[Lorric]

And I personally don't really care much for the gun debate since it's a bit pointless trying to talk about it outside the context of a culture's history. You can't really put severely limiting gun restrictions in place when none have existed for like a 100 years and everyone and their kitchen sink is already equipped with concealed carry. I reckon to gun supporters, telling them that guns aren't okay would probably feel similar to if someone told us that our internet should be censored and monitored as heavily as it is in China. Sure, the Chinese are used to it, but by and large, the rest of the world sure as hell isn't.

I've seen the culture argument before. And it may well be true. But why Americans don't just look at it and their minds don't scream that it's unbelievably wrong and should be done away with is beyond my understanding. Instead they cling to their guns as if they're as important as food and water.

[AdmiralRalwood]

And I personally don't really care much for the gun debate since it's a bit pointless trying to talk about it outside the context of a culture's history. You can't really put severely limiting gun restrictions in place when none have existed for like a 100 years and everyone and their kitchen sink is already equipped with concealed carry. I reckon to gun supporters, telling them that guns aren't okay would probably feel similar to if someone told us that our internet should be censored and monitored as heavily as it is in China. Sure, the Chinese are used to it, but by and large, the rest of the world sure as hell isn't.

I've seen the culture argument before. And it may well be true. But why Americans don't just look at it and their minds don't scream that it's unbelievably wrong and should be done away with is beyond my understanding.

Some of us do.

[StarSlayer]

The United States is a very large place composed of many different groups who's ideologies don't all agree.  Painting it with a single broad brush is lazy thinking.

It's also large enough that while gun violence is high for a first world democracy its not so rampant that it causes the populace at large to feel a clear and present danger over it.  The US is a long way from being Mogadishu or Escape From New York.

Many United States citizens zealously believe in individual freedoms and abhor the idea of government intervention in their daily lives(not that that was enough to curb the Patriot Act and the NSA but hey 9/11 scared the **** out of the populace).  This attitude can trace its roots all the way back to the colonial days.  In many ways this concept of individual freedom and by extension firearms forms an important pillar of US cultural identity.  So while standing on the outside its easy to go derp derp about it on the inside its essentially a 200 plus year old complex issue.

[Al-Rik]

I'm just going to take the point of view of the ignorant European dude here: There's practically almost no guns around here that can be freely owned.

Realy ?
A lot of firearms have been lost after the world wars and during the fall of the iron curtain.
Getting a stolen or illegal gun isn't a problem, just ask your local pimp or fence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1392407/Strict-laws-but-illegal-guns-flood-in.html

[Mikes]

The United States is a very large place composed of many different groups who's ideologies don't all agree.  Painting it with a single broad brush is lazy thinking.

It's also large enough that while gun violence is high for a first world democracy its not so rampant that it causes the populace at large to feel a clear and present danger over it.  The US is a long way from being Mogadishu or Escape From New York.

Many United States citizens zealously believe in individual freedoms and abhor the idea of government intervention in their daily lives(not that that was enough to curb the Patriot Act and the NSA but hey 9/11 scared the **** out of the populace).  This attitude can trace its roots all the way back to the colonial days.  In many ways this concept of individual freedom and by extension firearms forms an important pillar of US cultural identity.  So while standing on the outside its easy to go derp derp about it on the inside its essentially a 200 plus year old complex issue.

Fear/Being afraid of all kinds of things appears to be one of the major motivations.

Having a gun, makes you less afraid I guess? If the issue is rooted in fear then it just does not have to be rational at all.

[Grizzly]

The United States is a very large place composed of many different groups who's ideologies don't all agree.  Painting it with a single broad brush is lazy thinking.

But that's what they keep doing to us!

[Mikes]

The United States is a very large place composed of many different groups who's ideologies don't all agree.  Painting it with a single broad brush is lazy thinking.

But that's what they keep doing to us!

If you want to blame anyone, blame the education system.

[zookeeper]

When crazy people start shooting, it's vital that the honest, reputable and responsible members of the community have been allowed to arm themselves so that... oh, wait.

[Kolgena]

I guess it's kind of like this, oversimplified, in a nation with 5% criminals/crazies and 95% normals.

Guns illegal:
30% of criminals/crazy people have guns. 0.1% of normal people have guns. In total, 1.595% of population has guns.
Pros: Not a lot of guns floating around. Less likely for dumb shootings to happen.
Cons: It appears only the criminals and crazies have guns. Uh oh. Guess we need to rely on police being the only good guys with guns.

Guns legal:
100% of criminals/crazies have guns. 20% of normals have guns. In total, 23.5% of population has guns.
Pros: Yay, normal people have guns to counteract every baddy having guns.
Cons: o **** thats a lot of gunssss

So from a blank slate, to me it seems clear that it's better to choose to start out with having guns illegal, unless you have a retardedly high percentage of your population consisting of criminals or crazies. However, once you've gone legal, what you get if you suddenly go illegal

90% criminals/crazies have guns (lol I'm not giving you my guns unless you catch me), 2% normals keep their guns. Total 6.4% have guns.
Pros: uh, I guess there's less guns around, but the 2% that kept their guns are probably also the top 2% most trigger happy...
Cons: ****. almost all baddies have guns, and normals just lost all of theirs. hm. In a nation used to having guns on both sides for deterrence, that's maybe not good.

[StarSlayer]

Fear/Being afraid of all kinds of things appears to be one of the major motivations.

Having a gun, makes you less afraid I guess? If the issue is rooted in fear then it just does not have to be rational at all.

No I wouldn't really peg gun ownership on fear as a major driver.  I was referring to some of the concessions we made in the wake of 9/11 in the name of "Security."  I'm going to make a wild ass guess and assume personal gun ownership was never particularly a big thing in Europe?  Europe hasn't been a wild frontier for ages and I doubt in the days of the monarchies they were especially keen on having their population all armed.

North America, and the United States specifically, started out with gun ownership being sort of a necessity.  The original colonists landed in the wilderness and needed to hunt as well as deal with hostile indigenous populations that they suppressed and seize territory from.  Moving ahead, the War of Independence started as kind of a grass roots movement and the early campaigns required troops using personal firearms, especially before France started supplying arms and training.  After the war was won the populace was very keen on civil liberties and a weak central government.  Again personal firearms provided a check against possible abuse by the government or the rise of a tyrant.   In addition the federal military was pretty much a joke up until the War of 1812 and citizen militias were expected to provide the bulk of the national defense.  Even after the east coast was tamed and well established, the west was all wilderness up until the late 1800s early 1900s.  So for the first century of United States history firearms were in a way mandatory equipment for much of the populace.  That's a long time for gun ownership to become established and for us to get set in our ways. 

The United States is a very large place composed of many different groups who's ideologies don't all agree.  Painting it with a single broad brush is lazy thinking.

But that's what they keep doing to us!

Well it goes both ways, and I never said Americans were not lazy thinkers.

[Grizzly]

I guess it's kind of like this, oversimplified, in a nation with 5% criminals/crazies and 95% normals.

Guns illegal:
30% of criminals/crazy people have guns. 0.1% of normal people have guns. In total, 1.595% of population has guns.
Pros: Not a lot of guns floating around. Less likely for dumb shootings to happen.
Cons: It appears only the criminals and crazies have guns. Uh oh. Guess we need to rely on police being the only good guys with guns.

Although I know this is just a broad stroke thing, 30% of the criminals owning guns seems waaay to damn high - I remember reading an article in the NRC newspaper about the black market gun trade in the Netherlands - An illegal glock costs 2500 euros (and then you don't even get ammo!), whilst a legal glock costs 650 euros. I don't think that is an investment many a, say, thief of burglar can make.

[Dragon]

Illegal guns go mostly to organized crime. Most "garden variety" petty thieves don't get guns like that. Large gangs can afford guns, but they tend to go against big targets, so most people don't have trouble with them.

Besides, it's not that there's no crime in Europe, too. Less gun-related suicides, sure, but criminals can be just as deadly with a knife, and organized crime is certainly equipped with guns (though an average Joe shouldn't have problems with the latter, they usually go for bigger fish). Glasgow, for instance, manages a murder rate several times higher than many US cities, despite being located in Great Britain, where getting a gun is difficult. Even in Krakow, my home city, there are places where you either need good football club connections or a machinegun to survive in at night (that said, there's hardly anything interesting besides hooligans in there). Banning knives, or any other weapon, won't help it. When the government classified baseball bats as weapons, they just switched to golf clubs. To remove violence, other measures are needed.

It's true, though, that removing guns would reduce the number of suicides and gun accidents. However, the former is again, a symptom of a much bigger problem. I believe that in every case, the root cause should be worked on, not the symptoms. Suicide prevention is a much more complex issue and removing the means doesn't ultimately solve it.

As for accidents, they're caused by human carelessness or downright stupidity. If you're gonna remove guns for that reason, you should also get rid of cars, copper wires, tall buildings, bridges, bodies of water bigger than a puddle, booze, fireworks, power tools and animals. You've got millions of responsible drivers, then you've got that dolt who downed three beers and thought he's still good for a drive... Idiots like that actually kill more people than die from bullets in many first world countries. Training, education and punishing the guilty are the only things you can do.

A senile, retired cop shooting a guy in a movie theater is a tragic accident, and he will probably be held responsible for that. It was a murder, as far as the law goes and the whole theater saw it. I can hardly see him getting treated lightly. Violating basic rules of savior vivre is no reason to kill someone.

[Flipside]

If this were just two thugs having an argument in the Cinema, it probably wouldn't have made anything more than local news.

The problem is that this guy WAS an ex-cop, so in answer to the question of 'Should ex-cops have guns?', it seems to me the answer is 'clearly not in this case'.

And that's the problem, just because you are an ex-cop or an ex-soldier and used to carry a gun, it doesn't mean that it is an endorsement of the fact that you will ALWAYS be safe with a gun. Having been trusted with a weapon before is no promise that will always be the best route to take.

[Nuke]

i think everyone should be required by law to carry a hand gun. this should be expanded to nuclear devices as cheap, small ones become available. one way or another we will see a drastic reduction in violence.

[BrotherBryon]

The way things are now though it is impossible to get even the remotest sensible weapons control in place. The NRA is without question the single most powerful lobby in the country and it has successfully waged a campaign to make all sensible gun laws impotent and has scared the populace into believing any form of restriction on guns is a violation of personnel freedom. I see more people openly carrying handguns now then I ever have before and their justification for it is just plain nuts. I don't buy the argument that good people with guns stop bad people with guns, if anything scared or agitated people with guns become escalated problems in any given situation. As for a retired cop having a weapon it is understandable but I really think everyone who carries a gun (retired law enforcement included) needs to be fully licensed to do so and those licenses should need to be renewed periodically with full demonstration of ones ability to not only handle weapons safely but also have full knowledge of when force is reasonably allowed. I see the "I feared for my life" argument thrown around far too many times these days and there really needs to be stricture definitions of what constitutes use of deadly force. It is a statute that is being abused more often in high profile incidents and something must be done to lessen it.

[Mongoose]

ridiculous firearms controls

The murderer was a retired cop.  Are you in favor of restricting cops from carrying firearms?

Actually, that's something cultural. Most European countries restrict cops from carrying guns :
- local police forces in Germany and France usually do not carry guns
- national or federal police forces carry guns, but they can only use it a last resort, in cases of self defence, and if a non lethal solution has already failed
- military patrols during anti-terrorist alerts have empty magazines

Every police officer I know keeps his/her gun at home in a locked box.

I guess it is all about threat reduction, avoiding an escalation between police forces and criminals. And of course, at some point, sometimes the police will get shot at, but it's still better than gunfights on a daily basis, or having the risk of being shot dead during an ID control or a road control gone wrong.

Too bad it only works in countries with an already low gun violence rate.

Now see, as an American, this seems utterly insane to me.  I understand that gun crime in most of Europe is comparatively much lower than in the United States, but there's always going to be a chance that you come across a criminal wielding a firearm, and if all your officers have to combat them are a bunch of billy clubs and tasers...well, you're just asking for a higher bodycount.  Seconds matter when there's a shooter present, and not having your local officers harmed seems like a massive liability.  Hell, I remember back in college right after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, many students were upset when it was learned that our campus police officers kept their firearms locked in their cruiser trunks; we wanted them able to respond to a threat at a moment's notice without wasting any time.

And StarSlayer makes some good points about the historical background surrounding gun culture in the United States.  For all intents and purposes, our nation came into being on the backs of a bunch of farmers and shopkeepers wielding their own personal firearms.

(All else being equal, note that I personally see no reason to own a firearm, and I strongly believe that anyone who is licensed to do so should be required to go through stringent background checks and training sessions.)

[Nuke]

countries with low gun death rates have higher stabbing rates. violence is in our nature and i for one think we should stop trying to suppress it.

[Flipside]

I suppose, speaking as a potential customer, there's a chance I can outrun a nutter with a knife, but a bullet? Not so much. Daggers don't come with a 'stabs per second' rating.

[Nuke]

that can easily be rendered moot with tactics, such as stealth, or spending a few weeks learning the art of knife throwing. i merely meant to underline the human propensity for violence. that is totally independent of the effectiveness of a particular weapon.

[StarSlayer]

In my head Nuke's posts read like this: