Legislation of Firearms
 

Following the recent school shooting in Connecticut, gun legislation (or otherwise) is once again being discussed. Share your opinions here.

When discussing this, please try to bear in mind the vast differences in culture and history between different nations, just because something works in one country, does not automatically mean it can be applied in another.

(If you feel you need support for the issue of school shootings or similar, please post in this thread in General Support & Advice.)

I really don't see any reasons for allowing laymen access to firearms. I imagine there are some and I'm just not aware of them? In which case someone please enlighten me!

Well....its in their constitution as they have a right to bear arms which means its their right to, Im not sure why that was originally though. I think its seen as a human right in America like free speech and I think it would be very very difficult to change that.

Im not in America so I may be ignorant on the subject but I do find it very worrying that people who are mentally unstable and actually anyone who has fits of rage and so on are able to have access to such a dangerous object and its so easy to get a hold of.

But as I understand there are lots of amendments, so couldn't they just make another one? Although I'm not sure how 'drastic' previous amendments were!

I think it would be interesting to know the actual gun crime statistics, like per capita. There's some 'raw data' going round tumblr at the moment (like, Japan has x gun crimes, UK has y, USA has z), but whilst well-meaning, it's incredibly pointless from a statistical perspective and kind of annoying >.<

Is there maybe an argument that when people can legally acquire firearms, it can be more regulated? Like, with licenses and such, people can know who has what and crimes when they do happen are easier to solve?

I dunno, just my random thoughts, I don't actually know anything!

The 'right to bear arms' was an amendment in itself. The second one, I believe.

My understanding (and it probably varies from state-to-state) is that in the USA guns are registered to owners (although unregistered guns are rife), and these owners are vetted to an extent. There are laws regarding gun keeping as well.

However, a gun is a tool. It is the person behind the tool that makes it dangerous or not. Guns exist in Britain (my understanding is that gun ownership is not legislated as stringently in Northern Ireland?) for those with the proper licences for them, and among the criminal fraternity, who obviously don't have permits.

In the US the place with the most gun laws have the highest crime rate. All the law abiding people become defenseless and he criminal get guns anyway. Mexico has strict gun laws and over 50k people have been killed the last few years.

Alcohol is involved in thousands of deaths and and accidents and nobody wants to ban alcohol because they know it wont work. Yet it would be the same with guns.

The Columbine shooters actually intended a bombing. They would have killed hundreds if the bombs had worked (as they did in tests). They went on shooting rampage room by room after bombs failed. I have an elementary school a few blocks from here. The way they line up someone could drive a car into them and kill just as many.

They way I see it its crazy to have so many kids in one place and no protection. In Israel they dont have this because teachers know how to use guns and keep them at school. Passing laws that criminals ignore anyway hasn't worked and won't.

The Constitution does not allow guns because of hunting but because the citizen is "sovereign" meaning they are the ultimate power. The gov. and the army are secondary and citizens with guns is meant to keep them that way.

In Switzerland males between 20-30 keep assault rifles at home by law. Nobody runs around shooting each other. US had guns for almost 200 years before nuts started shooting places. Fact is a deteriorating society with broken families and sham culture is producing too many messed-up people. Minority crime is also allowed to stay sky high because its not PC to address it. Little black kids get shot up every day in cities with gangs allowed to get out of control. Now that a bunch of little white kids got shot its a crisis. If Bloods or Crips had shot these kids the story would be over already

But in the UK we have bigger classes with no protection apart from a good security system and theres very rarely any school crimes like this so i dont think thats the issue

I did see statistics somewhere. It was something like 8 kill by gun crime in GB in a year, 10 in China, 37 in Russia and 10,000 in America. (Those aren't the exact numbers - I can't remember off by heart. I'll find them when I go on my laptop but you get the idea.)

^But the USA is bigger. We need percentages for it to be meaningful.

That's the thing that was making me scowl on tumblr! Raw data is meaningless.

I could just stop whining and divide by the population of the respective countries. But even then it depends on the things like the age of the population etc. If you torture the data long enough it will confess and all that.

It probably was - I saw it on Facebook. It would be interesting to see the exact figures though.

I think it's ridiculous to allow pretty much anyone to own a gun. It's no wonder there are so many gun crimes in the US imo.

I saw in one documentary a bank in America gives people a gun, in store from behind the counter, when they open a certain type of account with them.

First off gun violence in the US is down a lot over the years since changes in policing. A lot of the remaining gun violence in America is among minority urban populations. There are around 5-6000 deaths of black males alone a year. These deaths take place in areas with very strict gun control. The shooters don't care about gun laws and the black market for guns is healthy.

On the other hand US violent crimes of all kinds is low

"there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.

Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland.

By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population.

France recorded 324,765 violent crimes in 2007 – a 67 per cent increase in the past decade – at a rate of 504 per 100,000 population"

UK is violent crime capital of Europe
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...of-Europe.html

Are all of those crimes violence related?

Want to initially state my slight ignorance to the topic as I'm not in America and I don't fully understand the laws surrounding guns etc.

Just as a point of interest, do you think it's worth targeting the fact that because many citizens legally own guns and have them locked away with the ammunition a certain distance away in a separate container, it gives ample opportunity for anyone to plan something like this to such an extent that hundreds will be killed?

The fact that you can literally walk up to a cabinet, unlock it, and take the gun out, is surely kind of derivative from the fact that it was legally allowed to be there in the first place? It's all an 'innocent' right to bear arms but in turn one bad motivation and boom, there's your disaster.

This kid was the son of a teacher at the school, right? Does anyone know where the gun actually came from?

I'd be interested to see % gun crim in USA, UK and elsewhere. Anyone got the stats?

the way I see it is, how many more innocent people, children or otherwise, have to die as a result of gun crime?

The vast majority of it can be avoided, which is the saddest thing really.

^
1. Statistics show acts of mass violence haven't actually increased.
2. It's easy to blame gun control at these times, but what is that really going to do? If someone is mentally unstable enough to want to kill a crowd of people, they're going to do it with or without guns. We should be looking at anything from home upbringing to bullying to mental health support.


Here's something I read that I agreed with. This is Morgan Freeman's take on the shooting:

Yes I agree with you on that respect, however, the use of firearms makes such a massacre easier. The guy had killed 20 people in a couple of mins.