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Originally Posted by punky
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).
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Clearly you and I were both reading different BBKing posts. He didn't simply state that other countries have gun crime despite restrictive gun control, he pointed out that "England and Wales usually has <100 gun murders a year (there are far more suicides, for instance, and of course the odd unfortunate accident), the last figure I can find is 80 in 2003 - this translates to .13 per 100,000 people. The US, of course, has over five times the population and about 40 times the death rate...". Against that backdrop, it is sheer intellectual dishonesty to try to claim that British gun control laws are responsible for rising gun crime in the UK. Our gun crime is at such a tiny level that any possible correlation with post-Dunblane laws and a recent rise in incidents is utterly dwarfed by the massive correlation between tight laws/low crime in the UK, and lax laws/big crime in the US. And just for good measure, BBK also pointed out that: "In fact nearly everywhere you might consider a nice place to live (Spain, Germany, France, Italy) has more gun murders per unit of population than England and Wales, with the notable exception of Japan, which has, er, draconian gun control laws." The link between the legal availability of lethal weapons and their use in illegal acts is plain to see.
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Originally Posted by punky
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?
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Yes, and less likely to be fatal at a single stroke in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they're doing. But surely you're not trying to suggest that ownership of a gun is no more controversial than ownership of a knife or a baseball bat?
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Originally Posted by punky
es, 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.
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/Sigh
I earned marksman standard with the .22 rifle while in the Combined Cadet Force at school. I have no objection to guns per se, but I believe this to be one of the areas where the potential for harm to be caused by a minority of people with guns over-rides the so called 'right' to own a gun. As for insults ... not a bit of it. I believe the American love affair with the gun can rightly be called a cultural obsession. And I believe it is ridiculous.
I don't like boybands either. But boybands don't normally murder people.
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Originally Posted by punky
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.
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I'm not sure what I've said that's indecent, except perhaps for disagreeing with you?
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Originally Posted by punky
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.
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Well, when in Rome, eh.
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Originally Posted by punky
"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?
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You completely missed everything I said about taking quotes out of context. Jefferson did indeed say the above. But you are assuming that he meant the people ought to have the right to bear arms in case of getting raped or burgled. You are assuming that if such things were common back then, he would have mentioned it in the text. You have no basis in historical fact for making any such assumption. When you take a quote, or the entire amendment, which was written specifically to address the threat of invasion, and try to make it into a charter to own a lethal weapon for any of the other reasons above - reasons that Jefferson never mentioned - then you are 'twisting' (your words) what Jefferson said to make it fit your belief.