Originally Posted by Lazors

It doesn't matter very much how much potential the gun has, the ability to take a life is enough for the people around you to be at risk. More bling on it only makes a higher potential amount of kills.
I believe we should take every possible action to ensure the safety of the locals. That means that the police has weapons and the locals don't.

As Arglax mentioned, Americans have this strange view on how it's your "right" to "defend yourself". A gun is meant to kill and nothing else. You don't have the right to threaten the people around you or put them at risk.
Self defense arguments are stupid, You have the greatest security in the wide world and you still feel the need to walk around with assault rifles?
A gun is meant to kill and nothing else. Let the police take care of the threats for you. Every other country on earth manages security fine without people walking around with guns, there is no need for people to wave with shiny assault rifles or anything of the kind.

Also, let's get off "school shootings" and "family protection" because that is already discussed in another thread.

Originally Posted by ImmortalPig

I think that's a logical fallacy unless you are willing to apply that logic to everything;
"If X has potential to kill someone X should be banned"
Are you willing to apply that logic to baseball bats, rocks, knives, cars, crowbars, martial arts, etc?
Or is this a half-baked anti-gun argument rather than something you actually believe in?


Guns certainly aren't the only way to kill people, if someone wants you dead they have many options.


I don't see a reason why anyone would want to carry a gun in public (let alone a rifle), but then again I also don't see any reason why someone would buy a $1000 quad core smartphone or use private transport. But I'm not about to advocate outlawing them.

Originally Posted by Lazors

I do apply that logic to everything, but it depends on how much of a danger there is. It's a different kind of threat to be able to bash someone down with a baseball bat than to remove a life with one click.
And of course it also depends on the use of the item. A gun isn't used for anything but killing (for target practice, use a soft air gun or similar), so there's no reason to flash it in public. You might bring a rifle to hunt, but you wouldn't flash it around in public because most countries don't allow that.

I know I said that as long as there is a potential risk for locals we should take measures, but that was when comparing handguns to assault rifles. Of course, there is a problem with sharp weapons and the use for it.

Originally Posted by ImmortalPig

There's 5 times as many deaths from automobiles than from firearms in the US every year. If you take injuries in to account, cars are more than an order of magnitude more dangerous.

Guns have legitimate legal uses, and so do cars. You will be surprised to hear this, but there's more uses to guns than killing people. More than 150 million people in the US own guns, and yet there are only around 10000 homicides every year. How can this be? If guns are such efficient killers, how come 149990000 are not used to deadly effect every year?

Am I expected to believe that the gun - the most feared and efficient killer available on the consumer market - has only a 0.06% (or 1 in 15000) fatality rate?

If airsoft guns had the same dynamics as real steel guns, then they would be just as deadly. Last I checked most airsoft guns operate under 500fps with .1-.2g pellets yielding less than a joule of energy, where as a rifle operates in the thousands of fps and with bullets weighing more than 10x as much, yielding more than 100x the energy. It's pretty ridiculous to say that an airsoft gun and a rifle are interchangeable! The UK has ruled that an airsoft gun firing pellets less than .2g at less than 500fps will not cause any lasting damage if a pellet was to strike an unprotected eye. Are you willing to have someone fire a bullet at your eye?

Originally Posted by ImmortalPig

That's questionable.

The firearm industry is worth a lot in the US, and helps to subsidise military costs (which are already insanely high). USA is one of the largest firearm exporters in the world. You are talking about restricting a 6 billion dollar industry.

If civilian cars were restricted, then people would ride busses, ride bikes, employ couriers and taxis, etc.

I think your point is severely watered down by your insistence on predicating restriction on economic worth; "if removing something I think is dangerous would have an adverse economic effect, then it can stay". In doing so you literally put a price on human life.

Originally Posted by JayStar

North America ranks in the lower 50 percentile for intentional homicide.

United States itself ranks over 100th for murder rates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._homicide_rate

As for incarceration rates, United States has the highest. This can be good, and bad. For one, high incarceration rate means people are being arrested and crime is deterred (usually) it can also mean there's rampant crime in the country (which I just don't see). The things is, although the United States makes up about 6% of the world's population, it has imprisoned about 25% of the entire world's prisoners at one point. So, a good number of US prisoners aren't even US native.

So, pretty much, [invade]

The United States is a rather peaceful place to live. The only other major safe havens are West, South, and Norther Europe (excluding minor less populated regions). Visit Central or Southern America, or try your hand anywhere in Africa, Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and so on.
I live in the United States and I'm alive. If it were such an "extremely violent" country, you'd think I'd have at least seen someone get stabbed or something. But nope, I go about my day like the rest of the country, healthy (mind you a few people who ate too many hamburgers, but those people exist in Europe too, I'm sure you know that).

Arglax Moderated Message:

snippety snip I don't like ad hominems.

Originally Posted by Smogard49

http://rayrayallday.com/2013/01/11/t...violent-crime/

This ^ is the major problem with international statistics, just like the unemployment / capita the US statistics looks great, whilst applying the same definition as most of Europe, Russia and a clear majority in the rest of the world they are sky-high... (Same goes with the report on violent crime being higher in UK than in the US as someone didn't care to look up the differences in definition of violent crime for the numbers used.)

However, Pigs claim still stands, with 11 million reported crimes a year, the US tops the charts. Perhaps you should expand your definition by adding the definition of harming someone economically, verbally as well as by blunt force to "violence".

Originally Posted by Smogard49

http://rayrayallday.com/2013/01/11/t...violent-crime/

This ^ is the major problem with international statistics

Originally Posted by Smogard49

However, Pigs claim still stands, with 11 million reported crimes a year, the US tops the charts. Perhaps you should expand your definition by adding the definition of harming someone economically, verbally as well as by blunt force to "violence".

Originally Posted by JayStar

Plus, Pig said that the US is extremely violent, verbal and economic damage isn't violent. It may suck, but it doesn't fall in the definition of violent crime. If you're really offended by some stranger's words... perhaps you deserve to be called what you were. If you can't protect your identity, you shouldn't be giving out information to everyone.