Originally posted by Skydancer
Yes cars kill people, but cars can be used to get us to work, hospital, see the relatives etc etc etc. You'd look pretty bloody silly sitting on your Glock in the middle of the road wondering where the ignition swith is wouldn't you.
:D -priceless!
A gun ban in the US would be unworkable, and only the law abiding would disarm. I'm opposed to unilateral disarmament now, just as I was in the Cold War, and this is not the first thread in which I've expressed this point of view.
But I'm glad that Britain has the laws it has with regard to guns. I'm sure our proportion of nutjobs is no different from the US proportion. And I am
convinced that our per capita murder rate would increase to be in line with the US rate if guns were freely available here, as in the US. In fact I think our homicide rate would then be much higher than the US rate because our population is more tightly packed. But, owing to the relative absence of guns here, our homicide rate is less than one third of America's.
The comparison between guns and cars is of course a fatuous one, not worthy of any serious debate. Of course there are more car deaths in the US because more people drive than shoot guns, and cars are used on a daily basis because of their versatility in helping us achieve the lifestyle we want. No-one buys a $25,000 car just to keep it in the garage, but many guns are bought and never used. Those that
are used are quite often used with bad intent, whereas very few people get into a car with the
intention of killing someone.
With regard to road deaths, cars are not the problem - bad driving is. With regard to gun deaths, the gun itself is not the problem - the ill intentioned or incompetent person holding it is. Having said that, a gun is
designed to kill, and is therefore much more likely to be the instrument of choice for someone who wants to kill.
So the real problem is keeping guns out of the hands of those who would like to kill someone, or even a whole group of people. The UK decided that it was too difficult to decide who could/could not be trusted with a gun, and because guns are not a universal requirement in Britain, they are pretty much banned.
According to
this report, there were 23 US school shootings in the 2003/04 academic year.
According to Ken Trump, of National School Safety and Security Services, during the 2003-04 academic year the number of school-related violent deaths hit 49, higher than any year since before Columbine. Of those, 23 were shootings. Since last August there have been 11 fatal school shootings.
"People say it's a wake-up call but then they hit the snooze button," he said. [LOL! - beet] "And you always hear the same comments from every school with a shooting across the nation - 'We never thought it could happen here'."
He added: "The problem we face is that time and distance from any high-profile incident breeds complacency and fuels denial. We are a reactive society, we react after the crisis - but these are short-lived lessons."
Indeed. And I blame all this
"it's not the guns - they're just inanimate objects" thinking for the fact that even in the wake of Columbine, there continue to be dozens of school shootings in the academic year.
The kid that killed all those people at Red Lake should not have been allowed to come anywhere near a gun. And yet he was able to get his grandfather's cop gun. Surely the grandfather knew of the kid's irrational state of mind? Surely he could have taken better precautions to keep his gun from being taken by the grandson?
But then again, he probably thought
naah, guns are not the problem.Yeah, that would explain it.
