Granny and the second amendment
Gun control means nothing as long as people are stupid. Stupid enough to, say, sit your 4-year-old granddaughter down in a Sam’s shopping cart right next to a purse that contains a loaded gun.
I wish it was a bleeding heart hypothetical. But it’s not. Instead, it’s a 4-year-old girl with a bleeding heart.
In law, they constantly talk about the interpretation of the constitution based on what the founders of the country meant when they wrote the original law. I think it’s safe to say that there will be no British soldiers forcing entry into your home anytime soon.
I’m not so crazy as to say that rewriting the second amendment and banning guns nationwide will magically cure our species’ propensity toward violence. And just because law-abiding citizens can no longer obtain a weapon legally would by no means prevent someone from doing so illegally. One look at 2nd Amendment and firearm possession advocacy sites such as this one are an indicator as to the vast intellectual collective behind keeping the status quo intact, so…
Stricter gun control just might lessen the odds of a Columbine or a Virginia Tech from happening again. It just might save a few drunken domestic disputes from ending in tragedy. Or it just might keep little girls from shooting themselves in the chest when Grandma is hauling the three gallon tub of Metamucil off the shelf.
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Uh - Chris. Do you have any idea how dangerous Sam’s Clubs truly are? Apparently not. I pack heat every time I shop in bulk.
Yup, that’s why I support stricter control over cars, swimming pools, household chemicals, bathtubs, buckets, etc etc etc…because a few isolated incidents are definitely enough to justify knee jerk reactions.
Yup, stricter gun control MIGHT reduce crime and accidents…of course, there’s no evidence anywhere that it’s ever done so any time it’s been tried…but why let little details like fact and reality get in the way of a good fantasy?
It’s an asinine and offensive parallel that you draw. Pointless really. Everything you mention has an alternate and very pedestrian purpose, with grave consequences when mishandled or misused. Guns have no everyday, pedestrian purpose. Their only purpose is to inflict harm. That is why they were engineered.
For evidence, please see every other country in the world where owning a gun is not a public right and per capita crime statistics are drastically less than the US. Indisputable. Less guns equal less crimes perpetrated people with guns. Simple, indisputable math. Anythin to the contrary in support of the status quo in this country is a weak analogy or parallel masquerading as fact.
I would support an outright ban and deal with the short term consequences if in the long term it meant that the a disgruntled college student couldn’t acquire the means to kill almost 30 of his classmates in a hour span. Could he have built a bomb? Poisoned them? Driven a car through campus? Sure. But nothing is as easy and brutally effective as picking up a gun, pointing it, and shooting it. He could never have achieved remotely similar results within the same time frame with any other instrument.
http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm
So the death of a child is less egregious when the mechanism of death is more “pedestrian” than a gunshot? I wonder if a parent of a child killed in an auto accident or by drowning would agree with you. And you found my point “offensive?”
It seems to me that what you’re saying is: in order to reach a conclusion about any tool’s value, both the costs and benefits must be weighed. What a novel idea.
If a gun’s only purpose is to inflict harm then all of mine are defective because as far as I know the only things they’ve ever harmed are targets at a firing range.
If a gun’s only purpose is to “inflict harm” then why do Police carry them? Is the purpose of Police to inflict harm?
The very characteristics that make a gun an effective tool for the application of criminal violence are the characteristics that make it particularly well suited for use in defense against said criminal violence.
Yes, guns can be used to inflict harm. Sometimes that harm is criminal, sometimes it is justified in defense against said criminal harm. And sometimes they are used to prevent the infliction of harm altogether.
The statistics comparing different countries are meaningless. Correlation does not equal causation, and the correlation is even suspect. Some countries with low legal gun ownership rates have very high crime and murder rates (Mexico and Russia come immediately to mind), some countries with very high legal gun ownership rates have very low crime (Israel, Switzerland).
The United States has an inner city, gang subculture that is very prone to violence. Our non-gun murder rate is higher than the total murder rate of several of the other countries with low gun ownership and low murder rates. As admitted by both the CDC and the Department of Justice following independent studies, there is no evidence that gun control measures reduce crime. Britain’s crime rates, including gun crime, have been climbing steadily since the gradual enactment of their current virtual total ban on gun ownership. Although their murder rates are still lower than ours, they are on the rise and their violent crime rate has actually exceeded that of the US.
Correlation does not equal causation so that does not “prove” that gun control causes an increase in crime, but it does indicate that gun control, in and of itself, does not reduce crime…not even gun crime.
And, since we seem to have switched from snark and sarcasm to a semi-serious discussion, exactly what “stricter gun control” measures do you propose that would have prevented the incident that prompted your post?