Originally Posted By: hm1996BD, I respect your right to your beliefs and the fact that you are personally willing to abide by those beliefs, even if it is misguided, as opposed to many of the gun grabbing Hollywood and political types (with their three layers of armed security).
If it works for you, more power, however, let me point out a couple of fallacies.
1) Your giving up your right to own a certain firearm (or spoon for that matter) will do nothing to prevent such atrocities as occurred in TX or NV unless you personally were planning such a dastardly deed, which of course, you are not.
The chances of your firearm falling into the hands of a mass murderer are slim to none, assuming you take normal precautions any responsible firearm owner should, of course.
Furthermore, any law restricting ownership of firearms affects only law abiding citizens, not the criminal preparing for his crime spree. It is just "common sense" (to use the grabbers' own favorite gun control phrase) to realize that violating a gun law is of little concern to a criminal preparing to commit murder which is also against the law! What's one (minor) criminal violation, compared to the (major) violation of the laws against murder?
2) Availability of firearms, contrary to grabbers' claims, does not contribute to the crime rate.
Simple fact is, statistics prove the availability of firearms has no effect on crime rate other than very possibly preventing "a good guy with a gun" terminating the bad guy's spree. Click link below and scroll to page 6 for supporting charts/statistics:
Quote: Myth: The availability of guns causes crime
Fact: Though the number of firearms owned by private citizens has been increasing steadily since 1970, the overall rate of homicides and suicides has not risen.33 As the chart shows, there is no correlation between the availability of firearms and the rates of homicide and suicide in America
https://gunowners.org/pdf/2014gunfacts.pdf
These are just two of the myriad of facts which need to be considered in any intelligent attempt to reduce criminal misuse of firearms or any other tools in the commission of such heinous acts.
And while we are at it, perhaps more attention could/should be given to criminal/mental records as opposed to placing all the blame on inanimate objects.
3) The perpetrator in every mass shooting in the past several years was either mentally troubled, on mind altering drugs, or a brainwashed fanatic.
It would seem to me that targeting such misguided individuals would be much more productive in preventing these tragedies than would gun control. After all, those who have been responsible for many of these attacks around the world have used bombs, gasoline, trucks, etc. with equally deadly results.
The perpetrator of the last tragedy, for instance:
1) Was convicted of Domestic violence, served 12 months in prison and received a "less than honorable" discharge for beating and pointing a loaded firearm at his spouse and hitting his 11 month old son hard enough to crack his skull!
2) Had attempted to smuggle firearms on a military base after making death threats against his chain of command.
3) Had previously escaped from a mental institution in New Mexico.
The warnings were clear, but unfortunately fell through the cracks.
Regards,
hm
Hm, I don’t believe I am misguided, although I do respect your opinion to label me as such.
You’ve made some valid points, but I still have to go back to the fact that we as a society have decided that instruments of warfare do not belong in the hands of the general population for the simple reason that they have the power to inflict a massive amount of destruction in a short period of time.
I never mentioned that I was willing to give up my right to own an AR. It is a personal choice to not own one. My right to own one is still in place, for now.
I don’t believe all laws are implemented to take away the rights of people. Many, many laws are just common sense. Unfortunately, many people in our society do not operate on common sense. That’s why these laws are in place. If it were not for these laws we would be living in an anarchist society. Currently, I think we all can relate to what that looks like if we’ve been following the news in regards to antifa and the riots.
I agree that the availability of firearms does not contribute to the crime rate. But I also believe that the availability of some ‘types’ of firearms do contribute to mass shootings.
I understand the perp had a history of violence and it sure was a contributing factor in him committing this evil act. What about Stephen Paddock though? He had no criminal record and no history of a violent past. There is no way of using a system that is currently in place to screen an individual. The fact is, many people with no criminal/violent history snap, and the other end of the spectrum is many people that may have had run ins with the law or a rough upbringing change and become productive members of society.
