Illinois is becoming like most of Europe.
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LabVIEWstuff wrote:
Flame-throwers - I'm guessing they'd be fine, shoot your deer and BBQ it at the same time?
Flamethrowers are completely legal to make/own in the U.S., in fact I don't think they've ever been regulated. But let's look in the other direction too, should we ban all knives? Those are also weapons. Only criminals should be allowed to eat steak!
Why stop at knives? Baseball bats and hammers can kill a person too. Cars kill more people than guns, as do poisons (accidentally ingested household cleaners, usually), so let's ban cars and cleaners! One death is one death too many!
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Why stop at knives? Baseball bats and hammers can kill a person too. Cars kill more people than guns, as do poisons (accidentally ingested household cleaners, usually), so let's ban cars and cleaners! One death is one death too many!
What you are forgetting is everything that you have mentioned has other predominate uses other than to kill people, and were designed to be, and are used in other ways than to kill people. Guns however are designed to kill people.
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Why stop at knives? Baseball bats and hammers can kill a person too. Cars kill more people than guns, as do poisons (accidentally ingested household cleaners, usually), so let's ban cars and cleaners! One death is one death too many!
Maybe it's the speed at which they can kill that differentiates guns from the other things you mention, and possibly why some gun enthusiasts would think that putting even more powerful weapons into the hands of their fellow civilians might not be a good thing? A hammer, knife, generally you'd kill one person at a time, then have to move on to the next. With a car you could plough into a bus stop and get 3 or 4 at a time, but the car would be scrap or have to build speed back up again. This all takes time and reduces the rate at which the deaths can accumulate. A handgun, still one person at a time, but if you have a crowd then you could maybe kill someone every 2s or so??? You see where I'm going with this... As we climb the weapons ladder we increase the rate at which we can kill, which brings me back to the question - is there an acceptable rate? A helicopter gunship could wipe out a football stadium in double-quick time, should they be allowed in the hands of the public? I hasten to add that I don't think I have any answers here, I'm just interested in the thought processes that people go through when forming their opinions. Andy B
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Yup - safer - just like Switzerlend.[^]
We don't have it this often. We have more people died in car crashs after speeding than killed by weapons. However, you can always discuss "Is it the weapon which kills people or the one who shoot the weapon is who kills people". Difficult thing... However, if you want to kill someone you can do it with a gun... or with your bare hands. Doesn't matter, the other guy is dead anyways.
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What you are forgetting is everything that you have mentioned has other predominate uses other than to kill people, and were designed to be, and are used in other ways than to kill people. Guns however are designed to kill people.
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Very good point, although like cars knives have other uses whereas guns are designed for killing prey (human or otherwise). Maybe it's just the 'fighting chance' aspect of guns that make us lily-livered liberals queasy? This may be naive but I've always thought that if get a warning and you can run fast enough or hide somewhere you at least have a small chance against a knife attacker, or car, or baseball-bat, whereas against a gun you can't run, can't really hide so you are in essence an execution. Hmm, maybe I'm coming round to the arm-everyone argument, but then surely we'd have to ban alcohol or anything else that impares judgement? Andy B
Would you argue for the banning of "assault knives?" Also, anyone can get a car, regardless of criminal history, anyone can also buy booze, regardless of history. Do repeat offenders continue to drink and drive and murder innocent people who don't have a fighting chance? Yes, hundreds of times a year.
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What you are forgetting is everything that you have mentioned has other predominate uses other than to kill people, and were designed to be, and are used in other ways than to kill people. Guns however are designed to kill people.
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Aside from being flat broke, they are also about to ban any semi automatic weapon. Rifle, shotgun, handgun, probably slingshot, that usb nerf dart launcher on your desk? Probably illegal soon. http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2013/01/03/illinois-assault-weapons-ban-passes.html
I don't really want to jump into the gun control debate en masse right now. But your post has a pretty ludicrous example of a slippery slope fallacy there. Banning assault weapons does not lead automatically to banning slingshots and nerf dart launchers.
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I'm genuinely curious as to whether there is a line the gun enthusiasts would draw as to which weapons were and were not suitable for Joe Public? Handguns - fine Single-shot rifles - fine Assault Rifles - fine Flame-throwers - I'm guessing they'd be fine, shoot your deer and BBQ it at the same time? Tanks - ? Helicopter gunships - ? Chemical weapons - ? Nukes - ? Andy B
The sooner everyone agrees there is a line, and what is under discussion is where to draw it, the sooner sanity can prevail. I'm sure the most lily-livered liberal would say that safety knives are okay, and the most red-necked right winger would agree that letting people have anthrax or napalm isn't.
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Sorry don't think I'm understanding your point?
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That reasoning can be applied to other things as well: steak knives were designed primarily for cutting flesh. Sounds like a dangerous weapon to me.
Yes, but it has the function of cutting up meat, which every house-hold will need. I cannot think of a situation where I would need a gun, apart from if I wanted to kill someone.
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Yes, but it has the function of cutting up meat, which every house-hold will need. I cannot think of a situation where I would need a gun, apart from if I wanted to kill someone.
There are a lot of households that supplement their diets with meat obtained by hunting. Yes, the point is still to kill something, but that is also true of bows and arrows, mousetraps and flypaper.
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Maybe it's the speed at which they can kill that differentiates guns from the other things you mention, and possibly why some gun enthusiasts would think that putting even more powerful weapons into the hands of their fellow civilians might not be a good thing? A hammer, knife, generally you'd kill one person at a time, then have to move on to the next. With a car you could plough into a bus stop and get 3 or 4 at a time, but the car would be scrap or have to build speed back up again. This all takes time and reduces the rate at which the deaths can accumulate. A handgun, still one person at a time, but if you have a crowd then you could maybe kill someone every 2s or so??? You see where I'm going with this... As we climb the weapons ladder we increase the rate at which we can kill, which brings me back to the question - is there an acceptable rate? A helicopter gunship could wipe out a football stadium in double-quick time, should they be allowed in the hands of the public? I hasten to add that I don't think I have any answers here, I'm just interested in the thought processes that people go through when forming their opinions. Andy B
Okay, we can look at this from a few different directions. Let's start with the ability to kill people quickly in large quantities. As was demonstrated some 12 years ago, airplanes have the ability to kill thousands of people in one go (given the right set of circumstances). Given that no one is advocating eliminating airplanes, why should we focus on ways of killing people that are orders of magnitude less efficient? If you want to scale it down a bit, I would argue that many places in the world can demonstrate the destructiveness of homemade explosives that are easy to make with a little research. No one is advocating restricting access to the necessary ingredients. So now let's try from the other side of the coin. Airplanes have other uses, as do cars and knives and hammers. Guns, on the other hand, are solely for destructive purposes, so let's ban them all. Now, that will affect hunting, which is a big thing in the U.S. States sell a lot of hunting licenses and use the seasons to control animal populations. But I suppose we can lose that revenue and pay specialists to kill the animals to control the population. Or let the populations grow unchecked. Of course, this only solves the issue of people who follow the law. Most of the gun violence in America is actually committed with illegal guns. Maybe making those guns more illegal will make people think twice. It also doesn't address the guns that our government gives to the drug cartels on the border, but since that's technically in Mexico I suppose there's no way that could come back to bite us. Maybe the issue is that it's better for the media to sensationalize things, and it's easier to sensationalize bigger things. So even though there are more handgun deaths than assault rifle deaths, we focus on assault rifles. And even though there are more deaths by bee stings, we choose to focus on shark attacks. Cars and alcohol are responsible for lots of deaths, but they don't drive viewer like the fear of violent crime.
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I'm genuinely curious as to whether there is a line the gun enthusiasts would draw as to which weapons were and were not suitable for Joe Public? Handguns - fine Single-shot rifles - fine Assault Rifles - fine Flame-throwers - I'm guessing they'd be fine, shoot your deer and BBQ it at the same time? Tanks - ? Helicopter gunships - ? Chemical weapons - ? Nukes - ? Andy B
Citizens should only be allowed to own and possess the same weapons there government is allowed to own an posses. We live in a world were the police are issued fully automatic assault rifles and civilians are told (in some cities) they are not even allowed to own a pistol. How can so many be so blind to the past as to think this is a good thing?
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost "All users always want Excel" --Ennis Lynch
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I don't really want to jump into the gun control debate en masse right now. But your post has a pretty ludicrous example of a slippery slope fallacy there. Banning assault weapons does not lead automatically to banning slingshots and nerf dart launchers.
Think of the children
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost "All users always want Excel" --Ennis Lynch
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Civilised? Well Done Illinois.
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Citizens should only be allowed to own and possess the same weapons there government is allowed to own an posses. We live in a world were the police are issued fully automatic assault rifles and civilians are told (in some cities) they are not even allowed to own a pistol. How can so many be so blind to the past as to think this is a good thing?
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost "All users always want Excel" --Ennis Lynch
This is exactly my stance. I read an article the other day that was about a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment which pretty much came to the same conclusion. The People should be armed to a similar level as the government's military.
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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No, less safe. Our non-fire arms crime is also high. Firearms are the private citizen's equalizer against violent criminals.
puromtec1 wrote:
Our non-fire arms crime is also high.
how is this an argument for doing nothing about the 65% of murders which are caused by firearms ?
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I'm genuinely curious as to whether there is a line the gun enthusiasts would draw as to which weapons were and were not suitable for Joe Public? Handguns - fine Single-shot rifles - fine Assault Rifles - fine Flame-throwers - I'm guessing they'd be fine, shoot your deer and BBQ it at the same time? Tanks - ? Helicopter gunships - ? Chemical weapons - ? Nukes - ? Andy B
Each person (according to the Constitution) is free to decide what he "needs". Cost would be more of a barrier than anything else. I'd like to have a helicopter gunship, but they're way too expensive, become even more dangerous when not maintained well, and then there's the problem of fitting it in the gun safe. Back in the 1700's, people owned their own canon. I see no reason why I should be compelled to limit someone else's "needs" based on my own viewpoints.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997 -
I'm tempted to tell John Simmons "The sky is falling - now coming to a place near you!"
Tell me what?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997