On the news, in washington it is illegal to own a gun. I think they should be allowed I mean Murderers are going to be able to get them anyway they're always black markets for them but what about the citizens who can't pro tect them selves???
I see there being no problem with owning a gun I own 6 guns they are 5 shotguns and one 22. But then I live in a small town not a big city cause thats a totally different if you were in a city lets say Denver I would think it would be ok to out law them there but to out law them in all Colorado would be outrages.
(The guns them self aren't bad its the person and what he choses to do with them is.)
See, the problem with taking away everyone's firearms, is that people will still have guns - the 'bad' people. Except, now the 'good' people do not have any guns to defend themselves with. Too bad.
As evidence, merely look at the events of 911. A few determined people armed with box cutters pulled off the biggest terrorist act the world has ever seen.
A few heroes on one plane have my admiration. As for the others... pathetic.
It depends on the person who is wielding say gun. Which is why, in my humble opinion, everyone should own a firearm of some sort. The reason being, is that as long as weapons are being produced somewhere, someone will try and use that weapon to rob, cheat, kill, etc. If you do not have a firearm of your own, how are you going to defend yourself? With a baseball bat? I wish you luck with that.
they shouldnt be able to do that its the second amendment and i think it is a good idea to own a gun for protection because there are a lot more people that would use the gun approprietly then people who would use it for bad
Not only should we be allowed to own a gun, but REQUIRED if mentally fit to do so. Also, we should be TRAINED to use them in school from third grade on (perhaps starting with paintball guns at that age instead of real guns, though treat them like real guns), and trained to respect them. This would not only cause far fewer accidents, but it would make sure that all Americans were able to defend themselves. Obviously, students wouldn't be allowed to OWN a gun until adulthood, but training them to use one makes sure that they understand what they are and how to use them.
This would also move us towards a more militaristic society, something I strongly believe in.
I think children should be tricked into thinking guns can randomly explode when they least expect it, so they are horrified by them for life.
Then, we should all carry tazers and pepper spray.
The whole "rotect yourself from bad guys" deal is bunk. All bad guys carry guns? every gun-wielding bad guy will kill you? If you have a gun, you are automatically safe from bad guys?
Speculation. Merely speculation. I doubt anyone here is qualified to predict the outcome of mandatory gun training and civilian arming. For all we know, there are some inherently cruel people who have been waiting to get guns, who haven't been able to for various reasons who will go on murderous rampages (an exaggerated example, please don't read into it too much). Tazers are fast-acting, non lethal, and if accurate, debilitating. Are we really expecting to be accosted from long distances by a man with a scope? I think that's farfetched.
Tazers are also a very close-range weapon. If someone's in my house going through my things, I do (and SHOULD!) have the right to use whatever means necessary to protect myself, my family, and my property. I live in Texas, of course, so the law allows me to use lethal force to defend my property. Dunno what the laws are in other states. But there's few robberies in Texas due to the simple fact that criminals are afraid of dying. Also, most people I know grew up hunting and using guns, and they treat them with the respect you should treat a firearm. The only people I know who don't treat them right are people who aren't around them much and don't know how to treat them. If not a training course, then at least a mandatory firearm safety course would keep people out of trouble. And under my system, a license would still be required... anyone who the state declared mentally unfit to own a firearm still wouldn't be able to get their hands on one. No convicted felons, either. Well, depends on the offense and the severity.
I think the only satisfactory method (and probably the most unlikely one) is to have SUPER strict gun ownership laws, such that there would be no black market. This would also ultimately lead to destruction of alot of the excess firearms that are unlicensed (not including family heirlooms). I definitely don't think we should outright ban all guns (hunting certainly has it's value).
Why would you need long-range weaponry in your house? Do you live in a wigwam? They make tazers that act over 20 ft, that seems good enough. Sorry for all the parentheses.
When I thought about this, I said to myself: "Well, the less ways we have to effectively harm each other, the less relative incentive there is to harm each other, however marginal this might be." I'm not sure if this claim can empirically be proven, but it seemed to me to be grounds for saying that we shouldn't have weapons of any sort (one reason why I do martial-arts being that I wouldn't want to have to be dependent on anything else other than myself if push comes to the shove.)
But that's impractical, since reality is that we have weapons and such is the way we are, even if they didn't exist, we'd just develop them again anyway. So I said to myself "how much actual risk does owning a gun actually constitute?"
Finding myself unable to answer this question on its own, I realised one thing: most posters here who have left more in-depth answers also reference their environment. The risks of owning a gun, as a tool which both is dependent on and influences behavior community wide, is itself contingent on the environment in which said gun is owned.
Which is why if I were to live in an area where gun ownership was not only legal, but most people in the community owned a gun, I would also own a gun. However, where I live right now, gun ownership is not legal unless you're a farmer with a license. Furthermore I consider the likelihood of my meeting a person who would use a gun as a mode of offense against me extremely slim given my lifestyle and my environment, so for me carrying a firearm constitutes a greater liability than a benefit.
However in certain communities, it just might make more sense to have mandatory training in gun ownership. Not to mention, as Mega has, that gun ownership also carries cultural significance in certain places.
But there's a major problem in my argument: communities are not static. And I'm not sure how to answer that one just yet. Also, if gun ownership laws were really dependent on community standards, the process would be almost unregulatable due to the extent of decentralisation.
