Originally posted by Sandwich
Sorry Kellan, but I'm gonna harp on all this gun-law crap, and your post is the one I'm gonna use as a punching bag. 
Feel free, I've bashed religion based on your posts before. I put my views out in public expecting them to be challenged.
Gun laws only work to prevent law-abiding citizens from aquiring a gun. What criminal is gonna say, "Oh, it's illegal for me to have/get a gun, so I'd better not" ?!?!? 
[/b]
I never said that gun laws would stop those who were determined to acquire firearms. I said as much, in so many words, in the post. However, casual criminals are far less likely to go in armed if it's difficult to get a gun. Crimes of passion are less likely to end with shootings if there's no gun in the drawer. Kids are less likely to fool around with Dad's gun and get themselves killed if he doesn't have one.
7 years ago, eh? And did this type of incedent occur once every 7 years or so previous to the instatement of the gun-law? No, didn't think so. So this "statistic" about it not recurring means absolutely nothing.[/b]
I had considered writing in this kind of disclaimer to the post, but I couldn't be bothered. I thought the point I was trying to get across would be clear without resorting to pedantry.
But no, it didn't happen often. It was just the most graphic example of gun violence I had to hand. However, if you really WANT me to spell it out, that event was like our Columbine. Since then, we've had no more "Columbines" because guns are illegal. However, the U.S. had events like that
before Columbine, and it has had very similar ones
since. Thanks.
THey also were quite emphatic about not fooling around with the gun - it was a weapon of death, meant to be used only when death was the point. When you go home, you don't showcase your new "toy" - you lock it up where small children and adults alike cannot get to it. You do not show off with it, you do not demonstrate to your family how fast you can disassemble and reassemble it. You recognize the incredible responsibility of having the power to kill in your 18-year-old hands, and you act with maturity.[/b]
To select one part of this long passage, I would add the qualification that
you act with maturity. Not everyone does, as your "lessons in blood" show. There are countless examples of family members shooting one another thinking they're intruders, or kids finding Daddy's gun, etc etc. In fact, IIRC they make up the majority of gun-related deaths in the US. That's too great a risk to take for me.
And yes, I realise that guns have their place in the military.
So anyway, here you have a society of gun-toting civillians; roughly one in twenty owns a weapon. Crime rate? Virtually nil. Yeah, you get the drug-related shootings every few months or so, but a crook breaking into someone's house? If that person has a gun, he can legally shoot-to-kill that crook for breaking into his house.[/b]
Yes, but respectfully - people in Israel have rather more to worry about than breaking into people's homes and stealing their stuff. It's not exactly a complete reason, but it could be a factor - especially in the Settlements.
School violence? Bah - we go on about the physical violence in our schools - kids beating others up, and yeah, it's pretty bad/sad/horrible. But thank God we don't have the school violence that you do in the West. [/B]
We don't have that kind of violence because
we don't have guns here. Simple.
