Another public shooting rampage...

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in a tragic way it is kinda funny. to buy a gun that you can legally buy (lets say a glock 17 9mm) for $450-$600, a crook will pay $800-$1200. yet conversely they can buy a fully automatic ak type weapon (which will set a legal buyer back 6 months,a mess of paperwork and several thousand dollars) for less than $1000 from the drug cartels.
it makes more profit for them to ship in ak's and other full auto types that can be bought in other countrys for less than (in some places) $200.

amaster , how can you say that criminals care about the law when by definition they obviously don't?

 

By definition only if you assert that willingness to break one law equates to willingness to break all laws, regardless of punishment.

 

Well, there's always Chris Rock's solution. The problem isn't guns. It's bullets. All we need to do is impose a "bullet tax" of 5K per bullet. The police and military, as government organizations immune to the tax, would have no problem staying equipped, but your typical thug will only be able to use his .45 as a bludgeon. Problem solved.

 

ummm, drew if the are getting the gun illegally what is gonna stop them from getting the bullets the same way?

yeah i know you are joking just being devils advocate here

 

Nothing, but this idea that a law is ineffective because people break it is kind of ridiculous, isn't it? People speed. Does that mean speed limits are ineffective? People commit murder. Does that mean laws against murder are ineffective? Laws don't exist to stop people from doing things. They exist to deter them.

The whole "criminals can get guns illegally" canard is really just a diversion, anyway. For starters, in a study of 65 high-profile multiple-victim shootings in the United States over a period of 40 years, 62% of handgun shootings and 71% of long gun shootings were committed with legally acquired firearms. Second of all, most illegally acquired guns in the US were acquired legally, in the US, first. In other words, if we banned handguns in the US, less illegal handguns would be available (or they would need to be smuggled in from other nations rather than stolen or purchased from shady US gun sellers)...which would make them even more expensive.

 

how about some sources for those studies please.
and you are missing the whole point. its like saying "oh someone commited a murder so we need to pass more laws to make murder more illegal"

just look at a little history, you used to be able to buy fully automatic tommy guns thru the mail yet we didn't have mass killings going on did we?
it all boils down to responsibilty, we dont blame the car when someone runs people down on purpose or the bat when someone beats someone with it. quit trying to shift the blame to an inanimate object.

 

This came from "Where'd They Get Their Guns? An Analysis of the Firearms Used in High-Profile Shootings." It was conducted by the violence Policy Centre, Washington DC, 2002.

Actually, no it isn't. Possessing a gun isn't a crime, and (with the exception of a few extremists) no one is trying to change that. Gun control advocates aren't trying to take away your right to bear arms. They are advocating background checks and a short waiting period. They do want to see an assault weapons ban, though, since no one wants to see the police roaming the streets with AK-47's and M-16's in order to keep pace with the street riff-raff.

I seem to recall a great bit of gun violence being committed by bootleggers with tommy guns. Let's also not forget the KKK back in the 1920's. Violence was really bad back then.

Cars aren't designed to kill things and neither are bats*. Guns are designed to kill things. Only guns are to blame for gun violence. I'm not blaming all violence on guns, just gun violence. How, without a gun, can one commit gun violence, anyway? This position [that guns are not to blame for gun violence] is not only untenable, but it's really kind of silly, isn't it?

*Incidentally, we do regulate cars. We control who can own them (if the state denies you registration, you cannot legally buy a car), who can drive them, how old people have to be to drive them, where people can drive them, when people can drive them, how fast people can drive them...

 

Heh. There was more than one occasion around WWI when the national guard (or federal troops; I forget which) used HMGs on rioters.

 

Drew,
I think America ought to do something about the state infringing on the right to drive cars! Minimum age? Drivers licenses? Mandatory insurance perhaps? Madness! Liberty!

Baseball bats require strength and agility, especially when used outside of an ambush scenario and against multiple opponents. Same for knives, where you have to add skill. The thing with guns is uniquely that every bozo can kill with a gun. You can be a total weakling, as long as you can hold a gun, are able to aim it and pull the trigger you have a reasonable chance of hitting your opponent at short range and inflict serious injury.
That's how first crossbows and then firearms revolutionised warfare - no more it was just the fighting classes who received combat training who could effectively fight (say, with bats and knives). Peasants, shortly trained and using salvo fire, could simply sweep the expertly trained and armoured knights from the field of battle. A gun has reach and can hit before a melee fighter can close in. In that sense the firearm was a great equaliser. That's the big appeal.

All that's what fully justifies making a distinction between cars, baseball bats - and guns, and coincidentally suggests that the failed analogy between the three as made by martaug is almost mischievous.

Also, Drew's point of the cops in an arms race with riff-raff is a very good one. The apparent underlying assumption of the 'guns vs. crime' theme is that, as all criminals are heavily armed, a law abiding citizen needs fire power superiority or at least equality to stand a chance. IMO this view has a lot more to do with threat perception that reality. In that sense, the difference between fire power superiority and equality depends on the perception. After a particularly harrowing crime time season you might not feel safe with anything less than a Gatling gun.
And then there are those who think of weapons as an insurance against the always oppressive state as some on the US right do here is no point in wanting to be armed en par with the cops or Feds. That is also a very American theme.

 

Interestingly enough, our government places limits on knives too...

 

Drew,
I carry a swiss army knife all day. The legal limitation applies to folding knives only. As Monty hinted on, that has to do with stabbing and the blade length you'd need to reach the average artery. Beyond that length the knife is considered to be a weapon. That means you still could carry one, if you have a weapon permit.

You can buy longer, fixed knives, but for that you need to be older than 18. To carry them around you'd need to have a good justification, say, that you're fishing or hunting. That will usually be implausible in shopping mall and city settings.

 

There are murders most weekends. I guess that means laws against murder are pointless.

 

If you aren't going to use it, why would you be walking around with a sharpened, 8 inch Rambo replica dagger? The law doesn't kick in 3 seconds before you violate someone's rights. It tries to be a little pre-emptive in order to serve its other function-- maintaining public safety.

 

Not apples and oranges. Carrying a knife illegally is, well, illegal. Murder is illegal. The illegality doesn't prevent some people from carrying knives, nor does it prevent some of them from killing each other.

 

Irrelevant. Your argument was that the illegality of certain knives does not prevent people from carrying and using those knives.

So what? No law prevents people from doing that which is illegal.

 

drew, the violence Policy Centre is the group that thinks repealing the handgun ban in washington dc is going to cause dc to lose their ranking as the safest city as far as GUN SUICIDES go. not that the city is safe as far as gun violence goes( top 10 ) they seem to think that denying millions the right of self defense is ok as long as it reduces suicides?
you notice they never claim the handgun ban makes dc any safer as it doesnt.(remember it is in the top 10 most dangerous)

you need to look at the records a little closer violence in the '20s was so much lower than modern times look at the rate per 100000 population.

and your part about car ownership is wrong. you can own as many cars as you like, you never have to get them registered and never have to have a drivers license as long as you keep them on your OWN property. a man with a few acres can drive his cars as fast as he wants and as crazily as he wants without a license all he wants.
also your ARTIFICAL categorization of "gun violence" is, well...just dumb, violence is violence. there is no difference between being shot to death, beaten to death, stabbed to death or any other style. trying to create a subdivision just to validate your idea doesnt make it right.

ragusa, over here a CCP(concealed carry permit) is only good for handguns, it doesnt cover any other weapon. i know you are from germany so it may be different there
my overall comparing of cars , bats and guns is valid in that you see that people aren't blaming the INANIMATE OBJECT in some instances but they do with firearms(still just an inanimate object) are you aware just how little force is required to cave someones head in with a bat? anyone over 90 lbs is quite strong enough. and restricting knives by length is funny as one of the easist ways to kill someone with a knife is by cutting the carotid arteries on the frontsides of the neck. an inch is all you need. cut them both and the person is too busy trying to cough the blood out of their lungs to even attack you.(gag reflex, you know?)
anyway totally off topic. the small number of bad uses of firearms doesnt negate all the good uses that happen everyday.