The crux of the matter.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

Criminals will always have weapons. They will steal them, smuggle them, make them, whatever it takes. They will also always be willing to use those weapons to get whatever it is they want money, drugs, sex, etc. They are predators, they will most likely choose victims that are weaker than they are and they will inflict whatever damage they want to in order to get what they want or just for their own sick enjoyment. Fortunately our founding fathers knew that such people existed and always would, so they saw fit to recognize and guarantee our right to self protection in our Constitution. Many years later those same predators still walk among us and the law abiding still have a right to protect themselves from them. Everyone wishes it wasn't so but wishes won't protect you from those who rob, rape and kill.

[rd_kent]

1. *applause*

:applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause:

[grantcart]

2. It didn't have to be that way but I have to say that you have convinced me

that additional gun laws are unlikely to be beneficial and that responsible gun owners are in fact, very responsible.


I still think that more should be done to enforce safety requirements so that people other than the responsible owners, especially children do not gain access to guns in the home. There still will be guns used in domestic arguments and too available for people susceptible to suicide but again no real answer fits the American reality.

A rare case of a changed opinion at DU lol.

[X_Digger]

3. Good news is, safety is 'up'..

There are fewer hunting accidents and other accidental shootings this year than last, continuing a steady trend for at least the last 5-7 years (I want to say the national safety institute or somesuch that tracks these stats.)

[grantcart]

4. that is good news

[SteveM]

10. National Safety Council...

They also found a very long term trend showing that childhood deaths due to gun "accidents" has been in a strong, steady decline, and ranks well below accidental drownings, electrocutions and falls, among other causes. Check out the May 2007 issue of Outdoor Life. Implied in these findings is a marked improvement in safety measures taken by parents since the rate of gun accident deaths is falling markedly when compared with the other major categories of death surveyed.

www.outdoorlife.com

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

5. I too would like to see the trend toward fewer accidental deaths and injuries continue.

I would also love to see the laws against those using firearms in crimes significantly strengthened. Say an added 10 year sentence that must be served consecutively for any crime where a firearm was used.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. There are some things that can still be done..

Some of us would like to see registration, OR, digital records from FFL's, that the BATFE can use to ferret out the mass straw purchasers, or maybe opening NICS so we can check prospective buyers ourselves without an FFL, but yeah, for the most part, everything that can be sensibly regulated really already is.

Maybe the BATFE could use more funding, because the real battle is keeping guns in the hands of law abiding citizens, and not letting them cross over to known criminals.

[taurus145]

9. Thank you. n/t

[TheWraith]

15. Welcome onboard.

You're right that most people don't practice proper safety in a lot of cases. Unfortunately that's not something that can be legislated, as we see every day with the number of people who don't wear seatbelts, or do similarly stupid things. But fortunately, gun safety in this country IS increasing--the number of accidental shooting deaths is low and continuing to sink to record levels. It's all about knowing what's appropriate. Take me: all the guns in my house are left loaded, not chambered, and unlocked. That's because everyone who's in my house or going to be in my house knows how to handle them safely. But if there were going to be kids around I'd never even consider leaving my weapons someplace they could be seen, let alone accessed.

[Katya Mullethov]

22. Additional gun laws are unlikely to be beneficial

But it's like cocaine aint it ? You just cant quit !

[eqfan592]

25. Glad to hear it :)

We'd be better off spending the political capital that many would spend on further gun laws of questionable valuable on laws geared toward attacking the root causes of violence, such as poverty, education, better mental health care (and health care in general), etc.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. You forgot 'they will pay someone with rudimentary high school metal shop tools to make one'

Because they can. Check out Khyber Pass forgeries some time. People are basically making replicas of firearms with collectible value with little more than a metal file, and time.

It's pretty amazing, and some of them carry collectible value just on the sheer amazingness of this sort of hand created firearm.

Here's an example: http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2007/10/khyber_rifles_a.html

[east texas lib]

8. Very true...

I do not carry because I wish others to die. I carry because I wish to live. In the Guns Forum on any given day you can find people on both ends of the RKBA issue ( and all shades of the middle ) debating and arguing their respective positions with great gusto, posting data to support their positions, and so forth. And yet, in one sense, it is in the abstract insofar as the fact that most of the posting and debating is done from the relative safety of the home or workplace, without even being face to face.
But should the unthinkable occur, it will be face to face, it will be brutal, it will be primal, it will unfold with terrifying speed, and it will be oh so simple. Life. Or death. I and I alone ( not any government entity, special interest group or individual ) will be the sole arbiter of how I face such a situation. For me, that is the crux of the matter. I choose life.

[GreenStormCloud]

13. Me too. I carry so I can have a chance to choose life (mine) if I have to. N/T

[GreenStormCloud]

11. Short and direct - excellent.

Prediction: The antis will avoid this thread.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

16. Thanks.

[Tim01]

12. True. nt

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

38. Thx.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

39. Zombie thread!!!!

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

40. Tim is still alive.

[east texas lib]

43. Dead again? Damn it, that's third time this week!

}(

[burrfoot]

14. Dave, I've

rarely seen it put so well. Both concise and complete. Well done.

Thanks! :yourock: :fistbump: :toast:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

19. Thanks.

[rrneck]

17. The reality on the ground. K&R

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

37. Thanks.

[jeepnstein]

18. If you want...

to see how far the criminal set will go to arm themselves, visit any prison. You'll be searched thoroughly for weapons or contraband before even getting into anything resembling an area with inmate movement. Despite near absolute control over inmate movement, property, and schedule, they can find all sorts of ways to kill one another and the staff. Their kind does not play by the rules.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

23. Kind of funny how that goes over some peoples heads here.

[jeepnstein]

27. I see it all the time.

People who never really deal with it often tend to believe that the criminal set is just misunderstood and they are all worth rehabilitating. Most of them are, in fact, worth the effort and they all should be given a chance. Some of them are just evil.

I never believed in monsters until I met one, then another, then a few more. They are real. They are walking around among us every day. I met one at the hardware store yesterday. He was fresh out of prison again and trying to join the normal world. I wished him luck but the odds are against him. We had a really honest exchange on the subject. There are few things nicer than seeing one of those guys beat the odds. There was a lady standing near us and she must have overheard our conversation because the look on her face as I passed her was one of pure terror.

[proteus_lives]

20. Good points. All of them.

But many won't listen.

It's safer and easier to blame a tool.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

21. True.

[Euromutt]

24. And we see this phenomenon even in countries with restrictive gun laws

I've posted this many a time on this forum, but in my native country of the Netherlands, the highly restrictive gun laws do not seem to prevent anyone who wants a firearm for criminal purposes from acquiring one. In the first nine months of 2009, there were 22 reported shooting incidents in Amsterdam Zuidoost (one of the boroughs of Amsterdam, pop. approx. 86,000), all involving illegal discharge of illegally possessed firearms, three of which resulted in a fatality. Five of these incidents occurred in May alone.

In the most recent incident, a customer got into an argument with a checkout girl in a supermarket, who then phoned her (36 year-old) boyfriend to come over and teach the customer a lesson. The boyfriend caught up with the customer at a children's playground and, in the presence of the customer's girlfriend and two month-old baby (as well as quite a few kids at the playground), shot him at least eight times. According to witnesses, two or more shots were delivered to the victim's head after he was already on the ground.

Also, the gunman was reported to be carrying two guns when he fled after the shooting, and there's speculation the second gun may have been the victim's. The vic, Ishmael Gumbs, didn't exactly have his life in order; he was 19, had immigrated from the Antilles the year before, was unemployed, had been suspected by the police of engaging in some petty drug-dealing, and running the numbers, he must have gotten his girlfriend pregnant within a few months of arriving in the Netherlands, while she was still 15. Oh, and she was pregnant again at the time of the shooting (within two months after giving birth). Still, Gumbs' social worker said he was trying to straighten himself out, but even if he hadn't, that didn't give the shooter the right to murder Gumbs.

Bottom line being, you can't credibly claim that Gumbs' murder was made possible by lax Dutch gun laws. Or that of Hans van Geenen, a marijuana grower who died when the car he was traveling in was riddled with sub-machine gun fire in September 2008. Or that of Erkan Yildiz, the owner/operator of a convenience store in Amsterdam North, who was fatally shot in the head during a robbery in February 2007 (two days after he'd appeared on TV to complain about the number of robberies he'd already suffered). You can't credibly claim that lax Dutch gun laws are to blame for the fact that an increasing number of muggings and robberies involve firearms (as a regional Dutch police report stated in 2005). The crux of the matter, as Dave rightly notes, is that no gun control law is going to stop someone who wants a gun for criminal purposes from acquiring one, because there's always going be some bastard willing to sell it to him.

And because of developments in the Netherlands and the UK with regard to criminal use of firearms, we have to seriously question how much impact increased gun control would have on American violent crime figures. American armed robbers and drug dealers like their guns, and it seems implausible that they'd let something like a gun control law stand in their way of acquiring them.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

28. Good points.

[eqfan592]

26. Outstanding, Dave!

Job well done!

:toast:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

29. Thank you.

[Hoopla Phil]

30. "It is every gentleman's duty to at all times go armed." n/t

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

31. I certainly hope it is gentle men who choose to arm themselves.

If not gentle at least peaceful.

[TheWraith]

32. Slight misquote.

That passage from Jefferson's letter read as follows, relevant bit in bold.

"The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press."

[GreenStormCloud]

35. Excellent quote. N/T

[Indy Lurker]

33. Here's a bunch of quotes

That say it better than I ever could.




Cesare Beccaria - author of On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty... and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.



Albert Einstein - father of modern physics
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

Benjamin Franklin - American Revolutionary
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.


Woodrow T. Wilson - 28th President of the United States
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it... The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.


Louis D. Brandeis - United States Supreme Court Justice (1916-1939).
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."


Thurgood Marshall - United States Supreme Court Justice (1989)
History teaches us that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.


Patrick Henry - American Revolutionary
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.


Samuel Adams - American Revolutionary
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

34. Thanks for posting them.

[spin]

36. Great quotes with a lot of embedded truth. (n/t)

[shadowrider]

41. There will be those

Who show up here, sooner or later, who will differ in their opinion. Me? I'd rather be morally unsuperior and live than be morally superior and six feet under.

Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

[Katya Mullethov]

42. Morally superior ?

Would that be a PC spawned euphemism , or simply a coping strategy of the mad ?