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North Illinois University Shooting
KharBevNor:
--- Quote from: Sox on 15 Feb 2008, 04:32 ---The USA's gun control laws are not effective at preventing gun related crime. The figures show this. The UK's gun control laws seem rather effective to me, I've seen a lot of people not get shot.
I'll be honest, I am biased. Any country that so many laws in place that make it legal to kill a man, any man, in my opinion, is barbaric.
--- End quote ---
It's not THAT hard to get hold of a gun in this country, it's just expensive, dangerous and involves a lot more crimes.
0bsessions:
In other words, much harder than here. Legal sale of guns allots for more production and importing of guns which allows for them to go missing and be sold illegally much easier. I'm mostly working on assumption here, but from experience I know it's not all that hard. I know some pretty batshit loco guys that own guns. Hell, the guy who let me try out his .357 comes from a pretty frightening family.
Edit:
Some new info on the shooting.
--- Quote ---"At least some of the weapons were purchased legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said."
--- End quote ---
Alex C:
Yeah, I'm sorry my fellow gun owners, but I'll never buy the idea that our gun control laws here in the US are very effective. The only argument you can really make at all is that owning a gun doesn't make you a violent person in and of itself, and that's pretty irrelevant because the primary concern is that guns increase the severity of violent incidents, not the frequency. I generally think gun control in the USA is a losing battle, but not because of flaws with gun control in general, but simply as a result of our culture and the sheer prevalence of guns. I've known plenty of gun control opponents who continually point out that the short term benefits of stronger gun control laws are minimal at best, but they also conveniently overlook the fact that there are so many guns in the USA that even most gun control advocates accept that the benefit will be in the long term, not the short term. Quite simply, even if we enacted laws similar to the UK this very day it'd take a long time to see a real pay off simply due to how many firearms are already in circulation in unofficial channels. People want a quick fix and it simply isn't going to happen, and our political culture has a notoriously short attention span. :|
0bsessions:
The thing I'm more worried about is the slippery slope that could result. In order to get any kind of serious gun control in this country, we'd have to practically outright repeal a part of the bill of rights. I don't like the idea of the nation's lax gun control, but I like the idea of fucking with the rest of the Bill of Rights even less.
Lines:
I think the major thing about the 2nd amendment is that it was written when people were being forced to give up arms because they were in the middle of a war. They wanted the right to defend their homes and the necessary weapons to do so. This was also made during a time when there was virtually NO home security. Now it isn't like this BUT some people feel safer with the option of having a gun. I saw on the news a while back, some lady with pretty good security have her home almost invaded by 3 guys, but luckily they couldn't kick down the door and were scared off. But as shown by the interview, they were very lucky they didn't get in, because the lady had an automatic rifle under her bed, which she had grabbed as soon as she heard them outside. She also had a few handguns around the place as well and would have easily defended herself if they had actually gotten in.
Back to the getting a gun bit - I imagine it'd be pretty easy. Like someone said before, kids will borrow them from their parents, buy them off the street, buy them off the internet, etc. It is very easy to get a gun, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the legal way, which is to get a permit and then buy one in a shop when your permit and background check clear.
That said and trying to stay within Troll's rules, I don't like guns, but if people want them for whatever reason that is LEGAL, then so be it. (This includes going to the range, hunting, home defense, etc, all of which are reasons some people I know own guns.) What needs to happen is getting guns off the street that don't belong there, but we've been dealing with this for how long now and I don't really see this happening any time soon. But even then, it doesn't stop events like this happening, because some people are messed up and they have an easy way to get things they shouldn't have.
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