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Shi Huangdi
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Pittsburgh, PA
Apr 1999
time: 00:21
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For shooting up a school though, it doesn't really matter what the law is on concealing. It would be easy enough to carry whatever weapon it is in your vehicle, drive that to school, and then when you arrived you could just charge right on in, regardless on the legality of concealed weapons.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-00.html
quote:
David Lampo is the publications director at the Cato Institute.
The number of well-publicized public shootings during the past few years, especially the tragedy at Columbine High School, has re-energized the gun control movement. As a show of strength, a coalition of gun control groups has organized a "Million Mom March" to be held in Washington, D.C. on Mother's Day, an event designed to stir up emotions rather than promote rational thought. And when one looks at the facts about gun control, it's easy to see why the anti-gun lobby relies on emotion rather than logic to make its case.
Think you know the facts about gun control? If your only source of information is the mainstream media, what you think you know may not be correct. Take the quiz below and test your knowledge.
1. Thousands of children die annually in gun accidents.
False. Gun accidents involving children are actually at record lows, although you wouldn't know it from listening to the mainstream media. In 1997, the last year for which data are available, only 142 children under 15 years of age died in gun accidents, and the total number of gun-related deaths for this age group was 642. More children die each year in accidents involving bikes, space heaters or drownings. The often repeated claim that 12 children per day die from gun violence includes "children" up to 20 years of age, the great majority of whom are young adult males who die in gang-related violence.
2. Gun shows are responsible for a large number of firearms falling into the hands of criminals.
False. Contrary to President Clinton's claims, there is no "gun show loophole." All commercial arms dealers at gun shows must run background checks, and the only people exempt from them are the small number of non-commercial sellers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, at most 2 percent of guns used by criminals are purchased at gun shows, and most of those were purchased legally by people who passed background checks.
3. The tragedy at Columbine High School a year ago illustrates the deficiencies of current gun control laws.
False. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold violated close to 20 firearms laws in amassing their cache of weapons (not to mention the law against murder), so it seems rather dubious to argue that additional laws might have prevented this tragedy. The two shotguns and rifle used by Harris and Klebold were purchased by a girlfriend who would have passed a background check, and the TEC-9 handgun used by them was already illegal.
4. States that allow registered citizens to carry concealed weapons have lower crime rates than those that don't.
True. The 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24 percent lower violent crime rate, a 19 percent lower murder rate and a 39 percent lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the nine states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states. Remarkably, guns are used for self-defense more than 2 million times a year, three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns.
5. Waiting periods lower crime rates.
False. Numerous studies have been conducted on the effects of waiting periods, both before and after the federal Brady bill was passed in 1993. Those studies consistently show that there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates. Florida State University professor Gary Kleck analyzed data from every U.S. city with a population over 100,000 and found that waiting periods had no statistically significant effect. Even University of Maryland anti-gun researcher David McDowell found that "waiting periods have no influence on either gun homicides or gun suicides."
6. Lower murder rates in foreign countries prove that gun control works.
False. This is one of the favorite arguments of gun control proponents, and yet the facts show that there is simply no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures. In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel "have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States." A comparison of crime rates within Europe reveals no correlation between access to guns and crime.
The basic premise of the gun control movement, that easy access to guns causes higher crime, is contradicted by the facts, by history and by reason. Let's hope more people are catching on. |
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Space05us
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quote:
and what about the idea of not restricting guns which goes against the constitution, but restriction ammunition? Granted, that's a bit harder to restrict as many people know how to load their own bullets. But most of these types of guns nuts aren't criminals. Of course it is very likely they will sell their ammunition on the black market. And ammunition is a fire hazard, you'd think they could restrict it if they had to. |
Its the same thing as restricting guns, the gun and the bullet together make the weapon.
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Whaleboy
It's a problem that needs more than gun controls though, consider Japan. A long history of big long sharp things, it takes social struggle and a long war with China to arrest that, because it's something that has penetrated popular history and culture... kind of like a teenager that still wets the bed. |
Please get your facts straight before you stick your foot in your mouth. In Japan the populace has almost always been forbidden to own weapons. Only the Samurai were permitted weapons, and at the height of their power any Samurai could execute a peasant for any reason without repercussions.
Therefore, Japan's long history is of lack of weapons for private citizens and enforcing conformity with tactics that make modern police states look like amateurs.
quote:
Originally posted by Dissident
and what about the idea of not restricting guns which goes against the constitution, but restriction ammunition? Granted, that's a bit harder to restrict as many people know how to load their own bullets. But most of these types of guns nuts aren't criminals. |
Except, of course, that as soon as you restrict ammunition the hand-loader becomes criminal...
 Yes, let's not restrict free speech, instead we'll restrict the use of vocal chords and ink. So you'd be allowed to say or print anything as long as you didn't use these restricted means. Try using semaphore and chalkboards instead.
quote:
Of course it is very likely they will sell their ammunition on the black market. And ammunition is a fire hazard, you'd think they could restrict it if they had to. |
What a moronic thing to say. Please show me a case where a house fire has been caused or even significantly augmented by stored personal ammunition.
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Ted Striker
Concealed weapons specifically are used more than any other weapon. There is a reason for that.
They are, well, concealable.
The kids at Columbine even used a machine pistol and a sawed off shotgun. |
The kids at Columbine did not use a "machine pistol", they used a Tech-9, which is a semi-automatic piece of crap that looks like a machine pistol but is in fact a good deal less useful than a proper 9mm handgun.
And yes they sawed off a shotgun, and fired birdshot out of it! Unfortunately for their cowering victims (advice for anyone in a similar situation is "A moving target is harder to hit and eventually tends to get away.") they fired from such close range (point blank) that any shotgun load acts like a big slug. But their scattergun would have not been lethal beyond a few meters.
What advantage they gained by using concealable weapons escapes me, as they opened fire outside of the school after retrieving their weapons from their car.
The advantage that law-abiding citizens gain from the fact that other law-abiding citizens may carry concealed weapons (depending on the jurisdiction) is that bad guys can't be sure who is packing, which is certainly a deterrent.
Bad guys use concealed weapons because they don't want to raise suspicion. Good guys carry them because they don't want to create a constant panic among soccer mom's who don't realize that their own suburb is actually armed to the teeth, and despite what they've heard should happen, it hasn't turned into a free fire zone due to the sheer density of weapons.
The will to do harm is the key to violence. The 911 hijackers killed almost 3000 people armed only with box cutters and an idea. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 with fertilizer and fuel oil. We aren't going to be able to coerce our way to security in this world, an argument you seem to understand on the international level. On a national level we aren't going to be able to limit the tools used by a tiny percentage for mayhem to the extent that we can significantly put a dent in the mayhem.
If we're really serious about fighting violence we could start off by giving it the media coverage it deserves, which is negligible. We are in love with our mass murderers, and all one has to do is note that much of the prime time schedule and much of the news as well is all about violent crime. This is a cultural and mass psychological problem, not a technological or freedom problem. Good healthy people don't shoot others except for self-defense, and good healthy societies don't glorify murder to the extent that ours does.
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Demerzel
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All I know is that I'm glad I don't have the right to carry a gun around. But hey if Americans want that freedom then they have to accept the consequences when something like this happens, or the disturbing case recently of the little boy shooting his sibling with his mother's pistol...
What would be interesting I suppose would be to see a comparison of the number of gun related ( & other ) deaths per thousand people for different countries around the world.
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Patroklos
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Back home in good ole Norfolk VA
Dec 2001
time: 05:21
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I agree that banning guns is wrong, for the constitutionality of it, but also the impracticality of it. It would take 200+ years before a ban would mean a damn thing to criminals. Same goes for those who have them in their homes.
But I will humor you Whaleboy, how exactly do you plan to recover all these weapons from society? As far as the illegal ones, we would have the same problems as now. But how do you plan on getting my gun? Are you going to send the cops, the feds, the military? Surffice to say most of these people are owners of private firearms and probobly would be too enthusiastic. Surffice to say most private citizens won't give them up willingly, and since your arguement is iminent danger to innocents you can't just let them keep them. You are talking about a bloodbath. And I can think of a few groups of people that would be near exterminated in the process, and none of them are the gun owners.
Anyways, I agree that the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to arm MILITIAS, and thus the national guard. The only private citizens who should be able to own weapons are the ones that know how to use them properly, ie military and police types. And yes, they should be locked in arsenels. Then again, you guys don't trust us much now do you 
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22-03-2005 08:48
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