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Forums - Politics Discussion - Time for gun law reforms in the USA?

HappySqurriel on 06 August 2012
the2real4mafol said:
HappySqurriel said:
the2real4mafol said:

i may have north korea's kim il sung as my avatar but that don't mean i want to live there, i'm happy in Britain. i'm a socialist NOT a communist (like America thinks, they are not the same thing). I believe that the greed of a few shouldn't affect the rest of us, it wasn't our fault they fucked up, is it? of course, it does anyway. Government should be there to help the neediest and offer basic services like healthcare and a good education, they definitely SHOULD not repress their people, that's what i hated about North korea and the former USSR. Capitalism is all good when everything goes well and everyone lives a decent lifestyle and has a job, but since the recession 5 years ago, so many people have lost what they had, it's just not right, it leads to higher crime and higher suicide, because money is everything. Your right, capitalism isn't bad but its not perfect either, as the few lucky people to make up to the top, fucked it because they got greedy. I mean to show how capitalism is flawed, lets compare figures, the US (a developed economy) poverty line is 15.7% of the population, with China (a developing economy) at 13.4%. Surely something is wrong there, the USA should have less poverty shouldn't it, if the American lifestyle is so much better than the Chinese

The problem is that you have to give the state power in order to "help" people, those that hold this power eventually become corrupt, and then this power is used or sold to benefit the individuals who hold the power ... This means that the more socialist a nation becomes the more it will turn into a communist or corporatist state.

Corporatism, not capitalism, was the cause of the economic crisis; adding more power to a government that is already a corporatist state will only result in large corporations having more power at the expense of individuals.

America's government is supposedly minimal and they, like the greed and power of money over the last 60 years has corrupted them, since both parties are the same anyway. While, in Europe that never happened, as the parties were distinquishable . The UK had several socialist Labour government and didn't corrupt, forming the NHS didn't corrupt us, nor did the other stuff Clement Atlee did. Governments gain power from the time they serve, not anything to do with socialism. we'll see how France ends up in 2017, when they hold a new election, we'll see if socialism helped sort out there problems. Socialism is about EQUALITY above anything, the government may be bigger, but it's to regulate not control

The United States government spending is 40% of GDP, in what way could that ever be seen as minimal?

Beyond that, how has the UK not been corrupted? Wasn't Barclays International just given an insignificant fine compared to the profits it generated through Libor manipulation? Didn't the UK spend over £1 trillion bailing out big banks? The UK is as much of a corportist state and the United States is ...

As for the rest of Europe, depending on how the Eurozone crisis resolves itself, I wouldn't be surprised to see many of the bankrupt nations move towards communism; while many of the stronger nations will become far more corportist.



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Kasz216 on 06 August 2012
Mr Khan said:
mrstickball said:
Mr Khan said:
Viper1 said:
If demand exists and you remove a legal market, you create a black market. This is economics 101.

Banning them won't stop them.

But the ban raises prices, often exponentially over production costs or market value, and that alone creates severe impediments.

I assume, then, that you support the War on Drugs, which seeks the same kind of advantages towards banning a particular product, right?

Certain drugs, yes. Crack and Heroin, for two, are quite dangerous. I just don't see the need to list certain ones as Schedule I.

Since i've moved to Las Vegas, i've learned the only thing it reallly does is cause people addicted to heorin, meth and the like to become homeless.

People will always choose the drug first.



Mr Khan on 06 August 2012
Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:

Certain drugs, yes. Crack and Heroin, for two, are quite dangerous. I just don't see the need to list certain ones as Schedule I.

Since i've moved to Las Vegas, i've learned the only thing it reallly does is cause people addicted to heorin, meth and the like to become homeless.

People will always choose the drug first.

And the alternative would be?



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

mrstickball on 06 August 2012
SamuelRSmith said:
the2real4mafol said:

yeah if that applied nationwide, it would probably drop to 50 murders or less a year


Funny, when the UK banned handguns, murder rates didn't go down:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1440764.stm - Handgun crime up, despite ban.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html - Gun crime up 89% over a decade.

It is true that crime has decreased a little over the past couple of years... you'd be twisting it a bit to suggest this had anything to do with the ban. Especially when many of the years before the decrease (that is, over the next 10 years after the ban) crime levels were at the highest levels ever recorded.

Also, just look at the USA. Look at the states and cities which have fantastic gun rights, and compare them to those that have gun bans.


Yep. My county is proof of that. We have about 1 murder every 5 years in a county with ~50,000 people. That's well below European standards. That's despite the fact that we are (as far as I know), one of the largest guns-per-capita areas in the US. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a gun. We have people that build machine guns, shoot them, and everything in between.

Yet murders are almost unheard of.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

IIIIITHE1IIIII on 07 August 2012
NintendoPie said:
IIIIITHE1IIIII said:
I disagree. Every citizen should have equal rights to be randomly killed by maniacs.

Seriously though, in my opinion guns should be banned altogether. Less people would die that way (I believe. Feel free to prove me wrong here), and I don't give a fuck about some ancient old 'rights'. Sure, removing guns from people (at the exchange of currency) would not be a simple task, but isn't it worth it even if only one single person is saved as a result?

But yeah, I don't live in America so obviously my opinion doesn't really matter. It's their country, not mine.

People can still kill people without guns.

And many, many people would be mad if guns were banned. That means the Government has more control over them, that they can't "protect" themselves.

Yes, but like I've already said: There is no easier way to kill anyone than with a gun. It's just one pull of the trigger and it's done. With knives and the likes people will hear them scream in pain and possibly feel guilty about what they've done. And even if not it's still more difficult.

Yup, that would be one of the main problems when trying to remove guns. I don't expect it to happen anytime soon, just saying what I think would be ideal in the long run.



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NintendoPie on 07 August 2012
IIIIITHE1IIIII said:

Yes, but like I've already said: There is no easier way to kill anyone than with a gun. It's just one pull of the trigger and it's done. With knives and the likes people will hear them scream in pain and possibly feel guilty about what they've done. And even if not it's still more difficult.

Yup, that would be one of the main problems when trying to remove guns. I don't expect it to happen anytime soon, just saying what I think would be ideal in the long run.

It wouldn't be ideal though.

Have you seen what other people have said? Many places with strict gun laws or even bans have a horrid crime rate.



the_dengle on 07 August 2012

Oh yeah, let's reform gun laws NOW, after Aurora, after Oak Creek, both of which could have been prevented if they had done it right after Tucson.

We're already too late. The time for gun law reforms was years ago.



IIIIITHE1IIIII on 07 August 2012
NintendoPie said:
IIIIITHE1IIIII said:

Yes, but like I've already said: There is no easier way to kill anyone than with a gun. It's just one pull of the trigger and it's done. With knives and the likes people will hear them scream in pain and possibly feel guilty about what they've done. And even if not it's still more difficult.

Yup, that would be one of the main problems when trying to remove guns. I don't expect it to happen anytime soon, just saying what I think would be ideal in the long run.

It wouldn't be ideal though.

Have you seen what other people have said? Many places with strict gun laws or even bans have a horrid crime rate.



Yes it would be ideal, although only in the long run.

It is true that immediately banning guns would be a bad idea. It would need to be a very slow process.

Kasz216 on 07 August 2012
Mr Khan said:
Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:
 

Certain drugs, yes. Crack and Heroin, for two, are quite dangerous. I just don't see the need to list certain ones as Schedule I.

Since i've moved to Las Vegas, i've learned the only thing it reallly does is cause people addicted to heorin, meth and the like to become homeless.

People will always choose the drug first.

And the alternative would be?

Let people use it.

Heroin legalized would be incredibly cheap...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/prime_numbers_doped?page=0,2

and it's not exactly hard to spot people on it. 

 

Doing so, they'd be able to afford their drugs and still have a place to live. 

The costs aren't actually dissuading anyone from doing it... and for the people who are hooked... it doesn't matter how much it costs.  They'll beg, borrow and steal (and worse) until they get what they need.

All the war on drugs does is punish those already hooked.



ArnoldRimmer on 07 August 2012

I've often read that a very important reason so many americans advocate owning guns is that they distrust/fear their own government, and so consider guns as a kind of defense against a potentially hostile government.

I think that reasoning is flawed (as Chomsky once said in an interview "If people have pistols, the government has tanks. If people get tanks, the government has atomic weapons. There's no way to deal with these issues by violent force, even if you think that that's morally legitimate."), but even if it wasn't:

Isn't that rather contradictory with the concept of "law-abiding citizen", that mystical gun-owning superhero who always turns up whenever there is a gun control discussion?

The main characteristic of law-abiding citizen is that he is "law-abiding" - in other words: he always strictly and blindly follows the rules dictated by this very government, as stupid as they might be. If such a person turns against his government, not only is he now longer law-abiding, but probably in a rather dangerous state of mind as well.

In my opinion, advocating "law-abiding citizen" and at the same time feeling a need to defend yourself against the government that makes those laws is kind of schizophrenic. I think the driving force for such a person to follow the laws is fear.