Why gun laws (or lack thereof) don't work in the US:

[Heimdall]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/14/university.shooting/index.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330728,00.html

Stay tuned, more to follow

[salr15]

wwwahhhh!

[muy_thaiguy]

wwwahhhh!

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!1!!

[DaGip]

Gun laws used to work when the society had stronger moral convictions and believed in God.

[Fircoal]

Gun laws used to work when the society had stronger moral convictions and believed in God.

morals =/= believing in God.

I'm not sure about God's existence (more no the lack of existence side) and yet I have some of the strongest morals out of people I know.

[SolidLuigi]

morals =/= believing in God.

So true

[bedub1]

Gun laws used to work when the society had stronger moral convictions and believed in God.

Unfortunately criminals don't follow laws, hence them being criminals, which is why gun laws don't work....or in this case...just a little crazy. And crazy people dont' follow laws....

Think about this scenario. You are a bank robber, and want some money. You can rob a bank, and all you have to worry about is the 60 year old retired guard. Or, you have to worry about all the customers in the bank cause they are all packing. The "Wild Wild West" was actually a very polite time....don't wanna piss somebody off and get shot.

[got tonkaed]

gun laws tend not to work because there are far too many people who view them as a serious infringement on their rights and on their sense of self as proud gun owners.

It seems more often than not, when you try to legislate away a personal freedom, you need a much stronger incentive than the mixed message evidence that is often part of anti-gun legislation.

[Grooveman2007]

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

[Fircoal]

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

So very sad but true.

[Grooveman2007]

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

So very sad but true.

I wouldn't call it sad because guns, when used properly, can be great fun and an exellent means of self defense. Unfortunatly psychopaths like the shooter from today can cause great pain and anguish. That's the only problem I have with current gun laws.

[Fircoal]

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

So very sad but true.

I wouldn't call it sad because guns, when used properly, can be great fun and an exellent means of self defense. Unfortunatly psychopaths like the shooter from today can cause great pain and anguish. That's the only problem I have with current gun laws.

guns are an easy way to kill now a days. They can be a means of a self defense in a way. But even if the robber or the want to be murderer is the one that dies in self defense it's still sad. Guns used as a tool to threaten is a bit different, but still it isn't right unless you have to. Guns just make the whole way of killing a lot easier.

[Jenos Ridan]

Gun laws used to work when the society had stronger moral convictions and believed in God.

Unfortunately criminals don't follow laws, hence them being criminals, which is why gun laws don't work....or in this case...just a little crazy. And crazy people dont' follow laws....

Think about this scenario. You are a bank robber, and want some money. You can rob a bank, and all you have to worry about is the 60 year old retired guard. Or, you have to worry about all the customers in the bank cause they are all packing. The "Wild Wild West" was actually a very polite time....don't wanna piss somebody off and get shot.

Gun Control either sends gun users to the black market, where they buy military-grade weapons, or is a step taken by a totalitarian regime like the Bolshevics or the Nazies.

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

So very sad but true.

I wouldn't call it sad because guns, when used properly, can be great fun and an exellent means of self defense. Unfortunatly psychopaths like the shooter from today can cause great pain and anguish. That's the only problem I have with current gun laws.

At 18, you can legally buy a black powder revolver but you have to be 21 to buy a modern handgun. At 18, you can buy an artillery piece (the kind used as late as the 1870's) and at still younger ages you can handle rifles, but you still have to be 21 to own most firearms. But at 18 not only can you vote and buy cancer sticks (bad for your health), you can buy masses of black powder and make bombs. It is all baloney, since if people are legal adults at 18 why are so many things not legal until 21? You can drive at 16 and cars kill a lot more people than guns last I checked. Why the stupid laws? No reason that I can see.

[Iliad]

Gun laws used to work when the society had stronger moral convictions and believed in God.

Unfortunately criminals don't follow laws, hence them being criminals, which is why gun laws don't work....or in this case...just a little crazy. And crazy people dont' follow laws....

Think about this scenario. You are a bank robber, and want some money. You can rob a bank, and all you have to worry about is the 60 year old retired guard. Or, you have to worry about all the customers in the bank cause they are all packing. The "Wild Wild West" was actually a very polite time....don't wanna piss somebody off and get shot.

but bedub they're criminals. They won't give a shit. It's not a logical decision but criminals don't make logical decisions. By giving guns to everyone you're only going to make battles. So you're argument is idiotic

[Neutrino]

Gun Control either sends gun users to the black market, where they buy military-grade weapons, or is a step taken by a totalitarian regime like the Bolshevics or the Nazies.

The other extreme won't work either. Total gun saturation will result in a decreaced crime rate and a massively increaced violent and accidental death rate. Not good.

That said, I do agree with you, to an extent. Neither extreme will work. What the US needs is tougher and better enforced gun laws. If you do it slowly enough you can essentially remove guns from a society and never run into the situation where criminals are armed and citizens aren't.

[comic boy]

Gun laws used to work when the society had stronger moral convictions and believed in God.

Unfortunately criminals don't follow laws, hence them being criminals, which is why gun laws don't work....or in this case...just a little crazy. And crazy people dont' follow laws....

Think about this scenario. You are a bank robber, and want some money. You can rob a bank, and all you have to worry about is the 60 year old retired guard. Or, you have to worry about all the customers in the bank cause they are all packing. The "Wild Wild West" was actually a very polite time....don't wanna piss somebody off and get shot.

but bedub they're criminals. They won't give a shit. It's not a logical decision but criminals don't make logical decisions. By giving guns to everyone you're only going to make battles. So you're argument is idiotic

He also fails to address the obvious flaw in his argument which is that other countries with more restrictive laws also have criminals yet far lower rates of gun crime.

[greenoaks]

Gun Control either sends gun users to the black market, where they buy military-grade weapons, or is a step taken by a totalitarian regime like the Bolshevics or the Nazies.

i wasn't aware my country Australia was a modern day Nazi state.

[Skittles!]

Gun Control either sends gun users to the black market, where they buy military-grade weapons, or is a step taken by a totalitarian regime like the Bolshevics or the Nazies.

i wasn't aware my country Australia was a modern day Nazi state.

Dude, where have you been? Australia has been Nazi since the end of WWII

[Neutrino]

Gun Control either sends gun users to the black market, where they buy military-grade weapons, or is a step taken by a totalitarian regime like the Bolshevics or the Nazies.

i wasn't aware my country Australia was a modern day Nazi state.

That's where you're wrong. Australia actually took the Bolshevik route to totalitarianism, rather than the Nazi route. Those welfare programs are a dead givaway.

[suggs]

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

SLAVERY? Of course you can change culture with legislation.
I odn't kill peasants anymore, beacuse its illegal to be a feudal baron anymore. You see my point-LAWS CHANGE EVERYTHING.

[Genghis Khant]

In a civilised society there is no need for the populace to be armed. In my opinion Americans who espouse the right to bear arms are admitting that they, and their country, are barbaric.

[Genghis Khant]

.... Unfortunately, psychopaths like the shooter from today can cause great pain and anguish. That's the only problem I have with current gun laws.

But it's not just him. This may be the first school shooting that I've heard of since Virginia Tech, but it seems that this sort of thing is a fairly common occurrence.

It is also the fourth shooting at a US education establishment within a week.

Last Friday, a woman shot dead two fellow students before killing herself at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tennessee, a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a student on Monday, and a 15-year-old was shot at a junior high school in California on Tuesday.

When are the legislators going to wake up?

[Dancing Mustard]

Unfortunately criminals don't follow laws, hence them being criminals, which is why gun laws don't work....or in this case...just a little crazy. And crazy people dont' follow laws....

The flaw in this line of reasoning is that you seem to have forgotten the fact that laws aren't just words on paper, they're things that can be actively enforced by the state.

Do gun laws in and of themselves cause criminals to give up arms? Not completely (though it's worth noting that UK Gun and Knife amnestys have always been met with huge numbers of handed in weapons). They do however cause a drop in the general level of weapon proliferation.

The bit that hits your stubborn criminals the hardest however, is active policing. Where gun laws exist the police have the power to deprive armed-gangs of weapons before crime actually happens. That's the bit that drops crime (and it's why EU states have lower homicide rates than the US).
Let's go back to your 'bank robbers' scenario: would you prefer the bank robbers to rock up to the bank and start a shootout with all the customers, or would you prefer that the bank-robbers had been deprived of firearms months earlier. Put another way, would you prefer a scenario in which two sides shoot at each other, and you hope the good-guys win; or would you prefer a scenario where nobody has the chance to shoot anybody?

Gun laws don't just get enacted then sit idle. They get enacted, and are enforced, weeding out all illegal firearms in the jurisdiction, until eventually nobody has the option of using a gun to rob any kind of establishment, regardless of who inside it might or might not be armed. This is the key factor that pro-gun arguments seem to miss on CC.

Sure, in a world where only criminals have guns there might well be more crime, but that's not what anti-gun laws aim for, or would result in. The laws are aiming, via citizen compliance and active policing, to ensure a world where there is no gun proliferation whatsoever. Now I'll admit, given the enormous rate of gun proliferation in the US, perhaps things would get worse before they got better, but with gun-control backed by effective policing, rates of gun-related crime can only fall, because the numbers of guns available to perpetrate crime with would be falling also.

In short: The 'only criminals will not comply with law' argument isn't an argument for arming everybody else, it's an argument for better policing and active programs of disarmament.

[Guiscard]

Unfortunately criminals don't follow laws, hence them being criminals, which is why gun laws don't work....or in this case...just a little crazy. And crazy people dont' follow laws....

The flaw in this line of reasoning is that you seem to have forgotten the fact that laws aren't just words on paper, they're things that can be actively enforced by the state.

Do gun laws in and of themselves cause criminals to give up arms? Not completely (though it's worth noting that UK Gun and Knife amnestys have always been met with huge numbers of handed in weapons). They do however cause a drop in the general level of weapon proliferation.

The bit that hits your stubborn criminals the hardest however, is active policing. Where gun laws exist the police have the power to deprive armed-gangs of weapons before crime actually happens. That's the bit that drops crime (and it's why EU states have lower homicide rates than the US).
Let's go back to your 'bank robbers' scenario: would you prefer the bank robbers to rock up to the bank and start a shootout with all the customers, or would you prefer that the bank-robbers had been deprived of firearms months earlier. Put another way, would you prefer a scenario in which two sides shoot at each other, and you hope the good-guys win; or would you prefer a scenario where nobody has the chance to shoot anybody?

Gun laws don't just get enacted then sit idle. They get enacted, and are enforced, weeding out all illegal firearms in the jurisdiction, until eventually nobody has the option of using a gun to rob any kind of establishment, regardless of who inside it might or might not be armed. This is the key factor that pro-gun arguments seem to miss on CC.

Sure, in a world where only criminals have guns there might well be more crime, but that's not what anti-gun laws aim for, or would result in. The laws are aiming, via citizen compliance and active policing, to ensure a world where there is no gun proliferation whatsoever. Now I'll admit, given the enormous rate of gun proliferation in the US, perhaps things would get worse before they got better, but with gun-control backed by effective policing, rates of gun-related crime can only fall, because the numbers of guns available to perpetrate crime with would be falling also.

In short: The 'only criminals will not comply with law' argument isn't an argument for arming everybody else, it's an argument for better policing and active programs of disarmament.

These are all good arguments, DM, and ones I've made on many occasions. Furthermore, I always argue that harsher gun legislation will actually gradually decrease the Gun culture which may seem too deeply rooted at the moment. Suggs' example of slavery is a perfect parallel, in many ways. In the south especially, the legacy of the ingrained cultural attitudes hung around much longer then when the specific legislation outlawed it. But it did decrease. Things did change. In the minds of the people guns gradually change in the way they are viewed. The 'criminals will always have guns' is a ridiculous fallacy perpetrated, for the most part, by people who cannot see their culture from the outside looking in.

[heavycola]

Gun laws don't and never will work in the US because guns are an inherent part of American culture. Can't change someone's culture with any amount of legislation.

SLAVERY? Of course you can change culture with legislation.
I odn't kill peasants anymore, beacuse its illegal to be a feudal baron anymore. You see my point-LAWS CHANGE EVERYTHING.

We have a peasant shooting season in the UK. You need a licence and a sherlock holmes hat and a sock on your knob, and they release packs of feral asbos and we hunt them on horseback. But you can't shoot albinos or mongs, you get a fine for that.


Re: college shootings...

Are these shootings so frequent:
a) because US kids are more fucked up than british kids?
or
b) because handguns are everywhere?

And what about the thousands of black youngsters shooting and getting shot in the US that don't get reported anymore because it's now, horrifically, accepted as the status quo?

A good preventative measure would be:
a) arm everyone to ensure that these depressed/violent kids are executed by responsible members of society before they do too much damage?
b) ban handguns?