In 2011, the US reported 9,146 firearm homicides. The same year, Australia had 30. I don't think choice is best for everyone!
yeah, it's best to ignore what has worked for other people. I'm not in favor of taking people's guns away. I'm just saying we should look at what has worked and see if there is a way to adapt it.
Those who prefer the lowered gun homicide rate over the right to bear arms can happily live in Australia. Those in America prefer not giving away freedoms for security.
Even the gun control advocates admit that there has not been a statistically significant decrease in the murder rate in Australia following the gun control measures and gun buy back implemented there. I don't care about "massacres" because they are a blip on the radar of murders. So no, gun restrictions have not been remarkably effective there, which is why Americans would be quite stupid to follow you down that primrose path. The already extant trend of overall crime and homicides declining continued at roughly the same place as before, a trend that was mirrored in the US without passage of gun control. Linkage.
Is anyone supposed to take the opinions of someone who has a borderline (ok, not borderline, more like full blown) sociopathic thought such as the above? Just wondering.
In your opinion, what was "sociopathic" about that statement? It seems to be nothing more than an obvious statement.
While I agree with you on a lot of points throughout this forum on many topics, I don't feel the need to explain obvious points that are based on definition. "a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sociopath
I know the definition, I just don't think it applies. Suggesting that people killed in a relatively few "massacres" are different than the masses murdered in other ways (less than 3 at a time) is odd to me. To explain further, having 300 people murdered one at a time is no more horrible IMO than 300 people murdered with 30 of them happening at one time. Unless I misunderstood (which is possible) that's what the poster was trying to say.
I understand what he's saying. I get the logic behind it. I can even see the relevance of it in certain circumstances, namely those where there are not other options and there is a dire need in a pressure situation. That being said, I still think it's a sociopath mindset to "not care" about massacres because they are only a "blip."
I get not liking the wording, but I think the underlying message is solid. If you fully eliminate "massacres" but it doesn't significantly change the homicide rate you really haven't done anything positive. Same goes for the gun murder rate. If you completely eliminate all gun murders, but it doesn't significantly change the overall homicide rate, you've done nothing. So long as he meant "I don't care more about massacres than other homicides" then it's okay. If it was instead endorsing massacres...well that's different.
I think there's some validity to that. Overall though, massacres are of a class of their own and if all of them were eradicated I would see it as a plus, even if the broad ranging homicide rate does not decrease much itself. On a related note, homicides are probably pretty complex things. For one, it's worth discussing the effects that mass murders have on a society compared to isolated instances of homicide.
Here's the thing. The right to bear arms has limitations. Most folks freely submit that they don't have the right to bear cruise missiles or nuclear warheads, or howitzers, etc. So those limitations seem to be okay. So those that want some stricter limitation on firearms doesn't mean they are anti-constitution. They may have a different perspective on what limitations they are willing to accept, but they aren't un-American. I think if we weed out the rhetoric there is some room for common ground. That being said there is a problem when law makers who propose gun control measures are totally ignorant of what they are proposing. When they confuse terms like automatic weapons with semi-automatic weapons, or include weapons in their bills that clearly aren't related to the stated objectives, many of those that are pro-gun will tune them out and not listen to anything they say. It might help if the lawmakers who are proposing gun-control took a safety class, and spent 200 hours shooting and receiving instruction dealing with the firearms they are talking about. It would also help if those opposed to gun control didn't stop listening the moment that the gun control advocates made a trivial and inconsequential error in the terminology they were using. It would also help if they didn't pretend like only those with their exact view on the constitution were anti-second amendment. I think there is probably some common ground place to start on the issue that both sides could grit their teeth and accept.
The right to bear arms was the right to have a musket to prevent tyranny and defend oneself - not to have an ak-47 to carry to a mcdonalds. But whatever, the constitution is the constitution. That said, there's nothing that infringes upon that right to require someone who wants to own a gun to have to get cleared by a psychologist, take a gun safety course, and be limited to ammo and weapons designed for self-defense and not going on the offensive. There's nothing to state that every gun should be coded in a way that makes it completely trackable all the way to the last purchaser (so if they lose their gun they better report it lost). There's nothing to say that a gun owner should be required to provide a few references that they are sane.
If 300 people are murdered, it makes no difference to me if they were murdered individually, all at once, or in any particular groupings in between. They are all just as dead. I can't believe you would be stupid enough not to understand that was the point, and I hope instead you were trying for some pathetic gotcha moment. Rifles and shotguns combined kill fewer Americans each year than knives. Going after "assault weapons" or other similar tactics is dealing with the tiny minority of gun murders. Most gun murders are committed with pistols. So, the reason people oppose these restrictions on specific weapons or weapon categories is that any reasonable person can see that doing so will not accomplish what gun control people say they are trying to accomplish. Any weapon specific focus should be on pistols, not worrying about people's AR-15s or AKs.
As I mentioned in another thread this is both a troubling and a false dichotomy. As I've stated before the 2nd Amendment doesn't rule out regulation and restriction on firearms. While I will agree the 2nd Amendment would prevent the type of law that Australia has but it certainly wouldn't stop much greater, restrictions on type, registration, monitoring and even who can own firearms. Also has brought up in other threads greater taxation and insurance requirements on firearms and / or ammunition. What is troubling about this view and why this is a false dichotomy is a misunderstanding about the purpose of the 2nd Amendment. It is in the language of the amendment itself and the Federalist papers that it is for collective defense of the states at a time when there wasn't a standing army. In this sense the freedom to bear arms is for a collective and not individual purpose. Regulation of arms then isn't a tradeoff of freedom for security as the primary purpose of the 2nd was for state security to begin with. Another troubling aspect though of this is the idea that gun massacres are both an acceptable and logical outgrowth of this freedom. I find it very unsettling to think that the price of a freedom, whose primary purpose has largely been rendered anachronistic, are the lives of people who die in mass shootings that seemingly happen about once a week now in this country.
Actually no there is a difference. Consider this. When the US dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima about a 100,000 Japanese were killed in a relatively short period of time. If the US hadn't dropped the A-Bomb and invaded Hiroshima probably 100,000 Japanese might still have died but the difference is that this would've been done at a much greater cost to the US in terms of blood and treasure. Lethality of any single tool makes a huge difference in regard to how to address such a potential threat. The fact that a single individual can kill many with relative ease is much different than that several individuals could kill several individuals with effort. An Adam Lanza or Choi probably couldn't kill double digit people in a single massacre in a matter of minutes without those weapons. While yes the same amount of people might die from other causes over a much longer period the lethality that a single individual can wield in a single moment is very large threat.
Here is why massacres should matter more even though they are a 'blip'. Almost all other homicides through gun violence occurs through disputes. Massacres happen to unsuspecting victims in movie theaters and malls. The victims of massacres are always innocent.
SCOTUS disagrees with your interpretation of the 2nd amendment, they've explicitly said that it is an individual right.....so you probably need to re-think your position.
