Should firearms be banned? {Closed}

I agree, you can't simply ban something because it is dangerous. Knives can be used a murder weapon, but are also a great tool for those who know how to use it. If someone wants another someone dead, they could use a variety of weapons, but does that mean we should ban everything that could be potentially used as a weapon? It appears that is what Obama is trying to do

Before you leave, I would like to know where you think people would get their food if there was no hunting. An answer of "farms" is not acceptable, details are necessary. While I think you are well versed in political theory, I do not think you understand the reality of what can happen to an ecosystem if you remove a keystone species, and I don't think you understand difficult it would be to have a vegetarian world. The reallocation of resources could completely destabilize entire economies, many areas cannot handle large agriculture, and there just aren't enough resources total to feed the world on non-meat products (with our current technology). It is a completely unrealistic situation.

My personal opinion on the matter (from the UK, where we have a ban on firearms) is there should be a ban on certain variants of firearms. I see no reason for the use of owning a firearm that is larger than a handgun for self defence, and if you wanted a larger weapon for any reason... tough. There should be places to rent a weapon or store your weapon for hunting so that all high-caliber firearms are accounted for and used only for hunting.

I cannot see any ban happening in the near future for you Americans because of all the hassle it will inevitably cause, but if it does happen i don't think it will that big of a deal due to it working well in the United kingdom and many other countries that have a ban already in place.

-Just my two cents

I somewhat agree with you, besides the renting of hunting weaponry. I think it's okay to own a gun for hunting use if a person chooses to (one that is mentally/psychology competent of course). I think any sort of mention of a ban will be met with incredibly high resistance in the US though, as it has previously when the topic has come up. When the topic is discussed people get really defensive (including some of my own family members). I'm all for banning the larger weapons outside of the military though. I don't even like guns in general personally, but I still believe people should have the right to choose whether they own one or not (pending psychological evaluation, etc.).

I agree with this.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of the UK model for firearm ownership. That will never happen here in the States though. Too many people frothing at the mouth over the weapons they will never use except the rare occasion they go to the firing range. *sighs*

Anyways, I don't think America should ban the ownership of guns. However, the use and right to carry them anywhere should be challenged. A person outside of law enforcement, and even that is questionable, has no need to carry a gun around with them at all times. They may feel they need to for personal safety reasons, but in all reality it's to inflate their own ego. In most cases that you would actually NEED a firearm at your side in public, it is already too late. You are already being leveled at by someone else.

I live in Dallas, Texas, there is a HUGE group of people that like to carry their semi-auto and fully auto rifles around with them in public. It has made national news. While they have the RIGHT to do so here in this state, companies also have the right to deny them service and ask them to leave. I fully support those companies. It's completely ridiculous to carry it around with you. Even if it were a pistol it gives the illusion of safety more so than actually giving safety.

Someone above compared the owning of gun to the owning of a knife. Yes, they are still both weapons. But I've never seen someone drop a knife and accidentally kill someone across the room. I've never seen in the news a child accidentally killing themselves or a friend while looking at a knife. A knife doesn't misfire and kill its user.

I loathe guns and will never own one. Not even for hunting. I don't even allow my friends who have permits to bring them into my home, nor do I go over there unless it's in a safe. I know how to use them, and very well. However, if someone wants to use one for hunting, so be it. If they need one in their home for defense of their home, so be it. Once you can take it outside of your own home, that's where I draw the line.

While I believe firearms are dangerous and should be banned, there is literally no way America will ever give up their firearms unless it came to a final point of where they must. Here is why:
1) The constitution states every US citizen can carry a firearms [1]. While you can change the constitution, it involves Congress, who may be against firearms banning [2]
2) US population is roughly 318 million [3]; when the UK banned firearms (1997) [4] the population was 58.32 (according to Google [5]). With a figure of 270-310 million people owning firearms in US [6] it'll be extremely hard to convince that many people.
3) Firearms are now integrated into daily life for many US citizens. It'll be like taking a child's favourite toy from them.
4) Too many people are against firearms being banned (see point 2).
5) Americans don't trust their own democratic system #MonarchyFTW #QueenLizzyII

I have tried to give the facts by giving the sources of which I found the information.

EDIT 1: I also believe hunting is wrong and cruel as it's not for survival, but for fun. So don't I am also against the use of firearms for hunting. I am also against the use of dogs when hunting foxes and any other form of hunting.

Just curious, is the questionable part that you think they need more training or something else? Not trying to be rude at all. I am genuinely interested in what you mean. There are plenty of people in law enforcement that I agree would need more training and more rigorous psych evaluations, but there are also people in law enforcement (like the ones I work with) that I feel completely safe around while they're carrying a gun.

It technically states in a "well regulated militia", meaning outside of that there is no constitutionally given right, such as carrying a gun around anywhere such as Dektirok was talking about. Especially since I think those cases of people walking around town with a fully automatic rifle are almost certainly not part of a well maintained and regulated militia, nor is it a necessity to carry around a gun like that at all times. It would be especially hard to quickly react to someone pulling a gun on you by readying a rifle compared to a handgun, and even longer if the person was actually being safe and left the clip out of the gun.
To this point, states could separately develop laws on the use of guns. The United States is a big country and split up into pieces the size that many other countries are. If a few states here and there abolished guns and people outside of those states had enough means and motives to move to one of those states, then it could become much easier to separate those who are "addicted" to guns and those who could do without them.
I don't mean this to bash what you said or anything, but it would be possible. But on the other hand, United States government.

I mean that no person really has the need to carry a firearm, even every single officer/member of law enforcement really has no need to carry one.

I guess I could understand certain members of law enforcement not needing to carry a gun, but I think that most do need to here in the US. Outside of the US it makes more sense since it is harder to obtain firearms, but here basically everyone owns a gun so the officers need that protection.

I know this is a huge thing in Europe and the political parties that would like to parrot europe but its just insane. Why would anyone even consider such a thing? A lot of people want to say its because people use guns to kill people. By that logic banning doctors would be the most critical thing and hammers and knives would be even more important to ban than guns. Also, if you want to ban guns because they kill people, you can eliminate the largest group of people that murder with guns by taking them away from police, which I actively advocate in my city, disarming the police.

Edit: I NEED my gun. It has kept me from being assaulted and jailed on many occasions. Police showed up to my house, I stick my rifle out the window and tell them they are unwanted here and if they do not leave the property or they will be shot. They leave. Makes life a lot easier.

Second edit: police showed up because a new busy body moved next door and complained about the noise, we were shooting paper targets in our back yard. That neighbor lives half a mile away.

Third edit: people thinking that banning guns in the US is even remotely feasible will have a rude awakening to their cognitive dissonance if someone ever gets courageous enough to try something of the sort. Your malls will close, the streets will not be navigable and many g men will either leave their post or be killed in a fruitless attempt to destroy what the US was founded upon.

UK specifically, police have practically no weapons either (and I've heard waaayyyy less bad stuff about our police than the US's). Honestly, I wouldn't feel safe if we allowed guns/knives etc. - it's much better nobody (including police) having them than everybody, imho.

What defines a big/large gun though? An AR15 (the gun model of choice when people argue about "assault weapons") fires are relatively small round (a .223) and a 12 gauge shoots a 12 gauge round.

As you can see, the .223 is quite small (while it is tall, that is all for making it high velocity), and a 12 gauge round is quite large. The 9mm is significantly larger than the .223, and the 9mm is the handgun standard nowadays. So how do we categorize large guns?

If we go by round size, we limit many shotguns and a few large pistols. But the guns violence isn't generally done with those guns, and it is a futile effort to eliminate all gun violence. If we go by actual gun size, well that doesn't help either. Most gun violence does not contain a rifle, it contain's pistols. If we target low caliber pistols (the actual guns criminals use), then we are eliminating self defense weapons from people's households.

Like has been said before, we need better screening. Not only should it be based on your criminal history and mental health status, but also geographical. If you have done a small amount of low-level non-felony crimes out in the country, you can probably own gun assuming everything else is in line. If you have done those same crimes, but live in a high poverty, high crime area of a city, you might not be able to own that gun because of how crime generally works. Age should also play a factor. Many states already have 21 years old age on handguns, but there are no other stages. I think 21 is a fine age to own a handgun, but there should be an length of time before you actually get the guns. Let's say one month between contract agreement date and physical ownership date. This can stop those spontaneous crimes. After the age of 27 or so, you can go pick up a gun from the store, again assuming you passed all the other tests (which should be updated on a regular basis).

But, it is also not reasonable to apply general logic to criminal activities. The fact is, not matter what we do, there will always be those that laws cannot stop. And those are the people we have to worry about. Those are the people who commit crimes that become token cases against guns. CNC milling and 3D printing of guns is also something that is not able to be stopped through laws.

The fix to the crime problem is education and screening, and not banning. It is easy to think that we can just cover up one relatively minor part of the issue (hence why it is such a popular political topic), but it is not a solution.

My views are biased, obviously, because I only have my own country to use as an example. My country being the Netherlands (the Eastern neighbor of the UK so to say) and over here people aren't allowed to own guns unless when they got very specific permits and undergo specific back checks. Although even that sometimes fails, not too long ago we had a shooting incident in a mall where the shooter killed several people and eventually committed suicide. As it turned out he suffered from cases of depression for quite a while and this could have been overlooked (or ignored) by the instances who should have checked if he was still allowed to have a license.

I think the good or bad regarding the legalization of guns heavily depends on the region its applied to. For starters: I'm very outspoken against government regulations which are focused on treating everyone as a criminal ("guilty until proven innocent") because this heavily intrudes on our freedom. In fact: I believe that rule sets like these are a sure way to slowly move a country into a form of dictatorship. The danger, as always, is the keyword: slow. Most people don't realize what's happened when it's already too late.

So looking at Europe first (because I can better relate to this): I think firearms should be kept banned out of people's homes because, in general, their use is hardly as common as it is in other countries. This is not saying that we don't have gun incidents here, we do. In fact, right now there's a serious liquidation spree going on in the Amsterdam underworld (source: local media) where several people were either attacked (fired upon) or killed. In most cases the person who got killed was known by the police (s0 was part of the criminal circuit) and more importantly: was usually armed himself.

People who benefit from owning a gun (jewelers, bank employers, etc.) can usually obtain one through legal channels. So I don't see much problems there. With that in mind I think the rules as they are now more or less work.

But when looking at the US I think things are quite different. Because a lot of people already own a gun it'll be quite hard to reverse that process. Also because gun usage in the US is more common than in other countries. With that in mind I think it would be very counter productive where home security is concerned to take away the fundamental right which people now have to arm themselves.

It also wouldn't make sense: you're allowed to protect your home with reasonable force where burglars are concerned, but you wouldn't be allowed to use your gun? In an environment where guns are more or less common? (or were common if such a ban would actually be applied).

For me this isn't about gun control but more so about public freedom. "Let's ban guns because if people own them they could kill others". So what about making sure that even if people would consider killing others they'd still think twice about it because of the consequences?

In my opinion the government shouldn't try to make things harder for the civilians by applying rules which restrict them in their personal freedom. Instead they should address any problems at hand and hold the people who caused those problems accountable for their actions. If they're having a hard time with that then they need to look into expansion or improvement.

Because... As many people, even politicians, often forget: we, the people, pay them to do that work for us through means of taxes. That's the prime fundamental aspect about the government. They're not there to control us, even if they think they are, we pay them to maintain us and regulate all that effort from a central point. We pay them so we have a right to expect something back from that.

I know its often wishful thinking and sometimes only theory because many governments (not just the US) have grown into big non-transparent organizations which will even violate / bend their own rules "for the greater good" (public video footage of the plane crashing into the White House during 9/11 anyone? People had a right to know, dictated by law, but only after years of prosecution did the government eventually release useless snippets). Still, this doesn't make my statement any less true.

So you want to disarm the people that keep your streets safe? The people that enforce the law? You simply cannot disarm the police if the entire country owns a weapon.... the crime would skyrocket due to the huge drop in police power and the country would descend into chaos. If you are disarming the police you would have to also disarm the general public

Really sounds civilised when you stick your gun out the window instead of just talking to the police. If they were going to arrest you, they'd have started a fire fight. Not walked off.

I wouldn't give my toddler a marker to begin with but a marker is a bit different than a gun... which I also wouldn't give my toddler(but she does have water guns and I use them to explain barrel safety to her, not pointing it at people or certain places) However, if she had a marker and wrote all over the walls I would explain to her why we do not do that and if she did it again I would punish her, I wouldn't say that we need to ban all markers or never give any of my children a marker again. ;-)

First let me say that this thread is very interesting. I like the idea that we can all voice our opinions without fear of attack for those thoughts. So let me throw in my 2 cents here....

I am an American ...having said that I would like to be the first to say that I do not always agree with what my elected officials do or even with the vocal few who make the headlines with shock factor videos. I do however believe in the original intent and concept of the US Constitution. It was designed at a time when we were a new Nation trying to establish a foothold... when the established European Countries were having their own problems with intolerance. To counter this our Founders made the choice to be tolerant of issues that were being repressed in Europe. The biggest were Religion, Weapon ownership, free speech, and taxation without representation.

I have watched as my country has tried, and in some cases succeeded, in taking these original citizen rights away one by one. I am not an activist by any standard, but as I watch the changes being made in the name of Greater Good I have to wonder. But as this a discussion about guns I will try to keep to that subject.

Gun control is needed!! But I do not believe that if I owned a gun I would be willing to be forced to account for my gun like a Library Book. If I want to go hunting to put food on my table then that is my choice.....I should not have to fill out papers to "check" my gun out of a controlled bunker. I do think that if you own a gun then it should be re-licenced every year just like your car. Every gun owned should have to go through a fire arms safety course every year. And at that time the instructor can make the determination if the person taking the course is responsible enough for ownership and handleing of said firearm. There are enough firearm experts in this country to easily set up and handle a licensing system like this.

For people that own a gun unlawfully......if you kill another human being with a gun you should face a firing squad. I could think of various other types of punishment but that is not the time nor the place.

I do not know how they keep the streets safe? They enforce commercial code and extort people for revenue for the state. As has been shown in New York since the police officer there was executed supposedly over police killing people, the city was actually much safer when the police stopped going around and harassing people.

I think this fails to note that the police left, so they weren't there to make an arrest. Had they stayed they would have manufactured a reason to fine or jail me but they couldn't because they were FORCED to leave. They didn't come back so their being there was obviously unnecessary to begin with, meaning they only came to cause trouble.

I believe we have the right to keep our armed weapons.