Shooting In Us University

Well, I of course don't know where in the UK you live, Powerscourt but I do not believe that you should be permitted to possess a gun for self-protection and I am pretty certain that when your firearms licence comes up for renewal, if that was the quoted reason to renew, the gun would be removed immediately and quite right too. I am interested to know how you being in possession of a firearm would actually prevent such an incident in this country - how would anyone breaking in to your home know you carried a gun?

Grande Armee's statistics in Australia show that being unable to carry guns has had a positive effect on the reduction in gun-related incidents, so there can be no justification in the US's inistence on the right to carry arms. We can also demonstrate the same.

We've had this discussion before and it will continue to resurface while the US continues to support such a gun carrying culture.

Incidentally, while it may yet happen here, I can't remember any suicide car bombers in recent history in the UK
 
Grande Armee's statistics in Australia show that being unable to carry guns has had a positive effect on the reduction in gun-related incidents, so there can be no justification in the US's inistence on the right to carry arms. We can also demonstrate the same.
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IIRC, gun crime went up in the UK after the post-Dunblane laws were brought in.

Regarding justification, there is ample justification for allowing citizens to carry guns if that is what the majority demands and the law has always allowed - although whether either or both of those is the case in the US is up for debate.
 
Originally posted by Songsheet@Apr 17 2007, 12:09 PM
Apologies, Powerscourt, for the assumption.

Still don't agree with the principle, though!
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OK Songsheet, we will just have to agree to disagree then.
 
I would have no problem using it if my life or my family were threatened in any way.
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Powerscourt - how would you make the call? What does 'in any way' mean? If your family were threatened with, say, a black eye, would you shoot?
 
What would be 'ample justification' for carrying a Glock around with you? They look quite nice and I'd really like to demonstrate ample justification for having one on me. It'd take care of those freakin' charity collectors and 'just five minutes' market researchers for a start - perhaps I could claim their takedown as a community service?

And, really, Powerscourt - much as I love most of your posts (well, those which agree with me, anyway) - c'mon - if the majority of the population want something or don't want something, you don't seriously believe Congress is going to dish it out or withold it, do you? Think a few million demonstrating against the Viet Nam war, against the invasion of Iraq, trying to get pensions rights sorted, veterans' disability payments... uhhh, no. Didn't see your government giving the people, no matter their will, what they wanted there! There were how many civil rights marches before those damn pesky blacks got a few laws enacted to give them nearly equal rights to the white man, an issue I'd put just slightly ahead of people paddying to carry around lethal weapons.

And how often do gun holders have their mental health checked, I wonder? How often are they checked to see whether, since initially taking out their licence, they have developed a drug dependency or a medical condition (let's say schizophrenia for starters) which should preclude them handling guns, where the sole reason for their existence is to injure or kill? You can't ban kitchen knives, rope, axes or hammers, even if they are used frequently in attacks and murders. You'll always get someone employing non-guns to carry out their lethal assaults, but you don't buy a gun for any other purpose but to maim or kill. Well, okay, in the case of clays, blast something inert to tiny pieces, but you get my drift!
 
you don't buy a gun for any other purpose but to maim or kill
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No, you don't fire a gun for any other purpose but to maim or kill. The difference being that there's probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans who have bought a gun but who have never, or will never, actually end up firing it.

(Ignoring shooting for sport, training, practice etc.)
 
Now, Gareth, stop it! You're presumably a big NRA fan, are you? Because that's the sort of guff we'd hear from them, excusing yet another mad rampage. You don't buy a car to just wax it and keep it in the garage, do you? If you buy a gun - in America, and leaving aside the sports issues - for 'protection', you buy it with the express purpose of being able to fire it one day, whether for self-protection or the defence of one's property.

However, you may well go doolally in the meantime, crazed by drugs, or not being on the right ones, and then your perception of why you have a gun can change very rapidly. Most of the people who've mown down others en masse have had some sort of mental disorder - extreme depression, delusional, schizophrenia, etc., - before the killing/s, sometimes triggered by the stress of an emotional event (death of family member, departure of spouse or partner), and their anger has been vented on the public.

The other reason people buy guns (again leaving aside the fun to be had blasting deer, bear, wild pigs, wild turkeys, or your golfing companion) is for criminal intent. With no background checks being made by the state of Virginia, the criminality here seems to rest with the state's own laxity. What the hell are they thinking? Sweet home Virginnny-i-a, where everybody knows everybody, and nobody thinks a mean thought? WAKE UP!
 
An ad hominem in just the second sentence, nice. I stopped reading after that - come back to me when you actually want to argue the point.
 
You have contributed two statements which the NRA regularly uses to shore up its own validation of gun ownership at all costs, Gareth. That should be clear enough. If you meant to say them ironically (or sarcastically) then I didn't get that. I don't have a point to ARGUE - I said what would be said about this case, as it's said about them all and, frankly, everyone in America has so far followed the same corny script. There is no will to change the status quo, so there isn't a point to argue. One just accepts the reality of gun ownership and the equal reality of future spree shootings.
 
Rather than restrict yourself to making points about the actual statements I made, you're content to associate them with the NRA and imply that that's all you need to do to invalidate them. It's not. If you're interested in discussing the points on their own merits, I'd be happy to - but indulging in the kind of fallacious logic that George W Bush himself would be proud of is not on.
 
Unfortunately with the teachers unarmed, the gunman was able to slaughter his 30+ victims unchecked. If the teachers, or even some of the more “responsible” older students, were carrying weapons then the gunman could have been taken-down before such a massive loss of life occurred.

Remember guns can act as a deterrent too.
 
I have often thought that but that is a bureau in the USA.

betsmate, I can't have that for reasons already stated. More guns does not solve the problem, merely exacerbates it. More stringent controls would limit the number of people who can buy guns and the number of guns they can buy. In Virginia, they have introduced gun control for handguns - a maximum of one per week. 52 guns a year? Just about enough I reckon.
 
Gareth, if I had the slightest idea what you're saying, I'd be pleased to carry on a dialogue with you. But I honestly don't!

The President murmurs condoling words (on this and on any similar occasion, as a country would expect), but the NRA lobby is so strong, so aggressive, and so - let's be frank - bullying, he and this and probably all successive governments haven't a hope in hell of ever putting the brakes on gun ownership. The NRA will say - well, rather it was Charlton Heston who said it for them - that guns don't kill people, people do (which you just repeated yourself) and that you don't need to fire them even if you own one (which ditto). That's why I wondered if you supported the NRA? And I wasn't being sarcastic - maybe you agree with those statements, after all, thousands of Americans do. Possibly including some of the 30,000 of them killed in gun-related crime every year, let alone the additional thousands badly maimed or lightly winged.

Gun ownership must imply you intend to use the thing, or else why would you ever own one/them? Did you see on the BBC news tonight that you can buy an ASSAULT RIFLE over some Virginian's kitchen counter - yes, right out of his house, for $100, and all he asks you is do you have any priors? Asks you, not checks first and hands over a terrible weapon later. He had an impressive range of handguns with 'something for everyone' and very cheaply priced, too. How can this be an acceptable situation?
 
At no point in this thread have I mentioned the NRA. That is entirely something that has been thrown at me in order to try and discredit my view, which as I've made clear is a pretty disappointing tactic. They are my own views, my own opinions, which - whether anyone thinks they stand up to scrutiny or not - come from what I believe is a pragmatic, logical position on the reality of the situation.
 
You'll never stop gun crime - it's not stopped it here in the UK.

But you can make it a hell of a lot harder, something the US government seems to struggle to comprehend
 
AN UNRESERVED APOLOGY: Gareth, I'm terribly sorry, I've made a mistake. It was Powerscourt's remarks about 'guns don't kill people... etc.' which belongs to the NRA's literature. I have no idea why I attributed that to you, apart from the fact my short-term memory doesn't seem to last the two minutes it takes to read someone's post and reply to the wrong person. I do sincerely apologise for that. I'm not going to bother to go over it now with 'Powerscourt' inserted instead of 'Gareth', but having gone back over the contributions, I now find that that's what I did. No wonder things got confusing! I hope you will accept my apology in the spirit in which it's intended.

I think I'll keep to simple subjects like teddy bears, or perhaps take a holiday from the forum. I'm clearly more addled than I thought. :shy:

And I've tried to PM you this, but your Inbox is full up!
 
I am going for a lie down - Aunty K has admitted a mistake :D

The interesting question about gun restriction laws such as we have here is not that it prevents gun crime per se - it doesn't as illegal firearms have proliferated and are used in crime .

What is does seem to have stopped is the unhinged getting hold of guns lawfully like the Dunblane and Hungerford killers.
 
Thank you, Gareth. I don't know about Ardross going for a lie-down, I probably need a year's counselling! No, seriously, that was stupid and I must stop whizzing past threads I think I've read and trusting what's now the memory span of a goldfish! :rolleyes:

Somehow or other, people with criminal intent always get hold of what's forbidden. But by making our gun laws as tight as possible, we at least significantly reduce the number of gun-related deaths which aren't criminally based. There are so many shootings in the US where people have thought someone was trespassing - remember that poor British man on holiday, shot dead by an American householder? He'd only gone to his door to ask for street directions! They're far too inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, and I'd be very concerned we'd end up with hundreds of deaths here if the 18-30 age group of males could legally access handguns.

I still think that reviews of gun-holders' mental health would cut down on some gun deaths, though. You can be a perfectly healthy 18 y.o. with a collection of rifles, shotguns and handguns - a small armoury is not illegal - and yet by 30 you can have been stricken by an illness like schizophrenia. Your doctor treats you, but nobody alerts the licensing authorities that you own 300 assorted potentially fatal weapons. The NRA's assertion that people kill people is of course true in the most facile way, but they don't account for the people who are suffering from delusions that the nice, family man next door is really Satan, sending evil messages to them, do they? So bang goes another gun, and another family is tragically wrecked. Like our own demented mass shooters, I'm sure much more common sense should prevail in the US, without disturbing the right to bear arms 'if found of sane mind'. I can't see how anyone could argue with that, especially as the latest killer in this sad roster is another one off his chump.
 
At the risk of going off on a tangent, one thing I'm completely in agreement on is that a hell of a lot more needs to be done to identify and help people who are suffering from mental illness - both in the US and here (and Ireland, for that matter, which has a huge suicide rate amongst young males).
 
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