• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Ongoing gun violence/injury thread

All I meant by the post was that firearms are used in self defence sometimes. Some people, irrational or not, fear more restrictions will lead to outright confiscation in the future.
 
All I meant by the post was that firearms are used in self defence sometimes. Some people, irrational or not, fear more restrictions will lead to outright confiscation in the future.
How many people die in accidental or violent shootings compared to the number of people who use a gun in self defense?
 
How many people die in accidental or violent shootings compared to the number of people who use a gun in self defense?

The estimates for gun use in self defense vary from 100,000 to 2,000,000 per year. Probably somewhere in the middle. Most of the time, the gun is not fired. Most criminals do not persist when faced with credible resistance. Of course, most of the posters on this board do not need firearms. They have the type of rippling muscles and fierce personnas that criminals fear. And they have reason to worry sbout shooting themselves.
 
Either of those are grotesquely high. Even at 100,000, you are talking about 6-10% of violent crimes are stopped by citizens with guns. It's preposterous.
 
Read the National Academy of Sciences report, RJ. 100,000 is the low estimate and it explains why it might be low.
 
All I meant by the post was that firearms are used in self defence sometimes. Some people, irrational or not, fear more restrictions will lead to outright confiscation in the future.

And people thought having black people swim in the same pool would lead getting VD. You don't bend the law to support insane people's irrational fears.
 
I'm convinced that the people that are extremely anti-gun in almost every conceivable/rational circumstance have:

1) Never been confronted with a real life threatening situation where a personal firearm would have either helped protect them or deescalated the situation

2) Very little knowledge about guns and have probably never used one in a formal or informal setting

I'm all about making it more difficult to obtain certain types of firearms, but the people lobbying for some kind of government intervention miss the irony here. Nine of the last ten mass shooting in the U.S. have involved a shooter with a mental illness that obtained their firearms legally. How would some law passed ten years ago have stopped Newtown or any other recent mass shooting?

What needs to happen is some kind of incentive program where a private organization funded with private dollars with some kind of U.S. backdrop/support goes out into the local communities and offers to buy weapons at market value plus 20% (obviously an arbitrary percentage, but you know, something that would get people's attention). After that, let private owners have their rights but put a damn lockdown on being able to go into a gun show and get a damn weapon of destruction.

After that, it really comes down to responsibility. If you leave a gun in your house that's loaded, not in a safe and within reach of a kid (or anyone for that matter) and it goes off and shoots/kills someone, your ass needs to go to jail. Period. Making new laws and saying what is or isn't an assault rifle/weapon and limiting the number of rounds per magazine won't solve shit...
 
I believe there are way more people then you think who are #1 and #2 and far fewer people then you think you are "extremely anti-gun in almost every conceivable/rational circumstance".

Most people you're arguing against believe the same things that you say you believe in your post.

I've heard very few people talk about just rebooting the AWB. That said, I don't know what your point admitting that the weapons were obtained legally, but saying that changing the definition of legal would have no effect. If someone can't legal obtain weapons that make it easy to kill many people at a time, it would become harder to obtain those weapons which would act as a deterrent. If a mentally ill person can't just get it from a family member or Wal-Mart or the gun show last week, how hard are they going to try to get it?

I don't think you know what you really believe. You want to be anti people who aren't as involved with guns as you are, yet you believe many of the common sense solutions that we do to the point that you contradict yourself.

You say "damn weapon of destruction" then a few sentences later, say that trying to define what such a weapon is "won't solve shit".

Just embrace common sense and work with people who may not love guns like you but want us all to live in a safer society.
 
The estimates for gun use in self defense vary from 100,000 to 2,000,000 per year. Probably somewhere in the middle. Most of the time, the gun is not fired. Most criminals do not persist when faced with credible resistance. Of course, most of the posters on this board do not need firearms. They have the type of rippling muscles and fierce personnas that criminals fear. And they have reason to worry sbout shooting themselves.

I think this is sometimes overlooked as people seem to think that people with guns are blood thirsty and come out with guns blazing. How many times does this happen and never get reported unless shots are fired?
 
Back
Top