JK wrote:
True but isn't a sensible step to take to make it as difficult as possible for such people to get hold of the tools? That's like saying "terrorists are going to succeed in hitting a target sooner or later so we might as well make dirty bombs easier to get hold of, since more people die in car accidents than terrorist attacks anyway"
Incidentally on the subject of your "few and far between incidents", there were seven in America last year, three in 2007 and five in 2006... so 15 in three years. Germany, whose controls you claim are excessive, has had two in the past six years and I couldn't even find a record of one before that. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there is one, but I'd say that's a pretty convincing case for stricter controls.
As Sweatsock already pointed out, we had one in 1996, stricter controls were brought in, and we haven't had one since.
Yes the sensible step is to make it as difficult as possible for CRIMINALS to get these tools. But, in America, that is not realistic. The black market is so vast that criminals have unlimited access to anything they want to get a hold of, they aren't walking into a store and purchasing the right way. Which is why I believe that the public, the law abiding public, should have little restriction in order to defend themselves and their property.
Now if you look at the deaths in all of those incidents in America from 2006-2008 they total 60 (with 33 being in the Virginia Tech massacre). Those numbers are peanuts next to the homicide numbers using firearms in the US which typically are over 10,000 per year. These incidents are only blown up and used to create stricter controls for the law abiding public, and I'd venture that a lot of those school shootings had a little something to do with lack of supervision both in the home and American schools.
Now if you take a look at
this wikipedia entry on gun violence, it shows homicide rates by country etc... The numbers are interesting because a lot of the countries that have strict controls still have plenty of homicides with firearms (per 100,000 pop.)Germany is a good example, the US still has more but it's closer than you may think.
And this brings us to a point to analyze. Does the amount of violence in one's country have to do with it's borders and demographics? I for one say yes it does. Perhaps the UK has such little gun violence because you are an Island, with no real weak border with a poorer nation (US and Mexico, Germany and Czech/Poland). And then begin to look at the demographics (specifically in America) of who is doing the shootings. 9.9 times out of 10 it isn't the common citizen who went through rigorous screening to purchase a gun.
Now on the question of why I own guns, it's simple: Protection of my home and property, and because it's fun to go out and shoot. Plain and simple.
