Landmark Supreme Court Decision on 2A

[Distracted]

Good point. But hitting someone with a bat one time is much less likely to kill them than shooting them one time. With blunt objects you often get the opportunity to change your mind before you kill someone. With a gun, though, often it's "Oops. I didn't mean to do that." Same for knives if you stick 'em in the wrong place. I had a patient in the ER once show up DOA from a four inch penknife wound to the left breast. It lacerated her heart. She was very skinny and her boyfriend was unlucky enough to stick her in JUST the right spot. Oops.

Incidentally, the novel I'm working on has a murder in it. The killer uses a baseball bat.

[TPoptarts]

I so wanna read it

Oh and baseball bats and stuff require closer contact... guns don't an attacker can shoot someone even if they manage to escape and they're like 100 feet away or whatever, but they can't hit them with a baseball bat if they're 100 feet away. Well I guess *some* people are like very skilled at throwing knives and stuff but that's still like way slower than a bullet shot out of a gun. And how many attackers would be so skillful anyway. I'm not talking about like how if they ban guns or whatever then if someone wanna kill people they're gonna find a way and a weapon. I know that. I'm just scared of guns because like how do you defend yourself from an attacker with a gun?? Like if someone swings a knife at you, you block them, get out of the way, kick them in the head, in the ribs, in the groin, wherever. Someone strangles you, you grab their thumbs and kick them in the gut, knee them, break their fingers, there's plenty ways. What do you do when someone points a gun at you??

That said I do realize that if they put a ban on guns then the only people who manage to own guns will be the criminals who plan to kill people with them.

[Escriba]

That said I do realize that if they put a ban on guns then the only people who manage to own guns will be the criminals who plan to kill people with them.

And the police. Why does everybody forget them?

The problem with this discussion is that it's too full of "what if"s and "if"s. Like saying that you can kill people with anything. Yes, that's true, but saying "you could use a pen as a weapon" is kind of an euphemism. Do you know what you can use as a weapon? A weapon. The problem with guns is that they don't have any other purpose. You can't say "I want to buy a gun to paint a Van Gogh" (well, actually you can, but people is going to wonder how are you going to do it ) Letting people decide if they're prepared or not to have guns isn't very wise because people usually think they can control whatever situation they are in (typical example: taking the car when you're totally drunk.)

On the other hand, the Constitution of the US allows people to have/port guns. And as an European I can think this is a little weird, but it's the Law and "Dura Lex sed Lex" (the Law is hard but it's the Law.) So if you want to change it you'll have to change the Constitution and this isn't a minor thing. In fact I don't think it should be so dramatic, with an amendment everything could be fixed, but because it is in the Constitution some people see it as an inalienable right (and this is logical, since it's in the Constitution.)

How can I have arguments to support all the sides? Well, I suppose I am a Lawyer

Anyway, the curious thing is that in Spain it's allowed to have guns, but there is a limit. For example, you can't have 16 guns (or some type of guns, like machine guns, that obviously you don't use just to self-defence), because that's having an arsenal, and nobody can have an arsenal.

When I discussed this with an American (an Erasmus student) he made the typical argument: "well, you don't understand it because you live in a country with a very homogeneus population and a low criminal rate." Boy, did I laugh hard... I remember my friends and I looked at each other and answered "you don't know much about the Basque Country, do you?"

By the way, don't see this post as an European patronizing thing, I'm not saying Americans are savages or anything. In fact, your perspective about guns is interesting for a discussion. It's fun to have people with different opinions

[CX]

Well I can match you emotional story for emotional story.

When I went to the Million Mom March, there were hundreds of thousands of moms there. I arrived wearing three buttons with pictures of my 3 adorable children in their soccer uniforms. I figured since my kids didn't want to come with me, I would wear the buttons to show I was a Mom. So I step off the bus and we are all psyched up to lobby for gun control. We head to the bathrooms. The women in front of me in the porta-potty line has the exact same sports photobutton, and her kid looks just like mine. So I say, "Hey your boy looks just like mine." She looks at my buttons like she's horrified and whispers, "Yes. And they're ALL dead?"

I went "NO, none of them are dead." She goes, "Oh good. Mine is dead." Turns out most people at the march out of nearly a million marchers are wearing buttons or shirts of their dead children killed by random acts of gun violence! So there is your emotional story.

I went to the march because I was outraged by two recent gun massacres in Pittsburgh in the month before the march. A black guy went on a killing spree killing whites and a white guy went on a killing spree killing nonwhites, including blacks and Asians. They set each other off. I can't remember which went first. It wasn't an abstract thing for me. Both events took place at locations I frequent. One involved a shopping mall and the other a McDonalds and other fast food restaurants.

Someone two blocks away killed their wife and themselves, while the daughter was at school. That was about 4 or 5 years ago. Supposedly someone halfways normal who lost it one day.

So Alelou's right. What are the statistics? People go crazy. Mental illness is prevlant in society. Many (most?) people will struggle with a bout of depression at some point. I don't know what the statistics are, but looking around I would say, lots of people. People who loose it don't always give advance warning. So why have the gun sitting around the house?

You know, there's this saying that I think way too many people just don't seem to understand the meaning of: "guns don't kill people, people do." Now what that means is when some psychopath kills someone, you don't sue Smith & Wesson. I really don't get the mentality of taking the blame off of some killer who just ventilated someone's frontal lobe for the fun of it and putting it on some inanimate object. A gun is just a tool to these people, and like Bnb said, they'll find something else to use, and all banning guns would do is unarm honest, law-abiding people.

[Alelou]

Of course guns don't kill people, people do. But guns make it a lot easier for people to kill people. Surely we can agree on that, even if we don't agree on gun control? You want to kill as many people as possible before the police shoot you, because you're a freaking nutcase who wants to commit suicide-by-cop and take as many people with you as you can in the process, what are you going to use? A gun or a baseball bat? I mean, come on. And if you're a coward who's afraid he might not win a struggle with someone, what will you choose, a gun or some hand-to-hand weapon?

[Asso]

Occasion makes a thief.

[justTripn]

If you want to own a gun, you also have to consider the odds of you or a family member, including teenage children, ever becoming temporarily depressed or suicidal. Go through your inventory of friends and family and count up the ones who have ever been suicidal to get your estimate of the likelihood of this. Doesn't matter if everyone you know is emotionally healthy at the time you choose to get the gun.

The other big risk is small children. I had a shortcut way of dealing with deadly risks. If I can imagine it happening, it can happen, so prevent it. Maybe this was extreme, but they had taken me by surprise too many times with their newfound athletic abilities and determination--to climb out of cribs, escape over fences, open doors, and wander outside. So I nailed the bookshelves to the wall (in case they tried to climb a bookshelf, it wouldn't collapse on them). I put bars on the low to the floor third-floor window. I chained the gate shut. And yet, one baby did roll head over heals down a flight of stairs at some point---escaping from supposedly secured area to do it.

So no guns around babies or teenagers is a good rule of thumb, for me, at the very least.

And why shouldn't I argue with people one by one about this, even if I've already "lost" at a Constitutional level. Everyone has a right to smoke, but smoking is becoming frowned upon, and rates of smoking are dropping in this country. If I think gun ownership is a bad idea, because the risks to innocent bystanders is too high, why can't I frown on gun ownership and argue against this practice? Why can't I lobby for controls and safety regulations for guns and gun owners? You have to get a drivers license to drive a car. And why can't I howl at the random violence that takes our random high school students who wander into the wrong neighborhoods? Of COURSE I blame people. I want to vilanize those who shoot their neighbors-- accidentally or on purpose-- make sure no one remembers them fondly.

[blacknblue]

There are several posts here I would like to respond to.

If I were going to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible, I would make a homemade bomb. Not a gun.

If i wanted a gun and couldn't buy one, i would make one. Trust me, it ain't that hard. Getting the ammo is easy too. Ammo is simple. Once you have the ammo, all you need is a barrel and a firing pin. Any machine shop can provide everything you need to turn out a functional firearm. Besides, I still don't see what the big whup is about handguns. IF you want to kill at close range, and you are serious about it, a sawed off shotgun is the supreme close quarter weapon.

I could kill someone with a baseball bat with one hit. I have killed large animals on the farm with one hit using a hammer. Same principle. Hit the skull at the right spot and it will split like a melon. And as Dis pointed out, a penknife will kill easily enough. One small nick on the carotid artery is all it would take. for suicide, slashed wrists or sleeping pills or gas ovens or high places are just as deadly as guns.

I agree about keeping kids safe. I also blocked off stairways. That's why my guns are kept locked in a steel cabinet. I do not follow my parents and grandparents habit of leaving them sitting out. I know its a break with tradition, but I don't live on a farm anymore. One has to adapt to different areas. I want to repeat, if a child EVER gets hold of a gun and shoots someone it is because some adult DID NOT DO THEIR JOB. Columbine was because adults DID NOT DO THEIR JOB. VA tech was because the judges and the clerks who were supposed to file the paperwork to follow up on the judges ruling DID NOT DO THEIR JOB. No child should ever touch a gun except under adult supervision, anymore than a child should ever be under the wheel of a car without adult supervision.

Same principle as driving a car. You don't leave the keys out where a kid can find them. And even if you do, you TRAIN the kid not to touch them by teaching them NOT TO MESS WITH THEM.

You train a kid not to poke their fingers into light sockets, because it can kill them. You train a kid not to stick their hand in a fire, because it can burn them. You train a kid not to play in traffic, because they can get run over. You train a kid not to drink bleach, because it can poison them. You train a kid not to pet strange dogs, because they can lose a hand that way.

You train a kid not to touch a gun unless an adult is supervising them, because they are killing tools. For the same reason I hang my swords and machetes high enough on the wall that my son could not reach them until he was old enough to be trusted with them.

[justTripn]

So you can understand the frustration of us parents when the NRA tries to block every simple precautionary law proposed, like background checks for criminals at gun shows.

Ann

[Elessar]

Or perhaps they just like to get up close and personal, some folks do.

This is true of more folks than we'd like to admit, I think.

So you can understand the frustration of us parents when the NRA tries to block every simple precautionary law proposed, like background checks for criminals at gun shows.

Ann

VIVA LA GUNSHOW LOOP!!! VIVE!

[blacknblue]

I was once offered the chance to purchase a .22 revolver for $20 at a flea market (this was about 12 years ago). I declined. The thing jammed on the second shot, and got hot enough to start a campfire by the time I had fired a full load. But my point is that criminals are not going to purchase their guns at a place where background checks are performed. The black market is alive and well.

[Asso]

Venom is subtler.

[blacknblue]

This is true. And in America, poison is not uncommon as a murder method. It doesn't get as much press, but it happens frequently.

So do knifings. Oddly enough, I keep reading about, and talking to people, who seem to have the impression that a knife attack is like something out of hollywood. Where someone draws a knife like it was a short sword or something. (??) Not here. Not nowadays. In America today, the first awareness you are ever likely to have that someone is after you with a knife is when you feel them pulling the blade out of your rib cage. Knife attacks here come from out of the darkness, from behind, at top speed. Nobody fights with knives in America today. Knives are assassin weapons in this country nowadays. Like poison.

[Asso]

Knife attack is usual in Italy.
And also "lupara".
Ah! Traditions!

[justTripn]

I prefer knives. At least my kids won't get caught in the crossfire of any knife attacks.