What's your opinion of gun control?

[Aggressor66]

Guns are made for one purpose, and that purpose is to kill.
I believe that guns are not weapons, they are tools. How they are used is up to the person holding it.
Guns are especially dangerous in the hands of people who don't know how to use them (i.e., kids and teenagers) as well as those who are mentally ill and/or have a temper problem.
Gun control will not stop violence because a violent person doesn’t need a gun to be violent.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, support for gun control increased dramatically.

Generally in America, the support for gun control has outweighed the support for gun rights.
Are gun control laws constitutional?
What would be your ideal set of laws regarding firearms?

[bryant.coleman]

IMO, people should be given the choice whether whey want to own a fire-arm or not. In places like Texas, where home invasions are very common, the possession of a fire-arm can save many lives. However, the government should make it impossible for people with a criminal record, and those with mental issues from obtaining fire-arms.

[AJMax]

https://i.imgur.com/q6sJpTH.jpg

Guns are made for one purpose, and that purpose is to kill.
I believe that guns are not weapons, they are tools. How they are used is up to the person holding it.
Guns are especially dangerous in the hands of people who don't know how to use them (i.e., kids and teenagers) as well as those who are mentally ill and/or have a temper problem.
Gun control will not stop violence because a violent person doesn’t need a gun to be violent.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, support for gun control increased dramatically.

Generally in America, the support for gun control has outweighed the support for gun rights.
Are gun control laws constitutional?
What would be your ideal set of laws regarding firearms?

Cat's out of the bag, tightening existing gun control laws on ordinary law abiding citizens without first addressing proliferation of illegal firearms is ridiculous.

[altcoinhosting]

In my country, to own a gun, you need:

- a membership from a shooting range
- you need to be active in the shooting range (at least a dozen times a year)
- you need to take an exam every 5 years
- you need to pay extra tax every 5 years
- your doctor needs to sign a weaver that you are capable of owning a gun
- you need a special cage to store your gun
- you need a signature of every person over 18 years old, living in your house
- certain calibers are just illegal, no normal civillian can own them... Period (it's pretty hard to own a firearm other than caliber 6 and 9 mm)
- the amount of ammunition you can own is limited (i think you can have 10.000 cartridges as a private citizen)

So it's basically almost impossible to own a gun legally (many people own guns illegally tough). However, gun related deaths are pretty low.

EDIT: even after all these thing, the government can change gun controll laws whenever they want. If you stop complying to the new laws, you have to turn in your firearm with the police for free, even when you bought it legally... (this actually happened on  two occasions the last couple of years)

[bryant.coleman]

^^^ Do you live in Australia? I have heard from some of the Australian users in this forum that the gun laws there are pretty retarded. That said, the gun crime is quite low, because there are few ethnic gangs (like the Crips and Bloods in the United States). However, a lot of Australians are using the dark market sites to purchase firearms and ammunition.

[Elwar]

Gun control?

You should use 2 hands.

[RappelzReborn]

I'am personally against owning a gun  but with too .
I like it how my country do it basically , please don't take this the wrong way I don't mean that normal citizens with average income have a cheap life .
Well basically here to own a gun you simply to be a Business man or something important on the society , that's all . and to be honest it's better that way , and killing here is a lot less then countries that allows owning guns .

[NUFCrichard]

I am a European.  I cannot understand why Americans want to have so many people owning guns.  I can see that yu want the freedom to do that, but I don't trust that everyone or even the majority of people can be trusted with a way to easily kill lots of people quickly.

In England people fight and there is knife crime, but generally you can pretty much run away from danger if someone goes crazy.  If someone comes with a semi-automatic weapon and starts spraying bullets around, I can run, but bullets are faster.

I wouldn't allow any hand guns, or automatic/semi-automatic weapons to be carried on the street or owned by anyone without serious assessment done in advance.  Americans will probably disagree, but I don't see these good guys with guns overwhelming the bad guys with guns, as good guys don't want to shoot people!

[Elwar]

I am a European.  I cannot understand why Americans want to have so many people owning guns.  I can see that yu want the freedom to do that, but I don't trust that everyone or even the majority of people can be trusted with a way to easily kill lots of people quickly.

In England people fight and there is knife crime, but generally you can pretty much run away from danger if someone goes crazy.  If someone comes with a semi-automatic weapon and starts spraying bullets around, I can run, but bullets are faster.

I wouldn't allow any hand guns, or automatic/semi-automatic weapons to be carried on the street or owned by anyone without serious assessment done in advance.  Americans will probably disagree, but I don't see these good guys with guns overwhelming the bad guys with guns, as good guys don't want to shoot people!

Imagine if all of the jews had guns. How many of them would have been swept away to the gas chambers by the thousands?

The point of having guns is that the people should have more power than their government. Sadly that shift of power has long been in the hands of the US government over the past 130 years or so. The whole point of the right to bare arms was lost during the Civil War.

[maku]

Different countries and different regions have different needs. In Texas where the distance between settlements is high you need something to defend. But in New York where people are close by the need of guns is not that important.

[bryant.coleman]

I am a European.  I cannot understand why Americans want to have so many people owning guns.

The biggest massacre involving guns happened in Europe. It occurred in a country, which is having one of the toughest gun control laws (Norway) in the world. A lunatic called Anders Behring Breivik was single-handedly able to mow down a total of 77 people, and the policemen present at the scene could not do anything, as they were not armed.

[Snail2]

I see gun control as disarming the law obeying people (and keep the criminals armed, as they don't care about gun control), for eliminating the ability of citizens to resist/challenge the state/tyranny.

[sdp]

Gun 'control' affects the law abiding people.  It also affects those who are not law abiding.  So, gun control does create a barrier to owning this kind of lethal weapon.  Sure one can find a merchant who will sell a gun illegally but you need to find such a person.

The drive to own a gun is similar to the "arms race" between nations.  The house robber down the street has a knife.  I had better get a sword.  Now that I have the sword, the house robber decides he needs a hand gun.  It should be easier to obtain legally than illegally.  At least that will make it a deterrent for robbing rather than a tool for robbing.

Gun control slows down the arms race between individuals in society.  There are other defensive ways you can protect your home.  One is to have multiple locks on the door.  An alarm system so the robber doesn't have the element of surprise.  Avoid indicating that you are not home.  Don't announce to the whole world when you are going on vacation.

sdp

[Mehek]

My opinion on gun control rests differently with different countries.
The rules and requirements of every country is different, so are the needs.

[Daniel91]

Guns are dangerous, specially for kids and inexperienced people.
In America, the right to possession and use of arms is a constitutional right but the rest of the world does not agree with such thinking.
Although almost everyone in America is armed, they didn't become safer and didn't reduce crime, just the opposite.
I think that security is not achieved by arming of the population, but with education and developing a culture of cooperation and dialogue.
Great example of this are Scandinavian countries.
So, we really need gun control otherwise our security will be further compromised by armed men who too easily use weapons either to defend themselves or attack the others.

[TinEye]

this is an interesting argument, some times avoided, some country allow to easy to access to weapons, there should be more restriction, in USA it is so easy that everyone can buy one of those gun, they often call it a far west for good reason, i think that there can't be good gun control, because this things are born to kill and when you face the death you will do everything to survive, and your control will not be 100%, your focus is only on your survival nothing else, so it is easy to hurt someone that ahs nothing to do with your dispute, especially if it happen in pubblic, like in the usa or russia

[bumm]

Guns are made for one purpose, and that purpose is to kill.
I believe that guns are not weapons, they are tools. How they are used is up to the person holding it.
Guns are especially dangerous in the hands of people who don't know how to use them (i.e., kids and teenagers) as well as those who are mentally ill and/or have a temper problem.
Gun control will not stop violence because a violent person doesn’t need a gun to be violent.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, support for gun control increased dramatically.

Generally in America, the support for gun control has outweighed the support for gun rights.
Are gun control laws constitutional?
What would be your ideal set of laws regarding firearms?

I think gun control is necessary. You never know who will go mad and start shooting people. Lot of killings going on these days, something has to be done about it. You cannot just hope that no one else will go insane.

[Elwar]

Gun control in many countries may also be why the women are more oppressed than in the US.

Guns are the great equalizer.

[moneyflow]

I think people just want to have the right of owning guns rather than actually owning them just to make them feel they are in total control. Sadly, freedom is a self exercised myth.

[NUFCrichard]

I am a European.  I cannot understand why Americans want to have so many people owning guns.

The biggest massacre involving guns happened in Europe. It occurred in a country, which is having one of the toughest gun control laws (Norway) in the world. A lunatic called Anders Behring Breivik was single-handedly able to mow down a total of 77 people, and the policemen present at the scene could not do anything, as they were not armed.

Ok the biggest might have been in Europe, but the frequency and total number killed is much higher in the US than all of Europe combined.

It wasn't that the police present couldn't do anything, he had set off a bomb in the capital city to throw the police off, then he attacked the children on an island that couldn't be quickly reached.
The guy was/is a lunatic and it is dreadful that he managed to get a weapon.  I would prefer that he wasn't able to get a gun, instead of giving lots of people guns to shoot each other in this kind of case (I doubt it would have made a difference as it was a Political Youth camp he attacked, probably not somewhere where people would be armed anyway)