Quote: Renegade Carpark @ 25th May 2014, 1:48 PM BST
I'm sure your choice would be based on a number of clinical, legal and statistical factors and not be some draconian, emotive, kneejerk, dogmatic, illogical and nonsensical action based on ignorance and fear.
OK, let's remove some of the ignorance, shall we?
Illogical, nonsense, especially on the part of some pro-gun people in the USA, is not readily removable.
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The pro-gun arguments in the USA has three main points.
1. If the government goes mad, we armed citizens can form a militia and depose it.
2. If someone attacks me with a weapon, I can shoot him first.
3. Guns are nice toys, I like firing them on a range.
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Number (1) is the top argument, it is the reason it is enshrined in the 2nd amendment of the Constitution. & referred to as "The Right to Bear Arms"
a ) { if citizens invoke number (1) you get the situation currently happening in the Ukraine-- Militia preventing democratic voting}
b ) in theory, we don't need that in the UK, we have the Queen, in theory, if our Government goes mad, the Queen can RESET the political system by dissolving parliament. It's the only really useful function left for Royalty. We are unlikely to find out if it would ever work, just as the NRA are unlikely to find out if they need to depose the USA government
c ) {some parts of the USA are hot, maybe this was a spelling mistake meant to be "The Right to Bare Arms"}
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Number (2) has some merit, but:
( a ) the defender is at a severe disadvantage if the attacker also has a gun (and in a country with many many guns this is likely} because the attacker is likely to have his gun ready whereas the defender's is holstered or upstairs in the drawer by the bed and not loaded.
( b ) if the attacker is in a car with his/her readily obtained gun and indulges in drive-by random shooting (like the one yesterday) the concerned armed citizens rarely get any chance to shoot him and remove the problem {I don't recall ANY case, where a rampagee has been shot by an armed normal citizen instead of the US police}.
( c ) If the attacker did not have a gun to start with, but the defender is not fully competent with his/her gun, the attacker can get hold of it and the defender gets shot with his/her own gun. (though I don't know of specific cases, I have heard that this does happen fairly often) You see, guns don't care who they kill, it's people kill people, not guns kill people. Guns just make it easier.
( d ) Guns can kill by accident, especially if an untrained person such as a child gets hold of a loaded gun or that old 'favourite' a gun in which the magazine has been removed, but the wielder didn't know that there was a round already loaded into the breech. One of the favourite arguments of the pro-gun people is that other things kill people by accident too and indeed that is true, people can fall on knives, or swords or garden forks, or get run over by cars, busses, lorries (especially happens to cyclists) or by falling off ladders. And indeed in total there are probably MORE people killed by accidents of such type because there are more, knives, vehicles and ladders than guns.
{a Great-Grandfather of mine died due to stabbing his foot with a garden fork}
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Number ( 3 ) is indeed true, even I like shooting guns on a range. Basically it is a challenge to see how well you can go through the physical actions to achieve exactly the same result each time. Not different in principle to Golf, Highboard diving and other single-person activities (in which your competitors have no direct effect on your actions, only psychological effects). It is a quest for precision, to show that you are perfect, the most perfect person in that sport. Even that horribly inaccurate weapon the Sten Gun, might be fun to fire on a range, though the chances of any precision results with that are near nil.
But this can go horribly morally wrong. In Italy and other Mediterranean countries some of the gun owning people delight in shooting down the birds on their annual migrations; some of these they eat, true, after extracting the poisonous lead pellets, but they do this without any due thought about what they are doing to the species. In the USA they did this, 100-150 years ago, to the Passenger Pigeon and in the last shoot, KNOWING THAT IT COULD CAUSE EXTINCTION OF THE SPECIES, I think I heard that they shot a million birds in one day.
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Number (2)( c ), the problem of getting shot with your own gun by an attacker, has a peculiar quirk happening at present. Anyone with sense that wanted a gun to defend themselves, would yearn for a gun that couldn't be used to shoot its owner and much work is going on at present to develop 'intelligent guns' which either recognise the owners grip (very difficult) or more recently, are disarmed if they are more that a few feet from the arming radio, which will be in a wristwatch worn by the owner. However the really really keen pro-gun persons in the states the avid defenders of the "Right to Bear Arms" are avid opponents of such 'intelligent' guns, because they FEAR THAT THE GOVERNMENT WOULD DEVELOP A RADIO TRANSMITTER WHICH WOULD DEACTIVATE ALL SUCH GUNS.
One such person on FaceBook/Twitter/somesuch recently said that he would happily kill the leading saleswoman of that 'Intelligent' Gun company, because she was attempting to disarm the citizens of the USA, by stealth. In my opinion anyone expressing such a statement should be banned from ever owning a gun licence.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/pro-gun-advocates-threaten-smart-gun-saleswoman-gun-company
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/28/1295324/--Gun-enthusiasts-threaten-woman-for-selling-a-safer-gun
http://www.sodahead.com/living/gun-seller-backs-down-on-smart-gun-plans-after-threats/question-4307157/?link=ibaf&q=&esrc=s