Originally Posted by Oakvillian (Post 11281902)

Nowhere have I said that I think guns should be banned. That would be stupid and ineffective. They do need to be more tightly controlled, and the US in particular needs to get over itself with its 2nd Amendment nonsense. The small-arms lobby needs to be got out of politics somehow, but that ain't gonna happen any time soon.

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 11282792)

They went up. 54 in 1997/98, 97 in 2001/02. They've since gone down but crime has gone down around the world across the board in the last ten years.

Originally Posted by Shard (Post 11282805)

Slightly patchy statistics. Aren't there annual stats? World crime rates are irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 11282812)

No there are not, because the Home Office changed the reporting method to basically the UK tax year so they could fiddle them, imo. Those stats are for England & Wales btw, the not the whole UK.

Crime has gone down across the developed world, I don't think it is irrelevant, big topic in criminology as to why it is happening.

Originally Posted by Jingsamichty (Post 11282650)

Forget about spandex-clad bisexuals, you asked a specific question: Why don't the world's armed forces use bullets designed to kill?

What is the answer if it's not to cause resource-expensive injury instead of death?

Originally Posted by Jingsamichty (Post 11282650)

Forget about spandex-clad bisexuals, you asked a specific question: Why don't the world's armed forces use bullets designed to kill?
What is the answer if it's not to cause resource-expensive injury instead of death?

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 11282772)

Many firearms are designed purely for target shooting, it's not semantics. Saying they can be used to kill people is no different than saying you can stab someone to death with a kitchen knife.

And a flare gun is technically a firearm.

Derrick Bird owned guns for pest control, .22 rifle and a double-barrel shotgun. No-one ever seriously suggests that you could ban those for that purpose, yet look what he did in Cumbria.



The point that I was making is that other people make that comparison and it's stupid.

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 11282798)

So what would you suggest exactly that California hasn't already got? It's got licensing (via the safety certificate that has to be renewed every five years), registration, a ban (essentially) on new models of handguns, a one-gun-a-month-law, testing of people, a ten-day waiting period together with a comprehensive background check, a ban on private transfers except through licensed dealers, all transactions of firearms and ammunition have to be in person, a ban on magazines that hold more than ten rounds, a broadly written ban on "assault weapons", a ban on people having guns who even go in on a psychiatric hold let alone are committed to a mental hospital and more besides.

Like I said it's actually more restrictive than Canada at this point, but he still had them and he still did it, so perhaps it's time to look at other alternatives.

Originally Posted by Oakvillian (Post 11284547)

n politicians) to separate gun ownership from constitutional freedoms, and stop hiding behind a loosely written 250-year-old phrase passed in haste by legislators with no notion of 21st century weaponry.

Originally Posted by Almost Canadian (Post 11282839)

The vast majority of weapons are not designed to kill; not these days. They can kill, just as a hammer can

Originally Posted by Oakvillian (Post 11284539)

Yes, semantics. Don't be silly.

Originally Posted by Oakvillian (Post 11284547)

What does California have? It has people owning guns because it's their "constitutional right" to do so.

Originally Posted by jossie (Post 11281542)

Your argument holds no water Mate. Firstly Guns don't kill people - people do. Have you ever heard of root cause analysis? If you have a bunch of phsychos running around the USA and you remove guns from the equation then guess what...you still have a bunch of phsychos running around because you haven't addressed the root cause of the problem. Now what? They will probably google how to manufacture a nail bomb or something even more deadly. And as far as hunting deer, as I have said before, if more people hunted then less animals would die. Deer die due to overpopulation so if more people hunted for their meat then less cows would die and people would harvest some of the deer that would have died due to overpopulation. The meat you buy at Safeway has been killed BTW in case you weren't aware and prior to that it had a way shittier life than the deer that hunters harvest. You are a product of the brainwashed society that now dominates the UK. Just because someone else kills an animal so you can eat meat doesn't make you a better person than the outdoorsman / woman that gets out there and harvests his or her own meat.

Originally Posted by Steve_ (Post 11282783)

Well your prejudices aside, target shooting is a very long-standing sport and is one of the original sports of the modern Olympics.

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 11281791)

To pick a nit in the above. I don't think hunting is a rural activity conducted by the "rural community", whatever that is. It's something done by people who drive out from the suburbs then zoom around shooting at things from their ATVs and trucks, chucking stuff out of the windows as they go. scootb is, I suspect, a typical hunter in terms of where he lives; he mentioned there being some large number of F150s on his street, that's not a manner of description appropriate to a rural location. People who live in the country have other things to do than hunt; for example, in the Autumn they have to paint "COW" on each of their cows and wrap their horses in day-glo blankets.