Guns don’t kill people, people kill people
But guns certainly make it easier.
Like most people living Asia, I woke up to the morning news and the first RSS feed I read was on the Virginia Tech shooting, the worst of its kind in American history. I think it’s about time some people get it through their thick skulls that private ownership of guns is a stupid thing. I am disturbed that any emotionally unstable teen can pick up a gun from his father’s locker and kill. I am disgusted that Republican politicians like Mitt Romney have to suck up to the NRA to please the conservative voters. I think the Second Amendment is a good idea badly conveyed and horribly misinterpreted.
Read on for why.
The founding fathers assumed that power corrupts and a government always requires checks and balances to remain true to the people’s interest. For that purpose, the people must have the ability to rise against an oppressive government should the need arise and thus the need for private ownership of guns. This might have been effective two hundred years ago when everyone used wooden musket guns and it didn’t take a lot of effort to burn down the White House, but today it is absurd to think that any private militia can have the firepower to match the US military’s cutting-edge technology and astronomical budget. Does anyone seriously believe that keeping a pistol by your bedside will help you if someone decided to turn America into a theocratic dictatorship? Unless you are Laura Bush, the answer is definitely “no”.
And that is exactly why no other functional democracies in the world relies on private gun ownership as a safeguard against a corrupted government. Instead they rely on dividing the power among different branches of the government and on an educated and well-informed population. If the day comes when it becomes necessary for the people to overthrow the government by force, then democracy has already failed. Are advocates of gun ownership saying that democracy in America is so screwed up and unreliable that such an arrangement is really called for, in spite of the innumerable negative effects it has on society? What a huge insult to the system that is the pride of so many Americans.
Not only does private gun ownership contribute absolutely nothing to in today’s democracies, it brings about a boatload of otherwise avoidable social problems. Some people feel unsafe without a gun for self defence because they would otherwise stand no chance against an armed criminal. But the irony is that the criminal is armed only because he too is allowed to possess firearms under the same set of laws. These gun right advocates claim that if gun control laws are passed, then honest citizens will be robbed of their right to self defence while the criminals continue to arm themselves with black market guns. But they are wrong. With proper law enforcement, criminals will have access to less guns than before and ultimately the number of gun-related violent crimes will drop. It is selfish for people to keep guns to protect themselves at the expense of public safety because it creates a harmful environment where guns are more easily obtainable.
Also, it is important to note that carrying a gun does not necessarily mean you are safer. If an armed man robs me, I will give up my valuables and stand a good chance of walking away from the encounter alive, because the goal of the robber is money and generally it is wiser to avoid killing and causing unnecessary trouble. On the other hand, if I respond by pulling out a gun, the situation changes and one of two things happen: I shoot him or he shoots me. Either way, someone will die.
Guns make killing all to easy. You can be walking home from work and end up getting shot by a drunk and bored teenager, or attending lessons when your classmate who just got dumped by his girlfriend pulls out a gun and shoot you. The people committing these murders are not members of organized criminal syndicates, they are emotionally unstable stupid teenagers who have an all-too-easy access to legally-purchased guns. Maybe mafia mobsters will continue to have access to black market guns even after gun control laws are passed, but at least these idiots will not. If the laws are enforced by a competent police force, and yet a criminal manages to obtain a gun illegally without getting caught, then clearly he possesses a higher level of intelligence and self discipline than the Columbine shooters.
And without guns, what will crazy nut jobs do in the spur of the moment when caught in a heated argument that they just can’t win with words alone? The worst they can do is to stab the other party with a knife. If they can even figure out how. Maybe they will succeed killing one person, but you can bet that it will not be 32 people. In a society that allows private gun ownership, the sanctity of life is cheapened to a trigger squeeze.
Knives, baseball bats, metal rods, golf clubs, lengths of rope, glass shards, rocks and, yes, even guns can kill people. The difference is that guns do it too well to be allowed in the hands of the untrained and undisciplined masses. Police officers and soldiers are duty bound and professionally responsible for their actions, it’s what they are trained to do. The average emo teenager on LJ is neither. I’m not saying that it is impossible for a trained soldier to loss his cool and commit murder, but I think it’s obvious which one is more likely to cause the next record-breaking campus shooting.
…But I guess freedom and liberty and whatnot is more important than going to school without having to pass through metal detectors. Whenever will some people learn to see what is true freedom?
stun guns for non lethal self defense. Stun guns are an inexpensive and effective means to protect yourself. Legal almost everywhere.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:25 am
OUT LAW GUNS,,, HEY THAT WORKED SO WELL WITH DRUGS I THINK SOME OF THE PEOPLE HERE SMOKED THERES BEFORE LEAVING THERE REPLY
April 30th, 2007 at 12:26 am
>>> How easy is it get access to illegal guns? How easy would it be to get access to illegal guns if guns were banned?
It’s called “smuggling”. You know, people from other countries buy weapons (illegal or legal kind) and smuggle them into the USA illegally, then sell them to people who want to get them, who for the most part probably are criminals.
As a side note, a friend of mine, as well as my mother, lived in Virginia for a long time. The crime rate there went up when guns were banned, and really hasn’t gone down that much.
And as for a link that proves presence of guns doesn’t really increase the frequency of crimes, take a look here. It’s a few years old, but I’m sure it’s just as accurate as the day it was written.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288
On a final note, I myself own a rifle, and have owned a rifle, and plan to own one pistol. Not because I believe in protecting myself and others around me, that’s a given. I would give my life to protect myself and my friends, whether I carried a firearm or not. I own these weapons as a hobby. I go out to ranges (shooting ranges) and shoot my weapons. I go home, and I clean them. I keep the shell casings merely on a whim, and arrange them around my room because I can. Also, I keep my ammunition locked up in a combination safe that only I know the combination to. Unless someone brings their own ammo into my place, no one will be using my weapons to kill anyone.
I pride myself as a collector of things, and one thing that catches my fancy is firearms. I don’t keep them to “protect myself from the greater evil” or some other bullshit like that. That’s just a biproduct of having, in my eyes. That’s just a shallow and transparent argument for having guns, in my eyes, and if that’s how you feel, join the police. My roommate is, because he has that kind of mentality, and he as well owns many more firearms than I do. He similarly keeps them locked up in two different safes: one for ammunition, one for weapons. I know it would make them difficult to get to in an emergency, but that is the price of weapons-safety.
This argument can be made over and over and over, but it will never solve anything. And before you go off saying things about me because of what I’ve said and who I am, I do want to keep myself and others safe, and I might end up joining the police or the military. My father and mother both were in the military at some point in their lives. As were their parents. I would not think of joining unless it was something I myself wanted to do, and I might just do that. No one needs a reason to want to protect others from something, all they need is a means. Guns, knives, your fists, can provide those means. Up till now, I’ve been using my fists and blades to protect myself and my friends. I might soon upgrade to a firearm, but haven’t given it that much thought. Not everyone who supports guns and gun-ownership are totally convservative psychos. ya know. It’s just sad that this country is built pretty much that way.
May 15th, 2007 at 9:33 am
I think whether private ownership of guns is appropriate is decided by the actual instance of different countries.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Beverly Hills Teen Charged in Hammer Attack on Girl
Saturday , May 19, 2007
AP
LOS ANGELES — A 17-year-old Beverly Hills boy accused of beating a prep school classmate with a claw hammer as they sat in his Jaguar must remain in a psychiatric hospital, a judge ruled.
A juvenile court judge on Friday refused to order the teenager removed from the hospital where he was admitted after being taken into custody Monday. He was charged as a juvenile with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
The boy, whose name was not released because of his age, attacked a 17-year-old girl who also attended exclusive Harvard-Westlake School as they sat in his car on a Studio City street, authorities said.
The girl’s mother, Barbara Hayden, told the Los Angeles Times her daughter was struck 40 times with a claw hammer, breaking her nose, shattering her leg and splitting open her scalp in several places.
“Her hair and face were caked with blood,” Hayden said. “On the left side, her head was shaped like a football.”
Hayden said her daughter told her that before pulling the hammer from a backpack her classmate said he had thought about committing suicide.
The boy’s lawyer, Patrick Smith, said his client was troubled but declined to elaborate.
After her attacker hit her several times, the girl’s mother said, he pulled her from the car by her hair and continued assaulting her until the hammer broke. Then he began to choke her until she bit his finger.
______________________
Uh-oh! Better ban claw hammers!!
Guns Don’t Kill People, Gun Control Kills People
July 6th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Simple post.
People kill people.
Guns don’t kill people. Gun control doesn’t kill people. Atomic bombs don’t kill people. Oxidation doesn’t kill people. Water doesn’t kill people (well, usually).
Well, I like to think the problem usually comes from gun inequality. In america, some have guns, some don’t. Therefore the ones that don’t are less safe than the ones that have.
So. You either ban guns from everyone except the police, military and such (and hope they’re competent). Or you force everyone to have guns.
I know. It sounds crazy. Its from a Repairman Jack book. The guy mentioned compulsory checks on roadblocks for everyone to have guns. Then he’ll move out for a few years, wait for the massacres to settle and go back to the politest country you’ll ever see.
But then, I see your point.
Freedom is limited to the intelligence of the people.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
The ironical thing is, I read a statistic somewhere that says that your life is in greater danger if you own a gun than if you don’t.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:33 am
just leave the guns alone because the guns are most country folks self defence if you are going to dis anything then dis the dumb people that do the killing
July 31st, 2008 at 10:28 am
….Wow, 1) You’ll never get them outlawed, because of hunting, and I am a hunter 2) I love guns, and many people enjoy being able to go to a range with their privately owned firearm, or carry one around for protection, so because a few people use them terribly (and the press jumps all over it) they should be outlawed? If guns were outlawed, people would still be killed, and anyways, remember the prohibition? It would be the same thing, and eventually they’d have to legalize them again.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
i’m can see points for and against in regards to this.
I believe one of the main causes behind deaths involving firearms, as that the person weilding them don’t respect the firepower they are waving around and have not been properly trained in how to use them safely, and people who have never fired a gun in their life cannot make an informed decision on gun ownership cos they haven’t experienced what it’s like to fire one.
i myself only fired a gun recently on my 21st birthday and it was only after i pulled the trigger that the realisation hit home, that every hole in the target is another person dead, but at the same time, it allowed me to treat the gun with respect, and as such me, and the whole family, had a great time.
the country i live in (australia) has had it’s share of nasty shooting massacres, most prominent being the port arthur massacre, because of that one in particular guns became heavily restricted or banned in most cases, however this has done nothing to lower crime rates, the number of illegal firearms found or used just keeps piling up instead and there were still a couple of shooting spree’s which occured sometime after the port arthur massacre.
also there are other uses for guns beside defence, pest control for example (wild pigs are a massive problem here) as well as target shooting, which is a legitimate sport, so it really comes down what you want to own a gun for, and what type of gun, yeah no one needs an automatic weapon, thatsa given, but owning a rifle for hunting, or a pistol for target shooting, yeah thats ok with me, so long as the person is trained in how to use it properly and safely.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Just going back to the Japanese censorship topic from a previous post…
Millions of people own / possess firearms… some of them are serial killers.
I’m not going to say what gun is appropriate, what isn’t, what is for hunting, or what is for self defense. I believe that self-defense is a unalienable human right, and that a gun is most powerful when it does not have to be used. But, like any power, it can be misused and abused.
Banning firearms will not prevent crimes from being performed with firearms. A society that promotes respect for laws and life and justly punishes law breakers that do not, will get much better results. Not everyone needs to own a firearm… just enough to provide adequate deterrence. If a mugger thinks that one in five people might be armed, he just might think twice about attacking someone. Unfortunately, most cities are “gun free” zones, and 10 out of 10 people are potential victims.