Gun Control / Nerd Fight

[D-Fence]

@ zenkidorki:
The emotional and insulting way you react shows that you are noone to take serious in a rational argumentation, Blind_Io has a point and tries to argument it rationally out, you start insulting again. And double posting doesn´t make it better. You are out of the discussion for me, say what you want or start making nazi comments.

@ Blind_Io:
Sure, you are right, as long as really someone shoots the gunman over right away, but as soon as he hesitates (I am pretty sure I couldn´t shoot someone just like that without at least trying to make him drop his gun) and a third person comes to the scene seeing two people pointing guns at each other it gets complicated and MIGHT (!) end in a mass shooting.
Concerning the gun laws: Sure there are states worse than the USA, but imho. you always claim to be an "idolic" nation all other western countries should follow, and concerning the larger (not in the territorial sense) western countries like GB, Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy etc. your level of homicides per people is way higher than in other countries with gun control. And you really don´t want to compare a highly developed western country like the USA with a pretty poor & corrupt feudal country like Russia do you?

Concerning the Nazi comment that had to come:

Would that be the one about Hitler disarming the people? Yeah, the truth sucks sometimes, don't it?

a) This is 50 years ago, nearly noone currently influential has had something to do with it, and for sure no forum member.
b) This is the same as if you start calling all Australians criminals, because Australia was a "prison continent" long ago
c) Hitler DID disarm the people. See:

Pre-existing Firearms Restrictions in Germany

Before the Nazi regime took power, the liberal Weimar Government had enacted the Law on Firearms and Ammunition in 1928. The 1928 Law established broad national regulations on firearms ownership. The 1928 Law required persons to get a "firearms acquisition permit" from the authorities to buy, trade, inherit, or receive a firearm as a gift. To buy ammunition required an "ammunition acquisition permit." Hunters were required to obtain an "annual hunting permit." All firearms were required to bear a serial number a mark of the maker or dealer.

As a result of the 1928 Law, the national German government knew the owner and location of every legally-held firearm in the country. This law afforded to the Nazi regime that took power in 1933 the information needed to conduct searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents and other targets. Raids of homes started in 1933; even Albert Einstein's apartment was searched in the quest to take any firearms he might have owned.

In addition, Nazi authorities banned the importation of handguns by order in June, 1933, and they refused to issue firearms permits to persons deemed untrusthworthy. In 1935, the Citizenship Law was decreed, which excluded Jews from civil rights. Local police were commanded in late 1935 not to issue firearms permits to Jews.

[edit] The 1938 Law

A first reading of the the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 might suggest that it effectively lessened handgun control and other restrictions from what they were under the Law on Firearms and Ammunition of 1928. Firearms ownership was restricted to, "...persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a (gun) permit". Some view this language as excluding only criminals and persons under the age of eighteen from ownership. One writer has claimed that the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 effectively liberalized firearms ownership in Nazi Germany. [1]

Analyzing the Nazi Weapons Law using principles of the Nazi legal system, however, shows that any apparent "liberalizing" of the gun ownership restrictions operated to enable Nazi police, military and other pro-Nazi personnel to obtain and possess firearms. Much of the German population was already disarmed by 1938, and the Jews' citizenship rights were already revoked. There is no evidence of an expansion of legal, citizen ownership of firearms in Nazi Germany as a result of the 1938 Law. The detailed explanation of these facts, with citations to legal and historical references, appears in Part IV of "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny [2].

The 1938 Law expressly barred Jews from businesses involving firearms. On November 11, 1938 [3], new regulations were issued barring Jews from owning any weapons, even clubs or knives. The new regulations coincided with the national night of violent persecution of Jews and destruction of Jews' synagogues and businesses, known as Kristallnacht.

What happened with the military is a different pair of shoes though and has nothing to do with any kind of gun laws.

[zenkidori]

Originally Posted by D-Fence

@ zenkidorki:
The emotional and insulting way you react shows that you are noone to take serious in a rational argumentation, Blind_Io has a point and tries to argument it rationally out, you start insulting again. And double posting doesn´t make it better. You are out of the discussion for me, say what you want or start making nazi comments.

or perhaps you have no retort because you actually do not know what you are talking about? Where did your allegation that we hear guns all the time so nobody cares come from? Your vast experience travelling America and listening to gunshots? I have NEVER heard a gunshot outside of a forest or shooting range(apart from LA of course ), but what do I know? I've only lived here all my life.

and again, read the article, people weren't sending emails while being shot at as you allege. try harder.

[Blind_Io]

Originally Posted by D-Fence

@ Blind_Io:
Sure, you are right, as long as really someone shoots the gunman over right away, but as soon as he hesitates (I am pretty sure I couldn´t shoot someone just like that without at least trying to make him drop his gun) and a third person comes to the scene seeing two people pointing guns at each other it gets complicated and MIGHT (!) end in a mass shooting.
Concerning the gun laws: Sure there are states worse than the USA, but imho. you always claim to be an "idolic" nation all other western countries should follow, and concerning the larger (not in the territorial sense) western countries like GB, Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy etc. your level of homicides per people is way higher than in other countries with gun control. And you really don´t want to compare a highly developed western country like the USA with a pretty poor & corrupt feudal country like Russia do you?

In the Mexican Standoff situation you describe the person who isn't the mass murderer, if he's smart, will put his gun down and let the other guy cover the homicidal maniac. For one thing the killer's gun and attention are on the first guy, so the second one has a better chance to get a clean shot and/or get him to put his gun down. Now, if the primary shooter (the one who came to kill) was in such a state do you think there would be a standoff at all? Let's be serious, someone who came to kill others and himself isn't going to care. There won't be a standoff at all.

I never said the US was an "Idolic" nation and I never said all western nations should follow our example. Please quote me saying these things and link to it.

Russia and Mexico are not feudal states and every government if corrupt in some way, it's just a matter of getting the price list up front or not.

I never said that anyone currently in power had anything to do with the Nazis. That doesn't change history - that Germany did disarm it's citizens. Do you think if the Jews had personal firearms things would have gone down the way they did? There would have been civil war first that would have gotten the world's attention and made clear what was going on.

Stop straw-manning your way through this.

[Firecat]

College/Univeristy can be very stressful, if a student breaks...it would probably be better if they didn't have immediate access to a weapon. Isn't that part of the reasoning behind the waiting/cooling off period?

Personally, I wouldn't feel safer knowing that 10 students in my lecture hall were carrying. Partly because I don't think all students are that responsible to begin with.

If schools did decide to allow students to keep guns (in a secured location), they should be monitored. Register with the school, and allow random checks to verify that they are always secured.

Another option is more campus police.

[zenkidori]

Yeah I'm not really for getting rid of gun free areas, but a school shooting range would be cool. some schools have them, mine doesn't. I don't think I would take my gun into a school even if I were allowed. besides, not all students could carry, you need to be 21 to buy a handgun.

Have they explained where this guy got his weapons? I didn't think a resident alien could own a firearm in the US, perhaps that's state to state or something. or I'm mistaken.

[Blind_Io]

Oh, a friend sent me this. I think it's appropriate.

[gtrietsc]

Well, lets say we decided to ban guns, all guns, today in America.

They wouldnt just disappear - we can't just WISH them to be gone, and then they are gone. There would just be a large black market for them. Which means only criminals would have access to them.

How does that make anyone safer?

[YF19pilot]

Originally Posted by Firecat

College/Univeristy can be very stressful, if a student breaks...it would probably be better if they didn't have immediate access to a weapon. Isn't that part of the reasoning behind the waiting/cooling off period?

Personally, I wouldn't feel safer knowing that 10 students in my lecture hall were carrying. Partly because I don't think all students are that responsible to begin with.

If schools did decide to allow students to keep guns (in a secured location), they should be monitored. Register with the school, and allow random checks to verify that they are always secured.

Another option is more campus police.

Boom! That's what I'm talking about.

Students don't need to be packing when they go to class, and knowing someone is carrying heat to class can disrupt the learning enviroment, etc. However, having a secure gun registry with the campus, could have helped things.

D-Fence, you've been making some generalizations that are very unfounded and show that you really don't know much about what's going on over here.

First, your comment about how Americans are "used to" hearing guns go off all the time:

News Flash! We're not! Want to know how many guns I've heard go off this year alone? None. Perhaps if I go back two years, and not count anything mounted to a AC-130 Gunship, I can still count on one hand.

The fact of the matter is, even if you're someone who is around firearms a lot (which most of America isn't), you hear a gun go off, you're not going to ignore it. If someone fires a gun somewhere you know shouldn't be a gun (like a mall, or a college campus!) you'll know something is up.

Second, dissemination of information!

You claim that 30,000 students will be able to act to run away and get to safety, and be warned as soon as the first shot is heard. I call bullshit. I'll agree the school could have a better system than email to get the word out, but between the initial incident, calling the police, campus security, getting the word up the latter, an hour can easily pass.

Their response from the first shooting makes sense, considering it happened before most administrative officies are open, and the school thought it was somewhat isolated (remember, the shooter left and it wasn't untill another 2 hours later when the shooter began his attack on the engineering building). The next email came out shortly after the engineering building was under seige. Also, remember that this building was chained so as not to allow anyone to escape. Not allowing anyone to escape tends to slow down information to the outside about what's going on within.

I go to a campus with around 10,000 people, probably less. If a fire broke out on the flight line, I can garuntee you that it would take at least an hour before I found out (I work in the Library, just more than 100 yards from said flight line). You can't honestly believe that the moment someone pulls the trigger, everyone will know what to do.

[Blind_Io]

The fact is that most people don't even know what a real gun sounds like. It's not the same as the sound effects in films and TV shows. I have heard gunshots before and seen people just stand around like nothing happened. They take their cues of how to respond from those around them. If no one reacts they just forget about it. In the case of repeated gunfire it's different, but even for those first hearing it I bet most people didn't know it was gunfire for the first few seconds. Then they had to figure out what do do about it. This isn't something that people encounter in daily life.

I can usually tell not only that it's a gunshot, but from what kind of weapon and the caliber - but I spent quite a bit of time at the shooting range.

[jetsetter]

Luby's massacre was a mass killing that took place on October 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, United States when George Hennard entered a Luby's Cafeteria and shot and killed 23 people, wounded 20 and then killed himself.

Consequences
As a direct result of this massacre, in 1995 the Texas Legislature, led by Suzanna Gratia Hupp (whose parents were both killed in the massacre), passed a law over the veto of former Governor Ann Richards that allowed Texas citizens to obtain a concealed carry handgun permit in part as a reaction against the massacre. Soon after, many states considered similar weapon permits for citizens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_massacre

[nomix]

Originally Posted by Blind_Io

Actually, I do think carrying a gun makes me safer. Think about it, if they had allowed guns on campus do you think the killer would have been able to shoot as many people as he did? All it would have taken in one person with a CCP and a pistol to end it before it began.

That depends. There's quite a large oppertunity that the person carrying the gun would get shakey, fire his gun, miss, fire again, maybe hit someone else, miss some times, and getting shot. Most college students doesn't have tactical firearms training, just having a gun might not be enough.

Look, your argument is completely flawed. The school has a ban on guns on campus and that didn't stop someone planning a massacre from getting a gun, all it did was ensure that law-abiding students were rendered helpless to defend themselves. Clearly the police and campus patrol are not able to protect students. If you can't guarantee the safety of a person you have no right to take away their ability to protect themselves.

It's not flawed, yes, guns were banned on campus, but then again, if people WERE alloved to carry guns on campuses across the states, what might arose as a bigger problem in the long run, is an increase of gun violence, especially accidental gun violence in colleges.

Gun control won't do anything to prevent such disasters, people will either find a way to get a gun (and trust me, there always will be a way) or they will use another means such as the IEDs that the shooters planted at Columbine.

Yes, but I am talking about the bigger picture, a society with many guns, means many armed persons. This means more accidents (statisticly), and in the long run, it IS easier to just take your gun when you're F*CKING angry. It is, there's no doubt about it, if you can quite easily legally purchase a gun, keep it on you at all times, then it will be easier to just pick up that gun, and shoot someone you hate in the face.

Gun control is an idealized notion of human nature, but there will always be criminals and madmen. Is it any wonder most of these shootings occur in gun-free zones? No matter how off his gourd someone is, they are not going to walk into a police station or a shooting range (well, one did that I know of, but he was unarmed) to do something like this. According to the logic of gun control advocates guns=killing. By that reasoning a shooting range should be the most dangerous place to be in the country. It's interesting that it's the only place very few people bother to lock their cars - at least at the range where my family shoots.

Most shootings, on a whole, occours in situations where having guns wouldn't do much. By that, I am thinking of more accidental shootings, when someone invades your home, where you are almost 50 times more likely to accidently shoot your wife than the intruder. I don't say that any person with a gun is a potential killer, but if you are a potential killer, easy access to legal firearms eases that process.

It's okay to have a firearm for sporting use, I'd rather like it, but a hand gun for protection is in the majority of cases, a false feeling of safety.

Cars are very important for our infrastructure, guns aren't.

Originally Posted by Blind_Io

You know what? I take it back.

If you people think that you can't control yourself and would pull a gun and shoot someone in the face over an academic disagreement then you shouldn't have guns. Your apparent lack of self control is the the best argument you could have for your sides. Why don't you just say that you are an idiot with no self control who can't be trusted with anything sharper than a wooden spoon?

I am not saying that, but that is beside the point, the point is that there are people out there that might punch someone in the face, who might, provided with a gun, pull up that instead, and shoot the guy in question.

Originally Posted by YF19pilot

For some reason, you gun control advocates seem to think that giving someone the option of carrying a gun is the same as requiring someone to carry a gun.

Who says that? To think that, one would need to be very, very stupid.

But that aside. The assumption that Gun Control advocates seem to make is that noone has self control. That everyone will pull out a piece at the slightest inconvinence. That the mass populus all have itchy trigger fingers and its only a matter of good fortune that the NRA hasn't gone on a mass killing spree yet.

Guns are, well, guns. They are designed to kill. Therefore, we need to work from the assumption that no one has self control, even though that's very far from the truth. But you need to work from that assumption, because one shouldn't take chanhes with guns, that's my point.

I know that I will be slaughtered for this, but the right to bear arms, is something that came along to be able to protect yourself against the king of England. A lot of things have changed in that time, firstly, England has a king, and secondly, England doesn't represent a threath to America. There are other threats, but to be completely honest, you guys have the strongest army in the world.

A constitution and ammendments to this, is great. It shouldn't be dealt lightly with, and one should be very careful changing it, but it must be interpered to the current situation, in the same way religious texts need to be interpered to the situation you are in at the time, for instance religious jews working in EMT services being able to work in the sabbath.

This is just my personal opinion, get rid of your guns. Keep a gun locked up on your loft it you're into sports shooting, but don't keep a gun for protection, you aren't that well protected.

A gun in it self does not guarantee protection, you need training to use the gun effectively anywhere else than at the shooting range, to actually be able to shoot someone in the face, psychologicly, even in wars, people who haven't got training in killing (yes, the skill of being able to shoot someone in the face without thinking, which you need to, if that person is pointing a gun at you) won't fire in 70 % of cases.

Well, that's my 2 cents, please don't slaughter me for it, it's just opinion.

[hajj]

Originally Posted by Tweeke

Totally agree. For Pete's sake, how could one say that things will be safer if all students had guns with them?
I'm so glad that we've got no right to bear fire-arms in the Netherlands. And that's it's actually pretty hard to acquire a gun. Good things.

Come on you study in Maastricht, you are across the Belgium border within 10mins. There it is a lot easier to obtain a weapon and a permit. If you would want a rifle or a handgun you simply become a member at a shooting range in Belgium, and after some basic training you can buy a weapon. Although you have to permanently store it there, you can take it to another shooting range without a problem or to Maastricht.
In Holland you are allowed to have six rifles if you are a hunter. Don't know about smaller firearms though. But if you manage to obtain a permit which only takes little time and effort, there are very few checks in Holland. The system is in fact flawed and yes I think I have enough experience with them to say that.
If you think you are safe, then open your eyes and notice that the borders are open since years and our system is far from great.

That said I don't think that stricter gun control can prevent such a massacre, as long you can somehow get guns. Nevertheless people who want to kill will always find a mean to do so.

[Tweeke]

Originally Posted by hajj

Come on you study in Maastricht, you are across the Belgium border within 10mins. There it is a lot easier to obtain a weapon and a permit. If you would want a rifle or a handgun you simply become a member at a shooting range in Belgium, and after some basic training you can buy a weapon. Although you have to permanently store it there, you can take it to another shooting range without a problem or to Maastricht.
In Holland you are allowed to have six rifles if you are a hunter. Don't know about smaller firearms though. But if you manage to obtain a permit which only takes little time and effort, there are very few checks in Holland. The system is in fact flawed and yes I think I have enough experience with them to say that.
If you think you are safe, then open your eyes and notice that the borders are open since years and our system is far from great.

That said I don't think that stricter gun control can prevent such a massacre, as long you can somehow get guns. Nevertheless people who want to kill will always find a mean to do so.

I'm in Wageningen actually, not that it makes a difference for your argument. Yes, I can go to Belgium, become a member at a shooting range, take basic training, buy a weapon and take it back to Holland. But that's still considerably more effort than walking into a weapon-shop next door, and buy myself a gun.
Ok, the system is far from perfect, but the fact is that there are FAR fewer guns out here (per 1000 citizens) compared to the US. And as a result, FAR fewer gun-violence. So, I do not have the illusion that we are completely safe here, but I do know that it would be definitively less safe here if we had the right to bear arms.

[hajj]

Originally Posted by Tweeke

I'm in Wageningen actually, not that it makes a difference for your argument. Yes, I can go to Belgium, become a member at a shooting range, take basic training, buy a weapon and take it back to Holland. But that's still considerably more effort than walking into a weapon-shop next door, and buy myself a gun.
Ok, the system is far from perfect, but the fact is that there are FAR fewer guns out here (per 1000 citizens) compared to the US. And as a result, FAR fewer gun-violence. So, I do not have the illusion that we are completely safe here, but I do know that it would be definitively less safe here if we had the right to bear arms.

Ahh well sorry about Maastricht
Knowing dutch society and its consistence, I think having no gun control would be quite bad. Just the though a very naturalized Moroccan will be allowed to have a gun makes me shiver.
Sure there is less gun violence around here than in the US, and that's mainly because there are less guns around (both legal and illegal), but there is still a lot of violence.

[jayhawk]

Take away guns and criminals will find other ways to kill. Or, think about this:

1995 - Fertilizer and gasoline was used to kill hundreds in Oklahoma City.

2001 - penknives, boxcutters and 3 airplanes were used to kill thousands in New York City and Washington DC.

[jeffy777]

Originally Posted by D-Fence

One of the main problems in America is imho, that you guys are USED to guns so much you don´t take a threat serious enough. You here a gun fireing and think "Oh ok a gun" and continue your way. Just fire a gun in the air in London or Berlin f.e. and see how fast people run for cover even some streets away.

It's hilarious how people in other countries claim to know everything about the USA Better continue your research bro, because you have some big misconceptions. I've lived in 4 different states, some urban areas and some very rural, north and south, and I don't remember the last time I heard a gunshot. It's been years, probably during hunting season in Michigan, and even then it was a rare thing that made me look out the window and make sure everything was OK. If I were to hear a gunshot where I currently live (Tennessee), you better believe I would be scrambling for my phone to call the police. People just don't fire guns as often as you think, so you might not want to use that as an argument any more. Seriously, I recently moved from the North, and currently live in a semi-rural area in the South and I've NEVER heard a gun being fired here