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Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 2,673
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Look, its time we face that all humans are criminals deep-down and no one, who isn't a government employee trained in their use, should be allowed access to any type of weapon including kitchen knives, air rifles, and psychology.
The United Kingdom has managed to reduce it's gun crime to less than .05% of all crime. Which should show, very clearly, that reducing the number of legal firearms really works for a couple of primary reasons: #1 It removes almost all of the "accidental" gun crime (crimes of passion, crimes of desperation, etc) which frees law enforcement to concentrate on real crimes. #2 It quells the "gun lust" of otherwise law-abiding citizens which reduces the demand for guns. This in turn reduces much of the infrastructure for illegal gun activity.
There are few things we could do for our children better than raising them in a country where they are not encouraged to settle their disputes with such absolutist measures as shooting one another. In fact, in the number of incidents where extreme fire-arms related measures could benefit or even save a law abiding citizen are reduced drastically when a society isn't steeped in the expectation of such violence. You may have noticed the recent trend towards shootings in gang related crime. While gang related crime in the USA has always been marked by abnormally high levels of violence, it was only in the late 1980's and 1990's when high capacity pistols and inexpensive assault weapons became readily available that we saw a true "shoot first" policy among otherwise "petty criminals". The movies of the day reflected this trend and many of today's adults have come to accept that this is the way it has always been. This is why we do little or nothing in the USA to try to stop this violence.
While, it is clear to me now that spending time teaching kids how to properly and safely use things that they will come in contact with (such as driving a car) is a worthwhile endeavor, some things are inherently misused by the very nature of the chaotic human design. I am not talking about some biblical "original sin" type of failing, mind you, just the limited-capacity of mankind to adhere to our own fickle moral codes. Everyone of us has, at some time, said or done something we are not proud of or wish we could take back. Imagine adding the interminable remorse of shooting someone to your worst moment. Humans are passionate and changing creatures in direct opposition to the definite and unyielding nature of fire arms related crime. This is why every great society in history has used rule of law to allow for the removal of the individual from the process of punishment and defense. Saying that private citizens act as some sort of augmentation to the police force or a deterrent to crime is in direct contradiction to what an ordered society attempts to achieve and is a concept that is almost a century out of date. Neighbor hoods filled with houses filled with guns waiting to be stolen is an encouragement to crime and a detriment to police who must enter those homes to apprehend criminals so that you don't have to.
An intelligent, responsible adult must also understand that children cannot be taught to be intelligent, responsible adults while believing that a gun could change their fortunes like the mythical Excalibur pulled from the stone at just the right moment. Anyone who has seen someone exhibit this Hollywood mentality knows that it brings out the worst in even the best people. The average person can be inebriated or impassioned by the feeling of power associated with a firearm that they don't even know how to operate safely. If the USA's firearms policies have taught the modern, urban, industrialized world nothing else, it's that even the richest nation on earth cannot facilitate the proper training of it's legal fire arms owners. Many states require absolutely no training of any type to purchase the same type of firearms carried by the local police. Simply be the correct age, have a valid ID, and be able to pay for it. This has led to an ever changing labyrinth of localized laws attempting, fruitlessly, to offset the accidents and crimes spurred on by the presence of such a huge mass of untraceable firearms. It makes law-abiding citizens less safe and turns them, eventually, into criminals. No society can prosper for long when it's citizens accept that they are criminals by definition. This leads to feelings of legal isolation and adds the unwanted weight of indefensible personal liability. All of this from something that was supposed to make you feel safe?
Many pro-gun groups in the USA repeatedly use "individual rights" as a cornerstone argument but few things have done more to restrict and infringe upon individual rights than the problems and resulting laws caused by firearms. These groups don't seem to care that nothing is more harmful to the "individual" than the sense of failure associated with living in a society where you do not feel safe. A more educated and industrious society is far safer than a more well armed society, but that is a very unpopular opinion in today's world. Popular or not I can find not one single example of a nation having a civil war in modern history when unemployment was low. Dictators don't seem to rise to power in industrious nations filled with well educated people either. When people have jobs and are part of a working economy they demand a less corrupt and more productive government and greater security. The highest crime rates (including the highest murder rates) in the USA, as reported by police districts, occur in areas with the highest unemployment rates and some of the worst high school drop out rates. Does this mean that those people have fewer "individual rights"? No, they have the same rights as everyone else in the USA until they commit a crime with a gun and go to jail. So what exactly are the pro-gun groups trying to say? I used to think they meant that you have the "right to choose" to commit a crime, but now I think they mean you have the right to suffer for your crimes after you make other people suffer. Given a "choice", I think I'll skip the suffering part.
I regularly hear from pro-gun advocates who point out that most of the gun-related tragedies of our day were not "caused" by guns. A good example is that guns didn't make kids chain the doors shut at Columbine and go hallway by hallway, and room by room. I will grant you that the adults, especially the parents, had a major hand in it getting that far. I will even allow blame to stick to the video games, music, movies, and pier pressure of an increasingly violent society. Hell, I'd let you blame the breakdown of the American family and the progressive, secularist's never ending assault on the church. I'll give you all those things because they only emphasis my point even more. Every layer of society failed the kids of Columbine, from their family, to their teachers, to their pastors, to their friends. After all of that there is only one thing that could have saved anyone and that's the absence of cheap, readily available firearms in a neighborhood full of kids with no one to paying attention to them when they were obviously so very, very upset and confused.
It is not inevitable that an armed citizen will commit or facilitate a crime by themselves, but all people should realize that they are part of a bigger society. The more people who have guns, the more gun crime and the more gun related problems there will be. The constant bad press related to firearms misuse keeps tensions high between groups of people in the USA who otherwise have all the same problems to solve : better education for their kids, better jobs for themselves, better health care, secure investments, and the improved condition of their environment. None of these are addressed by the presence of firearms in our society but every one of these problems is made more difficult it.
I scribbled this down when i was in the States
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