[punky]

Originally Posted by Chris T

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?

He didn't prove anything. He just said lots of other countries have gun crime, even though they have restrictive gun control, which is why I said "which confuses me about..." On the other hand I have proved it. Gun crime has gone up since handguns were banned. It has everywhere else they have banned it. Places with laxer gun control has less gun crime that places with stricter gun control, in the US (and it isn't solely a population issue, think how populous Houston and Dallas are).

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?

Impulse killings - precisely the type that would just grab a knife or baseball bat rather than sit through the 3 day cooling-off period. And aren't knives and baseball bats more readily available, and cheaper than a gun?

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.

Yes, OK. You don't like guns, some other people do, so they are wrong. Riiiiiiiight. If they like to shoot the have some "bizarre, cultural obsession" eh? I don't like boybands. I would like to see them fail rather than succeed, but I don't question why people like them, and I certainly don't use insults to try and bend people to see the world exactly as I do.

I shoot for sport, but i'd never hunt. I just don't like it. I would never try and ban hunting though. I don't judge people, and I don't try and dictate to people how to live their lives. If you want to ban guns, then thats fine. I'll respect that, but I should get the same decency in return.

What's this 'we' business? Are you in the NRA, or quoting from one of their pamphlets?

A bit of Freudian Slip here I guess, although I thought it was common knowlege. I shoot whenever I am in the US. And I am not the only one. When I am at the range, I always seem to a rather lot of Brits there.

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.

And without a gun, faced with armed burgulars, makes it rather difficult doesn't it? Reminds me of this quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Morton

"Gun control, the theory that 110lb. women should have to fistfight with 210lb. rapists."

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.

"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." sounds pretty clear to me. Jefferson was central to this amendment, he wrote about it in his book. So I am not twisting anything. He said, and believed both quotes. Luckily, in Jefferson's day, they didn't have to worry so much about rapists, burgulars, murderers or elitist liberals that think because they don't like to shoot, noone else should either. Even if they did, would make the admentment a bit long winded wouldn't it?