@ NigeeBaby

The principle of self defense should not be selectively applied based on weapon type. A Saturday night special and an M60 will both help you defend yourself.

@Nigee,

The type of arms isn't really relevant to the debate. To say that the Framers of the Constitution never envisioned an AR-15 isn't the point. They included the 2nd Amendment to ensure that whatever technological advances came to pass, that the people would maintain their right to use those weapons in their own defense. You cannot simply say that because the Framers didn't know the rate of fire that was going to be achieved by modern firearms that the principle they established is now antiquated and untenable. Had they wanted to only include muzzle-loading black power muskets, what wouldn't they just have written such? They knew that arms have evolved, and would continue to evolve.

I suppose when you live in such a big country a massacre of children or innocent here and there is not taken as serious as my little old country, every atrocity or crime committed by an English person anywhere in the world scars the conscience of our nation, this mess up with the North Korean flag tonight is deeply embarrassing because we expect more from ourselves, this cock up is not good enough.
ff we had many more murders in our country maybe we would get a bit blase about it and give up the battle against gun murders? Is there any amount of gun crime that would help you give gun laws some serious thought or is that mind closed on the subject forever?

Gun laws don't necessarily stop gun crime, and often INCREASE it -- the stats from your own country illuminate that very fact.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1440764.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2640817.stm

Any thoughts? Seems like the "solutions" that you Brits are proposing for us Yanks are about the LAST thing that we'd want to do.

@ NigeeBaby

I simply can't believe that you continue to ignore the facts. Gun control does not work.

I remember back in the '70's we had a smoking culture, approx. 2/3rd of adults smoked so obviously very popular, there was a Berlin Wall, a Soviet Union, vinyl records, Andersons were the biggest most reputable Audit firm in the World, IBM, News of the World, Enron, etc, etc. (How times change eh) If anybody had said that social pressure, taxation and banning the advertisement of tobacco on TV would reduce the % of people smoking in 40 years to approx. 25% of adults no one would have believed you. Cigarettes are still completely legal but society decided smoking is no good, it's nothing to do with the legality of gun ownership, more to do with the mentality of people like yourselves supporting the proliferation and continued use of guns, its mental not legal.
So guys don't keep looking to govt to control guns, you're not a Communist state. Look to yourselves for the answers rather than rely on the state all the time, is buying a gun an educated persons`response to the fear of crime, another rendition of the star spangled banner for me please as I'm losing a bit of faith in your 'American Dream'. You know McDonalds, it's unhealthy food, just thought I'd mention it in case nobody had said anything, do you ever feel the people in power aren't telling you the important shit :-)

MM - this is funny, in that link you posted a classic quote
'Existing gun laws do not lead to crime reduction and a safer place'
says David Bredin
Campaign for Shooting

You pick the shit you want to read but it still comes down to education and personal choice, let's stop filling those young kids with burgers and start filling them with knowledge, they will be smarter and will be able to run away from the criminals rather than have to buy a gun and shoot them :-)

MM - 'A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned'.

The research, commissioned by the Countryside Alliance's Campaign for Shooting

You are funny :-)

The latest quarterly crime statistics for England and Wales for the period to September 2011 were released in January 2012.1
Provisional figures show that 6,285 firearm offences were recorded by the police in the year to September 2011, accounting for 0.2% of all recorded crime. There was a 19% fall in firearm offences in the year to September 2011, compared to the previous year.
Detailed information relating to firearm offences is published in annual bulletins by the Home Office and Scottish Government.2 The headline data for 2010/11 is summarised below:
Number of offences
•
In England and Wales firearms were reportedly used in 11,227 offences, 0.3% of all recorded crimes.
•
There were 7,024 offences in England and Wales in which firearms, excluding air weapons, were reportedly used, a 13% decrease on the previous year, continuing the general decline since 2005/06.
•
There were 4,203 recorded crimes in which air weapons were reportedly used during 2010/11, a fall of 15% compared with the previous year and 70% below the peak recorded in 2002/03.
•
In Scotland the police recorded 643 offences which involved the alleged use of a firearm, a 24% decrease on 2009/10. The number of offences has fallen in each of the last four years.
•
A non-air weapon was alleged to have been used in 410 offences, marginally lower than in 2009/10, while there were 233 alleged air-weapon offences, 45% lower than the previous year.

I guess the BBC is lying then huh?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2640817.stm

Sunday 12th January 2003 this report is from.

There were 4,203 recorded crimes in which air weapons were reportedly used during 2010/11, a fall of 15% compared with the previous year and 70% below the peak recorded in 2002/03.

So you found a BBC report 9 years old, I've just given you an up to date one showing a 70% drop from the peaks in 2002/2003.
Doncha just hate it when stats work against you like that

Guns are bad because they kill people, how many big macs are required to understand this complex equation ......

@ NigeeBaby

Frankly, I don't care about how gun control works in the UK. This discussion is about America and guns.

And your cigarette analogy is bullshit because cigarettes are always bad for you. It's easy to educate young people not to do something that is so obviously bad for them. I would argue that the drop in smoking rates is because smokers keep dying with no one to replace them.

Guns, when in responsible hands, only kill bad people.

"Guns, when in [responsible] hands, only kill bad people."

So do you agree that to ensure that gun ownership is limited as much as possible to responsible hands, some of regulation and control over access to guns is necessary, and the debate is simply about what types of limitations are reasonable?

NigeeBaby, you say you don't care about how the UK works. But when debating something, does it not make sense to step back and look how different approaches work in other parts of the World.

sorry, that was gunfighters comment, not nigeebaby

@Nigee, guns don't kill people. Bullets don't kill people. The person pulling the trigger kills people. The gun and the bullet are tools. And the fact that criminals like to use this tool (usually from the *blackmarket*) doesn't make it any less a tool. Limiting access by having laws that prohibit certain people ownership (known felons, the mentally unstable), requiring courses in handling guns *by type* (not one gun course fits all), requiring certain types of guns to be registered and stored at firing ranges or in a private gun club's safe, limiting access to mass quantities of ammunition, and even controlling the manufacture and import of certain types of guns to restrict the volume - all these rules make sense. But banning all guns altogether does not. And it isn't the same as cigarettes or Big Macs because generally, Big Macs and cigarettes are always bad for you, but it is the excessive consumption that is bad for you. I don't think owning a lot of guns is the same as eating a Big Mac every day for lunch or smoking a packs of cigarettes a day.

@KJII - You make the assumption that it works in those parts of the world. There was a time when no UK cop carried a gun. Now, they have special units like US SWAT teams that carry them as well as their detectives and what not and it's just you average street cop that doesn't. Something tells me that gun ctonrol has seen a slide in it's effectiveness when the UK needs special units with guns because some of their criminals still have them.

I heard someone up here say that "the act of acquiring the gun will make the a criminal" but that is bullshit. They are already criminals. They have ill-intent. And even today they usually can't buy a legal gun or, if they can, they don't want that gun being traceable, so they already use the blackmarket or steal them. Banning guns isn't going to change that. All it is going to do is make certain that only the bad guys and the cops have the guns. So when the bad guy invades my home he'll feel safe in the knowledge that I don't have a gun. And when that rogue cop decides to commit an attrocity (they exist and it happens, ask my brother - a city cop himself for a medium sized city in the Greater Cincinnati area) then he does so with impugnity knowing that the person he is abusing and victimizing can't do anything to stop him.

Both extremes are stupid. Requiring gun ownership, well any city or state that told me I had to own one would be giving the bird. I don't own one and won't have one in my house. But many of my neighbors do and I feel safer knwoing they have them should the shit hit the fan and our neighborhood be victimized by ne'erdowells.

And the other extreme of "no guns ever" is also stupid. When you make it illegal to buy, sell, or own a gun, then you increase the blackmarket flow and embolden and empower the criminals who know they con feel confident their victims won't be able to defend themselves. "Oh look! He brought a knife to a gunfight!" is what they'll say to themselves if anyone tries to stand up to them.

No, there is a medium ground. Legal guns should be registered. Certain types should be controlled such that the purchaser has 24 or 48 hours to transport them to a gun club/firing range and the serial number is recorded at the time of sale and on storing it at the aforementioned gun club so the authroities know the person abided by the law and will get warnings if someone exceeds the grace period for registering it at it's new home. Limit transport of said specialty guns from place to place such that they cannot be carried loaded or transported with munitions at the same time. And finally, control the flow of munitions like we do prescription drugs such that you can buy ammunition that doesn't fit a gun that isn't registered to you and that you are limited in how much ammunition you may buy in a given time period. I would even go so far as to suggest that purchasing ammunition for the high-powered semi-auto rifle (non-hunting) could only be done at the club/range and would be like hitting golf balls at the driving range. You can buy as many as you like while you are there, but you have to use them all up.

@ Draugnar, good post

( ouch, it hurt to say that )

particularly the last part if "regreational shooters" want to fire artillery at decommisioned tanks on a Licensed Range thats the place to have it available for enthusiasts

a major problem with "lax & poorly regulated" gun control combined with a high rate of gun ownership pre capita are the number of gun injuries & deaths per capita caused by familly members using the poorly secured gun & ammunition on other family members,
----- dealing with children arriving at Hospital ER's after "playing" with mummy's or daddy's gun is something your ER professionals in the US probably get plenty of experience with--their views on gun control might be worth listening to, since they get to deal with the results, and there's got to be the "health cost" associated --another burden for public & private health care systems

@ FriendlySword

Every law-abiding adult with no criminal record and no history of mental illness should be able to own and carry a gun. Anyone outside of those parameters should not be able to own or carry a gun. I am not arguing about that. No right is unlimited. The First Amendment does not protect slanderers or violence-inciters. In the same way, the Second Amendment does not apply to criminals or mentally incompetent people.

However, there should also be no debate over which gun types should be banned. No gun type should be banned. Anything less than 20mm (widely accepted as the point at which guns stop and cannons start) should be available to any citizen meeting my parameters listed above. Why can't I own a fully automatic rifle? Why can't I own a short-barreled shotgun? Why can't I have armor-piercing ammuntion? Why can't I have incendiary ammunition? Why can't I own a Beta magazine? Why can't I own a silencer? Why can't my gun have a folding stock? Why can't I have a drum magazine for my automatic shotgun? An M2 .50 caliber machine gun isn't any more dangerous than a Ruger LCP if both weapons are used responsibly. Bans on specific weapons or weapon types are foolish and unconstitutional.

@ KingJohnII

So, you choose to ignore the obvious differences in culture? I cannot have a serious argument with you until you acknowledge that American culture and British culture are very, very different.

@ Draugnar

"Both extremes are stupid. Requiring gun ownership, well any city or state that told me I had to own one would be giving the bird."

Example: Kennesaw, Georgia requires gun ownership for every home except if the homeowner has religious or moral objections to owning one. Kennesaw also has basically zero serious crime, well below the national average for a city of its size. I believe this extreme, while drastic, appears to work quite well at stopping crime.

@ MajorMitchell and Draugnar

Requiring range use of non-hunting weapons is stupid. If I own a lot of land in the middle of nowhere, why can't I buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition and shoot whenever I want to? I am not opposed of ordinances banning shooting in cities and towns (the noise is a public nuisance), but requiring the gun to be fired at a range is completely bull. That's way too big brother.

@ Major Mitchell

Accidents happen. The parents should be punished for child endangerment if they leave an unsecured gun lying around. But banning guns isn't the answer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18996026

I'm with President Obama on this one......

"A lot of what this young man did was clearly against the law..."

A LOT? How about EVERYTHING the guy did on that day was illegal.

"But the fact that it was against the law did not prevent it from happening,"

Exactly. Laws are do a very poor job of PREVENTION, despite what legislators try to make their constituents believe. Laws punish those that violate them, they don't stop people bent on breaking them from doing so.

@Gunfighter - The original Kennesaw law was unconstitutional and they knew it, so now all you have to do is say you object on moral grounds (give them the bird). Not exactly a law with teeth now, is it? It's a stupid meaningless law because anyone who doesn't own a gun can just say they object on moral grounds. The burden is on the prosecution to prove they don't actually morally object and how would the prosecution manage to do that?

@Gunfighter - Define middle of nowhere. One stray bullet fired slightly upwards and not accurately can travels for more than a mile. The effective range (accurate with an expert firing) on some snipers rifles is over 2 kilometers. That's about 1.25 miles. And that is effective range. Fired at a 30% up angle and without aiming and that round can travel more than 2 miles. So again, what is middle of nowhere? I used to live in some very rural areas but there was still another house within two miles in any direction of the old farmhouse.

And incendiary rounds and armor piercing have the added threat of catching something on fire or traveling *through* any wall they may come in contact with. Look at the CO incident. People in the next theater were injured because his roudns went through the wall.

The right to bear arms does not give you the right to freely operate any "smal arms" you like with any type of munition in any amount. It gives you a right to own a gun and have ammunition for it (so a ban of all handguns is against it as Chicago found out) but it does not give carte blanche to any ammo type (only one ammo existed when it was written) or type of firearm (only a few types existed, none of which were automatic or even semi automatic at the time) and so it is not unreasonable to interpret it to mean weapons approriate for hunting and home/self defense as that is all that existed when the Constitution was written. In other words, signle shot rifles/shotguns and revolvers or semi automatic handguns with small magazines.

Gunfighter

Given that plenty of adults who have no criminal record or record of mental illness can still have incredibly poor judgement and hurt themselves or other handling guns without know-how, I think it is also justified to require a demonstration of ability to use certain types of weapons before you are permitted to purchase them. This is exactly the same principle that requires obtaining a license before operating a vehicle. Would you also agree with this limitation? If so we really don't have much disagreement.

Additionally:

"Anything less than 20mm (widely accepted as the point at which guns stop and cannons start) should be available to any citizen"

You say that there should be no limitation on the types of weapons available for purchase... yet you do set a limitation, albeit a very high one. What's the rationale for this? Why can't I purchase a tank as long as I use it responsibly? A bazooka? A heavy barreled machine gun? Is there are principled reason for the distinction, or is it simply based on an evaluation of what is an excessive level of destructive potential? If so, is this distinction any less arbitrary than setting the limit of purchasable weapons at anything below an automatic weapon?

I have to agree with AmicableCutlery (haven't called him that in a while :-) ) in that I think a proper handling and firign class for any *class* of weapon should be mandatory to get a permitand buy/own a gun. This would include hands on practical experience intially with the unloaded weapon (learning to break it down and clean it and yes I know it is different for each gun, but demonstrating proper safety procedure shile doing it is the kjey) and also handling the weapon. You wouldn't have to clualify as a expert, marksman, or sharpshooter like in the service, but at least show you can fire and come close enough to your intended target as to not be a serious threat to someone in your hunting party <grin>.

But I should point out that many semi-autos have a maens in a machine shop of being converted to full automatic, usually with some machining down of parts.

Friendly Sword,

I don't have too much of an issue with your idea concerning a required demonstration proficiency. However, it does open the door for simply "rubber stamping" failure of that test by an agency/administration in sneaky way around the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately, this is by no means unprecedented. Let me explain.

If one looks at the history of the prohibition on narcotics in the US, they'll find something very interesting. At one point in time one could buy cocaine, opium, heroine, marijuana, etc. at the local drug store. A movement arouse to "ban" the sale and use of these substances. However, that movement, rightly, ran into Constitutional opposition. Basically, the argument was that the government couldn't limit adults from purchasing and consuming products as long as they're not harming another in doing so -- back to the Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. To get around this, the Federal government came up with an tricky little plan -- they passed a "stamp act" of sorts, that required all sales of certain narcotics to have a "federal stamp." The kicker, they NEVER give out the stamp. As such, they effectively made the sale of narcotics illegal. The same could be down with firearms.

@ Draugnar

I am well aware of the effective and ballistic ranges of common small arms. Hell, the good old .22LR can travel up to a mile if fired at the correct angle. Most responsible gun owners would never fire a weapon into the air for this reason. Every New Year a few people across the country get hit and killed by random gunfire. Also, see below for my response to FS's idea of a "gun test"

"The right to bear arms does not give you the right to freely operate any "smal[l] arms" you like with any type of munition in any amount."

Why not? Does the Second Amendment say "You can carry guns, but not AP ammo or automatic guns". All it says is "arms". Fully automatic weapons and specialist ammunition fall into the category of "arms".

@ Friendly Sword

I would not be opposed to the idea of some sort of proficiency demonstration, especially for higher-powered or automatic weapons. I don't like the idea of someone owning an automatic weapon and not being able to control it (Trust me, you need gorilla arms or vertical grips to keep a larger caliber automatic on target). Some US states have a progressive licensing system, where you can easily get licenses for handguns and revolvers, then work your way up to rifles and automatics.

As I've said before, no right is completely unlimited. I am not opposed to reasonable licensing requirements. But blanket bans and unobtainable permits are not the answer. I'm sure you have some common ground with me on that. There are plenty of people that would be interested in owning and firing advanced weapons for recreational purposes.

The only problem is that, like MichiganMan said above, it would be all too easy for the government to enforce a de facto ban just by refusing to pass the applicant.

Why would you entrust so many human beings with such an effective means of extinguishing other humans lives?

@iMurk,

I think that is a very naive point of view. That "effective means of extinguishing other humans lives" genie is already out of the bottle and it cannot be put back. Whether it was a stone hand-ax, a long bow, a sword, or an AR-15, human beings have always had the means, and the motive, to kill others. As such, those of us that do not want to be victims of violent criminals, choose to defend ourselves with like technology. We trust governments, who are by far and away the most dangerous element in society, so why should We the People be trusted?