Americans

Originally Posted by ophic

Gun free zones are pointless unless enforced.

What about dildos?

Originally Posted by ophic

Simple case of level playing field. If one person is allowed to carry, all should carry. Otherwise you're giving away a huge advantage. Why do people have such a problem with this?

That logic only works if you believe you can spot a threat, draw, aim and pull the trigger before that threat can be carried out.

There's been two I ciders recently, one where someone actually had a gun at one of the school shootings and didn't use it and another where someone did use a gun to prevent an attack on a guy in a car and hit the guy in the head, he'd probably have preferred just the beating.

[ophic]

Originally Posted by Spank86

That logic only works if you believe you can spot a threat, draw, aim and pull the trigger before that threat can be carried out.

There's been two I ciders recently, one where someone actually had a gun at one of the school shootings and didn't use it and another where someone did use a gun to prevent an attack on a guy in a car and hit the guy in the head, he'd probably have preferred just the beating.

OK accidents will happen - they are dangerous things after all.

The logic you quote only works in a one-on-one situation. In which case you would probably end up dead (instead of definitely if you couldn't defend yourself), and it wouldn't make the news.

Any of these single shooter massacres wouldn't have as much of a death toll if everyone around him shot him immediately after the first casualty.

I'm actually all in favour of no guns but it's gotta be actually no guns, not most people with no guns and a few fruitloops with them. Just making them illegal would not work in this case. They would have to be completely purged from society.

We can't stand on our British high horses either as we have a similar problem with knives.

[ophic]

Originally Posted by Amadeus

What about dildos?

Ban them. Dangerous immoral devices that will damn your soul to hell in a pit of screaming fire

I read the statistic from a credible source (which I have now completely forgotten) that of the 239 mass shootings in the US, only one has been stopped by an armed civilian, in 1989.

Knives are not the same problem as guns, I am not saying it is not a problem and they are not dangerous but they are definitely not the same problem. Many of these mass shootings have victims in double figures. It is much harder to get this sort of death toll with a knife. You are less likely to get stray knife wounds in quite the same way that you get stray bullets when you spray a room at 20 rounds a second with a 400 round clip.

400 round clip? That's a f'in maching gun isn't it??

[ophic]

Originally Posted by ClunkintheUK

I read the statistic from a credible source (which I have now completely forgotten) that of the 239 mass shootings in the US, only one has been stopped by an armed civilian, in 1989.

Perhaps this is because when there are enough armed civilians around it never gets to be a mass shooting.

Originally Posted by ophic

OK accidents will happen - they are dangerous things after all.

The logic you quote only works in a one-on-one situation. In which case you would probably end up dead (instead of definitely if you couldn't defend yourself), and it wouldn't make the news.

Any of these single shooter massacres wouldn't have as much of a death toll if everyone around him shot him immediately after the first casualty.

I'm actually all in favour of no guns but it's gotta be actually no guns, not most people with no guns and a few fruitloops with them. Just making them illegal would not work in this case. They would have to be completely purged from society.

We can't stand on our British high horses either as we have a similar problem with knives.

Our knife problems nowhere near the American gun problem and as it happens it CAN not be no guns, look at Australia, even over here you can still get a shotgun yet neither place has anything like the American problem. Our "knife problem" is relatively minor but it does make a good story.

[ophic]

Of course knives are relatively minor compared to guns. However getting them off the street presents similar problems - level playing field. If you expect there's a possibility you'll be attacked by someone armed, you'll also go out armed. So making them illegal only makes the nicer folks more vulnerable - to either being seriously injured or prosecuted. Doesn't work.

In other countries than the US, there are far fewer weapons in general circulation. It's a lot easier to keep a society out of gun saturation than to bring a society back from it. What do you do? Forcibly confiscate all guns? Assuming you can find them all? There'd be a civil war.

As for gun free zones, who ever thought that was a good idea? Yes, nice people won't bring guns into gun free zones, but nice people don't tend to shoot other people anyway. So you've just made a nice big friendly target for loonies.

Originally Posted by Amadeus

400 round clip? That's a f'in maching gun isn't it??

Still legal in the US. Also not much use for hunting or personal protection, unless you house is assaulted by marauding Visigoths.