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Originally Posted by punky
1. Gun control doesn't prevent gun crime. I think honestly, if it did, then everyone who shoots worldwide (yes, there is another function to having a gun, like with archery. And don't forget how big gun hunting is in the US too), would just probably accept it.
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Yes it does, to a very great extent. BBking just did a great job of pulling together some statistics that prove it. Surely if you're going to re-state your claim to the contrary, the onus is now on you to provide some evidence in support of it?
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Originally Posted by punky
2. I wasn't trying to link gun crime with knife crime, but it is a force of habit nowadays, as the media seems to. Certainly is true that if someone wants to kill someone, then if they can't get a gun, they'll do it some other way, and knives seem like the next logcal weapon. I remember one person attacked a school with a Samurai sword? Gun control doesn't prevent crime, it just pushes it on to other weapons. That isn't conclusive of course, as gun crime still goes up, not down.
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Again, a claim not backed up by any evidence. It might well be the case that if someone is intent on murder, they will do it with whichever weapon they can get, but what about more impulsive killings? Might fewer manslaughters occur in the US if lethal weapons were not so readily available? Might a few more lost travellers not still be alive, instead of having been gunned down while knocking for directions, having been mistaken for an intruder?
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Originally Posted by punky
3. We talk about gun control, but I think the whole idea behind the Sky article isn't gun control, but is trying to further taint the NRA (National Rifle Association). The NRA has been villified for over a century as being a bunch of savages. Rednecks and cowboys, that eat babies and kittens. NRA bashing is probably more prevalent than US bashing. Like with any and all organisations there are distasteful, moronic and otherwise desirable individuals. I certainly won't defend them, but i'll point out that are kinds of people in there, like police officers, judges, doctors, mayors, etc. Some members are actually quite smart and avoid shooting everyone they meet.
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And Hitler was a great dinner party guest, just so long as you didn't get him started on politics. The fact that someone is a respectable pillar of a community does not render him immune from being sincerely wrong, or tainted by the same bizarre, cultural obsession with guns as the rest of his countrymen.
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Originally Posted by punky
One other thing. The vagueness of the term: gun control. People who shoot, and want a form of self defense aren't bulletproof. We want guns out of the hands of the irresponsible too, but not out of the responsible's hands too. We all want control, but not complete and outright bans, because that causes problems and steps backwards. Anywho, doesn't Jefferson's infamous quote: fit the gun control argument well? Especially as he made sure the right to bear arms as a constituional right.
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What's this 'we' business? Are you in the NRA, or quoting from one of their pamphlets?
As for Jefferson, that is an outrageous misuse of his words, ripping them completely out of context. Jefferson spoke in the early days of a nation that had fought for independence and was in peril of being re-subjugated by the British. The US Constitution
must be read in that context, or else it loses its meaning. So, when you read 'freedom', understand it to mean the broad notion of every man being equal and able to forge the destiny of his life and his nation
in contrast to living in a colony under an unelected monarch ; when you read 'right to bear arms', understand it to mean that every man must be ready, and prepared, to defend his freedom with his life.
To take a great historical document like the US constitution and reduce it to the status of an entitlement certificate for anyone who wants to own their own AK-47 is outrageous and selfish. Frankly I'm amazed that Americans in general allow the NRA to continue to misuse it in this way. Or could it be that the entire USA has become enslaved to the very document that was designed to set it free?