Pepperoni wrote

002 wrote

Pepperoni wrote

002 wrote

Pepperoni wrote

THQ wrote Why should I have to have all my guns taken away because of others. America is about the freedom. Yeah I agree a lot of people are popped a year, but you need to understand, it's not the guns it's the people behind them. We don't need any gun laws. What we need is stronger background checks for those attempting to purchase.

I agree. The background checks are a joke. When I bought my gun it took maybe 20 minutes. I went in, signed a few things and then waited for my background check. Way too easy.

So what else can they do?

Nice little article I read.

"Americans overwhelmingly support background checks. Surveys show that 92 percent of Americansincluding 82 percent of gun owners and 74 percent of NRA memberssupport criminal background checks for all gun sales.

But under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress and most states have failed to close the deadly loopholes in the background check system.

Federal law only requires licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks. That means that millions of guns are exchanged each year without a checkmost often online or at gun shows through unlicensed private sellers. Felons, domestic abusers, the seriously mentally ill, and other dangerous people know about this loophole, and they exploit it every day.

Its like having two lines at the airportone with security, and one without. And criminals get to choose. Thats why criminals are flocking to unregulated online gun saleswhere they can buy guns, with no background check and no questions asked.

Closing this private sale loophole is the simplest way to shut down criminals easy access to guns. Since the background check system was started, it has blocked more than two million sales to dangerous people, and a background check takes only a few minutes to complete.

We also need to make sure the background check database is complete. States and federal agencies have failed to send hundreds of thousands of records to the national background check databases. Every missing record is another tragedy waiting to happen. The Virginia Tech shooter, who killed 32 people, was banned from buying guns because a court found him severely mentally ill. But he passed a background check because his records never made it into the system.

There is no better way to reduce gun deaths in America than strengthening the background check system."

You said background checks are a joke. I already posted my opinion on how we can fix the loop holes so I won't get into that. My question was, what else can they do? Inferring other than background checks as they "a joke". Not attacking / disagreeing with you here, just looking for more insight from other.

I was just pointing out that there are loopholes. Stop private selling of weapons. Is what I would do. Anyone can go buy a gun from a private seller. And as far as background checks go I think the should tighten the parameters. Take a psych test or a mental health test before you take possession of the weapon

While I agree that we need to close the loopholes, it is a slippery slope on stopping private party sales. I could go into why it won't work / how you could get around it, but I'm sure you know that nothing is 100% effective in terms of banning something from mass population, so we'll look past that.

My problem with stopping private sales, is it creates a monopoly in the gun buying market as now you can only sell to shops / vendors. They often times want a 150-200% return rate so they offer you something stupid. For example, I was tempted to sell my Remington model 700 in .270 to Cabelas. This included my scope, case, the whole 9. I have over 3k into this rifle and they offered me like 650. If I needed it out of my house I would've gotten so screwed, but I didn't so I didn't sell lol. Used guns are like used cars, selling to a dealer you may as well give it away.

002 wrote

Motivational wrote

More like they were denying it's very existence. They were talking about the ban on guns in the UK which was in the nineties. So they are relevant for the time.

Yes, they were relevant for that time, but they're not relevant today.

Comparing crime rates in the UK vs America and trying to justify that there's more crime in the UK is completely pointless. It's safer to live in the UK without doubt in terms of crimes.

The majority of these facts are not true. Just read the bottom of the page. I'm sorry but a newspaper written for the purpose of selling as many copies as physically possible is not a credible source. Fair enough, the articles written by Universities are probably legitimate but the BBC, guardian and telegraph are not legitimate sources.

Less guns = Less gun crimes. That's simple economies with supply and demand. All these illegal gun dealers are not making their guns, they're buying them off their suppliers who have a legitimate licenses and are purchasing their weapons from the local gun store. We need to make handguns and assault rifles illegal to reduce this kind of thing from happening IMO.

What? " It's safer to live in the UK without doubt in terms of crimes" No it's not... According to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the U.K. had 933 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2012, down from 1,255 in 2003. In the U.S., the figure for 2010 was 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

Of course we're going to have more crimes per one hundred thousand people. The majority of people don't commit crimes, the higher the population, the lower percentage of the population commits crimes. That's basic maths.

You're also using a general term here. A violent crime in the UK, is someone getting robbed at knife point or a burglary. Both are terrible incidents but it's very rare that someone actually dies. It's extremely difficult to cover up a murder with a physical weapon like a knife or hammer, there's always evidence left behind. There's no need to kill someone in a robbery or burglary, the idea of the crime is to take their possessions and not their life.

It's completely different in America, the person you're robbing is almost certainly going to be armed and it's a shoot to kill situation. If an armed burglar see you with a weapon, you will be shot, I can guarantee that.

You cannot possibly compare a robbery with a knife, to a school shooting. One school shooting kills more people than a thousand knife robberies. Yet both of them are classes as "one violent crime" according to your statistics, even though they're incomparable in damages caused.

You're comparing it per thousand people too which also makes no sense. There is way more people in America compared to the UK not just in terms of actual population but population density. New York is a small city yet it holds a population almost the same size of the UK, it's obviously more dangerous to live in New York than the UK because there's more people in a closer area.

There's low income areas in the UK filled with crime because nobody has any money. They're not bad people, they're just angry and jealous because society has treated them so badly. Small towns have basically no crimes in them.

We also have a smaller population density, meaning that it's far easier for police and legal services to do their work. They're only working on a couple of crimes per day as opposed to hundreds in America meaning that they're going to have a higher success rate in terms of catching criminals.

002 wrote

Pepperoni wrote

002 wrote

Pepperoni wrote

002 wrote

Pepperoni wrote

THQ wrote Why should I have to have all my guns taken away because of others. America is about the freedom. Yeah I agree a lot of people are popped a year, but you need to understand, it's not the guns it's the people behind them. We don't need any gun laws. What we need is stronger background checks for those attempting to purchase.

I agree. The background checks are a joke. When I bought my gun it took maybe 20 minutes. I went in, signed a few things and then waited for my background check. Way too easy.

So what else can they do?

Nice little article I read.

"Americans overwhelmingly support background checks. Surveys show that 92 percent of Americansincluding 82 percent of gun owners and 74 percent of NRA memberssupport criminal background checks for all gun sales.

But under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress and most states have failed to close the deadly loopholes in the background check system.

Federal law only requires licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks. That means that millions of guns are exchanged each year without a checkmost often online or at gun shows through unlicensed private sellers. Felons, domestic abusers, the seriously mentally ill, and other dangerous people know about this loophole, and they exploit it every day.

Its like having two lines at the airportone with security, and one without. And criminals get to choose. Thats why criminals are flocking to unregulated online gun saleswhere they can buy guns, with no background check and no questions asked.

Closing this private sale loophole is the simplest way to shut down criminals easy access to guns. Since the background check system was started, it has blocked more than two million sales to dangerous people, and a background check takes only a few minutes to complete.

We also need to make sure the background check database is complete. States and federal agencies have failed to send hundreds of thousands of records to the national background check databases. Every missing record is another tragedy waiting to happen. The Virginia Tech shooter, who killed 32 people, was banned from buying guns because a court found him severely mentally ill. But he passed a background check because his records never made it into the system.

There is no better way to reduce gun deaths in America than strengthening the background check system."

You said background checks are a joke. I already posted my opinion on how we can fix the loop holes so I won't get into that. My question was, what else can they do? Inferring other than background checks as they "a joke". Not attacking / disagreeing with you here, just looking for more insight from other.

I was just pointing out that there are loopholes. Stop private selling of weapons. Is what I would do. Anyone can go buy a gun from a private seller. And as far as background checks go I think the should tighten the parameters. Take a psych test or a mental health test before you take possession of the weapon

While I agree that we need to close the loopholes, it is a slippery slope on stopping private party sales. I could go into why it won't work / how you could get around it, but I'm sure you know that nothing is 100% effective in terms of banning something from mass population, so we'll look past that.

My problem with stopping private sales, is it creates a monopoly in the gun buying market as now you can only sell to shops / vendors. They often times want a 150-200% return rate so they offer you something stupid. For example, I was tempted to sell my Remington model 700 in .270 to Cabelas. This included my scope, case, the whole 9. I have over 3k into this rifle and they offered me like 650. If I needed it out of my house I would've gotten so screwed, but I didn't so I didn't sell lol. Used guns are like used cars, selling to a dealer you may as well give it away.

Didn't think about it that way. In that case just like a car dealer (I used to work sales at a dealership)you will get screwed when selling a gun. Makes sense. There really isn't a soulution that would fix 100% of the problem. People will still get what they want. Use drugs as an example. Cocain is illegal but that doesn't stop people from using or obtaining it. Great points!! Made me think

Motivational wrote

002 wrote

Motivational wrote

More like they were denying it's very existence. They were talking about the ban on guns in the UK which was in the nineties. So they are relevant for the time.

Yes, they were relevant for that time, but they're not relevant today.

Comparing crime rates in the UK vs America and trying to justify that there's more crime in the UK is completely pointless. It's safer to live in the UK without doubt in terms of crimes.

The majority of these facts are not true. Just read the bottom of the page. I'm sorry but a newspaper written for the purpose of selling as many copies as physically possible is not a credible source. Fair enough, the articles written by Universities are probably legitimate but the BBC, guardian and telegraph are not legitimate sources.

Less guns = Less gun crimes. That's simple economies with supply and demand. All these illegal gun dealers are not making their guns, they're buying them off their suppliers who have a legitimate licenses and are purchasing their weapons from the local gun store. We need to make handguns and assault rifles illegal to reduce this kind of thing from happening IMO.

What? " It's safer to live in the UK without doubt in terms of crimes" No it's not... According to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the U.K. had 933 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2012, down from 1,255 in 2003. In the U.S., the figure for 2010 was 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

Of course we're going to have more crimes per one hundred thousand people. The majority of people don't commit crimes, the higher the population, the lower percentage of the population commits crimes. That's basic maths.

You're also using a general term here. A violent crime in the UK, is someone getting robbed at knife point or a burglary. Both are terrible incidents but it's very rare that someone actually dies. It's extremely difficult to cover up a murder with a physical weapon like a knife or hammer, there's always evidence left behind. There's no need to kill someone in a robbery or burglary, the idea of the crime is to take their possessions and not their life.

It's completely different in America, the person you're robbing is almost certainly going to be armed and it's a shoot to kill situation. If an armed burglar see you with a weapon, you will be shot, I can guarantee that.

You cannot possibly compare a robbery with a knife, to a school shooting. One school shooting kills more people than a thousand knife robberies. Yet both of them are classes as "one violent crime" according to your statistics, even though they're incomparable in damages caused.

You're comparing it per thousand people too which also makes no sense. There is way more people in America compared to the UK not just in terms of actual population but population density. New York is a small city yet it holds a population almost the same size of the UK, it's obviously more dangerous to live in New York than the UK because there's more people in a closer area.

There's low income areas in the UK filled with crime because nobody has any money. They're not bad people, they're just angry and jealous because society has treated them so badly. Small towns have basically no crimes in them.

We also have a smaller population density, meaning that it's far easier for police and legal services to do their work. They're only working on a couple of crimes per day as opposed to hundreds in America meaning that they're going to have a higher success rate in terms of catching criminals.

I used per 100k because we have so many more people. If you look at us with 5x more people, we have more crime so you have to take it down to a smaller scale, in which case, you guys have more crime.

It is also rare that someone dies here in the US as well, just like you said the point of a robbery is to take belongings, not lives. I don't know if you know this or not, but it is fairly easy to trace a shooting. Each gun strikes the primer differently, if a shell is left at the scene then there is a possibility of tracing you. Not only that, but you generally load a gun without gloves, so fingerprints are on the shell as well.

If a robber sees you with a gun and shoots you, then you are an idiot. You pull the gun firing, not aiming to scare them off. You pull it as they are not looking so you have time to fire. It takes 5 seconds max. It's simple self defense.

More often than not, school shootings are not "one violent crime". It's one bulk crime, however when you get sentenced it is for each person you kill. Jimmy was worth a life sentence, Austin was a prick so we'll only give you 5 years for him, Earl was a good guy so we'll give you two life sentences for him. That's how it works (not like that, but you get the point).

"New York is a small city yet it holds a population almost the same size of the UK" no? The UK has 64.1 million people and New York has 8.4 million? We can look at it a different way if you like. The UK has 650 people per square mile, New York has 411.

"There's low income areas in the UK filled with crime because nobody has any money. They're not bad people, they're just angry and jealous because society has treated them so badly. Small towns have basically no crimes in them." It's the same in the US, Canada, Mexico, and like every country.

So many things wrong with this post lol.

I meant to say London for the New York thing and I seem to have stupidly typed the UK instead.

I honestly cannot be bothered to respond the rest of the argument because someone is currently arguing with me in the Rant Section about the exact same subject. I'll edit this post when I'm done with him.

In terms of the rest of the argument. Have a look at some of these statistics - [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

You beat us in one statistic which is crimes per 100,000.

What about the other eight things we beat you in? Please explain this shit.

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I looked at that same graph and contemplated putting it in, but I didn't want to do the math to see where it ended up as the US is almost 500% bigger lol. I see how those say 82% more and all that, but keep in mind the US is 500% bigger, I'm not seeing a 500+% figure.

Let's try to get back on track here to make everyone happy. It seems the biggest question here from people from other countries is "why do you need guns?" My argument before about how we need to protect ourselves from a tyranical government (remember this was put in place by the founding fathers, not Joe on the conspiracy forum) is relevant, yet people don't fully understand it, so I'll put it in another term. Guns make us happy, and / or feel safe. Eating vegan, or driving a prius make a person feel good inside, but we aren't taking away their rights because 0.0003% of their communities are morons. We all have a different life style, and if my guns make you feel uncomfortable, I'm sorry. My advise to you is, get one yourself and get trained how to use it. That way you'll feel safer.

I used to work for an older lady (probably in her 70's), great lady, her and I had differing opinions on a lot of things but it was never "you're an idiot", it was always, "I feel differently, but if that makes you happy, so be it". She HATED guns, 100% take them away. I explained to her my position on guns, and still she didn't like them. Last month or so I helped her install a couple things in her house and I was amazed to see a pistol on the counter. I said "I thought you hated guns?". What she said was the coolest thing. She said something like "I do, but people own guns and that makes me scared so I bought one myself and I feel safe".

I also love this article:
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002 wrote I looked at that same graph and contemplated putting it in, but I didn't want to do the math to see where it ended up as the US is almost 500% bigger lol. I see how those say 82% more and all that, but keep in mind the US is 500% bigger, I'm not seeing a 500+% figure.

Let's try to get back on track here to make everyone happy. It seems the biggest question here from people from other countries is "why do you need guns?" My argument before about how we need to protect ourselves from a tyranical government (remember this was put in place by the founding fathers, not Joe on the conspiracy forum) is relevant, yet people don't fully understand it, so I'll put it in another term. Guns make us happy, and / or feel safe. Eating vegan, or driving a prius make a person feel good inside, but we aren't taking away their rights because 0.0003% of their communities are morons. We all have a different life style, and if my guns make you feel uncomfortable, I'm sorry. My advise to you is, get one yourself and get trained how to use it. That way you'll feel safer.

I used to work for an older lady (probably in her 70's), great lady, her and I had differing opinions on a lot of things but it was never "you're an idiot", it was always, "I feel differently, but if that makes you happy, so be it". She HATED guns, 100% take them away. I explained to her my position on guns, and still she didn't like them. Last month or so I helped her install a couple things in her house and I was amazed to see a pistol on the counter. I said "I thought you hated guns?". What she said was the coolest thing. She said something like "I do, but people own guns and that makes me scared so I bought one myself and I feel safe".

I also love this article:
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

I like that. You have to respect others opinions. Just because someone doesn't like something, it doesn't mean they are stupid. I try hard to have an open mind and listen to what people have to say. There are good and bad point on either side of an argument.

I'll use this post to also respond to your post on the rant thread as to why I don't think you need guns. Hopefully we can try and form a mutual agreement from this point out.

There's three different kinds of people involved here. The people who need guns, the people who don't and criminals.

The people who don't need guns such as myself feel extremely.. threatened I guess? By the fact that other people can walk around with a weapon capable of killing someone from long range and so quickly. A semi automatic rifle can literally (as we saw the other day) kill a large amount of people in a small amount of time and there's nothing that can be done against it. I'm a very traditional kind of person, I dislike the idea of using a gun as a weapon. I'd honestly be more fascinated by a bow or a sword.

Now, you suggest that we too purchase a gun. This is my problem. If a criminal jumps out of a bush and wants to cause harm to me physically without a gun, it will be a fair fight, even if they have a knife I would still have a fighting chance, however if they have a gun there's literally nothing I can do. I honestly don't think that it's worth allowing people such as yourself to carry a firearm which lets criminals access them too when people such as myself have no intention of owning one and never will. I shouldn't have to carry a piece of metal around with me to defend myself, we are human beings and should be able to live without the threat of being shot by weapons that we made.

The people who need guns such as yourself could survive without a semi-automatic rifle. You can use a bolt action rifle for hunting, a crossbow or even a shotgun. It wouldn't be that big of a deal for you to trade your AK-47 in, so long as you got your money back.

The criminals want guns for the purpose of committing crimes. You can easily rob someone with a shotgun or rifle. So I don't think that this would be that big of a deal for them.

My solution would be:

1) Legalise drugs (to an extent) to try and minimise gang crime. The criminals would have no need to fight over drugs and they wouldn't be able to make so much money of selling them because the government could sell drugs far cheaper than a small private company.

2) Limit weapons so that semi-automatic weapons aren't available. Weapons need to be extremely slow firing so that they can't kill so quickly. You should have to manually bolt the bullet into the chamber for the weapon. This would still be fine for target practice but extremely bad for mass shootings.

This way there's a trade going. The criminals have their drugs but they lose their guns.

I was actually just thinking of something there. What about some sort of vouch system, say for example you need five family members to say that you're mentally stable and that they vouch for you being able to handle a gun. It's actually not too bad of an idea. Not sure if it's already implemented though.

I honestly think that Americans are focused far too much on guns. They need to focus more on their fast food restaurants, immigration and their next president.

However, the idea of the tyrannical government is madness to me, as I've said multiple times. One tank could take out any city in America. One swat team could take down almost any building or compound. It's pure madness to suggest that because you have a semi-automatic weapon, you will be able to stop a tank. Sixty tons of impenetrable armour. Unless you have a rocket launcher, which to my knowledge isn't easily available in America and even then, it's still going to take multiple rockets.

As you said before, you don't really have free speech. Say bomb in an airport and see what happens or as I read in an article a couple of weeks ago, some guy put on twitter joking that he'd shoot up a school and the FBI were at his house almost immediately and he was arrested and is serving time.

Not to mention, we have the United Nations for a reason. If your government turned against you, Britain, France and Russia would be there to help you out.

Motivational wrote I was actually just thinking of something there. What about some sort of vouch system, say for example you need five family members to say that you're mentally stable and that they vouch for you being able to handle a gun. It's actually not too bad of an idea. Not sure if it's already implemented though.

I agree with everything in your post except for this point.
I think this would complicate the issue far too much and has too many variables at play to be a successful part of the system
For instance, what if your family members don't like you and 4/5 tell the truth and say that you are mentally stable, but just to inconvenience you the 5th says you aren't because of some bad blood in the past? Also people who don't have a large enough family or any family at all should be taken into consideration.
At the end of the day I think if a person wants to buy a gun and are willing to jump through the loops on their own in order to get one that should be fine.

Why should I give up my firearms because of some crybaby liberals.