Yeah, so then they start bringing guns instead of knives. Classic escalation.

And yet I would still have a gun. If somebody is breaking into your home while someone is possibly home, they obviously do not have an issue with confrontation. Thieves tend to wait until they know nobody is home because they want nobody to be there and avoid this situation entirely. My mother works in the department of corrections, specifically parole.

People with a non-violent background don't go and commit assault, it's usually just battery at the highest. However people who have committed assault, are far more likely to offend again, and they are the ones who commit violent theft. You don't go from robbing houses to violence, it's usually the other way around.

You should follow the link I just posted, it shows a gunman going in a shop, the shopkeeper calmly going about his business, before walking to the back of the shop and calling police. The gunman leaves the store, his robbery failed.

Not a single shot was fired. It likely would have been different, had the shopkeeper pulled a gun in "self-defense".

Are you saying this is every gunman? Actually, most robberies that end up with somebody being shot actually lead to the suspects turning themselves in if they are not caught.

Oh, well that's alright then. As long as the criminal in jail, who cares who died?

At least guns require less skill and thus are more accessible. They more or less even the playing field, whereas a knife only really protects very skilled individuals. Point and shoot vs hold knife properly, dodge enemy knife, thrust knife properly, height/arm length advantages, and anything else I'm not aware of since I've only been lightly trained in knife fights.

For example I feel fairly safe with a knife since I'm probably more skilled than anyone else where I live. However for my GF I would much prefer her to have a pistol in the house in the event someone dangerous enters when I'm not around. It's much easier for her to grab a pistol and fire, than to defend herself by any other means against a violent aggressor. Even if the intruder has a pistol of their own (or actually, regardless of what weapon the intruder has).

What if the intruder has an Apache helicopter and just levels your house. Pistol doesn't help. And that's the escalation argument right there.

Presumably weapons will continue to get more and more deadly. And what point will the absurd become reality?

Thanks for demonstrating why we should prefer intruders have knives instead of guns, and why it is preferable to have as many laws and controls in place to minimise the ability of people generally to get ahold of guns - the less access there is for guns, the fewer intruders will have them.

Armed intrusion is very rare in New Zealand.

Armed, with weapons or not, is common in the US. It is rare that an intruder has a gun at all, most thieves are unarmed or have some sort of melee weapon. Then again, most robberies occur when there is nobody home at all.

With your logic, that if gun control is stricter, criminals would stop getting weapons. There is already so many in circulation that just is not going to happen, "Get them out of circulation." Oh if it were so easy, not only the US, but all of Europe would thank you for your efforts in getting guns off the streets. Also, the difference in disparity here in the US is massive and it's not difficult to see. What I mean by see, is a poor man that has to rely on food stamps while working full time at walmart can easily look across a highway and see people who make six figures a year while working 10 hours a week.

It's not guns, our whole nation is an issue. Throwing out legislation now without setting up the framework that it can run on, is pointless. All this money being poured into gun control, anti-gun lobbying, and all that garbage should instead be funneled into our police force. Every mass shooting always has a story of why it happened and even the murderers can sometimes be labeled a victim too before they did anything. Tragedies happen here in the US more than other countries because of shit besides our fucking gun laws.

Good point. The line has to be drawn somewhere, right? In the US there are quite a few lines around guns when it comes to effectiveness of killing. Automatic weapons, various classes of rifles and pistols, and even certain types of knives are just outright illegal to own or use. Yes, there is definitely a line that needs to be picked and stuck to. I'm making a point that the line is fine where it is, other people here want to bump that line backwards and make it a little more strict.

To me this is the takeaway from this discussion on the Orlando shooting. Once we take a self-reflective look at why shootings happen from the shooters' perspective and understand how they came into existence, it can be fairly logical to conclude that gun control (as in, general gun control for the average healthy citizen) was not a primary factor. For the Orlando incident it really seems to me that the majority of people here think either A) the shooter was mentally unstable, and was not properly "taken care of" by society -- he didn't have appropriate recognition of his instabilities leading to him having easy access to guns; B) the shooter was islamic and hated gays; C) it's interesting to discuss the psychological point of view of shooters in general. All other discussion in the thread so far was mostly back and forth about these points.

We all care about the motives of the shooter and how he came into existence. I think this is a good thing. I imagine if a larger number of people cared about who these people are and how they are made, especially ones that can actually do something in regards to the direction the US goes in, we wouldn't have these shootings as frequently if at all.

Some of us think stronger gun regulation for mentally unstable will stop monsters like this from arising. I myself have put forth the idea that Islam can be targeted as a cause (but haven't proposed any actionable solutions other than to legally categorize Islam as an ideology). In the end I think we have mostly agreed that this isn't so much a gun control issue, as it is an issue of understanding humanity.

And if you were paying attention in the shout box, I already said twice that the problem in America is that the genie is out of the bottle.

Going cold turkey would obviously not work, and nor have I suggested that. Instead, bringing in gradual regulation and control of guns over time, will gradually lessen gun violence. I doubt you'll ever be able to end up with a system like most civilised countries, at least until the 2nd amendment is repealed, but there are many basic steps that can be taken that would not affect 99% of your population except to make them safer from guns, and so instead of coming up with deflections and self-serving arguments, gun-ownership activists should get real and start helping their country instead of hindering it.

I'd like to here reasons, logical or empirical, of how this can be known as truth. You seem like a logical and reasonable guy, I'm sure there's logic and reason here to be shared.

I don't get why you keep pointing out shooter was Muslim or Islam in general. It doesn't take being Islamic to hate people for being gay; there are LGBT Muslims who don't hate themselves, non-religious people who hate people who are gay, etc. It's a red herring when a ton of followers and leaders involved in Islam immediately condemned the shooting while a multitude of non-Muslims jeered.

If you're talking about LGBTQ rights and perceptions in anywhere besides the US, that again is a deflection from the fact that shooting happened in the US by a US-born-and-raised citizen (who was thus born and raised in the US's culture) and also ignorance in what Muslims have done to try to prevent the shooter from doing something like what he did, ex. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/20/i-reported-omar-mateen-to-the-fbi-trump-is-wrong-that-muslims-dont-do-our-part/ .

But yes, it's not primarily a gun control issue, although I stand by my previous claim that a sufficient policy (ex. requiring a psych evaluation over the course of a few weeks or months) could have preempted the shooting.

Pretty simple. If you instituted a gun storage policy as in New Zealand, where guns must be kept in locked cabinets, unloaded, with ammo stored in a separate locked compartment or cabinet, then accidental gun deaths from children finding hand-guns in [room] and shooting themselves or others will be drastically cut down, if not eliminated.

I'd like to see any coherent argument how locking up guns in that manner could increase gun deaths over the current level.

I bring it up because I feel it's a genuinely important point to consider. The way Islam is practiced in regards to Sharia law, and the numerous, frequent, and brutal mistreatment of humans is outright despicable. I don't really care if the idea of "blaming a religion" hurts someone else's feeling's, and I don't really care about the peaceful or reformed Muslims in the US. I care about the current events regarding Islamic tragedies against human kind. Events like the rape of Europe aren't really getting attention they deserve. To me it's a very real possibility that the Orlando shooting hearkens to the events in Europe as writing on the wall. If more un-reformed Islam practitioners move to the US it seems like more violent events like the Orlando shooting, or the raping of Europe, may happen. There even seems to be a lot of mass-censoring of information regarding these refugee/Islam-related rape events.

However, I don't really know what's true or not, hence the reason for having a serious discussion in the first place.


Okay, I think that makes a lot of sense for New Zealand, when talking about accidental deaths and child related deaths/injuries. I think we all agree this would likely work in the US as well. However, the discussion in this thread is largely about mass shootings, violence, murders, and other more sinister events, especially those involving criminals. So assuming your idea can extend to handle these topics as well: New Zealand is a fairly small piece of geography compared to North America; there are going to be less avenues for acquiring illegal weaponry and less people to control. I think geography is probably the most important factor, but scale of population also matters.

So in order for me to accept your point and become convinced I would need to see:

• How the US can enforce these regulations upon everyone, effectively, including criminals.
  
• How to prevent criminals from acquiring weapons illegally.
  
• How to prevent criminals from removing legally obtained weapons from their storage units for committing crimes such as robbery.
  
• Explain how the population size scaling from roughly 5 million to 320 million affects the regulations.

As stated in my previous FBI document 40% of all violent gun crimes were committed by individuals who obtained a weapon illegally. In the US, with land access much broader than New Zealand, it can be very different for a criminal to obtain an illegal weapon in one country, compared to another. As such, different policies may be needed. A difference in population size will also certainly give rise of necessary differences in regulations.

I understand the idea would be a slow change in regulations to become more like New Zealand. Okay. But what are the actual steps to enact this change, especially in regards to my above bullet points?

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jul 8 2016, 10:37 pm by CecilSunkure.

sooo then 60% of violent gun crime is committed by legally owned and acquired guns?

This is getting highly divorced from the original topic. If people want to talk about Sharia law, or talk about how guns relate to gun crime in general, please open separate topics.

Sure, that's what this thread is about. I however, said "gun violence", which includes accidental killings by and of children. You asked how my statement could be known as truth, I answered.

When I am arguing, I usually am quite particular about the words I use, such as "gun violence".

By spending the money to do so, and instituting cultural reform to support the legislation. In NZ it's a matter of course that everyone stores their guns this way. Sure, there are people that don't, and they sometimes get caught and fined for their actions.

America has a 'war on drugs' and a 'war on terror'. Use some of that money. It's not impossible to change culture - after all, culture is purely a human construct. Instead of throwing up your hands in the air and saying "it's too hard, lets not even try and start, lets just give up" means you will certainly fail. Am I saying America can do this overnight, or next week? Of course not. That's also why I specifically chose the words "gradual change".

Criminals acquire weapons illegally in New Zealand, too. No one is saying they don't. However the range of guns available in NZ means that by and large, criminals have shotguns and rifles, which are much more difficult to conceal than hand guns.

Yeah, 'cause that never happens in NZ, even though I just linked to a video of an armed robber failing to hold up a convenience store in this thread that happened just a few days ago in my city.

No one is saying gun control is a silver bullet that will magically solve all problems, and yet you're trying to argue against it on that basis. Nice straw man.
Europe has more residents than the US and their gun control is much more like NZ's than it is America's. They manage.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 8 2016, 10:48 pm by Lanthanide.

It's only a straw man if I asked you to explain how it would stop *all* crimes. We're discussing gradual change, implying some kind of effect. It is fair for me to ask why you think the effect would be what you predict it as. Simply saying "look Europe does it" or "look New Zealand" does it is just not convincing me, since they are geographically different. Your other points I thought were much more interesting.

As for gun control in Europe, I'd say it isn't working out so well due to geographic proximity to Islam (sources, A, B, C). Honestly, if all the citizens of these European countries had guns and were comfortable defending themselves we wouldn't be seeing rape rampages by groups of immigrants with no retaliation.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/gun-crimes/index.html

http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/12/04/news/how-american-gun-deaths-and-gun-laws-compare-canadas

It works in Canada well enough. Next to the US.

That said, the Orlando shooting could have taken place in Canada with the same weapon.

http://calibremag.ca/ar-15-canada/


Emphasis mine. While there are legal means for Omar to have gotten an AR-15 in Canada, given his past history with his ex-wife, his potential lack of positive character references, the potential for being recognized as a mentally unstable person, and the general stringency and time required to acquire such a weapon (and time/effort required being a significant factor in committing suicides, commit crimes, or murder-suicides), it is much less likely for him to have successfully acquired one.

On top of this if we were to assume he were in Canada or that ha was born and raised here, the culture he would have been exposed to wrt violence, diversity, LGBT rights, generally toned-down or lack of institutionalized racism, etc. would have likely have mitigated the motivation to commit such a heinous crime.

Further off-tpoic:


Emphasis mine, to point out that gun crime rates would be less in Canada if it were not for the US being in the state that it is. Note also that the "no firearm is inherently more dangerous to public peace than any other" argument typical of gun advocates is used here except that Canada in general doesn't have the problem of people shooting each other over arguments in salons, robberies, and so forth. Maybe that's again a cultural thing where life is valued in action than in word.

Why is that a relevant factor? ALL countries are geographically different from one another.