You reveal your loneliness and isolation with the vast amount of time you spend on this forum alone.

It is obvious fear and ignorance are your only real companions now.

 

As with any product we consume or activity we engage in, regardless of what it may be there is always a certain amount of risk involved. Ther is always the risk when you join a softball team that you may for example get hit by the ball and injured, or damage a limb sliding into a base. These are the risks, and these risks are deemed acceptable by those who participate in these activities and generaly by the population at large. The overall benefit is juged to be worth the inherent risks involved in the activity or product and we march happily on our way in spite of the possible risks.

Firearms are a sore subject for many people however. Either they deem the risks of owning them and allowing others to own them to be acceptable, or the deem the risk to be unacceptable and either side will fight tooth and nail to defend that position with absolute disregard for everything that doesnt agree with the philosophy that they have invested their egos in. Once the discussion becomes a battle of egos, common sense takes its leave and goes on vacation to another world while the egos remain locked in perpetual combat. Gun rights activists find the risk of general firearms ownership totaly acceptable while gun control activists find the very existance of such a tool to be completely unacceptable.

It is estimated, since nobody actualy knows that there are between two hundred and three hundred million firearms in private ownership in the united States. Thats enough to arm every adult and a fair number of the children in the country. As of 2005, there were approximately 30,000 firearms related deaths in the United States, with approximately 12,000 of those being murders. The rest being suicides (about 16,000) accidental shootings (about 1,800) and justifyable homicides (about 600.) Thats a lot of dead people. Too many in the eyes of some.

There is another device in the United States that from 1966 to 1990 killed between 44,000 and 54,000 people annualy and seriosuly injured or maimed nearly twenty times that number of people annualy in the same period. We defend the use of this product because we like it. We dont realy need it, and the money we could save by not allowing them could be used to provide everyone with a very low cost, safe and effective alternative, but we like it and therefor we justify the obvious risks involved with it as acceptable. The device is known as the automobile. The cost of personal automobile ownership in the U.S. is absolutly staggering. The cost of the fuel alone is one fifth of the U.S. economy. That means one in every five dollars you spend every day goes to the expense of fosil fuels. The economic impact of over two million injured or maimed passengers and bystanders every year is absolutly shocking . Then there is the environmental impact of automobiles and their fuel. In terms of air quality alone the actual cost is incalcuable because we have no certain method of determining if the skyrocketing number of resperatory ailments is actualy the result of cars or not, but the estimates arent good. The list of damges that cars or doing continues to grow and is the leading cause of death among young people (I bet you thought it was guns.) Whats facinating about cars is that in the last decade, between safety advancements and greater seatbelt use the death rate has been going down quite a bit. But the accident rate and the injury rate has been going up. But we deem these risks to be acceptable because we like our cars. If anyone ever suggested banning them we would buy guns to defend them with. Cars, by the way number about the same as guns in the U.S. but guns were designed to kill. Cars were designed for transportation. Yet somehow cars are a better killer than guns in the hands of the average citizen.

And this is the real meat of what I am getting at. Its not the device thats the issue. Its the use of the device that causes the real problems. There are plenty of people on the road today that simply shouldnt be alowed to ride the bus, much less drive a car. Just as there are people out there that shouldnt be allowed to own firearms. It doesnt matter if the gun has a magazine capacity of five rounds or fifty. The fact that a schizophrenic nut bag with a medicine cabinet that would put a Wal*Mart pharmacy to shame can get a firearm is the problem. I dont think anyone here would actualy walk up to a mentaly ill person and hand them a loaded firearm with even one bullet in it. Never mind ten, fifteen or thirty. Giving these people acces to anything more dangerous than a pillow is just plain stupid. Having a system that helps us to identify and mark these people as unfit goes a very, very long way toward eliminating the threat that they pose. The only case so far that a reporting system wouldnt have done anything to stop was Columbine. They got their weapons ileagaly in the first place so it realy wouldnt have stopped them.

Now we go back to the ego problem. The gun control lobbies have a very well stated agenda. Ban all guns PERIOD! They arent interested in sporting firearms or target shooting. They want them all gone. They have stated publicly on television and radio that this is not the intent but in their mission statements issued to every volunteer and employee it is stated in black and white that the goal is to eliminate all firearms.

On the flip side of the coin you have the brain trust at the NRA or the Second Amendment Foundation that will scream bloody murder every time the Brady gang even opens its mouth. Why? Because of the stated goals. The egos got involved and so the debate went from "lets work something out to make things safer" to "not only no but hell no." Talking to the vast majority of gun owners, we all understand that something needs to be done to prevent people who shouldnt have guns from getting them. Banning guns however doesnt accomplish that in a fassion that gun owners find acceptable. Any more than you would find my answer to preventing drunk driving fatalities by banning personal use of automobiles to be a brilliant idea. In the end, it would be easier and faster to try and create a system of identifying people who shouldnt own guns and then preventing them from getting them than it would be to try and ban guns. Not to mention that the people who arent crazed wackjobs who just like to shoot wouldnt have to be molested. If you want to save lives and make the world a better place, start looking at getting rid of cars.

Interesting to know.

Gasoline in the U.S. costs about $1.3 billion per day right now. Almost $500 billion a year just for personal cars. Not including trucks, trains, ships, aircraft etc. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that, in 2010, congestion in 439 metropolitan areas caused urban Americans to travel 4.8 billion hours more and to purchase an extra 1.9 billion gallons of fuel for a congestion cost of $101 billion. Another $25 billion a year in maintainence costs per year.

According to AAA the per-person cost of traffic fatalities in 2005 dollars is $3.2 million and $68,170 for injuries. AAA estimates the cost of traffic crashes to be $166.7 billion. Costs include medical, emergency services, police services, property damage, lost productivity, and quality of life.

In 2010, an estimated 32,885 people died in motor vehicle crashes, down 2.9 percent from 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2009, 33,808 people died in motor vehicle crashes and an additional 2,217,000 people were injured.

 

lets set it right rifles, shotguns, and handguns are not classified as guns
they are classified as firearms
something such as a cannon is a gun
the main cannon on a tank is a gun a 9mm. pistol is a firearm

and yes there will always be risks to any hobby, sport, and activity
but you wouldnt let a child with a bad heart run track would you?
so why let someone who doesnt have a respect for and a knowledge of firearms possess one?

 

so the wild west's loan gunman had a cannon slugged over his sholder.......the US is a wierd place

also I once had a firearm....it still hurts from time to time

 

He's right. Gun is a slang term for firearm but guns are cannons like those on tanks and warships.

 

all im saying is when people talk about gun controle no one is thinking cannons on tanks ans warships.

and the slang word of gun is what all the bang bangs are braodly known as to most common people.

intrsting side note I bet you and ridgerunner are the kind of guys that i hate to watch action movies with

"its not a gun its a firearm and thats not how you hold a 9mm and a shotgun would make a bigger blast" I know someone like this...we were watching a zombie movie......

 

I can't speak for ridgerunner but I don't talk during movies not that I watch many movies.

 

really then I need to take you to see some good movies or some bad ones I don't really care

 

Nah, I don't care much for movies.

 

*shrugs* faire enough.......

 

last movie i saw was back to the future in a theater
or no it was st. elmos fire
and ive never been one to talk over a movie or tv show

 

Look on the dark side. All you'll ever be is an ignorant brainwashed parrot that will never make a man.

 

What a helpful thread . . .

I bet the problem is solved through extremist opinions and name-calling.

Good on ya!

 

Maybe so but it won't be you son.

 

My point is made . . .

Thank You.

 

That one's bullshit. I don't know of anyone who wants to ban all guns.

But a person can't ride a gun to work can they? Nope. But the majority of people have to drive their cars to work because we don't have mass transportation.

But don't we require people with cars to pas a drivers test and have a drivers ;license. Don't we require people to register and license their cars? Don't we require people with cars to have at least liability insurance on those cars?

I bet if we required the same of gun owners we wouldn't have 30,000 gun deaths per year.

I think I've asked you this before and I'm sorry if I missed it but would you please describe in detail just how this system of identifying mentally ill people is supposed to work?

Nope I'm going to call a bullshit on that one again. Where do you see any gun control lobby stating they want to ban all guns?

Once again please describe in detail just how this reporting system is supposed to work? Who is supposed to do the reporting? Do they just take anyone's word for it? What happens after someone is reported? Do they go to the person's house and confiscate their guns? This would have to be a national data bank wouldn't it? What if someone isn't mentally ill? How do they prove their mental stability?

Once again if we require the same things from gun owners that we require of car owners I'm all for this comparison. Because we are constantly trying to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from automobile accidents but aren't doing anything to reduce the number of gun deaths and injuries.

 

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