Gun don't kill people, people kill people

[kallipolis]

^The issue here is that guns are not the only means to kill people.

Knives are becoming a convenient method for killing people.

In the case of the LA shooter clearly this massacre was carefully planned over many months enabling him to hoard sophisticated weapons, and ammunition clearly identifiying a man with a mission to kill many people. He succeeded.

At this time we can only speculate on the motives. Thus far the family of the shooter remain perplexed.

Perhaps in due course the police will be able provide us with an answer.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

^The issue here is that guns are not the only means to kill people.

Knives are becoming a convenient method for killing people.

In the case of the LA shooter clearly this massacre was carefully planned over many months enabling him to hoard sophisticated weapons, and ammunition clearly identifiying a man with a mission to kill many people. He succeeded.

Would he have succeeded in killing scores and wounding hundreds....


... with knives instead of guns?




The issue of the OP is very clearly that guns kill people. Not that lots of other things can be equally hazardous.

 

[kallipolis]

There is a practical challenge here with 300 million guns in the hands of private citizens. Switzerland also has a high gun ownership the result of a policy of the state arming those who are members of the reserve armed forces who keep their weapons in their homes. Switzerland has a very low gun crime rate, in relation to the USA. Without going into the ins, and outs of why Americans are aggressive, and violent compared with other peoples there is a problem here that goes beyond gun ownership.

The United States prohibited the sale of alcohol in the 1920s that led to an explosion in illegal drinking "speak easys" and crime organisations flourished.

Severe restrictions on the sale of guns would be a beginning.....

 

[gsdx]

^ The NRA would have nothing to do with restrictions of any kind. They nixed a government attempt to have locks put on guns.

They simply have more power than the government and governments far-too-afraid to put them in their place.

 

[kallipolis]

^I agree that the NRA is a force to be reckoned with when the politics of gun ownership is under discussion.

The NRA can make, or break an administration.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

^I agree that the NRA is a force to be reckoned with when the politics of gun ownership is under discussion.

The NRA can make, or break an administration.

Only as long as the people let them. As soon as one of the two big parties find that 55% of the people are fed up with the NRA, they will become irrelevant.

Nay, sooner: the day 55% of likely voters in a number of states with 270 electoral votes between them do.

 

[kallipolis]

^Your speculation is all very well but today's reality is crystal clear that the NRA exercises sufficient influence on the political elite to ensure that no legislation will be enacted to restrict ownership of guns.

The best we can hope for is more action on eradicating the ownership of automatic, and semi-automatic weapons.

 

[Willie Boy]

Can you kill 59 people and injured over 500 using your fists ?

If he can't I could. Not that I ever would.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

^Your speculation is all very well but today's reality is crystal clear that the NRA exercises sufficient influence on the political elite to ensure that no legislation will be enacted to restrict ownership of guns.

Again, the NRA will have zero influence as soon as the political elite no longer see any benefit in obeying to them. It's not the NRA that politicians fear, it's the voters who defer to the NRA.

 

[Kulindahr]

The 'right to bear arms' is a good argument only because it is taken out of context and, in context, nobody know what in hell it means.

In context it means exactly what it meant at the time the words were penned: the right to own and carry the standard military equipment of the individual soldier of the day. That's what members of the militia were expected to have, and since the reason given for protecting the individual right (that's what "the people" means every time in the Constitution), those are the arms referred to.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm happy to note that your grammar, and spelling have improved....no more deliberate grammatical, and spelling errors.

The United States has some 300 million fire arms in the hands of private citizens.

How do you propose relieving those armed citizens of their weapons when it is their constitutional right to "bear arms."?

Murder remains a capital offence... but people still murder people....

300 million is a figure based on invalid research techniques. When adjusted for the bias inherent in asking people such a question, recent calculation have put the figure at 450 million to 600 million.

 

[Kulindahr]

Another flawed argument.

No one is seriously proposing disarming everyone. We license people to drive after they learned all the rules. Why not owning a gun?

Sure, people still murder people even though it's a capital offense. But I bet there would be a lot more murders if it was legal.

Because driving is not a protected right. If government could be depended on to be honest and fair about determining if someone was safe to own weapons, a blind process for permitting would be tolerable -- but it would still be useless, since many guns used in murders are obtained legally, and many murders take place in "gun free" zones anyway -- meaning that law does not discourage people from obtaining guns or using them wrongly.

It's worth noting that the original intent of the Second Amendment, to protect an individual right, had nothing to do with owning weapons of a person's choice for defense of home, self, or others -- that was considered so obvious as to not need protection! That so many assume that government has any business at all telling people how or if they may defend themselves or others shows how far we have fallen in regard for the value of individual lives.

 

[Kulindahr]

Context or not, the prohibition is clear: ...the right of the people to keep and bear ares shall not be infringed." More was involved than militia. Many lived on farms and the frontier. Hunting game was an important food source and protection from wild animals was needed. A prohibition of arms would not have been accepted.

And "shall not be infringed" is stronger than "shall pass no law regarding"; it means no law even peripheral to, since to "infringe" isn't to attack the main thing, but to intrude on anything at all related: the image is of fiddling with the "fringe" on a garment, which at the time referred to the rather useless (though perhaps decorative) strands of material dangling from sleeves and lower hems -- such as here, on a coat:

or here, on a skirt:

 

[Kulindahr]

After two incidents of mass slaughter.....Australia, and the United Kingdom legislated new laws that made hand guns illegal....resulting in an enormous fall in fire arm related deaths.

California has passed laws making handguns very hard to obtain -- with the result that the police are finding that criminals are making their own. It isn't even hard to do; back when I was in high school, several students made their own guns in metal shop using machinery available from Sears, Roebuck & Company; better machinery is available today. With just a few tools from Sears, someone reasonably competent could turn out a handgun in a week of evenings.

In the recent LA massacre the use of semi-automatic weapons should initiate a national debate on how a private citizen was able to purchase military grade weaponry.

No military grade weaponry has been used in shootings in the U.S. In fact, all military grade weaponry in the U.S. is licensed by the U.S. government, and since no one can buy any such new, the only way to get one is find someone with a federal license who has one and persuade him or her to sell -- and the prices start at around $20,000.

It is possible to modify a semi-automatic weapon to function as a fully automatic one, but it is both illegal and still not up to military grade.

 

[Kulindahr]

^ That and stopping political donations by the NRA. No lobby groups should 'own' the government.

The NRA lobbies for the three-fifths of Americans who view it favorably.

In fact a recent survey showed that for the first time, a majority of blacks now view the NRA favorably (surprising, given the number of white racists in the organization).

 

[Kulindahr]

Their constitutional right to bear ancient guns and not modern guns.
Might as well arm with a nuclear weapon then !!!

No, the constitutionally protected right is to the standard military weapons of the individual soldier of the day -- that's what the phrase meant and so still means.

And since nuclear weapons are NOT part of the gear of individual soldiers, they aren't covered.

 

[Kulindahr]

Kinda simple. Consider original intent. All arms that were in use at the time of the framing of the US Constitution are protected. All others can be regulated or banned.

Would the current Supreme Court justices see it my way?

That's not the "original intent" -- the intent was the standard arms of the individual soldier. And yes, the Framers knew that gun technology was changing.

See, if that was the original intent, then no religion not in existence then would be protected, and no property except what existed at the time, and no words not yet in use......

 

[Kulindahr]

^ There was also the 'militia' thing. Back then, a militia was necessary. Invasions are unlikely.

The militia was considered necessary in case the government got tyrannical -- after all, the revolution they'd just fought was against their own government because it became abusive.

 

[Kulindahr]

I wonder how many Americans of colour would be happy with that ‘original intent’ business.

What do you suppose the ‘original intent’ was when those white slave owners wrote ‘All men are created equal’?

Jefferson meant it literally -- ALL humans.

 

[Kulindahr]

This is why America has such high murder rates compared to countries with gun control: in other countries, murder tends to be premeditated... Or aborted. In America, shit happens that doesn't happen in other developed countries.

The real reason is that in the U.S. almost everything is viewed in antagonistic fashion, from labor relations to medical care. And it applies to government as well: for example, the first thing the government does if someone needs Medicaid is to try to take every last asset they own and leave their heirs in poverty. If you compare countries where most everyone believes the government is supposed to serve them with countries where people don't trust their government, the difference becomes clear.