The Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

I own firearms and of course my bow.

I carried a side arm for a few years when I worked as security for a construction company. Trust me being in the middle of a tract home development surrounded by half completed houses with expensive tools and material laying about, you do not want to be walking around 'guarding' this stuff without a useful tool to even the odds when you encounter a gang of men stealing.

Tool. A gun is a tool. No gun has discharged of its own accord. No gun will hunt down a person or an animal by itself. It requires a human being to squeeze the trigger in order to make that tool do anything.

I am for a better regulation and control stance on guns. I am against taking guns out of the hands of legal private citizens, once we remove the guns from them, the only people left with firearms are the criminals and the police.

Other than hunting, guns are a necessary evil. There are bad people in the world who want to do bad things. CCTV and more police on the streets is a BAD move - one which infringes on our rights of privacy and lead to a police state.

Cars are far, far much more dangerous than guns. More people are maimed and murdered with cars than guns on a one to one ratio of gun to car. No one dares to suggest we ban the automobile.

When it comes to crimes committed by criminals with guns - more often than not these are guns bought off the black market, unregistered, not licensed. Private legal citizens are not the ones doing the death dealing here. You remove the guns from our hands suddenly you make up open targets.

Of course our society likes to do things backwards. For instance we use abortion as contraceptive - thus we have the 'pro-life- crowd who want us to ban abortion, but do not want to address the problem of unwanted pregnancy. If they were smart they would address the underlying cause of abortions, thus remove the need for all of these abortions.

The same holds with guns, we need to address the criminal element. No, not more persecution, erm I meant prosecution, not more prisons - seriously start off by dealing with the emotional/mental/sociological causes that lead to criminals committing crimes. Target the crimes as mental health issues, devise real rehabilitation and preventative measures and you remove the need for private citizens owning guns for self defense.

Like it or not we are a species with a small talent for war/fighting. We are a violent, predatory species that barely keeps the mask of civilization in place. We need to start addressing our animal nature and find logical, constructive ways to deal with our nature thus addressing the underlying causes of most of our self-made woes and eventually end the need for guns and many other tools.

[Aester]

I want bear arms, they're furry! But no to guns and violence

[Pix]

But no to guns and violence

Though sometimes guns are the best way to say no to violence. For example, a woman I know walked into her home to find a strange man approaching her. There's no telling what he was going to do to her because when she pulled her gun from her purse he ran out a side door. Thus, a gun stopped violence (or it's reasonable to assume it did).

Two straight women went to a redneck bar and after being bored by the drunken men they danced with each other and then were yelled at for being lesbians. They left but a group of men followed them, began shoving, spitting, and insulting them as "dykes" when one pulled a gun and the men backed off leaving them alone. Again, violence was stopped and further violence averted because of a gun.

The guy who started the Pink Pistols was being chased by men right after the murder of Matthew Shepherd, and one said they were going to make him the "next Matthew Shepherd." He made it to his vehicle, though not fast enough to get in and lock them out, and barely grabbed his gun in time as they caught him. They ran. Thus, he said no to violence, with a gun.

Gary Kleck, one of the rare people I trust on either side of the gun issue to speak on it as he's a liberal who belongs to the ACLU and Amnesty International who intended to prove the NRA wrong but came to the conclusion that as wrong as the NRA was on most things, they were actually right on guns being effective deterrent and defense against crime (that is, he's proven he doesn't let political bias rule him, he tells the truth even when it's not what he was hoping for, and doesn't seem to fall to confirmation bias). Though he cites many cases, the one I'm thinking of the most is when he showed how rapes reached an all time high in Florida when the cops in 1 town or county gave free lessons to women in using a gun for self-defense which the news media reported on, and rapes IN THAT AREA ALONE went down by about 90% while they remained high in the rest of the state, which strongly suggests that would-be rapists knowing their victims stood a chance at being armed and would be supported by the police if they used their guns stopped violence (even for those women who didn't arm themselves).

Supposedly, millions of violent incidents are thwarted by someone with a gun every year in the USA alone (though granted, that number seems excessive and I question it). And btw, that doesn't mean millions are shot. In the vast majority of cases, the gun is not fired, merely presented. Even when fired it's used to stop, not to kill (one exception a year or so ago was convicted of manslaughter after he reloaded his gun and shot a criminal who was down--the initial shooting was ok by law as it was self-defense, but after shooting him while he was down and helpless he became a vigilante in the eyes of the law). And even in the ultra rare cases where a criminal is shot in self-defense the criminal often survives, not only because the defender is merely trying to stop (as opposed to killing) the attacker(s), but because the victim (that is the one who defends himself or herself with a gun) calls 911, if the call hadn't already been made.

In short, guns can make an excellent way to say no to violence.

[TommyinKY]

One of the plaintiffs in Parker v. District of Columbia was Thomas G. Parker. This was the lawsuit that eventually lead to the supreme courts ruling in Heller vs DC.

Thomas Parker was a gay man living in San Jose California in 1982. He was being followed by a large group of young men who called in out for being gay. He attempted to flee the area but they pursued him telling him that they where going to kill him and that no one would find his body. He then produced a 9mm pistol and the crowd of young men dispersed.

The reason he was involved in Parker vs DC was because DC would not allow him to have a firearm in serviceable condition in case he became the victim of home invasion.

As much as some may hate the use of violence it is sometimes necessary in order to preserve the life of the peaceful and innocent.

If a person doesn't provide for their own protection then they must rely on others to do it. This puts not only their life but the life or their protector in danger. I have have never felt it right to ask someone to give up their life for my safety. It's improper for me to do so.

[Almac]

I used to own a pea-shooter when I was a kid does that count!

[wakeboarder]

there is nothing wrong with owning firearms. i own several. i hunt, and target practice on the regular. i have even taken my son with me to target practice (using all safety precautions of course) i do believe that education on gun safety and making it harder for those not allowed (felons) to obtain them is the ticket. but i also know that there is people who will obtain them illegally.

[HollandofFrance]

in the book" liberal fascism" by Goldberg he says Che Guevara would kill anyone and he killed young guys like 17

he executed hundreds of good men

down with oppression

usa will remain free

[DOMITIAN]

Fixed and celebrated in their "Bill of Rights" and "Constitution"; it is way too late to try to take away guns from US citizens. Since the end of WW2, the USA has become the most violent and crime ridden of all the modern industrialized societies. Criminals would rather shoot it out with police in the USA rather than go to one of their overcrouded prisons. The USA has the world record for the number of per-capita citizens behind bars, and the worlds record for overcrouding, not to mention the torture practices used in American prisons on helpless inmates. America is a violence worshipping country, nobody will ever change that.

[HollandofFrance]

thats beyond silly

usa is big place

my county has zero to 3 murders a year -lots of guns
Chicago or cook county per capita no guns and tons of murder

google kennesaw Georgia guns

[HollandofFrance]

and yet i pretty much hate guns and especially hunting by gun