GUN CONTROL - A Big Waste of Time?

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Submitted by realitycheck on April 4, 2006 - 7:30am.

Gun Control – A Big Waste of Time?

WARNING: Some of the following statistics may shock, horrify and worry you. However they are 100% true.

*35% of homes in the U.S (11 million homes, 22 million kids) have a gun in the home, and the kids are younger then 18.

*9% of homes have guns, unlocked, loaded, with 1.7 million kids.

*Another 4% of homes have the guns stored unlocked with the ammunition stored near by.

*50% of the homes mentioned are not aware that their child(ren) know the location of their gun(s).

What is the purpose of a gun?
From what I understand a gun is a tool that should be used by the Armed forces, law enforcement and hunters. However, you can watch the 5 O’clock news and realize that this is not the case at all. As I have mentioned in my other blogs, this year one person had died every day in Detroit. This is a serious issue. You can clearly se that guns are in the wrong hands.

What is Gun Control?
The debate over gun ownership is centered on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which protects "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."
Gun control advocates believe that right does not extend to ownership of military-style firearms that are otherwise known as assault weapons. They point to incidents such as the Columbine high school massacre in April 1999, which resulted in the deaths of 14 students (including the two gunmen) and a teacher, in support of banning assault weapons. They also support measures intended to curb gun-related violence, such as mandatory child safety locks, background checks on those wishing to purchase a gun, limits on the number of guns a person can buy and raising the age limit for gun ownership.

Gun rights groups, led by the National Rifle Association, argue that these and other proposals infringe on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. They maintain that bans on the sale of certain types of weapons have not proved effective in reducing violent crime, and that proposals for stricter background checks at gun shows are designed to eliminate gun shows themselves. Some gun manufacturers have volunteered support for safety locks, but the NRA has criticized safety locks for placing an undue burden on gun manufacturers without a proven benefit to the public.

Do these Laws actually WORK?
Today we have over 20,000 local, state and federal laws which cover every aspect of using, owning, carrying, buying, transporting, storing and possessing a firearm. Yet, with all these new laws, the majority of which have been created since 1968, we have had more and more illegal use of firearms than ever before. Despite all the laws and despite harsher penalties. One has to ask why?

What is the Goverenment TRYING to do?
1. Raise the age of gun ownership to 21 in all states or raise the minimum age for purchasing a handgun from 18 to 21.
The press reports that a HANDGUN purchase can only be made by a 21 year old. This is good, but did you know that a handgun is seldomely used in crimes like The Columbine Shootings? Infact, a handgun was reported to be used in only three school shootings total!

2. Hold parents criminally liable when their guns are used by juveniles in a crime. This is Carolyn McCarthy's legislation which provides criminal penalties for adults if juveniles used their weapons for illegal purposes.
Yup, you may have all ready guessed it – even if a child heroically shoots a burgular breaking into his home, the parents are charged with a crime. This is a NO EXCEPTION LAW. Parents can’t even allow their child to handle an unloaded gun. Children can not fire a gun under adult supervision.

3. Making child-safety gun locks mandatory.
Among most people who keep a firearm for protection, the two most insurmountable obstacles to "child safety locks" is either the need for an external key or the reliance on a battery in some kind of locking system. Keys can be misplaced, especially in the dark when under stress and batteries are notorious for registering OK then the next use drains them just when you need them (like my flashlight or cell phone).

MY OPINION: I am kind of confused why my local grocers carry gun ammunition. I live in Detroit. There’s no where to go hunting here. There’s very few shooting ranges, and they are not even in the city. Are we asking for problems? It seems like we are.
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Sources:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/guns/

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The second amendment

#54373 On April 4, 2006 7:52am o ceallaigh said,
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The actual text states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As is exhaustively explored here, that "well-regulated Militia" part is grounded in English history, where militias served various purposes. Colonial militias, even though they were next to useless in the Revolutionary War, nevertheless were modelled on English militias and evolved into today's National Guard.

A subtext, here, though, is that certain English kings attempted to force disarmament on their subjects. Rightly or wrongly, this was viewed as despotism and resisted. This subtext, in my opinion, is crucial to understanding Amendment 2: the right of a citizenry to retain the ability to resist, with armed force if necessary, the oppression of its own Government, Mr. Bush.

IMO, our problem is not the Second Amendment. I think the Founders were wise beyond our ken to put and keep it in there. Our problem (and where have you heard this before :( ) is our failure to educate and discipline ourselves as to the proper use of the weaponry, of the responsibilities attending on our right to bear arms.

Oh and incidentally, gun deaths are still a very small fraction of the deaths we accept without murmur on the nation's highways.

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Nancy J We need to address

#54390 On April 4, 2006 10:23am Nancy J said,

Nancy J
We need to address the reason why people want to kill each other AND teach the difference between right and wrong, a knowledge that is sadly lacking in our society. If you study history, you will find that people were killing each other on a large scale way before guns or firearms were invented. They used knives (and still do), swords, explosives, rocks, boulders, sticks, poison, ropes, hatchets, axes, and a host of other weapons. You cannot remove all of these things from our midst. It is the hate in the heart that must be removed.

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There is one thing you're lacking in your...

#54394 On April 4, 2006 11:34am Maverick said,
Maverick's picture

Assessment of the history of killing and guns. Guns caused a fundemental change in what was required to kill people. If you have a sword and want to kill someone basically he's got to be armed and want to fight you. If he's not armed or doesn't want to fight he can run... who do you think runs faster, you with a sword or some guy who's gunna die if you catch him and no sword?

Let's swaps swords with guns now for a comparison. If I have a gun and I want to kill you how much good do you think running is going to do?

Oh, wait, your list wasn't inclusive. Obviously you meant to include bows as well. How quickly can you draw and fire a bow? What's the effective range on a bow? Sure, longbow has an effective range that's a fair amount further than your typical handgun. Of course, you couldn't draw a longbow and even if I could draw it I couldn't hit the broad side of a mountain.

I can go on and on and into much greater detail on this topic, but the short of it is that killing someone with a gun as compared to historically killing someone with other weapons requires much less skill, fairness in terms, and desire to kill. Can a child mistakenly kill his friend with his father's sword? No, he can't lift his father's sword and certainly can't wield it effectively.

You do almost touch upon a good point, though. It was the nature of swords and the like to have great respect for the weapons because of the years of investment in training and the fundementally different combat environment.

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Sword culture

#54395 On April 4, 2006 11:46am o ceallaigh said,
o ceallaigh's picture

It was the nature of swords and the like to have great respect for the weapons because of the years of investment in training

Swords were also hideously expensive, unlikely to be found in the hands of one not of noble blood or of the high bourgeoisie (i.e., peasant poor). And they also required a lot of maintenance. Among the greatest calumnies on a person was to accuse him of having a rusty sword (too poor or dissolute to tend to his weapon).

Maybe that's the problem. Guns are too cheap. But if they get to be so expensive that they're monopolized by an elite, then we're up against the issue that spawned Amendment 2 in the first place ...

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Sell Guns but not Bullets

#54400 On April 4, 2006 12:15pm realitycheck said,
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Mav has very good points. They seem so obvious but I never though of it like that.
Possibly he is right, guns are too easy to obtain, too easy to use and also (as O'C says) cheap.
Guns are also easy to hide. I can't imagine a person hiding a sword in his jacket pocket.
If the cost of guns went sky high would this prevent some of the crime? It may for the domestic cases. I don't think it'd stop gang crimes or drug related crimes.
It does seem like a descent idea though. Far superior to punishing parents who are teaching a child how to shoot a pistol in a safe environment.
Hell, ever since I was 5 we'd go up north and I'd watch my Uncle teach my cousins how to shoot every kinda gun imagineable. They were taught gun safety. Guns were NOT toys.
The older the kids got the cooler guns we got to shoot. Semi automatic Tommy's, you name it. But we always learned the proper care and handling.
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Realitycheck the Thompson Gunner??

#54409 On April 4, 2006 1:06pm o ceallaigh said,
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And never a headless one, I hope. But man, I ain't messin' round your bar!! :) :)

I never went beyond a Remington .22. I was sixteen. On a range. Got my prize and walked away. Have never picked up a locked'n'loaded since. Nor wanted to, really. Though I've got a couple of colleagues back in Maine who'd like to change that ...

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