zone (they have never used one or heard friends using it).

I think problem with US is that guns are so embedded to your culture that it's the first thing people think about when they want to hurt somebody. You seem to even just go shooting stuff with friends in a desert. Making guns more difficult to get would mean less of my friends would have a gun, which would mean I would be less likely get one. This will not happen overnight, but once it starts it might have a huge effect. I would think that if armed robber comes to my house I have better chance to survive if I don't have a gun than if I do.

Originally posted by redbore
I would think that if armed robber comes to my house I have better chance to survive if I don't have a gun than if I do.

You may think that, and for you it might even be true. It would not be true for me.

It will only prevent some murders by gun....obviously a murder has many "tools" at his disposal. The history of gun control (with the exception of Great Britain and Australia, at least so far) has not been good for the disarmed populace.

I cant speak for anything other then a city, but in a city, it is very easy to get a gun. (And my experience comes from new york, the most strict state in the country) I am currently in the military, and everytime i go home, including my vacation 2 weeks ago, all of my friends show me their new (illegal) guns. It is much easier to get a black market gun then you might think.

Everybody in a city, knows someone who can get you a gun. The chain doesnt extend further out then that.

Gun control won't prevent murder. If I were the murdering type and I couldn't get a gun I'd get a nice big hunting knife. If I couldn't get a hunting knife I'd get a butcher knife, and so on.

Are you going to ban all knives too?

There are a myriad of ways to kill. Use your heads. Should we just ban living?

Say, there's an idea - the extinction of the human race.

a lot of this is anecdotal and observational- but try looking back at many of these spree killers, try finding one that was a tee totaller and never touched drugs, whether illegal or legal- seems to be quite a high proportion of these scumbags have altered their cranium

side note: it is very suspicious that this happened just a couple days after it is legal in all 50 states to carry a concealed weapon.
coincidence, or planned to work toward disarming an invadable country?

Originally posted by Bodhi7
Because the average person finding a black market gun is nowhere near as easy as people want to believe it is. In cases like today, he probably just wouldn't have had a gun.

Sorry but I disagree. Let us use drugs as an example. Drugs are illegal, yet people in this country have no problem at all getting drugs. In fact, getting drugs is much easier than getting a gun. We can not even keep drugs out of maximum security prisons which are locked down and have extremely tight security measures.

Not to mention the typical argument of people having guns to defend themselves doesn't really work. What are we going to do, start arming children and teachers?

Actually yes. Teachers should be armed. Fact is, they are not and schools are considered a "gun free zone" which means it is very very illegal to have a firearm on school property, which makes schools a great target for a person who wants to kill.

Today, there is 20 or more dead kids. If Teachers were trained and armed, I bet that number would be greatly reduced and you would have a shooter who was dead before he finished emptying his first clip. Unfortunately teachers are not armed, and this shooter had time to reload.