Guns

Discussion in 'Debate Corner' started by Styx, Jan 20, 2011.

  1. Peace and War Bianca, you minx!

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    Guns can be used to eliminate a threat. That is the only extent of defending a gun can be used for, to stop any farther attacks against you or others around you. This 'self defense' can only be initiated through an aggressive act of killing or harming. Like I said earlier, whatever way you look at it, it's an aggressive act intended to hurt.

    The founding fathers wanted to defend against foreign government influence to their own ideals, mainly the British which I’ve already stated. They were at a weakened state at the time and feared foreign intervention into their newly established 'freedom'. they were only afraid of what was logical AT THE TIME. Nowadays, the government isn't coming to take away your land and liberty, at least not by force with weapons, and as such is the reason guns wouldn't be needed. Freedom is an idea. A concept. A state of being. It is not obtained by attacking senseless with weapons against possible government hit squads, but by conviction and individuality.

    And if you think that your liberty and your freedom is being taken away then you're not looking at the world around you. You live in a country where free speech is allowed and even encouraged. Where all races and genders are to be seen as equals. Where the man with nothing can obtained everything they ever dreamed. And where peace can be kept with words and not weapons. You think your losing freedom because some people are considering banning guns? Try telling that to starving family's in Africa. With some of the poorest countries in the world who lack the very basics to survive. With only a shack to protect them from the weather. No clean water. No education. Diseases with no cures. Where militants come to a village, cut the arms off of men and execute in the streets and where they rape women, children and even babies, for no reason but fun. They're lead by a corrupt government that uses their money for their selfish wants and does near nothing to help its people. Where foreign countries exploit these people. They simply use them as cheap labour, being paid so little as to barely survive each day working longer hours then you or I a day.

    Can you really tell me you’re losing you’re freedom? I don't know if you can even imagine what no freedom is like.
     
  2. Egypt Twilight Town Denizen

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  3. P Banned

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    How would guns help in that situation? The state has more power at its disposal than the people do. The government has more guns and more equipment. While the general public outnumbers them, they don't have training. They're not as well equipped or as experienced, and gun laws aren't going to change that. What I'm getting at is that guns won't help overthrow government tyranny, and would not have helped in that situation in the video. If the protesters had pulled guns on the SWAT officer, they would have been overpowered and sent to jail. It wouldn't have helped the 'fight for freedom' in the slightest.

    That's not to say the SWAT was justified (although I imagine there are background laws floating around), just that guns would not have helped in that situation.
     
  4. Egypt Twilight Town Denizen

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    I'm not saying guns would have done any good, because it wouldn't. I'm not saying that we go out and shoot, not at all. If we did any thing like that it would be the end of the Republic. What these YAL have done was the right thing.
    Yes they do have more power but I doudt that every law enforcement will go along with the gov't it might be 50/50 at most.
    What I'm saying is that I don't want the gov't start telling me what I can and can't have in my home. If they start saying what I can have and can't have whats going to stop them from telling me what car I can have or not have etc, if we let them talling us what we can do then they will keep taking more of are rights away.
     
  5. P Banned

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    Too late. You can't have certain weapons, you can't have certain animals, you can't have certain chemicals and you can't have certain drugs.

    They do regulate what car you can have. You can't have a wreckage of a car that doesn't conform to road laws.

    All these other restrictions are already in place, and they're good. They keep people alive. In the same way, guns do not keep people alive. So it's time to take them away. Our problems can be solved with reasoned discourse in this day and age. Having a bunch of people resorting to force is not a good idea.
     
  6. Lite The Future

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    In my honest opinion, I think that the only people who should be allowed to use any firearms are the Police. They are professionally trained to use them only in heated situations (Which there would be less of if guns weren't being sold to the public in the first place), so it's not like they're the ones going around killing innocent people. Other than them, nobody else should have firearms in their possession. There's no reason to and it leads to unwanted deaths if not concealed tightly enough. Again, thats just my opinion.
     
  7. AmericanSephiroth Traverse Town Homebody

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    ehh same old debate as the last 500 of its kind. I will say this and very honestly some people only respond to force and force alone you can't reason with a thief and you can't reason with a psychotic killer the only thing you can do is stop them but if you are disarmed then well you are quite ****ed aren't you? simply put,take me for example, I am someone of fragile health and i am quite feeble in terms of strength without a weapon or help i cannot defend myself in most any situation. I have the intellect to reason out of numerous situations but many people cannot be reasoned with so how am i to defend myself without a weapon? I lack the funds for a bodyguard(s) and the police aren't standing next to me, also I have no real physical strength so what is to happen? short answer: I'm screwed. long answer: i am unbelievably and totally unreasonably and absolutely ****ed. think about that for a bit before you think deadly weapons, especially guns, should be outlawed

    long story short: i do not believe guns should be outlawed because there are dangerous individuals and animals out there that wish to harm myself or others and without something to eliminate that threat issues will arise very rapidly.
     
  8. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    I am for a gun ban if it absolute, but I trust no man, no matter his expertise or licensing, with something that I cannot have. Guns are no exception to this. It may simply be that I wish to collect guns. If another man is able to do so, then I should be too. If it is a matter of training, then it is my own fault for not being ready. If it is a matter of equipment, though, I would like to be as equipped as the next man, no matter who that man may be, or, at the very least, able to be. If we are being honest here, I feel that no ban is justified unless it is absolute. There can be no man that is exempt from such a ban, or else it is an imbalance, and there is not an equal opportunity for all. I say equal opportunity in the sense that anyone of any occupation may be able to buy or trade said product with the same restrictions or lack thereof as would apply with any other man. All members of a society should have the same opportunity in all things. This does not mean that they have equal opportunity to become officers or soldiers, but that soldiers and officer have the same opportunity as any other worker. If this is not adhered to, then there will be an elite class of people who can get banned things and a lower class that cannot. I care not for murders committed by stray criminals as most would tend to bring up, but more of this splitting of ranks. If there is superiority displayed now, it will only grow with a gun ban. That I would not like to see.
     
  9. Patman Bof

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    ^What are you talking about ? There' s already a good way to divide people, it' s called money. Guns aren' t free. Furthermore there' s already a shitload of professions that give you access to things that are banned to the public. Why ? Cause they' re dangerous and a certain knowledge is required to handle them.
    If cops manage to screw things up when handling guns despite their long training I don' t expect Mr Average Moron to do any better. You want everyone to be able to have a gun ? Fine, then have them train as much as cops do and have them monitored as closely as cops are. Otherwise there IS an imbalance.

    Yeah cause, you know, European countries are even more violent than the worse American hood nowadays.
    I don' t think I ever heard of someone attempting a robbery with a knife. If you can' t have a gun, thugs can' t either. If they couldn' t have a gun, the coward' s choice weapon, then maybe most of them would think twice before doing anything bold.

    The smart move, I think, would be to at least try. Ban guns for, like, five years, see where it leads you, if there' s any impact on criminality statistics, and then let people vote. That' s what people do in a democracy, right ? Try stuff, vote stuff ...
    OK, maybe five years aren' t nearly enough to see if it has any impact, but I' d be really curious to find out how many American people actually want guns to be legal.
     
  10. Makaze Some kind of mercenary

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    Everyone has an equal opportunity to obtain wealth, but perhaps not paper currency in our current system... With the exception of those in the employ of the state. They do not, strictly speaking, earn money in same way that others do. They take money from those others instead. They circumvent the customer and the idea that the customer is always or even sometimes right and get payed only by their bosses, as far as they are concerned.

    Also, I am of the opinion that there should be no equipment or object that I cannot have, so long as another man can have it. This means that if I had the money that that company did to buy that equipment, I should be able to do. If the company made the object itself, then it is up to that company whether or not to sell it to me, but a third party stopping them from doing so would be in the wrong, no matter what this third party claimed to be. I see no imbalance there with the training, really. If both you and the officer have the same amount of time with which to train, and are both able to obtain the necessary equipment (from the same manufacturer, it should be noted) that you would need to do so, then what the two of you do with your time creates an imbalance, either way. If the officer trains while knowing that the other is not doing so, then he is creating an imbalance. Likewise, if the other does not train while knowing that the officer is doing so, he is creating an imbalance. It is of your own choice that you do so. In this way, there is no true imbalance, and they have equal opportunities.

    I speak mainly of privilege, though, and not simply the physical advantage with guns or any weapon. Someone who is able to access a better library than I am because they are given some special grant will, inevitably, feel superior to me, or will simply be superior to me. It will be a closed club. There is an imbalance and an elite class that has been created by this grant. A license to carry guns that is only granted to a specific group is just another example of this. The thing itself does not matter so much as the principle of a right to access. Now, with money as a basis for access, there is no restriction on what kind of person you are, what you do for a living, or where you live, so long as you can pay. How much money you have and how that is affected by state control is another discussion, and one that would probably be better saved for another time.
     
  11. Boy Wonder Dark Phoenix in Training

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    Exactly. This to the millionth power. Hell, we should give everyone the right to a gun for the day that they are attacked by a psychotic killer, because that will happen. When they get faced with a threat, they can easily defend themselves and blow the threat away. Unless the threat uses their right to bear arms to blow them away first, but hopefully, people like this would be able to shoot the threat first. I mean, if everyone at the Tucson disaster had a gun on them, then the moment Loughner started firing, someone could have shot him and reduced the casualties! (if we got lucky, they might even have killed him and saved the trouble of what to do with him!) We should also put guns out in public, like in specialized vending machines, so if a situation happens and everyone forgot their guns at home, we can easily get one.
     
  12. Arch Mana Knight

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    Untrue. Plenty of instances where the people of a nation or otherwise have overpowered authority. Most recent example is in Egypt. Local law enforcement essentially ran away and even the military isn't doing anything about it because they're on the side of the general public. I can't give a more specific example or further details on the subject because I only know about this even through the odd glance at the TV when it's on a news channel.

    Lol. Seriously. A gun ban wouldn't do anything. Why? People already own guns and not everyone has a permit. Even if it became to illegal to purchase a firearm it wouldn't be impossible to get your hands on one. All it would do is shift the ratio between "good people" and "Not so good" people who own guns. Obviously it wouldn't be a good shift.

    Also, there is one thing that can keep crime down in states with lenient "gun laws". If a good chunk of the population owns a gun, a person is less likely to pull one out to do some mass shooting or otherwise. While this wasn't the case in that Arizona shooting or in some others, think of how many possible shootings are being avoided simply because of one's fear to pull a gun out when others are likely to carry one as well.

    Anyways, people who own guns but do not know how to use them don't deserve to own those guns. I wonder if any place has some sort of gun permit that requires a possible owner through a test like one you would see to get a Driver's License. That would be a great idea in my opinion. Guns are far less dangerous to yourself if you know proper safety and how to use and maintain it correctly. Sadly, many idiots might just buy a gun and never bother to learn about it.
     
  13. Luna Lovegood nani panda-kun

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    [video=youtube;fCtD3OJ-_Es]fCtD3OJ-_Es[/video]
    Because I had to. :lolface:
    (That's the only video I could find with the song, but hey, the visuals enhance it I guess).

    I know you weren't being totally serious (or at least I hope you weren't ._.), but giving the majority of the population guns wouldn't be significantly better than banning guns. Sure, if everyone was a-ok in the head, it would work a lot better. More angst-ridden, depressed, mentally unstable teenagers would then have access to their parents' gun(s), which could result in more mass school shooting suicides, just as an example.

    That sounds like a good idea to me.
     
  14. EvilMan_89 Code Master

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    i don't think anyone is saying guns should be banned altogether because for one thing it's not going to happen and it can be a self defense thing. but i DO think more common sense laws need to be implemented to prevent guns from being purchased by obvious madmen.
    but see the thing is, that makes it so much easier for people to do bad things with them too. it would be so easy to amass a whole cache of guns for bad purposes as well as good ones.
    i don't really understand why you would think having a large population of people having guns would prevent crime. that's a VERY idealistic view and very unrealistic. i would think it would have the opposite effect actually. yes, you can blow away threats with guns, however if the majority of people have a gun, you're most likely going to get shot before you have a chance to defend yourself. there's no way you're going to be able to guess who's going to want to shoot you before it happens. think of how many emotionally unstable kids would shoot each other out of anger or how many drunks at bars who would normally get into fist fights would just blow each other up.

    once again: i'm not saying guns are completely evil. i just think there needs to be some more common sense laws to keep them away from obvious criminals.

    i actually agree with that. having a test for proper usage of a gun would be a great idea. good instruction on how to use it and what not to do with them. maybe if we make buying a gun as annoying as going to the DMV, THAT would make people be too lazy to get a permit, lol
     
  15. P Banned

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    In which case guns don't matter, because the government lacks its fighting force. If the military is rebelling, then whether the public has guns is irrelevant.
     
  16. Shinichi Izumi Totally Pink and stuff

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    im 13 and i shoot its not that hard you just gotta be responsible
    shooting is a very good way to teach people of responsibility
     
  17. Dinny I am Anime ( ⚈้̤͡ ◡ ⚈้̤͡ )

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    Well, I agree on restrictions because in the long run I do believe that more lives would be spared if only the legalized would have a gun. I'm not too informed about the whole gun-ownership-thing in my country really, or quite any where else. Police officers, I know, should be carrying guns around - which I do believe is right because they have earned the right to hold onto one as to help bring the crime rates down. Legalizing weapons open to the whole public could be very dangerous because obviously, not everyone's the same. There could be a criminal in someone you'd least expect. In anyone really. Though I also know that some people, who aren't police officers, keep guns with them - usually at their home or in their cars for safety precautions. Which, part of me does agree on - but I think of the other kind of people who may use this supposedly-gun-owning-for-safety for a whole another reason.

    Personally, I do like guns. I've gone shooting a couple times, and it's honestly really fun - but I am most grateful that I learned how to work one so if ever there was a time, I could defend myself. Guns are cool and gorgeous but I still believe only the legalized should be allowed to own one and put them to use if ever needed.
     
  18. TheVader74 Gummi Ship Junkie

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    I've never understood the Self-Defense argument. If you're walking along the street, and you get pushed into the wall and someone is demanding you hand over your money and they have already got a knife or a gun pulled as they most likely have, then what exactly are you going to do? Reach for your gun, turn the safety off, aim at the mugger and fire? In that time they will have incapacitated you, robbed you blind and probably leave you bleeding out on the sidewalk. And how often do you think this situation will ever come up? You won't react, you'll be either scared shitless or give up your money so you don't get wounded.

    And sure, I'm all for protecting your civil freedoms, but even here in the UK, if you sort out a permit and some required paperwork, then you can legally possess a gun. Reducing it from a constituitional right just makes the process more difficult for the idiots in society. And frankly, if nothing from the Constitution never changed, you'd still have an abundance of slavery and women would still not have the right to vote (Arguably, I'm not totally up to scratch on my knowledge of the Constitution).

    If you ask me, it's incredibly unsettling to think of the vast amounts of idiots in the US who government is basically OK with giving them deadly weaponry. That requires me to place a greater amount of trust in people I neither know nor care about in an atmosphere that just seems to promote fear to me. I have nothing wrong with weapons, I have problems with idiots with weapons.