Originally posted by Dune
Couple of points. First off I appreciate the faith you have in your fellow Kiwi's. It's very refreshing.
Secondly, I won't bother getting in a discussion about how it would be illegal for the nutters and scumbags, who are probably felons anyway, to posses the firearms in the first place. I'll also skip going into the fact you're on an island so the criminal element's ability to smuggle guns in is much less than it is here. Which, of course, just means that the only people who are unarmed are the law-abidding civilians.
However, this belief that fear is behind the desire to own guns would be laughable if it didn't show such a glaring lack of understanding. After all, to make a statement like that, I would hope the speaker is just spouting off to try and come up with something that supports his point. After all, someone couldn't be that foolish to really believe? Could you?
I mean really, I own over 20 guns and yet live without fear. I must be a mutant or something according to you all. I live in the 5th largest city in the US and it has a fairly decent crime rate. Much of it due to improvrished minorities (many of them illegal aliens) and the drug trade (meth and pot are huge here). Yet I don't live in fear. I guess I just haven't been paying attention. Instead of using my guns to shoot and hunt and mess around with, I should have been holed up in my house with a loaded CZ75 and waiting in paranoria. I must apologize to our gunless friends for screwing up their stereotype. So sorry.
I don't live with any more care and concern than anyone else with half a brain does in a big city. It's just that, unlike you all, if someone did try and do me harm, I could do more about than run crying like a little girl or drop to my knees and beg for mercy.
And I like it that way.
Dune, I don't have complete faith in all of my countymen and with good reason. A post I made earlier in the year will clue you in.
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1193834#post1193834If that url worked you will see that I'm not opposed to people keeping guns for protection if they they think they need too. Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of NZers don't need too, they are more likely to be struck by lightning every day for a week than experiance what I have.
I'm not a fan of gun regulations that go to the extreme of restricting sane law abidding people from using guns for sport.. hunting..plinking or just collecting them, thats fine too.
The gun regulations here give us the freedom to do these things while at the same time they do a more than fair job of keeping the guns out of the hands of the nutters and scumbags.
If there's any confusion over the defination of nutters/scumbags let me clarify what my definitions are:
A nutter would include someone who uses a ChiCom AK47 to slaughter a dozen people because the voices told him to do it or because he was just having a bad day. That happened here some years ago.
There's no guarantee that something like that won't happen again but the regulations bought in since then lesson the chances.
Scumbags, sick.. vicious..remorseless muthas who commit the worst of crimes. Imo they should be drowned at birth. It's a shame maternity hospitals don't have crystal balls to check to see how juinor is going to turn out.
No system is perfect but the balance between firearm regulations and freedoms in NZ is about right at the moment i.e We have got our cake and we are eating it.
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However, this belief that fear is behind the desire to own guns would be laughable if it didn't show such a glaring lack of understanding. After all, to make a statement like that, I would hope the speaker is just spouting off to try and come up with something that supports his point. After all, someone couldn't be that foolish to really believe? Could you
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I didn't say fear was the reason people want own guns.Thats your interprertation of what I said.
I said any member of the public that's not in law enforcement and keeps or carries a gun for protection is in fear of something.
You will note that I used the word protection. And I don't make a distinction between people who buy a gun soley for prtection and the hunter who keeps a loaded 12 gauge under his bed just in case.
I know that thats not a popular comment to make but I'm just saying it the way I see it.
Excel
