You never see on COPS the offers pulling shotguns out of the cruiser. That sounds like a load of crap to me. Even SWAT uses handguns in addition to their automatics and sighted rifles.
I agree that a handgun is a liability to the person holding it, and a society in which every person is armed essentially means just raises the stakes on every heated argument and impassioned fight in the nation. In fact, it would make guns trivially easy to obtain for criminals, since they would be so abundant.
If you have a gun in your house, it's more likely to be shot at someone living in that house then anyone else - whether by accident, or by design.
Even in places with heavy gun control, that sort of thing happens. Australia, for example, has fairly decent gun control laws - and pretty much every year, some poor bozo manages to shoot himself while duck hunting. Often, these are people that quite experienced in the use of their guns. Like farmers. | |
PirateHead wrote:
You never see on COPS the offers pulling shotguns out of the cruiser. You almost never see on COPS officers getting into firefights, either. They draw their pistols as a safeguard while they're arresting dangerous offenders, but most people know (but aren't consciously aware) that officers aren't actually allowed to shoot unless they feel as though they're being threatened with immediate bodily harm or death. On the rare occasions when bullets do start flying, they duck back to their cruisers for cover, if they can, and at that point the suspect has usually started to flee, so they usually just get into the cruiser and chase down the suspect. I would actually say that if an officer doesn't grab the shotgun, it's a good sign that he's too stressed out to be consciously thinking in the midst of the gunfight. I wouldn't really hold that against him, but if he takes the shotgun, the deadly force would get a whole lot deadlier and the risk to the officers would end rather quickly. Police don't shoot unless they want to kill the person, so there's no reason to skimp on the weapon being used. That sounds like a load of crap to me. Even SWAT uses handguns in addition to their automatics and sighted rifles. Handguns are useful for CQB, of course, because they can be brought to bear on a fast-moving target at point-blank much faster than a long gun, which takes time to swing because of its length and weight (and thus its distributed momentum and inertia). However, a submachinegun like an MP5 is not a great deal bigger than a pistol. The main reason they use pistols during breaching operations is because they're one-handed. That allows the officer to hold a bulletproof shield in their other hand. In such a case, the pistol is still a holdout -- the job of the person holding the shield isn't to shoot anyone, but to keep the shield up to absorb bullets that would've hit him or his buddies, and to use the pistol to take potshots at targets. When you compare the fact that you can only squeeze the trigger on the pistol a couple of times per second, versus the cyclic rate of at least 10 bullets per second on most SMGs, there's no other way to describe the pistol's effectiveness other than "negligible". I'm trying to find a statistic on the number of soldiers killed by which method in World War 2 but coming up nothing. However, I remember reading somewhere that the statistic was less than one in a few thousand for pistol deaths. | |
The only person responsible for the death at Virginia Tech was the gunman. Not gun laws, not 'the devil', not spoiled little rich kids, not incorrect psych analisies. The only person responsible for murdering is the murderer, there is no way around that.
Plenty of things could potentially push us to the edge of destruction, perhaps even murder. However most of us are capable of not merely restraining ourselves, but making the distinction between right and wrong. Given the oppertunity I assume most of us would not kill someone else even if we had a weapon and means to get away without prosecution. Guns aren't the problem here. People are the problem. As long as there are people who are willing to kill there will be people who are murdered, wether it be from guns, swords, rocks, or fists. | |
Mizar wrote:
Guns are not the problem here. People are the problem. As long as there are people who are willing to kill there will be people who are murdered, whether it be from guns, swords, rocks, or fists. Guns make it easy though. With pre-gun technology you had to deal with the psychological effects of seeing the pain and mutilation caused by the weapons. With a gun someone can just point shoot and walk away. With swords etc... there is more work involved and they are a lot slower. People will always kill each other. Guns and other weapons just make it easier. It is kind of like how people act on the internet compared to reality. With the internet, they can hide behind a computer and they do not have to see the effects of their actions. Whereas in real life if you acted like a jerk, you would probably have to deal with some consequences. I think there is a place for guns in society. However, I do not think that guns should be allowed to be carried by anyone other than a law enforcement agent. Maybe for hunting, but that should be heavily regulated. | |
Alright, its a lot I know, but be sure to read all of what I have to say before jumping to conclusions.
I'll admit, psychologically speaking the lowest form of human morals is that which is created by fear of punishment (With one of the two highest being the mindset of 'Imagine a world where it wasn't merely me who did this, but society as a whole', but I digress). Its true, there are people out there who say "I would never kill anyone, because I would go to jail". As long as this mindset exists, you can't stop murderers. "With pre-gun technology you had to deal with the psychological effects of seeing the pain and mutilation caused by the weapons." As for what you are describing, however, this is quite true, but you seem to have left out that people had a different mindset when it came to violence in pre-gun eras. In France during the 17th century, duels were extremely commonplace. So much so that many European countries had to pass laws to crack down on the exessive dueling in the 1700s a hundred years later to little avail. (I have quite a bit of information on this subject if you don't find that sufficient. The book "Gentlemen's Blood" by Barbara Holland goes into great detail on the history of duels. But what about prior to the era of the great duels? Pre-Rennasance? During the Dark and Middle ages killing and looking uppon mutilation was extremely commonplace. There were castles with entire rooms specifically devoted to the torture of individuals. On the battlefield you didn't have a choice when it came to mutilation. Often you didn't even kill your opponent outright, you simply maimed them so badly that they bled to death several hours later. Even ancient Rome was brutal and barbaric in many aspects. Mutilation was actually a form of entertainment for many in the Roman empire after the construction of the Colluseum by order of emperor Vespasian. The Colluseum was huge, and criminals who commited even the most minor crimes were forced to battle, often to the death either in single combat, or in massive reenactments. I think if society has gone anywhere as a whole, it is forward. Sure we still have our problems, but we don't sit in arenas to watch criminals kill eachother. We don't take pride in the number of men we have killed in defending our honor. Killings now happen out of base moral degeneration. Now, I'll admit, the world isn't perfect, but trying to regulate weapons will not fix anything. Violence is a moral problem. In Switzerland guns are practically embedded in swiss culture, yet gun crime rate is so low that it is not even necessary for them to keep statistics. In Switzerland you are not only allowed to have a gun, at some point in your life you are REQUIRED (as a man) to have a gun as part of the unique Swiss national defence system (Every male undergoes a few weeks of millitary training, and is administered an assault rifle with 24 rounds of ammunition, which they keep at home). You want to stop gun violence? Change American moral standards. People often blame the second article of the Constituation for a first article problem. Its often our freedom of expression that gets out of hand, and we sometimes don't realise who me might be influencing through the media. For the media, in some ways is not like a gun, but rather like a massive flak cannon aimed indescriminantly at people you never have to meet, and fired accedentally. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the media should be stopped in any way whatsoever. I'm all for our firt article rights. By all means, I enjoy TV just as much as anyone else does. But I think its important that we educate people. More people than you imagine assosiate principals laid out by popular television shows to real life. Even public broadcasts can get taken too far. (I have some examples of this as well, but for times sake I'll hold them until requested.) Without further adieu I thank you for enduring my ongoing rant-like thing, and end with these final words that may sum up what I am trying to say: Education is key to bettering our society, not restrictions. | |
I submit to you that the gun crime rate in Switzerland is infity-plus-one percent times higher than it would be if there were no guns at all.
Guns are not the root cause of violence. They are, however, an accessory to it, and while not giving guns to anybody wouldn't magically make the world peaceful and safe... not giving them to the psychotically deranged is a damned good place to start. Every Swiss male has an assault rifle? I suppose when they toss the bunks of disturbed individuals who have been hospitalized for their own good, they're not just checking for contraband, they're also making sure the crazy men still have their automatic weapons. Anyway, you're talking about a situation where the place of guns in the national culture is as a responsiblity the individual owes to the state, not a right/privelige that the state owes to the individual. While the 2nd amendment refers to the needs of security, it's taken by its supporters as a case of "But DAAAAD... you PROMISED I could HAAAAVE OOOOOOONE!" The good news in all this is that if we do have an excess of freedom, then we don't actually need guns to defend that freedom. Everybody wins! | |
Relevant in light of Mizar's comments: Switzerland considers banning guns.
The article cites a high suicide-by-gun rate, as well as a few incidences of "American style" gun violence. | |
Out of 55 trained officers killed in the line of duty in 2005, 6 of them were killed with their own weapons.
A hand gun is almost as dangerous to the person holding it as it is to the person who it is being held at. If a trained officer can have his gun wrestled away from him and be shot with it, I would put very little confidence in a common civilian with no self-defence training.
This is a horrible thing to say, but she has to measure whether she'd prefer to be raped or killed. I think some women would prefer to be killed, and I tend to weigh rape as worse than murder in terms of crimes, but even so. A hand gun isn't as much of a deterrent as people think it is; it's often a liability. A shotgun or a long gun, on the other hand, can really make people think twice. On one website, I read about an Oklahoma weapons officer discussing what the purpose of an officer's handgun is. "Protect the public" or "allow the officer to protect himself" were the two major responses he got. What was his take? The sidearm had only one use: to protect the officer long enough to get back to his cruiser and pull out the shotgun.
This is why I tend to agree with the idea that civilians shouldn't have pistols. They're concealable weapons that are only useful to the crime element or as emergency holdouts until a real weapon can be grabbed.