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Bullet tax to solve Chicago gun violence and crime problem

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How would my life change if you took away all guns?

Well first of all I'd engage in full out revolution against whoever was taking the guns. No questions.

Ignoring that little glitch, if all guns just suddenly disappeared as if by magic then I guess I'd have to go with something else...possibly a taser or two and probably a sword or staff. I'd also likely start wearing stab armor. I'd be VERY uncomfortable (mentally as well as physically) most of the time, which would lead to irritability and other issues. In short, it would suck.

Think I'm overstating? When I went to England for 10 days I was HYPER aware, fidgety, and nervous for most of the trip. When the coach would send others out with me and make me responsible for them it was AGONIZING feeling like I couldn't protect them. After carrying 16/7/365 for 16 years my firearm is a part of me, and being without it puts me on edge.

It's likely that after a few years I'd adapt, but I'd always be resentful that someone took away my ability to effectively and efficiently respond to threats.
What I was going for was not the emotional rage that SOMEONE took away your guns. It's what happens if your guns ceased to exist tomorrow. Could you perform your daily routine without an issue. Obviously I'm not saying cops lose their guns and soldiers lose their guns.

Average workers. People in the financial sector, engineers, doctors, construction workers, teachers, nurses, firefighters. Honestly their lives wouldn't change. Yes they could go make a fuss out of it, but that's just making a fuss for the sake of making a fuss.

Yes there's an emotional response to these things, but if you look at it from a pure need/want basis, logic prevails.

There are always logical problems with analogies, it's whether the intended point gets across that matters.

Your post seems to boil down to "you don't need guns, therefore you can't compare them to things you do need." The issue there is gun ownership is the keystone of the natural right to self defense, which we do need, even if it is rarely used by the population as a whole.

What we need is the right to gun ownership. Gun ownership itself is not needed. You decide whether you need guns or not, but for the most part in the modern day society you're not missing out on much by not having a gun. That said I don't believe in saying no you shouldnt be able to get a gun if you wanted to.

I'm not trying to just find holes in analogies. The fact is people talk about gun control all the time, but to compare controlling something you don't need to something that is a way of life is not a legitimate comparison.
 
PoW, all of the "current" guns would cease to exist, but the information on how to create them would still exist. Meaning it would be EXTREMELY lucrative to invest in square and round tubing of various sizes as these will probably go up in price as a blackmarket of gun manufacturers sprung up.

So what we would have then is a period with little to no gun activity, then we'd have some group pop up with a ton of guns and try to cease control.

Unless that is you can also make everything like this http://www.slideshare.net/edgarinventor/expedient-homemade-firearms-1-the-9mm-submachine-gun-2726187 not exist either and also wipe peoples memories so they can't just build one from scratch. You'd also probably want to get rid of any similar technologies which could be repurposed or eventually lead one to coming up with the design for a gun.

Basically like I said eliminating guns or even having "strict control" is IMPOSSIBLE and will do NOTHING to stop gun violence or gun crime. The cat is out of the bag and we can actually "attack" the real problem, violence as a concept, with education.

Not sure who you think you're arguing with...I've spent most of my adult life as a mucky-muck with pro-gun movements. You're preaching to the choir here.

The question was asked 'how would your life change if guns didn't exist'. I assumed that to mean a magic wand which literally prevents guns from existing.
 
What I was going for was not the emotional rage that SOMEONE took away your guns. It's what happens if your guns ceased to exist tomorrow. Could you perform your daily routine without an issue. Obviously I'm not saying cops lose their guns and soldiers lose their guns.

Average workers. People in the financial sector, engineers, doctors, construction workers, teachers, nurses, firefighters. Honestly their lives wouldn't change. Yes they could go make a fuss out of it, but that's just making a fuss for the sake of making a fuss.

Yes there's an emotional response to these things, but if you look at it from a pure need/want basis, logic prevails.



What we need is the right to gun ownership. Gun ownership itself is not needed. You decide whether you need guns or not, but for the most part in the modern day society you're not missing out on much by not having a gun. That said I don't believe in saying no you shouldnt be able to get a gun if you wanted to.

I'm not trying to just find holes in analogies. The fact is people talk about gun control all the time, but to compare controlling something you don't need to something that is a way of life is not a legitimate comparison.

Ahh, well, if soldiers and cops keep their guns, but private citizens lose them, then my life changes in the following way:

I stop doing ANYTHING except stealing firearms from cops and soldiers and redistributing them to the people. That's my life. Period. Every second of it. It's not 'making a fuss for the sake of making a fuss', it's a fundamental necessity for me. I MUST have efficient and effective self defense, or I can't function.

So it would be a HUGE change in my day to day to life. In other words, no, I couldn't perform my daily routine without issue. It is an absolute essential part of me being contented. Without it, I have SEVERE limitations on my functionality.

Conversely I haven't had a bank account, or car, in almost a decade. Those things are useless and unnecessary. Erase them through magic and absolutely nothing changes in my life. Same is true of televisions and many other things. In other words, there are broad differences in what people need. The ONLY universals are life universals (food, water, air, etc). EVERYTHING else is subjective.
 
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1. Never said that you did. But experience does impart knowledge that typically cannot be obtained from any other source. You're given two people: One person who's driven for 10 years, and one 14 year old who's never sat behind the wheel or even touched a car and who's only real reference has been movies. Who knows more about cars?

2. Please don't act so dense. The fact that a weapon is a type of tool notwithstanding, what if I buy a gun purely for recreation and only ever use it as such? Is it still a weapon? Not in my mind, it's simply a toy that could be dangerous if used improperly. There are plenty of guns out there that are never used as weapons.

To use your analogy, if all you ever use that flamethrower for is roasting marshmallows, then all it is in my mind is a grossly inefficient marshmallow roaster.

Likewise if a murderer uses an otherwise innocuous steak knife, that knife is considered the "murder weapon" even though its original intent was culinary.

I already posted about both of your points (RTFThread), but you seem to be following emperus's "logic", where you believe that items should be regulated based on some perceived category as opposed to their actual effects.

Actual effects...thats awesome!

Well tell you what clever guy, I'm ready to line up my data about how many people have been killed by guns, and you can line up your guns as toys data.

Once you are done, go and find a better analogy, because even a 14 year old who has never driven a car knows that letting people drive 100 miles an hour down city streets is dangerous.
 
I guess we understand English differently. If you are so confidant. Text those words to the secret service and tell us what happens.
You're a retard is what you are. If I tell you you should eat an apple, am I threatening to eat that apple?
 
Actual effects...thats awesome!

Well tell you what clever guy, I'm ready to line up my data about how many people have been killed by guns, and you can line up your guns as toys data.

Once you are done, go and find a better analogy, because even a 14 year old who has never driven a car knows that letting people drive 100 miles an hour down city streets is dangerous.

I already have in effect, and I don't need to be clever about it. 47% of US households (and growing) have a gun, 0.0029% of the population are killed by guns every year. Seems we're doing pretty well given that level of ownership and the fact that we have virtually one gun per man woman and child floating around.

But I guess 46.9971%/47% are just using their guns improperly. After all, all of those guns should be killing or maiming people, that's their purpose right? 🙄

I cited sources earlier. Suffice it to say they consist of Gallup and the FBI uniform crime reports.
 
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Ahh, well, if soldiers and cops keep their guns, but private citizens lose them, then my life changes in the following way:

I stop doing ANYTHING except stealing firearms from cops and soldiers and redistributing them to the people. That's my life. Period. Every second of it. It's not 'making a fuss for the sake of making a fuss', it's a fundamental necessity for me. I MUST have efficient and effective self defense, or I can't function.

So it would be a HUGE change in my day to day to life. In other words, no, I couldn't perform my daily routine without issue. It is an absolute essential part of me being contented. Without it, I have SEVERE limitations on my functionality.

Conversely I haven't had a bank account, or car, in almost a decade. Those things are useless and unnecessary. Erase them through magic and absolutely nothing changes in my life. Same is true of televisions and many other things. In other words, there are broad differences in what people need. The ONLY universals are life universals (food, water, air, etc). EVERYTHING else is subjective.

Ok, but no reasonable person in this forum has been able to show that their world without guns is a serious problem. You just choose to make it an issue. Without a bank account or car, I think probably everyone here is in some deep trouble.

So the point remains that in terms of necessity to live your life, guns fall pretty low on that list. I think this makes the argument that any sort of limits on access doesn't really screw anyone over. With that said limits shouldnt exist for the sake of limiting people. It's to make sure people are vetted and there's proper documentation. Similar to car registration. Firearms regulations is like cars having safety codes. You have vehicle codes, federal safety requirements, traffic laws, traffic standards for roads, signs, etc. It's a giant industry designed to work with car safety with tons of regulations and legislation.

I guess what gets to me is that anytime you talk about guns, the gun advocates go crazy. There's some sort of fantasy of a foreign invasion or a zombie apocalypse for them to have 20,000 rounds of ammunition and 18 guns or something like that. It's just like when I talk about living a life without guns, you talk about your alternative being to smuggle guns.

Let's take something that I think many of us enjoy but don't necessarily have to have. Strip clubs. Ok, I've been to a few. Some where I live, some in Vegas. Now it's great, but I think as long as we have porn, that's acceptable to most of us. Now if all strip clubs disappeared tomorrow, would I be screwed? Would I find a need to go on a rape spree? Yeah maybe I'll have to find somewhere else to go for a bachelor's party I'm planning to go to, but is my life in jeapardy now? I could go on an extreme and say well it affects me so much I have to open some underground strip club. Come on. Is that how the average person deals with a world without strip clubs?

It's ridiculous. Bring up guns and people bring up cars. Bring up guns being killing machines and people say "well killing isn't bad." Killing isn't bad really? I mean for nation states to achieve national interests, killing is necessary, but even if the world's better without Bin Laden or Al Qaeda or ruthless dictators, we celebrate their downfall, but it's not like we celebrate their killing like killing itself is a positive thing. Fact is killing is bad, and I bet if you ask most reasonable people if we can achieve a similar outcome without killing, you'd pick no killing. Killing with guns is a necessary evil sometimes given how society works, but it's not the same level of slaughtering cows and pigs. It's totally different.
 
I already have in effect, and I don't need to be clever about it. 47% of US households (and growing) have a gun, 0.0029% of the population are killed by guns every year. Seems we're doing pretty well given that level of ownership and the fact that we have virtually one gun per man woman and child floating around.

But I guess 46.9971%/47% are just using their guns improperly. After all, all of those guns should be killing or maiming people, that's their purpose right? 🙄

I cited sources earlier. Suffice it to say they consist of Gallup and the FBI uniform crime reports.

Ok I think we talked about this before but you use these % values and by showing lots of 9s and 0s (depending from which perspective), you assume that these values of gun deaths is small. But I ask you, what gives you the authority to say that is an actual small amount or gun killings?

Would you drink water with ppm levels of lead? 0.0001%? Smaller numbers than you showed. You want ppb at least like 0.000001%? But what about 15-20 ppb which would start to get concerning because that starts getting to borderline you should worry. 0.00002%? So low right?

Anyway, you should get my point by now. Just because the number looks small, doesn't mean it's small for the scenario you're describing. So I ask you what's an appropriate number for gun deaths? 46%/47%? 46.9%/47%? 46.9970%/47%? 46.999999/47%? Ok, meh let's use raw numbers. It's like 10k deaths right? Is that too low or too high? At what point is it a cause for concern? At what point do you say we need better legislation? My point is if you take one piece of current legislation and you repeal it and that 10k becomes 20k, then what do you say? It's still a small % right?

My point is that you can't look at it in terms of %. Murder rates are relative to other countries in the world in the end. What makes better sense (and there are many flaws I can point out in this) is to compare against other countries. Yes. Other countries operate differently and don't have a 2nd amendment. Japan is an extremity, and so those who point solely to Japan need to recognize you need to compare against a whole spectrum of countries and recognize where the USA sits. But I think it makes more sense to compare murder statistics between countries, between states in the US, etc. than to spew out a % number and say well that number looks small so we're ok. It's a very narrow minded view that doesn't allow you to assess how well you're doing. We may not adopt the same firearms policy as another country, but I think you can analyze a whole array of policies from a all the nations in the world, and recognize what works what doesn't, what's more effective, what's less effective, and pick and choose the effective tools in having proper restrictions yet allowing ease of access and gun ownership to law abiding citizens.
 
Ok, but no reasonable person in this forum has been able to show that their world without guns is a serious problem. You just choose to make it an issue. Without a bank account or car, I think probably everyone here is in some deep trouble.

So the point remains that in terms of necessity to live your life, guns fall pretty low on that list. I think this makes the argument that any sort of limits on access doesn't really screw anyone over. With that said limits shouldnt exist for the sake of limiting people. It's to make sure people are vetted and there's proper documentation. Similar to car registration. Firearms regulations is like cars having safety codes. You have vehicle codes, federal safety requirements, traffic laws, traffic standards for roads, signs, etc. It's a giant industry designed to work with car safety with tons of regulations and legislation.

I guess what gets to me is that anytime you talk about guns, the gun advocates go crazy. There's some sort of fantasy of a foreign invasion or a zombie apocalypse for them to have 20,000 rounds of ammunition and 18 guns or something like that. It's just like when I talk about living a life without guns, you talk about your alternative being to smuggle guns.

Let's take something that I think many of us enjoy but don't necessarily have to have. Strip clubs. Ok, I've been to a few. Some where I live, some in Vegas. Now it's great, but I think as long as we have porn, that's acceptable to most of us. Now if all strip clubs disappeared tomorrow, would I be screwed? Would I find a need to go on a rape spree? Yeah maybe I'll have to find somewhere else to go for a bachelor's party I'm planning to go to, but is my life in jeapardy now? I could go on an extreme and say well it affects me so much I have to open some underground strip club. Come on. Is that how the average person deals with a world without strip clubs?

It's ridiculous. Bring up guns and people bring up cars. Bring up guns being killing machines and people say "well killing isn't bad." Killing isn't bad really? I mean for nation states to achieve national interests, killing is necessary, but even if the world's better without Bin Laden or Al Qaeda or ruthless dictators, we celebrate their downfall, but it's not like we celebrate their killing like killing itself is a positive thing. Fact is killing is bad, and I bet if you ask most reasonable people if we can achieve a similar outcome without killing, you'd pick no killing. Killing with guns is a necessary evil sometimes given how society works, but it's not the same level of slaughtering cows and pigs. It's totally different.

No sir, you try to make it NOT an issue by not hearing what people are telling you. If I did not have a firearm, I would likely be injured, crippled, or dead now. It has saved me. It has prevented crime. The same is true for thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions of others on a yearly basis.

You ignore that I live perfectly well with neither bank nor car, as do numerous others. You choose to see the world ONLY through your own perceptions and biases.

In order to 'live your life', you must first be alive, and without adequate means of defense, this is often not possible. Therefore the firearm exists every bit as vital as oxygen or food or water in that when it is necessary, the alternative is death itself.

I don't see how a useless tax on ammunition is equivalent to necessary safety regulation.

You choose the extreme fantasies to discount the very possible potentials. Civil unrest and the disintegration of America is entirely plausible. Fascist government usurpation is not only probable, it's currently occurring. Self defense happens every day. These things can (and do) occur, and access to proper tools and the ability to use them effectively are the only thing that will make the difference between surviving it and not.

You accuse us of making faulty comparisons, and then you compare a firearm (something which saves lives, and entire nations or peoples), to a strip club (a chance to pay to smell the food at the buffet). THAT is what's ridiculous.

Yes, killing isn't bad, when done for the right reasons. In fact, it's the BEST possible thing in those situations. This is because you CANNOT achieve 'the same thing' without killing. You MUST kill evil. Always.

In short, you have NO IDEA how important they are purely because you choose to have a different opinion and discount anything which does not match your world view. We sit here and explain to you, carefully and with evidence, example and analogy, WHY we feel differently, and instead of looking at it you discount it or belittle it. You are what you accuse us of being.
 
Ok I think we talked about this before but you use these % values and by showing lots of 9s and 0s (depending from which perspective), you assume that these values of gun deaths is small. But I ask you, what gives you the authority to say that is an actual small amount or gun killings?

Would you drink water with ppm levels of lead? 0.0001%? Smaller numbers than you showed. You want ppb at least like 0.000001%? But what about 15-20 ppb which would start to get concerning because that starts getting to borderline you should worry. 0.00002%? So low right?

Anyway, you should get my point by now. Just because the number looks small, doesn't mean it's small for the scenario you're describing. So I ask you what's an appropriate number for gun deaths? 46%/47%? 46.9%/47%? 46.9970%/47%? 46.999999/47%? Ok, meh let's use raw numbers. It's like 10k deaths right? Is that too low or too high? At what point is it a cause for concern? At what point do you say we need better legislation? My point is if you take one piece of current legislation and you repeal it and that 10k becomes 20k, then what do you say? It's still a small % right?

My point is that you can't look at it in terms of %. Murder rates are relative to other countries in the world in the end. What makes better sense (and there are many flaws I can point out in this) is to compare against other countries. Yes. Other countries operate differently and don't have a 2nd amendment. Japan is an extremity, and so those who point solely to Japan need to recognize you need to compare against a whole spectrum of countries and recognize where the USA sits. But I think it makes more sense to compare murder statistics between countries, between states in the US, etc. than to spew out a % number and say well that number looks small so we're ok. It's a very narrow minded view that doesn't allow you to assess how well you're doing. We may not adopt the same firearms policy as another country, but I think you can analyze a whole array of policies from a all the nations in the world, and recognize what works what doesn't, what's more effective, what's less effective, and pick and choose the effective tools in having proper restrictions yet allowing ease of access and gun ownership to law abiding citizens.

You cannot compare them to other countries because other countries aren't this country. They generally have nothing in common. Not talking about the 2nd amendment, or murder statistics, but wealth distribution, social nets, cultural homogeneity, size, neighbors, economic outlook, history, traditions, values, employment, etc. Unless ALL the factors line up, direct comparison is false.

If you do look at all the countries, as you suggest, then you see that there is no linear correlation between firearm possession and crimes/violence. Many highly saturated nations have low crime and violence, many low saturation countries have high crime and violence. Same with suicides, or other metrics. The best minds in the world (the CDC, the NAS, numerous independent researchers, etc) have already established quite clearly that there is NO affixable causal relation between these things (at least not with all the data currently in existence in the world).
 
Yes, because we've spent the majority of them arguing whether guns primary purpose was to kill or maim or to use for competition. How can you further any debate when people aren't constrained by reality.

Guns are designed to kill man. So are swords, bows, sharp sticks, big rocks, and women.
 
Ok I think we talked about this before but you use these % values and by showing lots of 9s and 0s (depending from which perspective), you assume that these values of gun deaths is small. But I ask you, what gives you the authority to say that is an actual small amount or gun killings?

Would you drink water with ppm levels of lead? 0.0001%? Smaller numbers than you showed. You want ppb at least like 0.000001%? But what about 15-20 ppb which would start to get concerning because that starts getting to borderline you should worry. 0.00002%? So low right?

Anyway, you should get my point by now. Just because the number looks small, doesn't mean it's small for the scenario you're describing. So I ask you what's an appropriate number for gun deaths? 46%/47%? 46.9%/47%? 46.9970%/47%? 46.999999/47%? Ok, meh let's use raw numbers. It's like 10k deaths right? Is that too low or too high? At what point is it a cause for concern? At what point do you say we need better legislation? My point is if you take one piece of current legislation and you repeal it and that 10k becomes 20k, then what do you say? It's still a small % right?

My point is that you can't look at it in terms of %. Murder rates are relative to other countries in the world in the end. What makes better sense (and there are many flaws I can point out in this) is to compare against other countries. Yes. Other countries operate differently and don't have a 2nd amendment. Japan is an extremity, and so those who point solely to Japan need to recognize you need to compare against a whole spectrum of countries and recognize where the USA sits. But I think it makes more sense to compare murder statistics between countries, between states in the US, etc. than to spew out a % number and say well that number looks small so we're ok. It's a very narrow minded view that doesn't allow you to assess how well you're doing. We may not adopt the same firearms policy as another country, but I think you can analyze a whole array of policies from a all the nations in the world, and recognize what works what doesn't, what's more effective, what's less effective, and pick and choose the effective tools in having proper restrictions yet allowing ease of access and gun ownership to law abiding citizens.

I used percentages to emphasize exactly how small the death rate is by comparison to the... non-death rate you could say.

Or do you think 9,000 out of a population of 310,000,000 isn't small? Remember that we're talking about the same number regardless, it's just a matter of presentation. For my part, I hear people talking about "thousands die from gun violence every year!". Well that's true, but it's ~9000 and out of a population as large as ours that's a VERY small number.

Now would I like that number to be even smaller? Of course. But I'm not willing to compromise the rights of over a hundred million to save a few hundred. In turn I really wish the FBI accounted for gang killings in a separate statistic, because they'd be killing each other anyway and removing them from the figure would lower it drastically IMO.

No system is perfect, all systems can be improved. I do not trust the United States Government to increase our gun regulation in a manner that maintains it as a right and freedom.

And you can't compare our gun violence rate to other nations anymore than you could compare our rape rate to the Congo. There are so many cultural and societal differences between the US and others as to render such comparisons meaningless.

What works best is simple, if not easy to obtain. Low poverty + opportunity + education + medical care = less crime. We have more than enough gun regulation, we simply need to enforce it. While we do that, we need to treat the disease and not the symptom.
 
What we need is the right to gun ownership. Gun ownership itself is not needed. You decide whether you need guns or not, but for the most part in the modern day society you're not missing out on much by not having a gun. That said I don't believe in saying no you shouldnt be able to get a gun if you wanted to.

I'm not trying to just find holes in analogies. The fact is people talk about gun control all the time, but to compare controlling something you don't need to something that is a way of life is not a legitimate comparison.

I'll restate.

1. We need the right to self defense.
2. For this right to mean anything in the modern era, we need the right to gun ownership (here we agree).
3. Therefore, we need reasonable civilian access to guns.
4. Therefore, regulating guns (something we need access to) is equivalent to regulating something else we need access to.

Just because guns/self defense are used less often by society as a whole doesn't mean they're less vital or that the comparison is invalid, simply that the scale of effects would be different if they were removed.

Say you have cancer and are on two medications: One you take once a month, and one you take every day. Both are needed for you to survive. If you stop taking the 2nd one, you die within 24 hours. If you stop taking the 1st one, you'll be fine for the next month, then you'll die. Does that difference mean the two medications are incomparable?
 
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The economist in me says that if there is any evidence that this will reduce gun-related crime in Chicago... couldn't you check crime rates since the beginning of the Afghan war?

The two wars have dramatically increased the price of ammunition domestically.

Edit, Nope (ignore the car stats) just look at the not-falling gun-related deaths.

4fbffa8673b2e.image.jpg
 
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I see why it's so hard to enact sensible gun policy. Gun nuts are just that, nuts. Are we really having an argument about what a gun's primary purpose is? Wow. Reality seems so fleeting to you guys. The fact that you carry guns scares me even more.


I have probably pulled the trigger of a loaded gun 10,000 (a very rough guess) times in my life. Only one time did I point the barrel at another living thing, a deer when I was a teenager that I legally shot, killed, and ate. So that would mean 99.99% of the time I am using my gun wrongly, according to you, when I go target shooting, trap/skeet shooting, plinking, etc. Yet no one else would tell me I am using my gun for a reason that it was not built for. I think if you look at how many bullets and shells are fired in a given year by all Americans who shoot vs. how many people are killed or shot in a year, you will plainly see that guns have purposes other than killing.

But even if we dismiss all of that and I were to agree with you, that a gun's sole purpose is to kill, tell me why that means bullets need to be taxed. That is like saying the sole purpose of an axe is to destroy a tree, therefore it needs to a special tax. Or bologna's sole purpose is to get you fat and give you heart disease, so it needs a special tax. Or a fishing pole's sole purpose is to kill fish, so it needs a special tax. I don't see the connection, I don't understand your logic here.
 
The economist in me says that if there is any evidence that this will reduce gun-related crime in Chicago... couldn't you check crime rates since the beginning of the Afghan war?

The two wars have dramatically increased the price of ammunition domestically.

Edit, Nope (ignore the car stats) just look at the not-falling gun-related deaths.

4fbffa8673b2e.image.jpg

Should note that that number includes suicides, which is probably the cause of the mild increase given the economy.
 
I already have in effect, and I don't need to be clever about it. 47% of US households (and growing) have a gun, 0.0029% of the population are killed by guns every year. Seems we're doing pretty well given that level of ownership and the fact that we have virtually one gun per man woman and child floating around.

But I guess 46.9971%/47% are just using their guns improperly. After all, all of those guns should be killing or maiming people, that's their purpose right? 🙄

I cited sources earlier. Suffice it to say they consist of Gallup and the FBI uniform crime reports.

Interesting. But thats not what we were discussing.

But you knew that already.

Regardless, guns were not invented for recreational hunters/range shooters, no matter what statistics you trot out.

And your other meadering point about we need guns for self-defense has no data to support it either.
 
LMFAO! A nickel a bullet...... Ok, I know gangbangers tend to be horrible shots, especially when they feel the need to look "cool" when they shoot by holding the gun sideways, but even if they unload an entire 18 round 9mm magazine we are talking less than a buck...... Yeah, I can definitely see the gangbangers rethinking who they shoot and why because it will cost them less than a dollar IF they empty the mag.
 
Interesting. But thats not what we were discussing.

But you knew that already.

Regardless, guns were not invented for recreational hunters/range shooters, no matter what statistics you trot out.

And your other meadering point about we need guns for self-defense has no data to support it either.

If you've ever read or posted in a gun control thread in ATP&N (you have)then you've seen the links the Kleck's study.

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

http://www.guncite.com/kleckandgertztable1.html

http://www.gunsandcrime.org/dgufreq.html
 
Interesting. But thats not what we were discussing.

But you knew that already.

Regardless, guns were not invented for recreational hunters/range shooters, no matter what statistics you trot out.

And your other meadering point about we need guns for self-defense has no data to support it either.

No, guns were not invented (about 700 years ago) for recreation. I never contested that. I contest that their sole modern purpose is to maim or kill, and I've used that word more than once.

Has no data? Are you serious?

I attack you with some kind of hand-to-hand deadly weapon. You have the option of a gun, or something other than a gun. Now what option is there that would be even remotely similar to a gun in terms of effectiveness? You think its safer or equally safe to take on a knife-wielding opponent in hand to hand vs shooting them? You think single-shot tazers are just as effective?

And lest you think that's just an armchair scenario: http://www.abc4.com/content/news/to...-lake-city-smiths/NDNrL1gxeE2rsRhrWCM9dQ.cspx

Would the guy have been able to hold the stabber at bay with a baseball bat or another knife? Or even tazer? Who knows, but it's far less likely.

I have many more links where that came from. But honestly, the extreme advantages of a gun in any self-defense scenario are self evident to anyone with a basic grasp of logic and the properties of weapons. If you're going to argue that a person can go into a lethal self-defense encounter without a gun and be just as safe as they would be with one, this conversation is over.
 
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To get a gun card in Illionois you have to submit a photo and a your fingerprints. In some states all you need is a driver's License?

All Hail the Police State of Illinois!
 
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