6 ms·

And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws? Criminals do not follow the law, that much is true, however a large amount of crime is due to opport

And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws? Criminals do not follow the law, that much is true, however a large amount of crime is due to opportunity and removing opportunity does help reduce crime. If guns didn't exist and everything else were the same and these evil people still had intent to do harm do you really believe that they would just give up because they had no other way to harm people? If this is true, then you're arguing that opportunity has absolutely nothing to do with crime. Adam Lanza for example, if everything had been the same in his life (mental illness, family problems) but he was born in England where he had no access to guns and wasn't brought up around guns would he have been able to do what he did in Sandy Hook somewhere in England? The problem America has is not one gun control will solve, the problem America has is that guns are a part of American culture and the country is so saturated with guns that making them illegal will not make any difference to availability to anyone. Arguing that gun control is wrong for America seems fair but arguing that gun control is always wrong and that people will kill regardless of gun availability doesn't match reality.

nitrogen 14y ago
Societies must make the decision whether the opportunities lost by the vast majority of law-abiding people are worth denying opportunities to the very few criminals. Is the cure more damaging than the poison? Is a gun-free society forcing its will on those who want to own guns better or worse than a society in which criminals have slightly easier access to guns by stealing them from law-abiding owners?
- reader5000 14y ago
  You mean the opportunity to increase your probability of violent death? http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    I am perfectly happy to increase my probability of violent death from 1 in 100000 to 2 in 100000 if it means I also increase my probability of enjoying an annual Thanksgiving tradition with my family and community from 0% to 100%. Edit: your reference appears to lump suicide and homicide together, which is not germane to a discussion about gun control. I'd wager that studies would find there's a correlation between owning over the counter or prescription medications and the risk of medication-induced death in the home.
- rooshdi 14y ago
  Yea, the pros of sem-automatic rifle regulation has to be weighed against the extent of tragedies they enable. Do the pros of another firearm really out-weigh the pain they enable?
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    We won't get anywhere if the debates continue to rely on shocking stories, sweeping positive firearm events under the rug, and emotionally laden rhetoric instead of conducting a rational analysis.
  - bmelton 14y ago
    There are a LOT of semi-automatic rifles that aren't AR15s. There are semi-automatic shotguns, and semi-automatic pistols as well. Speaking objectively, most firearms bought today are semi-automatic. A semi-automatic weapon is inherently no more or less dangerous than any other gun in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Just for clarity, and I don't mean to assume that you don't know, but as most people I've spoken with have it entirely wrong, a semi-automatic firearm means that when you pull the trigger, a bullet is fired. There is no 'burst' or 'spray' mode, and there's no tangible difference between an AR15 and, say, a Browning BAR (http://www.chuckhawks.com/browning_BAR.jpg http://www.chuckhawks.com/browning_BAR.jpg), and "assault weapons bans", in my opinion, penalize a gun for looking like military weapons, when in reality they function nothing like military weapons (as they don't have burst, spray or fully automatic fire modes). If they're famous for causing havoc recently, it almost certainly speaks more to their popularity than anything else. If the most popular car in the America were the Ford Taurus, it would likely be involved in more accidents than other cars, based on sheer math. The AR15 is the most popular rifle sold in America today. The reasons for its popularity are because of its modular design, not its lethality. With an AR15, I can replace the upper assembly without need of a gunsmith. This means I can have one "gun" for both long and short range shooting. I can 'bolt on' attachments like a scope, night lights, laser sights, bipods, etc., without having to pay somebody else to do it for me. It's popular today for the same reasons Linux is popular with nerds -- because you can tinker with it. As for its lethality, it fires a small caliber, low-weight round (.223). In its generally short-barreled configuration (though again, that is moduler) it is considered a 'varmint' gun, used to kill raccoons, coyotes, wolves and the like from a ranch, or what have you. If people were choosing their killing weapons based on lethality, they would have chosen an AR10 (.308 round) or something like a Saiga 12, which is a magazine-fed shotgun.

nitrogen 14y ago

Societies must make the decision whether the opportunities lost by the vast majority of law-abiding people are worth denying opportunities to the very few criminals. Is the cure more damaging than the poison? Is a gun-free society forcing its will on those who want to own guns better or worse than a society in which criminals have slightly easier access to guns by stealing them from law-abiding owners?

reader5000 14y ago
You mean the opportunity to increase your probability of violent death? http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
- nitrogen 14y ago
  I am perfectly happy to increase my probability of violent death from 1 in 100000 to 2 in 100000 if it means I also increase my probability of enjoying an annual Thanksgiving tradition with my family and community from 0% to 100%. Edit: your reference appears to lump suicide and homicide together, which is not germane to a discussion about gun control. I'd wager that studies would find there's a correlation between owning over the counter or prescription medications and the risk of medication-induced death in the home.
rooshdi 14y ago
Yea, the pros of sem-automatic rifle regulation has to be weighed against the extent of tragedies they enable. Do the pros of another firearm really out-weigh the pain they enable?
- nitrogen 14y ago
  We won't get anywhere if the debates continue to rely on shocking stories, sweeping positive firearm events under the rug, and emotionally laden rhetoric instead of conducting a rational analysis.
- bmelton 14y ago
  There are a LOT of semi-automatic rifles that aren't AR15s. There are semi-automatic shotguns, and semi-automatic pistols as well. Speaking objectively, most firearms bought today are semi-automatic. A semi-automatic weapon is inherently no more or less dangerous than any other gun in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Just for clarity, and I don't mean to assume that you don't know, but as most people I've spoken with have it entirely wrong, a semi-automatic firearm means that when you pull the trigger, a bullet is fired. There is no 'burst' or 'spray' mode, and there's no tangible difference between an AR15 and, say, a Browning BAR (http://www.chuckhawks.com/browning_BAR.jpg http://www.chuckhawks.com/browning_BAR.jpg), and "assault weapons bans", in my opinion, penalize a gun for looking like military weapons, when in reality they function nothing like military weapons (as they don't have burst, spray or fully automatic fire modes). If they're famous for causing havoc recently, it almost certainly speaks more to their popularity than anything else. If the most popular car in the America were the Ford Taurus, it would likely be involved in more accidents than other cars, based on sheer math. The AR15 is the most popular rifle sold in America today. The reasons for its popularity are because of its modular design, not its lethality. With an AR15, I can replace the upper assembly without need of a gunsmith. This means I can have one "gun" for both long and short range shooting. I can 'bolt on' attachments like a scope, night lights, laser sights, bipods, etc., without having to pay somebody else to do it for me. It's popular today for the same reasons Linux is popular with nerds -- because you can tinker with it. As for its lethality, it fires a small caliber, low-weight round (.223). In its generally short-barreled configuration (though again, that is moduler) it is considered a 'varmint' gun, used to kill raccoons, coyotes, wolves and the like from a ranch, or what have you. If people were choosing their killing weapons based on lethality, they would have chosen an AR10 (.308 round) or something like a Saiga 12, which is a magazine-fed shotgun.