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Post of the day.
Sorry old son we are not in the slightest agreement and your point is asinine in the extreme.
Your 'point' (such as it is) only pertains to assault rifles. So you're quite happy for people to be able to go into a store and fill a shopping cart with handguns just as long as they aren't allowed an AR-15?
The only differences between them are rate of fire, power and magazine capacity. You walk into a school with a handgun and you can kill maybe 6 maybe 12 kids before the swat team comes in and stops you. You go in with an AR-15 and you can kill maybe 15-30.
If your point is that a few dead kids are an acceptable price to pay for being allowed to carry guns then fine but the rest of the world would contend that no dead kids should be the aspiration.
Why is Colt marketing and normalising this weapon? Because they are in the business of selling guns and fortunately for them they operate in a country where the government permits them to go about this business perfectly legally and there are millions of citizens who believe they should have the right to buy their products to protect themselves against Muslims/gays/Communists etc.
Can you explain why you think castigating a company for going about their business is the answer?
As a certain Senor Lazar once said 'bullets do not kill. It is the finger that pulls the trigger.'
Colt could mass produce a rifle for fingerless hoodlums. TripAces might get the hump at a company legally making money by selling their product to happy customers but it would be unfair to bar the digitally challenged from the fun of mass infanticide.
In Europe it seems to be a no-brainer that people shouldn't be allowed to possess (at the very least) assault rifles. Having one is e.g. in Germany a felony, and you also cannot even obtain a licence to have one (unlike for a hunting rifle, if you have a hunting licence, or for a pistol under special circumstances). Legal guns must also be registered.
But the story is a different one once you have 300 million or so guns floating around in your country, the overwhelming majority of them unregistered. I can see why some decent people are tempted to buy a handgun themselves (though not an automatic rifle) for their own defence, increasing the problem itself. But knowing the U.S. at least better than the average European, I find it unrealistic to find a majority doing away with the 2nd Amendment...and no more realistic to expect the Supreme Court to decide what I think the truth is: That the 2nd Amendment does not at all grant an individual right to have a gun, except for the purpose of letting the states have a well-regulated militia.
So why in th world would Europeans still feel sorry for a country of which the population clearly wants their children murdured in schools? There's no other way to say it: they want it. The assault weapon ban (yes, there used to be one! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban) wasn't reinstated or prolonged, even though some (both D and R) tried.
People say they want to be able to 'defend their homes and farms' from wildlife and burglars. Whilst I don't know how many bears are shot every year because they were attacking law-abiding citizens, I bet it were fewer then kids shot in schools. But hell, defending your stereo is far more important thne your kids life, we all know that!
No, they want it. It's clear. If there was a majority against it these people would go on the streets and protest, block entrances to gun factories, whatnot. but they don't give a toss.
Funny how one of the most backward countries in the world still thinks it should police the rest around.
Those outside the U.S. don't understand how messed up our "representative" form of government really is. More voters vote for Democrats than Republicans. And yet, Republicans control almost every aspect of government. How is that?
http://prospect.org/article/republican-structural-advantage
We’re also saddled with the 2nd amendment and the NRA. Fun stuff.
For the benefit of our European members, let me just say: the American history with guns makes the situation re: the law and gun sales a little...complicated. And I'm speaking as someone who's long been in favor of stronger restrictions on the easy availability of firearms. The 2nd amendment can easily be exploited by those who simply want to make more $$$ by selling any and every sort of weapon to anybody with the cash. That's clearly not the original intent of the amendment (the phrase about a "well regulated militia" makes that particular point pretty clear) -- but Americans do tend to value the third factor in the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of profit" more highly than the first one. And the NRA...well, they clearly need to re-evaluate their position in this issue. That's something only the dues paying members of the NRA can address. Still, the public opinion on this issue seems to have shifted rather significantly of late, and politicians are generally pretty intent on seeming to be in tune with the wishes of their constituents. We shall see how the tide runs over the coming weeks and months...
Yes, smaller communities work better that way.
The journey of a thousand miles...doesn't happen overnight. All I'm saying is, this time it seems like the conversation is starting in earnest.
The only thing I'm picking a fight with is this idiotic notion that banning assault rifles will make the slightest difference when you can still walk into a Walmart and fill your basket up with pistols, shotguns and rifles.
The difference between an assault rifle and the above is merely killing efficiency. If you want to shoot up a classroom full of kids an assault rifle would be the preferred option for sure but you can still destroy plenty of lives and families with weapons that don't come under that bracket.
This is the crux of it. Until the gun control movement can mobilise themselves to be as effective as the NRA at lobbying and getting the ear of politicians then nothing will change.
This video shows just how much the NRA manages to influence feckless politicians simply by getting off their arses:
An arsenal of pistols and shotguns won't kill 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas, from 1,000 feet away.
Allowing pistols and shotguns won't rid ourselves of gun-related deaths. But it cuts down the likelihood of mass casualties, simply because having to reload or re-arm is not conducive to it. There is a reason why AR-15s are the most common weapon used in wiping out many people in a short amount of time, without any skill required.
Yep. I feel genuinely sorry for those like @Creasy47 who aren't as mental as the gunowners and are still stuck there, but at the end of the day, if the majority of Americans didn't want it there wouldn't be such a big debate every single time this happens (and it's happened too many times to count), it'd be much more one sided. It's messed up but if enough people wanted it to change, it'd change. Even in this thread we've had a guy telling us that his coworker owns 50 guns, telling us Vegas was down to poor security at the hotel rather than how you can easily buy an assault rifle, and I'm pretty sure I can remember posts from a couple of members who've bought their own PPK. Too many Americans love their guns to prevent this happening again. See you next time guys.
Just seems to be going round in circles to me. "Jesus Christ again? How have America not sorted out stricter gun control", "self defense!", "you don't need an assault rifle to defend yourself", "second amendment, criminals will find a way to get guns anyway, lets ignore the fact gun crime is lower in the civilised parts of the world", etc. Then it dies down until more people die, then it starts off again, dies down, more die. Endless cycle.
A conversation they had before. I'll believe in changes when I see them.
At the risk of parroting a cliche': Be part of the solution or you're part of the problem.
What a heartwarming story. No doubt he's still got a massive arsenal of handguns and shotguns though?
This seeming obsession that getting rid of assault rifles is the solution seems like an easy win for the politicians (if they weren't in thrall to the NRA) as it would look like they were doing something but people could still keep most of their guns.
Virginia Tec (32 dead), Dunblane (17 dead), Hungerford (16 dead) and the Cumbria shootings (12 dead) were all done by people who didn't have assault rifles.
It's only because people are allowed to buy AR-15s and they deliver a better bang for your buck that they are the current weapon du jour for the aspirant nutter. If you ask any of the above if they would have liked to upgrade to an AR-15 they would bite your hand off. If nuclear warheads were easily available and affordable I daresay we'd be seeing a spate of nuclear massacres in schools at the moment. The point being that if you have access to guns and you are mental then you can commit such atrocities anywhere irrespective of what type of gun you can get your hands on. It's extremely difficult to prevent people going mental so the other option is to reduce the access to guns PERIOD not just certain types of guns.
Picture the scene:
(A Mentalist walks into a gun shop with a plan to shoot up a local school)
Mentalist: I'd like to buy an assault rifle please.
Shop Assistant: Sorry the government has banned the sale of assault rifles. We can sell you pistols, shotguns and rifles though.
Mentalist: I had my heart set on an assault rifle.
Shop Assistant: Well my hands are tied the law is the law.
Mentalist: Fair enough. I'll be off then.
(Mentalist goes home and abandons his planned slaughter of children and lives a happy and productive life as a peaceful citizen.)
Suggesting that just banning assault rifles will see these shootings stop is pissing in the wind while Rome burns; unless of course we consider a mass shooting where only 7 kids are killed instead of 20 as progress? I guess it is of a kind but I wouldn't want to be the one telling the families of the 7 'Well your kids are still dead but thanks to us banning assault rifles it could have been a lot worse so happy days.'
There has to be a multi-level approach. There will NEVER be a ban on guns as long as the 2nd amendment is in place. But Chris Rock once said that what the U.S. needs is not gun control but bullet control, and though he was cracking a joke, he was right.
Stronger background checks
No sales at gun shows
Illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase a weapon
Significant taxes on all gun and artillery sales
Among other things.
There certainly isn't. But there are steps that could be taken to make a difference
How many mass shootings have there been in Australia since 28th April 1996? That's just a coincidence I suppose?
Agree entirely. But the constitution wasn't engraved on stone tablets and sent down by God. It was written by men and if there is the desire it can also be changed by men - as demonstrated by the term 'amendment'.
Let's not claim that this is some intractable problem and that nothing can be done. Politicians could bring in legislation for gun control but we all know they won't because of the NRA having the government in their pocket and the general population having no desire to give up their guns.
Can individual states not set their own gun laws? At least then the civilised places like California and NYC where there might be a majority of sane people could ban them and leave the gun loving, god bothering nutters in the middle to it.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article200820119.html
This gun crap is deeply embedded into our culture.