See on one hand I believe in the constitution and the bill of rights. I do I really do. On the other hand guns personally make me uncomfortable... But that just means I don't want to personally own one. At least it used to.
I think there are some obvious things that need to be addressed before discussing banning any type of firearm.(which I will get to)
Like the banning of bump stocks and extended magazines. A radical improvement in education about guns to our children. Major improvement to our mental health system. More empathy for our poor and despondent population( a person who feels receiving assistance is persecuted by their peers may neglect their needs to save their ego which could breed desperation.) More in depth background check requirements and longer waiting periods. Better security for our schools. The "can't we all just get along" discussion. And I would suggest a casing and shell exchange program that limits the amount of ammunition one can possess at a time. Once used you'd have to exchange the casings/empty shells for more ammo. Liscencing. Need one to hunt,fish,cut hair and drive.... Need one to buy a gun.
Of course none of these will fully solve the problem, and neither will banning certain types of weapons or guns altogether. but it might help... At least a little bit. Better than turning our heads twiddling our thumbs and hoping the problem just goes away on its own while people needlessly die.
As far as banning any specific types of weapons. I personally don't understand what the average person needs with an assault weapon. Hunting rifles, handguns, shotguns ok. But an AR-15 wasn't made for target practice or fun. It was designed with the intent to kill many enemies in quick succession in situations of intense and unpredictable conflict/combat conditions. They weren't made to kill quail, they weren't made to shoot clay targets, they weren't made so you can teach your teenage kid how to shoot.
Now I know some gun enthusiast is gonna try and break down my argument. Honestly I have heard each and every point youll likely make. Most of which I find lackadaisical, lacking empathy and humility, and generally ill conceived and not really worthy of mention..... Save for one. When you recite the second amendment.
But even that has a flaw. Sure we have the right to arm ourselves so that in the event our government or another makes the attempt to oppress us we can defend ourselves. What you fail to realize is that if a government does so choose to oppress us, its going to. Sure hold on to your AR-15. The government has way more than you, as well as an arsenal of so many other weapons that dwarf that AR-15 and way more manpower to overwhelm you. T h ey have you beat. And if they even think you might have a chance to defeat them. They can just nuke your sorry ass.
So stop acting like children who are getting their toys taken away. Part of being an adult is realizing sometimes you gotta sacrifice the things you want for the better of those around you. And sacrificing innocent lives for the sake of how you spend your leisure time is pretty fucking selfish.
Writing a response to this kind of thing is always like writing a term paper or essay on the subject so, I'll try to break it down for the sake of brevity. By definition, do you know what an assault weapon actually is? Off the top of your head, without googling it first? If not, you have no right to take peoples rights away. The very fact people believe they should make decisions about other people's lives without even first understanding what it is their effecting is insane. To let you know, the assault weapon's ban would ban things like adjustable stocks, pistol grips and bayonets, which are effectively harmless and don't increase the lethality of the weapon in any way. Assault weapons make up less than 2% of murders, and handguns are used for about 90%. The deadliest mass shooting in the entire world killed 67 people with a handgun, more than the Vegas shooting with an AR-15, and most of the injuries in the vegas shooting were not actually severe, with there being only 200 critical injuries and 500 minor injuries.
The AR-15 is not actually a military weapon, and is uses a different bullet and does not shoot fully automatically, or like a machine gun. But the military AR-15 was not designed to kill as many enemies as possible, it was designed to provide suppressive fire, and penetrate armor at 300-600 yards. The military normally has the same number of men of their enemies or often outnumbers them, so killing lots and lots of people was never the intent, but rather hardened targets that can shoot back. What something was "designed" to do is essentially irrelevant in comparison to what it can do. The deadliest mass shooting in the whole world killed 67 people, vs. 86 killed and 458 injured for a truck attack, 400 for an Arson, 796 and 1500 injured for a bombing, and 3000 in a plane attack. Several other forms of attacks, such as an Arson in America which killed 86, the Oklahoma city bombing attack which killed 168 and injured 680 with fertilizer, the india train bombing with pressure cookers that killed 200 and injured 700, and the 900 dead from poisoning all far exceed the death toll of guns. In fact, any single person mass shooting in the world. So if guns were really the problem, why is it that other commonly available weapons kill more people? The simple reality is that banning guns won't ban these other forms of murder, and thus won't stop killing people. As we can't ban trucks and other weapons, banning guns will just cause criminals to switch over to other weapons, as criminals either are crazy and want to kill people, or want something like say money.
Than the argument always changes from "guns were designed to kill lots of people!" to "Well, you can't ban trucks, poison, flammable materials, pressure cookers and fertilizer, so..." completely skipping over the first point. Guns are far from the deadliest weapon available, especially so-called "assault weapons", and there's nothing that warrants them being banned anymore than other common household substances. As 93% of guns are obtained illegally in the first place, off the black market, banning them from gun stores doesn't stop illegal manufacture or smuggling. [1][] "So you're saying we should do nothing?!"- The argument changes, again. No, I'm saying we have to focus on the criminal and mental health, not the type of weapon. As long as a violent crazy person can get behind the well of a car, buy a pressure cooker or fertilizer, by poisons and pesticides, or anything that can catch on fire we will always have a mass murder issue. The primary solution is by improving mental health services, not banning guns. To put it to you simply, if you had a crazy person in your home who wanted to kill you, and he could strangle you in your sleep, stab you, blow you up, set you on fire and so on, would you feel safe just because he didn't have a gun? Getting rid of guns, even if it's possible, wouldn't make us as society safe. We must go after criminals, not innocent civilian's en masse to solve the problem. Which would also be great as 45-64% of criminals are mentally ill, 90% of suicidal people and most homeless people, so if we improves mental health, we not only reduce mass murders, but also 10's of thousands of other deaths too, which is far more important than the few hundred mass murder deaths per year.
Then of course, the argument switches from mass murder to regular murder. Because deflections and strawmen, right? If we want to do an aggregate comparison, countries with more guns tend to have less violence, according to U.N. data. Out of the top 25 countries with the lowest homicide rates, 20 out of the 25 (80%) of countries with the lowest homicide rates in the world had a higher gun ownership rate higher than the world average. Of these, 15 had a gun ownership rate higher than 15 per person (60%), and 7 (28%) had a firearm ownership rate of 30 per 100. Of countries with a higher homicide rate, 8 out of 25 (32%) had higher than the world average. Only 2 out of 25 (8%) had a rate at or above 15.0, and zero had a rate higher than 30.0. Of these, very few made it slightly above the 8.9 figure. So, countries with lower homicides tended to have more guns, and countries with more homicides had more guns. As an aside, the U.S. also does not have the highest mass shooting rate, and is actually number 11 out of many developed countries. [1][2] And, violence from firearms is actually dropping in the U.S., and it's down by half or 49%, so we are doing something about the violence, it's just not strict gun control.
As for various international comparisons, it's often hard to make direct comparisons due to the differences in definition between crimes. for example, in the UK involuntary manslaughter is often excluded from the intentional homicide figure, and involuntary manslaughter can include people on say, drugs, which means if you're on drugs during the commission of a crime, it doesn't count as "murder" and thus the murder rate seems lower even though a criminal killed someone. As 46.7% of criminals in the U.S. for example classify as drug dependent, drugs heavily influence crime rates, and therefore excluding them will make the murder rate look lower even if it wouldn't be using the same definitions. Regardless internal trends, that is comparing one's own data to oneself is easier to do, so the simple question is, did the murder rates go down in say, the Australia or the UK afterguns were banned? The simple answer is, no, they went up. In Australia it was only slightly, and in the UK it doubled. So, gun control did not decrease violence. There have also been mass shootings in Australia, such as the Monash university shooting and others, but notably there's been other attacks, such as a stabbing which killed 8, and a number of arson attacks. In fact, there was an Arson which killed 173 people and injured over 400, more than any mass shooting in the world. So, with that in mind, mass murder rates are about the same, even though the use of guns went down, and arsons nearly doubled.
Of course, comparing one country to another country is not exactly a good idea, but it's often done in the debate. So in short, 1. Guns are not the deadliest weapons and many commonly available materials are more deadly 2. Guns are largely illegally obtained making a ban difficult to enforce 3. Mental health and other underlying causes of crime, such as poverty should be focused on instead 4. International comparisons actually show that more guns correlates with less violence and 5. Things aren't as rosey in the rest of the world as many people think. So, in conclusion, gun control wouldn't work and a better focus for time and money is mental health which takes away no-one's rights and actually focus on the fundamental causes of the problem.
Edited by Manoka, 08 April 2018 - 07:14 PM.
