Gun Control Laws

Another Debate...

Ok so here in Illinios they think by strengthening gun laws there would be less crime. Do you agree or dissagree?

I dissagree for you know there are ways for criminals to just steal or black market guns. Also my dad is an investigator, and if the state takes all guns permit or non there is no way for real non-abusive people to protect themselves.

Well if they do take away all the guns then the crimnials will make makshift bow and arrows or just use knives or like you said get them off of the black market-where most are probly found already.

[Oscar]

stricker gun control laws will only make gun crimes worse. Take a look at Mexico where guns are banned for the public, yet most crimes are committed with guns and there is more crime in Mexico than in the USA. Problem is that the laws should be less strict and give us permit to bear the arms publicly. With this any criminal who does get the idea of robbing or comitting a crime with a gun will know before hand that the person or group of people he/she is about to act upon most likely is armed as well and will certainly fire back and defend themselves rather than sit there like qucking ducks.

Thats not a terrible idea, slap, but I think there is a 99.9999999% chance of that NOT happening... with the government and all the way it is.

I've read entire papers on the subject of gun laws, especially pertaining to the US, UK, and Australia. It is my opinion that gun laws, like most restrictive laws, are ineffective and actually harmful to the GP because government doesn't work. some food for thought from wikipedia:

The National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, reported the following statistics:

* New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.

* In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.

* In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 %.

* Over 50% of American households own guns, despite government statistics showing the number is approximately 35%, because guns not listed on any government roll were not counted during the gathering of data. [9]

* Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982 but experienced no decline in violent crime.

* Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.

* 20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.[8]

* UK banned private ownership of all handguns in 1997. Since 1998 the number of people injured by firearms in England and Wales has more than doubled, despite massive increase in number of police personnel.[9]

* Violent crime accelerated in Jamaica after handguns were banned.

I don't think guns should be banned all together, but I also don't like the idea of people being able to legally carry them around with them wherever they go.
We had a conceal and carry law passed here in MN a few years ago allowing people to get licenses to carry concealed handguns. It was repealed less than a year later but all of the licenses issued during that time are still good, so there are still signs up in almost any building you go into saying that you can't have guns there, even most churches have them.

Again I have to question your source of info Slap. Some elementary web research would show you that, statistically, the US has more gun related crime than any other country. Places where easily concealed hand guns, semi-automatic and automatic weapons have been banned for use by anyone other than law enforcement have significantly lower crime rates involving guns. Sure, illegal posession and sale still occur but, the number of people killed is tremendously less. Arming everyone would do nothing but increase fatalities. Many more crimes would be commited by people who would not have the time to think or cool off because they'd have a gun at hand. It is rediculously illogical to not see how less weapons equals less crimes committed with those weapons. The 2nd amendment of the US Constitution was written at a time when governing bodies felt it necessary that people be armed to defend their homes and property and needed weapons for hunting. Well, you can still do those things with rifles ans shot guns. It is not necessary to arm people with easily concealed and automatic weapons.
About ten years ago, after a night of heavy drinking, some friends of mine and I decided it would be fun to ring in the new year but firing her husband's gun. Luckily none of us were hurt by the extremely stupid combination of alcohol consumption and firearms but, the one thing I'll never forget regardless of how foggy my brain was that night is how quick and easy it was to pull a trigger. A micro-second of misjudgemnt, anger, rage, hurt etc. was all it would take to do something that cannot ever be undone. No one deserves to have that kind of lethal power in moments of missjudgement and error. No one!

[Oscar]

and with your last sentence it is the very reason one should be allowed to bear arms freely to defend one self from drunkards or loonatics. Read up on Kevin's post...

Those statistics have been generally dismissed over the years as innacurate. They were put out by a "conservative think tank" after all. And no one, not involved in the shooting of the gun that night, was ever in danger. Also, the likelyhood of successfully defending yourself from someone who's hell-bent on harming or killing you, whether you are armed or not is very slim.

^ I figured someone was bound to pout at figures from a conservative think tank, so here's a nice paper from a libertarian one: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/boo ... entRev.pdf . It's a good read if you have the time


Also, less gun control does not mean more people owning guns (how do you arrive at that conclusion anyways?), it simply means that the documentation of the guns owned is more complete. Personally, I think it's a good thing to have a higher percentage of guns legally registered.

Well, let's not forget that, the guns used by the kids responsible for columbine and the person responsable for the Virginia Tech rampage wer all owned and registered legally. And the latter were legally owned by someone with an extensive history of questionable mental health and was saw as a threat to himself and others. So even if you're not in support of less guns, you have to see that the method of controlling them now simply doesn't work.