There is the illegal market for guns sure, but that's why we have the police for, to face them. Or is all the population these days vigilantes? Do we really want that?
You cannot count on the police for protection anywhere near 100% of the time. Usually they're there to investigate AFTER the fact and try to arrest any guilty parties. They're usually not close enough to your property or your vehicle or whatever to actually prevent a crime from happening. There's usually going to be a lag of at least several minutes from the time you feel threatened enough to call the law to the time they get to your house or car or whatever. That's IF you even get the opportunity to call them. I'd much rather scare away or even kill a would-be criminal than be a victim and allow them as armed aggressors to do whatever they feel like doing to me, my property, any family or friends with me, etc. I have a very hard time understanding why so many other people cannot understand this and apparently value the lives of criminals more than their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.
One other notion that I've seen here and elsewhere is the notion that firearm ownership can be tolerated, but it shouldn't be easy to exercise said. Eh, wait a minute, here in American the government is supposed to protect our life, liberty, and property. Making the free exercise of a right expensive, obnoxious, time consuming, or regulated to death is not conducive to protecting liberty. Sure there should be checks to make sure criminals, nuts, and other prohibited folks from getting guns, but beyond that, the government should stay out of our face.
Agreed. And just about every nut and criminal who uses a gun to commit a crime obtained the gun illegally - the most common exception being kids who grabbed their parents' gun without permission because mom or dad didn't bother to lock it up.
Why should that be your choice? Or the governments? For law-abiding citizens, that should not be the government's choice to make. It's a second amendment right and all gun-control does is limit access to law-abiding citizens. I would much rather invest all the time and energy being put into gun-control and put that into gun-education and safety so people are aware of how to use guns and respect them in the proper way. Especially children, who don't understand the huge risk of grabbing their parents gun without them knowing.
I'd definitely be down with there being more training classes available to law abiding citizens. If you don't have a criminal record, that is. I'm not an absoluteist on the 2nd amendment. But I'm against any new restrictions being put onto fire arms ownership. That being said, we do have too many accidental deaths and tragedies. You're never going to get rid of the criminal element. But I think trying to lower accidental deaths from legal gun owners is a noble, and somewhat realistic goal.
Ohhh, gun control is such a sensitive topic with Americans...one that I don't really see anywhere else...I am all FOR gun control, simply because all the idiots will hopefully shoot themselves.
That would make you against gun control. You would want easier access to guns for everyone so the "idiots" as you call us could shoot each other.
Absolutely. I currently don't have a gun, but my dad recently got one in the past few months. He however has no idea how to use it. While it's his right to certainly have a gun, I think its important that citizens need to have some sort of base knowledge about the weapons work. I don't know what sort of training program would be effective, but I think requiring something as small as an 1hr course on gun safety and how to fire/hold the gun properly could go a long way to solving a lot of the issues we see.
Yeah, this one area I think the two parties could and should come together to forge a common sense compromise. As Republicans we're sometimes a bit too knee jerk in opposing any changes in gun laws. I think requiring gun safety courses would be a good step. The trick is figuring out what the right amount would be.
