Johnson was pretty clear that he doesn't think he'll ever be in a situation where he'll need to use or draw his gun, but that no matter how remote the chance is, if put in a bad situation, he wants to have the ability to defend himself. It's been brought up several times, but the reason a lot of Americans don't like gun control has a lot less to do with practicality and safety and a lot more to do with a love for independence. We just don't want to be told what to do, even if it's for our own good.
If anyone wants to know why America has a gun "obsession," its right there. Yeah its about individual protection and liberty, but it goes deeper than that. From birth, were basically told to not trust our government and to always question it because as satirious said, rebellion and revolution was part of our founding and everything is an extension and a derivative of it. It can be further extrapolated to explain why we have so much political bickering over one issue or another. I dont think thats our government being broken, I think its functioning as intended. Parties and groups not trusting each other, or a religion, or a President? Perfect, thats the way it should be. Are things perfect? Fuck no, theres a lot of improvement to be made in many areas. But I cant imagine having an effective democracy without it.
While I find it depressing that a U.S. politician risks career suicide just by whispering about potential gun restrictions, I believe gun control laws are useless in America because it's gone on for too long, you have almost as many guns as people, so of course restricting them is next to impossible. Your collective gun-boner long ago passed into religious territory, to the point many Americans equate owning an automatic weapon that has no point other than to kill as many humans as fast as possible with something like the freedom of speech. I would completely support someone's right to own a handgun in their home, or a hunting rifle (especially given most of my extended family has both), but for any legislator that actually pushes for goddamn armor-piercing bullets -- seriously, fuck that (hypothetical) guy. A few questions for those doing mental gymnastics trying to make the stats look like more guns = fewer gun crimes: Why do you think you share company with countries like Mexico, the Philippines and Panama in gun deaths per 100,000, whereas the rest of the civilized/Westernized countries are about half your total, at most? Why do you think, in 2002 anyways, you DWARFED Mexico (freakin' MEXICO!) and a place like Zimbabwe in murders with firearms, yet the rest of the Western world held steady at a fraction of your total? Why do you shoot and kill each other more domestically in one year than all of your soldiers got shot in Iraq and Afghanistan combined? I guess the simpler way to ask this is: if more guns really are the answer to stopping gun crimes, why do you keep killing each other with guns at monstrously higher rates than any other Western-world country? Just curious. And for the record I love the U.S. -- the country and the people -- and hate that it's been a couple years since I've been. I know you don't care, but the basically world-wide stereotype of the careless, gun-toting, asshole America comes largely from your obsession with guns.
I think someone posted this in the last thread but it's worth looking at... Of the 15 thousand or so murders a year only about 350-400 of them are rifles, which includes the scary "assault rifles." Since they don't seem to keep track if the rifle had an extended magazine or not you can only imagine the number that are used is smaller still. As sad and tragic as these events are, they are extreme outliers, the chances of you being murdered by an assault rifle, let alone during a mass shooting are basically slim to none. The raw evidence belies the truth behind how effective the media can be in villainizing these guns. I mean if they focused on hand gun deaths they might have a stronger argument. I don't have time to go into a KIMaster point by point on this as I have to go work out and head to work but, you are wrong, on almost all fronts.
Just a quick warning...if posts start getting attack-y, they're going to start getting delete-y, too. Debate, but please don't be antagonistic or incendiary.
Because causation does not equal correlation. There are MANY other factors at play in each of the examples you gave. Let's look back at my favorite gun-friendly country, Switzerland. They have more guns per capita than either the US or the countries you listed, yet also have the lowest per-capita gun-related crime rate out of the bunch - why do you think that is? Please stop with the sloppy thinking, it's just degrading the conversation.
I posted this on the first page: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17847 Pretty telling really. It's not guns, or at least banning guns won't solve it. Changing human nature would be a better starting point.
This. Education and awareness are powerful things. A car is a tool, the speed limit across the country never exceeds 80, yet you can buy a car that travels double that speed straight off the lot. A speeding car can take out a LOT of lives...should there be legislation in place that stops stock level automobiles from exceeding 80 miles per hour? No one's arguing that. I'd rather not have the government tell me that I can or can't use a firearm for recreation, hunting, or self defense purposes. In my admittedly limited time on this planet, I've not been reassured of my government's ability to determine what is in my best interest.
This is my belief, quite simply stated. I think the US has a higher gun crime rate because their culture - and their cultural human nature, if that exists - is one that tends more towards violence than other places. For me, personally, I have a strong dislike of guns. I don't own one, I wouldn't allow one in my house, and if I have kids guns won't be part of their upbringing. In all my travels, mostly solo, I've never felt threatened and looking back I can't think of a circumstance in my life where a gun would have enhanced the outcome in my favour. That's my own ethics. What control I'm willing to give my government, and what laws of the land I lean towards, are something entirely different. I've mentioned the Long Gun registry twice, and it bears saying again: this is the kind of solution a government will come up with when posed with a reactionary situation (in the LGR's case, the shooting at L'Ecole Polytechnique in 1989). It is trying to retroactively legislate safety, and all it does is create whole bunch of government jobs, cost the taxpayers billions and inconvenience law-abiding citizens. I'm glad they abolished it, and I hope they don't cough up another 'brilliant' idea. To go back to ODEN'S point - how do we legislate a different set of cultural values? I'm pretty sure it can't be done. If, as a people, there is a greater tendency towards violent crime involving guns then I can't think of a legal measure that can be implemented that will change things.
Stop glorifying violence and violent reactions to problems. Beating a guy's ass for looking crossways at your girl doesn't make you a bad ass. It makes you an idiot. That'd be a good start.
I think it helps that Switzerland is a hell of a lot smaller than the United States, wasn't founded by armed revolution, and is one of the richest in the world. Richer countries tend to be more educated. Not only that, your own picture points out that males from 20-42 keep their issued firearms at home. This implies that the Swiss government gave them those guns and the training to handle them. The US government isn't giving guns to it's citizenry so there's no burden on the government to make sure people that have guns know how to use them.
Focus: As I've stated before, I'm a convicted felon. I also happen to be a big supporter of firearms in civilian hands. I can't legally own a gun, but I don't begrudge the Average Joe having one. Hell I had a fairly decent collection up until the day before I went to court and the judge stripped away my right to own a firearm. (Disclaimer, I do not at this particular moment have a firearm or ammunition for such in my possession.) That said, I think the gun laws are in perfect balance in this nation with a few minor points. You've got people that don't need ready, legal access to guns; violent felons and those that are mentally ill the point of being an active danger to the community. Then you've got the weapons regulated by the 1934 National Firearms Act; that would be your machine guns, rifles and shotguns with shortened barrels, suppressors/silencers, and a host of other weapons like Street-Sweeper shotguns, and handguns disguised as cellphones and what not. (I'm not going into explosives, like hand grenades, rocket launchers, dynamite, etc. Those are legal if you want to jump through the hurdles of getting the registration, permits, storage, and actually buying the damn things. Explosives are a whole other issue, and one best left out of gun control.) The NFA weapons are typically owned and used by serious collectors and enthusiasts, not the type of people that are going to go shoot up a mall for shits and giggles. Getting any NFA item is a royal pain in the ass, and often are so cost-prohibitive most people aren't going to fool with them. Right in the middle are the guns you can walk into most any FFL (Federal Firearms License; or Federally licensed gun dealer), and buy. That would be your usual assortment of .22 rifles, hunting shotguns and rifles, handguns, and semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 variant rifle used by the Colorado shooter. You've got to pass a standard background check, and fill out a 4473 form before you can leave the store with them, so Bubba ain't gonna walk out of the state pen and buy a Glock the same day. There are reasonable precautions keeping them out of the hands of those who don't need them, and are common enough that they can be legally bought and sold. Sure criminals can still purchase firearms out on the street via private sale, but there's nothing you can do about it. Likewise where the law abiding can get permits to carry concealed firearms in most states, criminals won't worry about such. Where the laws come into balance here... If a felon gets caught with a gun, he's going to jail; that's about the best you can do there. Criminals will get guns if they so desire, and any with basic knowledge of the law will bear in mind there is a penalty for doing so. On the other hand, if a collector desires an exotic machine gun, or a silencer for a pistol, there are legal means of acquiring them, that also make them hard for the general public to get (which if the public were to get them easier, they'd eventually make their way into the hands of criminals; via theft or private sales). And of course, Average Joe can still walk into any gun shop and leave with a weapon that can be traced back to him via the 4473 and the weapons serial number. This prevents an unregulated black market for guns. The United States has an unquenchable love of firearms, and short of a massive cultural shift towards Pacifism, that's not going to change. In the gun-grabbers dream of rounding up every firearm in the US; American would be disarmed for less than a week. After that, guns would start making their way into the country the same way every other illegal good does. Either drug runners would start tossing AK's and hand grenades in with cocaine shipments, or Hank Hill would start up his lathe out in his garage and start turning out home made Sten guns. Instead of the average semi-auto AKM knock off you can buy down at the gun shop, you'd start seeing military-grade firearms (machine guns in essence), on the streets. As it stands the type of gun most commonly used in crimes tend to be cheap, small-caliber pistols (aka 'Saturday Night Specials') due to ease of purchase. In my proposed scenario, that could likely be replaced by full-automatic rifles. With the talk of reinstating the 94' Assault Weapons Ban, or AWB, with no Sunset clause you run into another factor... Whats to stop a man from purchasing multiple 5 or 10 round magazines instead of the more standard 30 round magazine for his AR-15? Regardless of the capacity of the magazine, a well trained marksman can still reload an AR-15 in seconds. Same goes for a pump-action Mossberg 500 shotgun, or a revolver, or a lever action rifle. It's not the weapon that is to blame here, or the capacity of it's ammunition magazine; it all comes down to the man. As other have stated before, here and elsewhere, a committed individual does not need a firearm to commit murder. Hell the bloodiest school massacre was the Bath School House bombing in the mid 1930's; a crazed school board member used dynamite to murder 50 some people, if I recall correctly. The September 11th attacks involved the use of box cutters to hijack the airlines. Banning or further restricting firearms will only hurt the law abiding; and there is plenty of practical use for firearms. Speaking as a farmer, how are you going to humanly euthanize a dying steer when you're 15 miles from the barn if you don't have a pistol? What about putting down a coyote that's in the process of harming your livestock? What other tools are as suited to the task as a gun?
An interesting fact, background checks and gun sales in Colorado have dramatically increased in the last few days: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/07/24/157281714/gun-sales-are-up-sharply-in-colorado-since-theater-shootings" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... -shootings</a>
Swiss culture is incredibly homogeneous. When everyone looks identical and speaks the same language (not even separated by a southern drawl or Ebonics), it's easy to not assume the worst in your neighbors. I don't think it's possible to legislate a different set of cultural values, short of instituting the draft again. What can be done instead?
This analogy fails when you think harder about it. It assumes an equivalency across tools. In so far as very few people accidentally kill or seriously injure others with fire extinguishers, "the defensive firearm" are not much like fire extinguishers. In so far as fire extinguishers are rarely used in violent crimes, "the defensive firearm" is not much like a fire extinguisher. Lastly, it fails because "the defensive firearm" is not a thing. There are merely firearms, which are sometimes used defensively.
You can't isolate guns used illegally from guns used legally until a crime actually happens, so reduce the number of guns in total by making them more expensive and harder to buy. You can jack up the price of guns by this concept called taxation. There's a huge amount of opposition to changing the rules on acquiring guns, so change them in favor of the people who already have them and in favor of smaller, privately-held, licensed retailers instead of places that have no responsibility over the guns they buy and sell. Again, the idea is not regulation of ownership, but regulation of the supply of new guns. As far as training, I would consider making gun courses more comprehensive. I learned how to shoot, clean and handle a gun from a variety of people, most of which were not professionally trained, even in military or police courses. Think about driver's ed: you take a pure gun idiot from zero to competent in a course done by someone certified to know what the hell they are talking about. Hopefully, in that training you learn more than the mechanics of firearms, you learn when you should and should not draw a weapon. Most of the CCW permit instructors I've known reported that the first thing they have to do is break the bad habits of the guys who learned the wrong stuff. That suggests a huge gap in the education that goes into being a responsible gun owner.
I know it varies state by state, but in Connecticut you only need to take a 8hr pistol course and wait the time for your application to be processed to obtain a CCW permit. 8hrs of training is the same amount of time you need to obtain a drivers license. You can't curb violence through legislative action or making people take fluff courses on how to safely operate a firearm, just as you can't curb poor driving through an equally fluffed safety course. I agree with some other posters when they say that negativity is the driving force behind so much of our daily life in the US. I think as a whole, our country focuses on the negative aspect of everything and it's effects are starting to manifest more and more in people's actions. Not to get all hippy sunshine, but being surrounded by positive people and positive thoughts has greatly enhanced my quality of life and I think it would be beyond helpful in curbing a lot of this seemingly bizarre behavior. Obviously some people are mentally ill and need professional attention, but from what I've read so far of this guy, he doesn't seem to be dealing with any major obvious mental illness other than the fact that he is sitting in jail for shooting up a movie theater.