Re: Guns
 

I've said it before and you shouted me down - if you don't make an effort to understand the why of these shooting rampages there are going to be more and more of them. I've owned guns for over 45 years. I have bags of experience shooting from pellet guns to howitzers almost all my life and hunted almost all my life and I've read the same opinions from you or people like you (opinion-wise) on this forum before. It's like staring at an Escher staircase. What about the shootings that take place from cars? All you statisticians..... (If it takes a chicken and a half a day and a half to lay an egg and a half how long does it take a grasshopper with a wooden leg to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?) I don't know if any of you should have guns, but that isn't my job. If you don't like guns don't have one; same argument as abortions. There are some semi-auto rifles that are sporting classics, nothing military about them, btw, other than that they are semi-auto. They usually have 5 rd magazines so the short mag or conversion kit sold for assault rifles isn't required. I would consider banning those over-reacting, like (feel free to correct me) Australia banning pump action shotguns because someone went nuts with one. Oswald used a cheap Carcano bolt action but he was a good shot, he could feasibly done it with a muzzle loader.

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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?

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I really, really want to go drinking with you. :)

Re: Guns
 

Cardiff hit and run rampage kills mother and injures 13 more

Doesn't sound very efficient does it. He should have been allowed a gun and done it properly.

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Guys alone in the woods together shooting at things. Sounds gay.

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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.

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I'm not disagreeing with you that firearms aren't weapons, they are, but you clearly know nothing about target shooting. There are legions of Italian gunmakers making shotguns purely for shooting clays out of the sky and no-one in their right mind would use them for field shooting. The same is true of the pistols and rifles used in ISSF (including the Olympics).

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

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Have you been issued your pistol yet? :lol:

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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It's the better angels of our nature. ;)

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Sorry

You are correct. Shoot a soldier dead and you have taken one soldier out the conflict. Injure one, and you have taken 3 out.

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

Re: Guns
 

The key to effective killing power in bullets designed for hunting or for self defence is controlled expansion, with typically a lead nose on the projectile flattening on impact and the force pushing a lead core outwards, controlled by a copper jacket. Hollow point ammunition expands more rapidly. Expanding bullets were outlawed by the Hague Convention of 1899, and the full metal jacket bullet was introduced as a humanitarian gesture to lessen the severity of wounds compounded by fragmentation and expansion. When the 5.56 mm round became standard the increased velocity was discovered to cause a tumbling effect on the projectile on impact, causing bizzare bullet paths. When any weapon causes an enemy to be wounded so it takes 2 other men to carry him it's a bonus. We had little plastic landmines that would fire a .22 short through your foot if you stepped on it, very inexpensive and easy to use and designed specifically to cause a minor wound, but almost impossible to detect, and they were meant to be deployed in great numbers. Now illegal since the landmine treaty (which is still unsigned by many nations).

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Yes, semantics. Don't be silly.

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What does California have? It has people owning guns because it's their "constitutional right" to do so. It has little to do with how restrictive it is compared to Canada or anywhere else, it has to do with the attitude that guns are somehow a part of the culture, and are OK to have and to use in daily life. As I have said, the main challenge is for America (and particularly conservative American 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.

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This.

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Military weapons are designed to kill, bit of a myth about the "designed to wound" to take people off the battlefield, the Hague Accords and the later Geneva Protocol were intended to stop that sort of thing. The reason being for example that certain chemical weapons are not designed to kill but instead to incapacitate in a variety of nasty ways.

Re: Guns
 

I'm not being silly, it's not semantics. A wide variety of firearms are not designed to kill. I don't dispute they can kill and irresponsible use of them would generally lead to being killed with them but they aren't designed to kill. A wide variety of shotguns for example are designed purely for shooting clays out of the sky. The .22 pistols and rifles used in ISSF events and at the Olympics are clearly not designed to kill.

It's factually wrong to say they are. Although I have to say I do get annoyed with people who take this too far, many sports have grown out of martial arts, such as archery, javelin, shot put, etc. At the end of the day it was a skill that evolved out of killing people. Like when I pick up a gun can call it a weapon, often someone will say, no it's not a weapon, it's purely a tool, blah, blah. Yes it's a tool that is a weapon. Forgetting that is likely to put the thought in your mind it can't cause significant harm if you get shot with one. Anymore than I would want to get skewered with a javelin!

Re: Guns
 

California doesn't have a constitutional right in its state constitution to keep and bear arms, it's one of the only States that doesn't. Hence it's quite hard to do anything about the many gun laws directly there as you have to take it to Federal court. Usually their gun laws get struck down on other grounds, such as violation of due process.

I don't think that's got anything to do with it, there are plenty of places in America with pretty loose gun laws and a healthy respect for the Second Amendment that have very little crime, armed or otherwise. California would have to qualify I think as the State with the least interest in respecting the Second Amendment.

There's just a culture of being trigger happy, you only have to watch American TV for a few hours to see it.

By the way, the Second Amendment was apparently based in part on Article 7 of the Bill of Rights 1689, it's far from being a uniquely American thing.

As for the 21st century, you could make the same argument about the internet in regards to the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment.

Re: Guns
 

1) I'm not your mate, and neither do you think so either. So, please don't refer to me as such. It's like being French kissed by an old wench.
2) The fact that you edited the post and yet it still came out appearing incomprehensibly nonsensical means that I haven't got a 3).

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Yeah I'm prejudiced against exposing children to dangerous firearms. Hands up! Last I checked, though, children firing guns was not a sport in the modern Olympics.

Re: Guns
 

Yeah okay, but I bet the ownership of guns by people in the country compared with people in the city is like 20:1. Rural community = people in the country.

I have never seen a cow painted COW but I would live to see one. I once saw a garbage hut painted "No bears" in Muskoka which this guy said was there for literate bears. The amount of Americans who believed him, made me chuckle ...!:D

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This line that people kill people not guns is just an excuse. We need to treat mental health disorders much more proactively, yes, but let's not conflate gun incidents with mental health issues. They don't always coincide.

Let me put it another way to you, and in the context of the awful scenes from Moncton tonight: if it's people killing people why is this 24 year old NOT running amok with a carving knife?

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:goodpost:

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He could have manufactured a nail bomb and killed many more had he not had a gun or maybe used a baseball bat and killed less. Who knows?

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There's always a field of them close to highway 15 on the way to Ottawa.

I see them from time to time where we are and will advise of the location come Autumn in case you want to go and look. Be careful though not to come in a jacked up truck with camo paint, a Browning logo and a license plate holder from a dealer in Mississauga, as the locals may let your tyres down.

Re: Guns
 

I think we all know that he wouldn't have killed multiple policemen with a baseball bat. I think it's fair enough to say that the liberty of the public to have guns is worth the lives of a few policemen and bystanders now and then. That's a compromise the Canadians have chosen. It's nonsense however to suggest that, in the absence of the guns, there would be dead policemen, in this instance, or dead bystanders, in the usual case.

I suppose if he ate them it'd all be fine.

Re: Guns
 

I would place bets that this man in Moncton (when the whole story finally unravels) has been surrounded by guns all his life, trained to shoot as a child - hunting with crossbows, and generally been told that it's people that kill people, not guns. :roll eyes:

It's great that he can run around small city with assault rifles. That's such a useful skill to have, and its nice that he has the freedom to do this.

Re: Guns
 

How do the anti gun lobby propose to gather up all the existing guns out there?

If you intend to go killing people then Id say the thought of having to break the law to obtain any of the millions of guns already out there to do so is hardly much of a deterrent.

People that have been around guns all their life fully understand the danger and safety aspects of handling weapons. Its hardly glamourous to have that drilled into you every time you go to the range.

The bottom line is normal sane people dont go on killing sprees. In a country/ continent with millions of guns its unrealistic to hope you can legislate them back out of the wild, it simply will not happen, so the deranged and disturbed are sometimes going to be able to get weapons either legally or illegal. So along side sensible laws regarding gun acquisition and the types of weapon legally available for sale is the need to ensure that damaged people that feel for whatever reason they need to do this are a top priority for healthcare interventions and not at the back of the queue because as a society we find mental illness a taboo subject.

Re: Guns
 

Agreed. People who surround their kids with weapons are very naïve to think that their child would never do such a thing

Re: Guns
 

Statistically speaking, what percentage of the population goes on killing sprees? On in 100million , one in 10million maybe?


I think I am not too far out on a limb to suggest that 99.999999% of parents who expose their kids to firearms are pretty safe to think that their kid would never do such a thing, even ignoring the fact that at least some of the mass murderers no doubt came to guns of their own volition.

My kids exposure to guns on the couple of ocassions that they have gone to the range has been all about the safety aspects of handling and storing them. If your havent actually experienced that I dont know how you could make such a sweeping statement.

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He was also on Facebook saying he was hating on cops and no one did nowt !!!!!

If he said he hate N*****s he would have been arrested or at least questioned, and none of this would be happening, society has it all arse about face in my opinion. The N word gets more press than a guy with guns wanting to kill cops wtf

Re: Guns
 

Hard to say. It depends on the country and the amount of time. It's not a question of the % of pop that goes on killing sprees, it's the % of children that have guns that go on killing sprees.

Not sure how many children there are in Canada, say 10 million, and say 10% have guns, so 1 million population. If over a decade there are 5 killing sprees, then the incidence is 99.999% or 1 in 200,000. Sounds a more realistic figure than what you are suggesting.

Re: Guns
 

I don't find mental illness to be a taboo subject. I'm accustomed to living with a person who is mentally ill and with a gun in the house. But I think mental illness is a red herring here.

People get ill tempered, they develop grudges, some act on their temper or their grudge. Most do so in socially acceptable ways, they rant at their bartender, some in less acceptable ways such as punching the source of irritation. These people need not be "mentally ill", they're just having a bad day. If you take these same people and give them serious firepower, some will use it. It doesn't make them ill, it's just human nature.

Since we can't change human nature we just have to decide to what extent dead humans are a reasonable price for the ability to kill our own animals. In the UK we're not keen on random death. In the US and in South Africa, they're comfortable with it. Canada's somewhere inbetween. As immigrants we should be attempting to civilise the country, not supporting the natives' tendency to barbarianism.

Re: Guns
 

So you would summarize your position as "the problem is too difficult. Let's not even try to address it."

You continue to conflate gun crime with mental health. While it's absurdly obvious that going on a killing spree is hardly the action of a well-adjusted person, there are difficulties with your conflation in both directions: not all mentally ill people go on killing sprees; not all mass-killing perpetrators have an identified/diagnosed mental health issue. You make a valid point that there is a strong need for better/earlier diagnosis, treatment and support of the mentally ill, but that need does not absolve society from trying to limit access to firearms.

Re: Guns
 

Except that, as you likely know, assault rifles are not permitted, outside of military/law enforcement, in Canada.

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May I point you in the direction of the Jonesboro massacre. Two young boys aged 12 & 14 from good families one grew up around guns & taught about safety etc, stole weapons & ammunition from a family member then opened fire on their school mates killing 4 & 1 teacher.

Also, Adam Lanza was someone whose mother saw fit to bring up around guns.

I'm sure there's many more & many more to come. Just because this sort of thing is rare & the majority of people with guns or gun access don't go on a rampage doesn't mean that it couldn't be your child one day.