My New Baby...

[Asso]

I have a little bit of fear to say something on this thread, because I'm absolutely far from the ideas of your countries.
Having weapons it's a thing distant from my brain, and from Italian brains, generally speaking.
Having weapons is a thing.. for not good peoples, always generally speaking.
You can see how cultures are different.
Well! I don't want to say that "not having weapons" means "to be good", or viceversa.
It's just a consideration.

[Elessar]

I have a little bit of fear to say something on this thread, because I'm absolutely far from the ideas of your countries.
Having weapons it's a thing distant from my brain, and from Italian brains, generally speaking.
Having weapons is a thing.. for not good peoples, always generally speaking.
You can see how cultures are different.
Well! I don't want to say that "not having weapons" means "to be good", or viceversa.
It's just a consideration.

hehe, I don't know anything about italian culture, but it's kinda funny that you say it's far from italians' brains because the oldest firearm manufacturer in the world and one of the oldest corporations in the WORLD is....

Beretta! An italian corporation, almost 500 years old, owned and operated by the same Italian family

Guns just fit my "plan for the worst" personality.

[JadziaKathryn]

Personally, I do not wish to own a gun. But, Asso, just as information to consider, a lot of people own guns in my state because it's a fairly rural state. Hunting is a popular pastime, especially with men. So in the fall people look forward to hunting season, mostly for deer but also moose and bear (if you are lucky enough to get a permit), rabbit, and duck. And in the spring it's turkey season if you can get a permit. The meat is eaten, so it's not wasteful. These are hunting guns, not the kind designed for war.

But then I came to Australia, and people ask about guns. "Aren't you afraid you're going to get shot?" I've been asked, as though people routinely get shot going to the grocery store in middle-class New England. "I don't know how you feel safe in America with all those people running around with guns," they add.

"I'm more nervous that your police don't usually have guns," I reply.

"But they don't need them if nobody else has guns."

I do not believe this. "Someone will always manage to get a gun."

A small frown might appear on the Australian's face here. "Well, there is the mafia in Melbourne."

I do enjoy cultural exchanges, though, because it's so interesting to hear another perspective.

[Navigator]

A small frown might appear on the Australian's face here. "Well, there is the mafia in Melbourne."

Not to mention the smuggling out of Indonesia and just about everywhere else in Southeast Asia.

[CX]

I don't really get the stigma some people have for it personally. People pick up a hundred different things that could be used to kill people every day, and that's not even counting their hands and their feet. The fact is, a gun isn't going to do anything until someone picks it up, and even then it's only as good or as bad as the person who has it. I mean, it's not a toy by any means, but it's not some horrible abomination either.

[blacknblue]

Somebody said, "We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners." You can turn that around and apply it to guns. We in the US do not like to shoot things because we have guns, we have guns because we like to shoot things. Disarming a warrior does not turn him into a pacifist. A pacifist holding a gun is still a pacifist. An empty handed warrior is still a warrior, and still dangerous. Taking his weapon will not make him less dangerous, because he will simply find or make another weapon.

[CX]

Which is the entire basis of martial arts.

[Elessar]

Somebody said, "We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners." You can turn that around and apply it to guns. We in the US do not like to shoot things because we have guns, we have guns because we like to shoot things. Disarming a warrior does not turn him into a pacifist. A pacifist holding a gun is still a pacifist. An empty handed warrior is still a warrior, and still dangerous. Taking his weapon will not make him less dangerous, because he will simply find or make another weapon.

I'm totally for unhindered gun rights, but I would point out that the anti-gun people who think less guns would mean less violence aren't arguing that disarming "a warrior" would make him not a warrior... They're not thinking about people I'd define as a warrior when they think about gun violence. They're thinkin about the guy who doesn't have the ___ (you might call it courage, you might call it insanity) to go ahead and commit the crime he would have committed with a gun, but with a knife, or a club, or a crowbar, or his hands.

There shouldn't be any arguing that the firearm is the single most enabling advent to the phenomenon of killing. Sure, it's possible to kill someone with a pipe or your foot... but if you're depressed and pissed at the world, is that going to be enough to push you over the edge to run around school with a pipe bludgeoning people? Or is the convenience and self-confidence of use in the firearm what enables that?

What I'm saying is, there is some % of crimes committed with firearms that people wouldn't commit them with pipes or knives with.

I'm not a gun rights proponent who says violent crimes wouldn't go down if you could eradicate every last gun on the street. I do think it would. But I'm a gun rights proponent who believes that the extra crimes committed with firearms are worth the Right that we have. It's a fundamental fact of life that some proportion of the population will always not be able to handle the independence they're given.

[CX]

The thing is, laws only matter to the people who follow them. Did that Virginia Tech kid care that it was against the law to bring guns on campus? Would any criminal care that guns are banned anywhere? And even if you did manage to reduce the number of firearms in criminal hands, it's been seen in places where gun bans are in place (like the UK) that knifings and other violent crime go up, simply because the same criminals have found new weapons.

[Escriba]

No one has the authority to force you to own a gun, just as no one has the authority to tell me I can't own one.

Hey, if you don't shoot at me, we're cool

I agree with Elessar, but I can see CX's point of view too. Yes, a person who want to kill somebody is going to kill anyway. Except me, I can't kill a person except if he's a five years old child who is near a staircase I think what scares me is the power it would give me. Maybe it's a silly argument to not owning a gun (besides the fact that in Spain is a little harder to have one,) but it works for me.

The other reason it's the concept. I don't know if I could explain myself, but here we go... I remember that some years ago I have different instructors for the Competitive Exams and they used to test us on a lesson at the Law College every Monday and Thursday. Some of the instructors were Judges or Public Prosecutors. They have bodyguards where I live. Armed bodyguards. So I remember walking with a bodyguard behind me and thinking "This guy has a gun to shoot people who can attack us just because the woman who is in front of me is a Judge and a defender of the legal system." So, because I live where I live, guns scare the hell of me.

See? I'm a hopeless case.

[Alelou]

Do you live among Basque separatists or what?

I can tell you that I sure felt a hell of a lot safer wandering around London by myself in the middle of the night where the cops (and the people) had no guns than I do in any city here.

But that was a long time ago and I suspect that has changed too.

You add guns to a culture where life is cheap and kids grow up playing violent video games in houses where the parent never really grew up, then add in a warring gang or three, and you've got a really scary environment.

On the other hand, our perception of the violence we live among is artificially heightened. We watch news footage of crimes from all over a gigantic country only because there's footage that gets picked up nationally, and this soaks into our brains and makes us paranoid. Life is not really as unsafe in America as even the Americans feel like it is -- except for the people stuck in the neighborhoods with the gangs.

[Escriba]

Do you live among Basque separatists or what?

Guilty.

[blacknblue]

The thing is, laws only matter to the people who follow them. Did that Virginia Tech kid care that it was against the law to bring guns on campus? Would any criminal care that guns are banned anywhere? And even if you did manage to reduce the number of firearms in criminal hands, it's been seen in places where gun bans are in place (like the UK) that knifings and other violent crime go up, simply because the same criminals have found new weapons.

Actually, if you search the BBC news web site (I have) and other news sources in the UK, you will uncover the interesting information that AS SOON AS the UK gun ban went into effect, gun crime in the UK started to GO UP.

Now, after several years of the gun ban being in effect, gun violence in the UK is AT AN ALL TIME HIGH.

Explain that, oh ye who have infinite faith in the omnipotent power of government to control the minds and hearts of criminals.

Washington DC had over 200 gun related homicides a year back in the 1970s. SO they enacted a law that effectively banned the private ownership of handguns, and required that all shotguns and rifles kept at home be stored unloaded and either disassembled and/or locked up.

Today, more than thirty years later, Washington DC has over 200 gun related homicides a year.

Check the FBI statistics. Don't take my word for any of this. There is a small town in the south. I won't tell you the name. IF you already know it, you know I speak the truth. If you don't, I want you to enjoy finding it. Google will turn it up fast, along with a LOT of additional information. Way back when they passed a law REQUIRING every adult citizen to own a gun and a box of ammunition for it. The law is not enforced and there is no penalty for disobeying it, they just wanted to make a point.

Today, that town proudly boasts that since passage of that law their rate of violent crime is 0%.

"An armed society is a polite society."

Astonishing.

[Asso]

hehe, I don't know anything about italian culture, but it's kinda funny that you say it's far from italians' brains because the oldest firearm manufacturer in the world and one of the oldest corporations in the WORLD is....

Beretta! An italian corporation, almost 500 years old, owned and operated by the same Italian family

Guns just fit my "plan for the worst" personality.

Ah Ah! Good point!
You have hit the mark!
But you must understand. We began to build weapons from a very long time. Remember you Gladiums and Arbalists?
Anyway, joking apart, it's true that the weapons' possession is (usually) far from Italian brain.
Italy is also the Stradivarius country, but that do not mean all Italians are fiddlers!
What I wanted to mean is explained very well by JadziaKathryn's narrating.
It's a fact that there're different sensibilities about weapons, and - honestly - I'm slightly ill at ease when It sounds to me I can find a sort of complacence, almost childlike, about weapons.
But... THAT HAVE TO BE CLEAR! This is my impression, and this is said with absolute regard for others' ideas.

[CX]

You add guns to a culture where life is cheap and kids grow up playing violent video games in houses where the parent never really grew up, then add in a warring gang or three, and you've got a really scary environment.

Much like guns, you cannot blame games for violent crimes, and no offense to you, but that's a Jack Thompson train of thought. Like with anything else, if someone is predisposed to violence, then violent video games would appeal to them, make sense? This does not, however, mean that playing violent video games makes one more predisposed to violence. If anything, if a kid can't tell the difference between the fantasy of a game or any other form of entertainment, then it is the parents fault for not insilling that ability or any other values in their children. Plus, I'm a big fan of first person shooters. Halo and F.E.A.R. are my favorite games. But I have yet to even be involved in a serious fight, and the only two I've been involved in were both initiated by someone else, and I stopped as soon as the threat to myself was past. I don't go around shooting people either, and I hardly think that life is cheap.