guns

[Guest]

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country." --Adolf Hitler, dinner talk on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426. Translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens. Introduced and with a new preface by H. R. Trevor-Roper. The original German papers were known as Bormann-Vermerke.

[Guest]

Sorry, but I don't get the point of a Hitler quote in this discussion at all.

[Guest]

3: Gun Control Has Reduced The Crime Rates In Other Countries
Myth #3: Gun Control Has Reduced The Crime Rates In Other Countries


1. Fact: The murder rates in many nations (such as England) were ALREADY LOW BEFORE enacting gun control. Thus, their restrictive laws cannot be credited with lowering their crime rates.1
2. Fact: Gun control has done nothing to keep crime rates from rising in many of the nations that have imposed severe firearms restrictions.
* Australia: Readers of the USA Today newspaper discovered in 2002 that, "Since Australia's 1996 laws banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24% and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%."2
* Canada: After enacting stringent gun control laws in 1991 and 1995, Canada has not made its citizens any safer. "The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic," says Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser in 2003. "Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted." 3
* England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.4
* Japan: One newspaper headline says it all: Police say "Crime rising in Japan, while arrests at record low."5
3. Fact: British citizens are now more likely to become a victim of crime than are people in the United States:
* In 1998, a study conducted jointly by statisticians from the U.S. Department of Justice and the University of Cambridge in England found that most crime is now worse in England than in the United States.
* "You are more likely to be mugged in England than in the United States," stated the Reuters news agency in summarizing the study. "The rate of robbery is now 1.4 times higher in England and Wales than in the United States, and the British burglary rate is nearly double America's."6 The murder rate in the United States is reportedly higher than in England, but according to the DOJ study, "the difference between the [murder rates in the] two countries has narrowed over the past 16 years."7
* The United Nations confirmed these results in 2000 when it reported that the crime rate in England is higher than the crime rates of 16 other industrialized nations, including the United States.8

http://gunowners.org/sk0703.htm

There's always another side of the story.

[Guest]

LOL. Yeah, gunowners.org sounds like a very objective source...

[Guest]

It's all more complicated than it seems.

This nation's obsession with guns goes back a few hundred years. After the Revolutionary War, for example, many husbands returned home with their guns. Many suffered after mental anguish after returning home and many were killed by random homicides and suicides.

This of course hold true for many wars when soldiers returned home.

The papers back then and news today were writing sensationalistic headlines to sell. News are still filled with murders and suicides....how many times a day do the Newschannels run a commercial who got shot where in NYC of Philly....you do not see this to that extend in other countries. We are a society obsessed with guns.

We are also a society with great inequality of wealth, which is not see in many European countries and Canada, which adds to friction and at times violence.

I don't believe the problem is just rooted in gun laws....but it would make sense to ban some crazy automatic weapons, and it would make sense to have a very strict enforcement of licensing. Nobody takes away your right.

[Guest]

[Guest]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1u0Byq5Qis