Politics

[mikey]

@Playful

what if you have no interest in using guns, only collecting them?

[Trainer Ave]

^^this
Someone comes into your home and is threatening just me I'd be fine but assuming someone has a family he/she needs a way to protect them until the police arrive. Guns have actually stopped a high number of people from being victims of various crimes.

EDIT: ninja'd

[Dudeman]

what if you have no interest in using guns, only collecting them?

I'm kind of joking but

[MaestroUGC]

Oh boy, here we go. This was previously discussed in the Discord a few days ago, but I'll summarize what I said there.

In most cases people only want guns for 3 reasons: Protection, Collection, and Recreation. Of these three reasons (which do overlap to varying degrees) Protection is, statistically, the least valid reason as several studies have been compiled to show that most gun owners only have ~1% chance of being in a situation where a need to protect themselves is necessary. This does not take into account that if someone is found in such a situation one of two things will happen: gun-owners will either freeze from panic and fear as they lack any real training or experience to react rationally in any high-danger situation; or they will begin to fire back at the assailants, increasing the risk of greater injury or casualties due to creating a cross-fire.

But what about domestic situations? Well numerous studies have shown that, merely owning having a gun in the home will vastly increase the chances of homicide and suicide. The odds of someone needing to protect themselves from an outside assailant remains roughly the same but the threat of violence from within the home increases the likelihood of a bad situation turning fatal.

So what about the other two reasons, recreation and collection? Well as stated before just having a gun in the home is already a safety risk, and even when all measures of safety are taken to their fullest it doesn't eliminate accidents or deliberate usage. But let's say someone only collects guns, with no intention to use them, well they are useless without ammunition so there's that. But what about those who frequent firing ranges or hunting reserves? Well hunting accidents are frequently reported, and most people who participate in either activity are statistically likely to own multiple firearms.

The whole point of the Gun Control debate isn't to "take people's guns away", it's about putting in place serious, enforceable measures to prevent people from accessing high-firepower weapons. It's one thing to own a handgun as a means of protection, but another thing entirely to possess an AR-15 for recreational purposes. Nobody in the U.S. has any real need to own and such weapon, much less to be able to buy one with greater ease than buying a car.

Edit: Source

[PlayfulPiano]

@Playful

what if you have no interest in using guns, only collecting them?

Then the following would still apply:

Intense background and criminal background checks and anything violent automatically disqualifies you.

Follow the Japanese model where you must have two gun safes in different areas of the house, one to store the gun and one to store the bullets and you must provide the police with information on where those safes are.

No concealed carry and only handguns may be allowed to be out in public.

If transporting a weapon, it must be in the trunk of the vehicle, in a bag or some other case, safety on and unloaded and may not leave the vehicle until you are at the destination.

If you live in a rural area where police (and people, for that matter) are few and far between, something akin to a deer hunting rifle should provide plenty of protection from predators and poachers, you still have to follow the aforementioned steps.


The "Remove AR-15s and the likes" bullet point could be considered an exception strictly for gun collectors, that bullet is mainly for defensive or recreational purposes. People do not need to defend themselves with a semi-auto, nor hunt with one.

[Trainer Ave]

To be fair though cars take much more work to build than a gun so buying a gun should be easier. It's getting the right to do so that should be harder.
However the process Playful was describing is actually a tougher process albeit a similar one. As far as I'm aware it is not required for a background check to be made for someone to drive and learning gun safety is much more hands on than car safety because there's a whole lot more that could go wrong.
Also despite the fact that most people who own handguns for protection will never get to use them and despite the fact that many of them lack proper training it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that owning a gun and having been trained in how to use it can be a valuable means of security. Guns have actually stopped a large number of people from being victims of violent crimes.
Suicide is another issue in this country but taking guns out of the home will not solve the problem as people will just find other ways of killing themselves. We need to look at why people kill themselves to better help them. Similarly we need to look at why it is that people want to kill people and take steps to prevent said eventualities.
Hunting accidents are just like car accidents. We don't ban cars because of car accidents. Why should we ban guns for gun accidents? As with cars create more safety measures and procedures to prevent such accidents or to lessen the fatality of the accidents.

For the most part you are right. Individuals have no legitimate reason to own high powered guns. Theree are however large quantities of people in the gun control debate who want to ban guns altogether and to say these people don't exist is intellectually dishonest at best and lying at worst.

EDIT: ninja'd again

[mikey]

what if they made gun safety a requirement in the education system  (Disclaimer: this is a joke)

the suicide argument is interesting, but if I were to kill myself I'd rather use a gun than risk it not working, so I could see how it would lower suicide rates

the curious mind in me wants to see gun control implemented just to get actual real statistics that we can use to compare but if we did implement gun control there wouldn't be a reason to un-implement it :/

[Dudeman]

To be fair though cars take much more work to build than a gun so buying a gun should be easier. It's getting the right to do so that should be harder.

...that's not at all how buying things works. Just FYI.

[PlayfulPiano]

As Dudeman said, guns & cars should have similar amounts of difficulty to buy one in regards to laws and education, because they're both insanely dangerous for other people / can be used as a weapon to kill another.

Cars take more work to build than guns, which means cars are more expensive than guns by a long shot.

[Dude]

I like playful's suggestions better than anything else I've heard

[Altissimo]

Might be best to move the topic here.So, I assume by "action" you mean more laws? Personally, I believe laws only take guns away from the good guys. I can't think of a murderer that would legally buy a gun and go through the rigamarole of obtaining a gun legally. The bad guys will always have guns. Heck, I've seen reports of robberies where they had automatic weapons which are already illegal.

By this logic, you could say "People who really want to will always find ways to get drugs, so we should make them legal." or "People who want to have abortions will always find ways to do them [possibly unsafe], so we should make them legal." or "People will always steal, so we should make shoplifting legal." or "People will always drive above the speed limits, so we should remove them." or "People will always enter the country through illicit means, so we should just allow them to." or any number of other similar corollaries.

Now, this isn't to say I think that all five things mentioned in the above paragraph should be legal or illegal. I just happen to know you'll think at least one of them should be illegal.

I understand your point, I do. But for every person who goes into the black market to acquire a firearm there's also a person who is less committed to their murder plot and would likely have given up on attempting to acquire a dangerous firearm if they were illegal, or would have been too stupid to get it successfully and been caught in the process. If enforcing stricter regulations and making firearms (or automatics, or semi-automatics, or rifles, or whatever subset of that you want) illegal prevents so few as one death from a mass shooting incident, I'd say it's worth it.

[Sebastian]

By this logic, you could say "People who really want to will always find ways to get drugs, so we should make them legal." or "People who want to have abortions will always find ways to do them [possibly unsafe], so we should make them legal." or "People will always steal, so we should make shoplifting legal." or "People will always drive above the speed limits, so we should remove them." or "People will always enter the country through illicit means, so we should just allow them to." or any number of other similar corollaries.

Yes, but shoplifting, speed limits, etc. aren't tools that can be used to protect your family, yourself, etc.
As I said before, more laws would only take guns away from the good guys. In my opinion, shoplifting, abortion, or whatever isn't ever right and shouldn't be in the same category as a gun since there is a good use for guns, unlike stealing, etc.

[mikey]

I think we should make drugs legal

[Trainer Ave]

In many countries where drugs are legal there a few people that do them. Part of that is the culture because just not seen as cool to do drugs in those countries like it is here

[MaestroUGC]

You can make the laws have a provision where law enforcement can still carry weapons, but in other countries where nobody has guns, violence by guns is far lower than in the US.

Violence still happens, but the whole point of gun control is to limit the kinds of weapons people can legally get as well as the means they can obtain them. You'll still have they very, very, very small group of people getting them illegally, but outside of organized/gun-related crime or terrorist conspiracies, the average person will have no idea how to buy an assault rifle if it's not sold in a store.