Should civilians be allowed to have guns?

abccormac

Am I to assume the government is a better judge of how I should die and how long it should take and what is acceptable for me to use to kill myself?

If the government decides something should be banned, and people don't like it, they can vote for a different government. How you die is nobodies business but your own, and has nothing to do with gun control. My point was that if somebody else was to shoot me, it would kill me, I have no plans to shoot myself! I need to eat something or I will die of starvation. I don't need to smoke but I chose to start. I'm now on twenty a day and wish I hadn't. The main point of my argument is that society as a whole in Ireland has decided that the risks of widespread availability of guns outweigh the benefits. We are heading the same way with tobacco. Many products are banned from food for human consumption. All with good reason. You live in a country with very widespread gun ownership. Your country also has one of the worlds highest rates of gun crime. Do you believe that this is completely coincidental?

MizzKattt

abccormac wrote:

How you die is nobodies business but your own, and has nothing to do with gun control.

You're absolutely correct, abccormac. It was off topic and a cheap shot.

abccormac wrote:

You live in a country with very widespread gun ownership. Your country also has one of the worlds highest rates of gun crime. Do you believe that this is completely coincidental?

Below are some interesting facts. This is an old study but the best I could do on short notice. Please keep in mind these statistics are mainly from the point of view when a gun is used for the purpose of defense rather than guns used for the purpose of sport.

* Americans use firearms to defend themselves from criminals about 760,000 times a year. This figure is the lowest among a group of 15 nationwide polls done by organizations including Gallup and the Los Angeles Times.

* Approximately 11% of gun owners and 13% of handgun owners have used their firearms for protection from criminals.

* When citizens use guns for protection from criminals, the criminal is wounded in about 1 out of every 100 instances, and the criminal is killed in about 1 out of every 1000 instances.

* Washington D.C. enacted a virtual ban on handguns in 1976. Between 1976 and 1991, Washington D.C.'s homicide rate rose 200%, while the U.S. rate rose 12%.

* In 1996, Dr. John R. Lott of the University of Chicago Law School published the results of a crime study conducted using FBI data for all 3,045 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992.

* The study sought to answer the question, "What happens to crime when states adopt right-to-carry laws?"

* Between 1977 and 1992, 10 states adopted right-to-carry laws. Dr. Lott's study found that the implementation of these laws created:
-- no change in suicide rates,
-- a .5% rise in accidental firearm deaths,
-- a 5% decline in rapes,
-- a 7% decline in aggravated assaults,
-- and an 8% decline in murder

for the 10 states that adopted these laws between 1977 and 1992.
* Using 1995 numbers, this amounts to:

-- 1 more accidental gun death,
-- 316 less murders,
-- 939 less rapes,
-- and 14,702 less aggravated assaults

in these 10 states annually.

Source

abccormac

us non fatal firearms crime rate 1993-2003

us gun crime rate 1973-2003
Clinton tightened gun control when he came into office. Gun crime "plumetted" after 1993 according to the US bureau of justice. If you look at the second link you will see how gun crime rose steadily throughout the late eighties and early nineties until Clinton came into office and tightened gun control

According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2001 about 39% of the deaths that resulted from firearms injuries were homicides, 57% were suicides, 3% were unintentional, and 1% were of undetermined intent

Off Topic: The suicide figure came as a real shock to me

Sparks

MizzKattt wrote:

Below are some interesting facts.

Sorry MizzKattt, but Lott's studies have been shown to be wholly incorrect because the maths in his statistical work was woefully poor, and he fabricated a lot of the things he quotes
If it helps any, I believed what he wrote as well for nearly a year before I found the criticisms of his work.

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

What if person X has the 'skill' level to own an AK-47 and just happens to leave it lying around the house for his son (who happens to be a majorly fecked off teenager) to take into school and blast away.

Part of having the skill level to own a firearm is having the skill level to always secure it, so it's not exactly a properly phrased question.

abccormac wrote:

Just out of interest, what exactly is legal here in Ireland, and what sort of license requirements are in existance? I have a vague idea that you need to get land owners signatures to get a gun for hunting but I'm not really sure. Anyone care to enlighten me?

How to get a gun licence. Basicly, any firearm you can safely own and use, you are permitted to have. The final decision is purely down to the local Garda Superintendent. About the largest that would be "commonly" owned would be .308 rifles which are used for both hunting and target shooting (long range target shooting like the ISSF 300m event - though 6mm is a more common round for this event - which was an olympic event until 1972, or the La Palma event whose origins date back to the 1870s, use these kind of rifles because .22 calibre rounds just won't go that far - La Palma is shot at a thousand metres). There are some larger ones - the largest I've heard of being a .375 which a hunter in Wexford is seeking to get (he goes safari hunting, you wouldn't be hunting rabbits with that kind of rifle ).

You do need landowner signatures to get your licence if you are planning on hunting; if you're just target shooting it's more relaxed if you're in a known club because you'll be shooting on their range.

The licence requirements are covered in the Firearms Act 1925, Section Four:

Conditions of grant of firearm certificate.

4.—Before granting a firearm certificate to any person under this Act the superintendent of the Gárda Síochána or the Minister (as the case may require) shall be satisfied that such person—
( a ) has a good reason for requiring the firearm in respect of which the certificate is applied for, and
( b ) can be permitted to have in his possession, use, and carry a firearm or ammunition without danger to the public safety or to the peace, and
( c ) is not a person declared by this Act to be disentitled to hold a firearm certificate.

Part (c) there has a specific meaning and it's covered in Section Eight:

Persons disentitled to hold a firearm certificate or a permit.
8.—(1) The following persons are hereby declared to be disentitled to hold a firearm certificate, that is to say:—
( a ) any person under the age of fifteen years, and
( b ) any person of intemperate habits, and
( c ) any person of unsound mind, and
( d ) any person who has been sentenced by any court in all Saorstát Éireann for any crime to penal servitude for any term which has not expired or has expired within five years previously, and
( e ) any person who has been sentenced by any court in Saorstát Éireann for any crime to imprisonment for any term of not less that three months which has not expired or has expired within five years previously, and
( f ) any person who is subject to the supervision of the police, and
( g ) any person who is bound by a recognizance to keep the peace or be of good behaviour, a condition of which is that such person shall not have in his possession, or use, or carry any firearm or ammunition.

(2) Any person who is by virtue of this section disentitled to hold a firearm certificate shall also be disentitled to hold a permit under this Act in relation to any firearm or ammunition.

There's a fourth condition to be added to section four, contained in the Criminal Justice Bill 2004:

(d) in the case of an application for a firearms certificate made to a superintendent of the Garda Sıochana, has provided, to the superintendent’s satisfaction, secure accommodation for the firearm concerned at the address where it is to be kept.

There's also a background note on licencing on the DoJ website, here. There are some minor inaccuracies in it though (it's not been updated in a while), for example you can get a rifle of calibre greater than .22 without needing a hunting licence, if it's for target shooting.

Balfa

To the insane people who say some guns are okay because they're designed for competition, is it okay if we take your tools of murder away and replace them with laser pointers with pistol grips? In that case, the competition is absolutely unchanged, the person with the best aim is still going to win, and the tools of murder can be taken out of the equation. then everyone's happy, right?

Feel free to come up with something i can use to cut broccolli for dinner tonight, so we can take these other tools of murder out of the equation, too.


See the difference?

RE*AC*TOR

If the government turns to oppressive. We will need suitable tools to overthrow them. I'd say laser-pointers probably won't cut it.

Balfa

MizzKattt wrote:

My point is this: Everything with moderation, responsibility and sound judgement.

Except humans by nature don't have 100% sound judgement, so just take the gun out of the equation instead.

Balfa

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

If the government turns to oppressive. We will need suitable tools to overthrow them. I'd say laser-pointers probably won't cut it.

I'm going to assume that was a joke...

RE*AC*TOR

Balfa wrote:

I'm going to assume that was a joke...

How else would you propose to overthrow the government?

Balfa

MizzKattt wrote:

By banning the gun, blame is shifted away from the person handling the gun to an inanimate object.

No it's not. banning the gun means the person didn't handle the gun, no one was shot, no one died, and there is no blame to shift.

Balfa

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

How else would you propose to overthrow the government?

Sticks? Knives? Home made explosives?

You have a good point. It is a very important thing to be able to overthrow the government if it turns oppressive, but by killing them, you've lost your morals and your humanity, because everyone, no matter how oppressive they are, has the right to life.

I hate to grey the issue, but it looks like this is going to have slide down into a risk/reward ratio. i.e. the risk of not being able to overthrow an oppressive government is outweight by the reward of not having as many violent crimes in the meantime. You may as well ask how we can defend ourselves against the aliens when they come to assimilate us, y'know?

RE*AC*TOR

Balfa wrote:

Sticks? Knives? Home made explosives?

You have a good point. It is a very important thing to be able to overthrow the government if it turns oppressive, but by killing them, you've lost your morals and your humanity, because everyone, no matter how oppressive they are, has the right to life.

I hate to grey the issue, but it looks like this is going to have slide down into a risk/reward ratio. i.e. the risk of not being able to overthrow an oppressive government is outweight by the reward of not having as many violent crimes in the meantime. You may as well ask how we can defend ourselves against the aliens when they come to assimilate us, y'know?

As this is the politics forum and not humanities I can afford to casually discard my morals. Hence, I feel that violently overthrowing an oppressive government would be justifyable. As for violent crimes, you are probably right, however, I would imagine that a distinction exists between the legally owned firearms (like my .22 semi-auto rifle), and those illegaly owned by the IRA/ various criminal gangs. Having a registered firearm brings a certain responsibility - to make sure it stays out of trouble. So I'd imagine (from my own personal experience) that people who own registered weapons would be very unlikely to turn them on another person, unless perhaps it was the oppressive government scenario as described previously.

MrPudding

Balfa wrote:

To the insane people who say some guns are okay because they're designed for competition, is it okay if we take your tools of murder away and replace them with laser pointers with pistol grips?

A couple of things. Laser pointer competition would be useless. Especially for outdoor long range competitions. Unless you have secretly invented a laser that is effected by wind and other environmental conditions there would only be a fraction of the skill involved.

No one has been killed in Ireland by a registered competition firearm. Why should they be banned? I have a 22KG amplifier in my home cinema setup. I reckon if I hit someone with it I could kill them. Now. As far as I am aware noone in Ireland has been assaulted or killed by an AV amp. Should we ban them anyway just in case?

MrP

pickarooney

Balfa wrote:

To the insane people who say some guns are okay because they're designed for competition, is it okay if we take your tools of murder away and replace them with laser pointers with pistol grips? In that case, the competition is absolutely unchanged, the person with the best aim is still going to win, and the tools of murder can be taken out of the equation. then everyone's happy, right?

Feel free to come up with something i can use to cut broccolli for dinner tonight, so we can take these other tools of murder out of the equation, too.


See the difference?

You can cut things with lasers.

magpie

Again, this is incorrect as firearms have genuine, regular, domestic applications for millions of households, because millions of households eat bread, lamb, mutton, beef, vegetables and so on, and firearms are used in the production of all of these, not to mention meats which are hunted like rabbit and venison.

:rolleyes:

Let me know when you've come up with the link between firearms and bread/vegetable/beef/lamb (I'll include mutton here as its the same animal you know... "yes lisa a magical animal") production.

Civilisations managed to produce/farm all these forms of food successfully for millennia before the advent of firearms, so your argument that firearms are necessary for their production, or even involved in their production, are at best utterly spurious.

At the end of the day you think its important that people be allowed to have guns to shoot paper targets in the name of sport, I think its not sufficiently important that they be allowed to do so to risk anyone getting killed accidentally or otherwise with a firearm. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Over and Out.

bonkey

abccormac wrote:

We could go round and round in circles asking why, when we have strict control of gun ownership, we don't have such strict control over knives or yo-yos or boomerangs or sharp sticks, but it would get us nowhere.

Ah, but we weren't actually discussing the strict control we have when discussing yoyos and the like, but rather whether or not guns should be banned in Ireland.

None of the arguments for abnning hold up that I can see. For a start, we don't have a ban on guns in Ireland in the first place. A friend of my dad's was an avid pheasent-hunter. A friend of my sister's has a license to shoot deer. I'm 100% certain that in both cases they are using fully licensed, legal rifles and shotguns which , if capable of taking down a deer or a pheasant, would be well capable (with the correct ammo, of course) of killign a human being.

Is there a demonstrable need to ban these weapons? Can we show that the cost to society of allowing this type of recreation and/or species population control to continue is greater than the cost of a ban. Is there a cost to society in the first place? I haven't seen anyone produce one. I've seen the argument as to why we shouldn't have a system like the US, or like the UK....and I agree with them.....but I haven't seen anyone show where the flaw in the Irish system exists which is sufficient to justify a ban on all firearms from all civilians.

Until somebody lays out a way in which relaxing the gun laws would benefit society more than it would increase the risk of me being shot, Iwon't see any reason to relax them.

Again...lets start with the question we were asked. Should civilians be allowed to have guns.

Do you feel there is a need in Ireland to reduce the chance of you being shot. Do you think that removing the shotguns and rifles that hunters are using will achieve that? If not, then why shouldn't these people be allowed to continue what they are doing? And if they should be allowed to continue what they are doing....then surely the answer to the orignial question is "yes, civilians should in tightly controlled circumstances be allowed to have guns.

If we arrive at that point, then the next question is which guns pose a sufficient risk to merit banning, and which can be made safe through the imposition of sufficient controls. That, however, would seem to me to be a seperate question beyond that originally posed, and who's answer is meaningless unless and until one accepts that not all guns should necessarily be banned.

I don't rule out the possibility that a government body could decide in principle not to have an outright ban on guns...but then fail to fuind a single gun type which they were willing to permit. However, at least in that case the basic and fundamental distinction has already been made....that unlike people, all guns are not created equal.

jc

Sparks

Balfa wrote:

To the insane people who say some guns are okay because they're designed for competition, is it okay if we take your tools of murder away and replace them with laser pointers with pistol grips?

I'm rather miffed (and frankly, it's hard not to snigger) at the suggestion that my olympic air rifle is a "tool of murder". You'd want to not only be a murderer for that to be true, but a rather unintelligent one at that.

In that case, the competition is absolutely unchanged, the person with the best aim is still going to win, and the tools of murder can be taken out of the equation. then everyone's happy, right?

Except that the competition is not unchanged. Firstly, as pointed out, the skill in outdoor shooting is to do with judging changing wind and lighting conditions, having a solid position that absorbs recoil consistently, and in some competitions (like benchrest shooting), in developing the best load for a particular rifle by hand-loading ammunition. This is a sport for life - at some point in your later years, arthritis will prevent you from shooting some disciplines, so you change to others. Make all shooting competitions an exercise in Quasar or Laser Tag, and you've just changed it from the most egalatarian sport in the world to a restrictive one.



Me, I like to know that when my knees and hips won't let me shoot standing or kneeling, and prone is a bit of a pain to get into and out of, that I can shoot like this lad.

Feel free to come up with something i can use to cut broccolli for dinner tonight, so we can take these other tools of murder out of the equation, too.

Feel free to come up with something others can use to hunt meat for the pot, and they'd be happy too I suppose. Mind you, if it's hunting with hounds, you should know that people don't like that much. And if it's trapping, just don't forget you have to kill the animal after you catch it in the snare, usually many shock-and-cold-filled hours or even days later, assuming it's not knawed off its own leg to get away in the meantime. And you can't poison it, because not only is poison indiscriminate, but it also means you can't eat the meat.

Oh, and if you could come up with a way to put down large animals humanely as well, that'd be nice too. Slitting their throats tends to distress them a bit, and bashing their heads in with a hammer is so neolithic stone age...

Sparks

Balfa wrote:

Except humans by nature don't have 100% sound judgement, so just take the gun out of the equation instead.

If humans don't have sound judgement, then how do we rely on your judgement to come up with the right answer?

Sparks

magpie wrote:

Let me know when you've come up with the link between firearms and bread/vegetable/beef/lamb (I'll include mutton here as its the same animal you know... "yes lisa a magical animal") production.

Bread and vegetables are grown from seed (yes, yes, you grow grain for bread, not bread itself, unless you're growing breadfruit). Ever see crows pecking away in a field after sowing? Ever hear a loud bang at random intervals from the birdscarer (which is essentially a firearm shooting blanks)? Notice how they fly away? Plus, farmers occasionally shoot at them if they get the chance - scare them away and they just go eat someone else's seed, and then they scare them on to the next lad or back to you, ad infinitum.
As to cows and sheep and chickens, they have predators even in Ireland - foxes, stray dogs and the like (with cattle it's more the disturbing of the cattle that leads to reduced milk yields or the injuring of calves, and there is the thought that some animals spread disease amongst cattle and other animals). Firearms are used to defend the meat animals in the same way that hoes are used to weed gardens. And that's the domesticated animals. Game animals like deer, rabbit and so on, are still hunted and shot.

Civilisations managed to produce/farm all these forms of food successfully for millennia before the advent of firearms, so your argument that firearms are necessary for their production, or even involved in their production, are at best utterly spurious.

Civilisations managed to produce and farm some of these forms of food in vastly smaller quantities and at lower levels of quality for years before artifical fertiliser, machinery, firearms, domestication of animals and so on. Doesn't mean we can go back to those halcyon days of the neolithic stone age - it'd mean the starvation of billions of people who rely on modern agricultural methods. Besides which, it's more humane to shoot a rabbit than to half-strangle it in a snare and then bash its head in with a rock a day later. Which was the usual idea in those "halcyon days".

At the end of the day you think its important that people be allowed to have guns to shoot paper targets in the name of sport, I think its not sufficiently important that they be allowed to do so to risk anyone getting killed accidentally or otherwise with a firearm.

In 164 years, noone has been killed with a firearm while target shooting. Where's the risk? And more to the point for the 96% of the population that don't shoot, where's the justification for overruling the constitutional right to personal liberty in this case? Many, many hobbies could be of far greater threat to human life - rally driving, flying, skiing, martial arts, etc - and if you ban target shooting for a possible threat that hasn't been realised in over sixteen decades, you'll be setting a dangerous precedent that could shut down other sports that do have tragic accidents in their recent past without even a murmer from the law.
And even more worringly, you'll be setting a precedent of preemptive group punishment. "Some individual someday might have an accident, so we're shutting down an olympic sport enjoyed by thousands of people to prevent it".
And more than that, you'll be saying that the olympic ideal of turning swords to ploughshares is no longer valued.
And as the last 30 years in Ireland have shown, even if you ban all guns, it won't stop the gun crime we see criminals and terrorists undertaking. People will still be shot and killed by criminals and terrorists, just as they were for the past 30 years (or did you think that the IRA had licences for their fully automatic AK47s when noone else in the country could get a licence for anything larger than a .22 calibre rifle?)

You know, so far I can't see a good side to this proposal of yours.

bonkey

Sparks wrote:

Feel free to come up with something others can use to hunt meat for the pot

Ohh.. me sir. I know this one. Pick me sir.

They could use what they had before guns. Y'know...whaddya call'em....

oh yeah... bows and arrows or spears. They're perfectly safe compared to guns. Couldn't try killing someone with those.

And if it's trapping, just don't forget you have to kill the animal after you catch it in the snare

If its small, I'll use my knife. If its big, I'll use my sword...they're safe weapons too.

Oh, and if you could come up with a way to put down large animals humanely as well, that'd be nice too.

Same way we do humans? That way, there's no chance of it ever being misused on huma...umm....nevermind.



jc - I need to go home now. Too much caffeine.

magpie

Interestingly I was watching a programme on the Aztecs where it explained how their civilisation managed to feed an enormous population using hydroponic methods of growing grain and other crops, they managed to produce large quantities of organic fertiliser from human faeces etc etc. Nary a firearm in site until the Spanish showed up and massacred them. Of course they were also bloodthirsty savages, so what goes around comes around.

Sparks

bonkey wrote:

Ohh.. me sir. I know this one. Pick me sir.
They could use what they had before guns. Y'know...whaddya call'em....
oh yeah... bows and arrows or spears. They're perfectly safe compared to guns. Couldn't try killing someone with those.

Well, actually...
Oh, and they're also illegal to hunt with in Ireland...

Sparks

magpie wrote:

Nary a firearm in site until the Spanish showed up and massacred them.

True, which is why they used knives made from obsidian to cut the still-beating hearts out of the prisoners they captured from neighbouring tribes when making their regular few dozen human sacrifices. And of course, since they had no machinery, they had slaves. Methinks there are better models on which to base social policy and agricultural methods...

magpie

True, which is why they used knives made from obsidian to cut the still-beating hearts out of the prisoners they captured from neighbouring tribes when making their regular few dozen human sacrifices. And of course, since they had no machinery, they had slaves. Methinks there are better models on which to base social policy and agricultural methods...

Erm, in your frenzied and continued desire to quote me out of context you missed the line directly below the line you quoted from me, which was

Of course they were also bloodthirsty savages

Which pretty much sums up, more stylishly I like to think, what you have gratuitously reiterated.

Sparks

magpie wrote:

Erm, in your frenzied and continued desire to quote me out of context you missed the line directly below the line you quoted from me

No, I saw that, I just wanted to make it clear that the "bloodthirsty savages" line was in this case not actually sarcastic (given that many fairly peaceful peoples have been described by that moniker just before being eradicated by their more "civilised" discoverers in that part of the world).

Sleepy

Personally, as a paintball enthusiast, I'd be in favour of airsoft licences being available to those over the age of 18. Used responsibly, they're no danger to anyone. In fact if you examine the statistics, paintballing as a sport is safer than virtually any other field sport you care to mention.

With regards to target pistols, I think our current legislation is about apropriate.

Balfa

Sparks wrote:

If humans don't have sound judgement, then how do we rely on your judgement to come up with the right answer?

Easy. The 100% of citizens with an average judgement rating of 70% make the rules, so that the 1% of citizens with the 10% judgement rating don't kill us all. that's the way society works, see. As if you really had to ask.

Sparks

Balfa wrote:

Easy. The 100% of citizens with an average judgement rating of 70% make the rules, so that the 1% of citizens with the 10% judgement rating don't kill us all. that's the way society works, see. As if you really had to ask.

So 100% have a judgement rating of 70% and 1% have a rating of 10%?
Er, can we get someone in here that knows a bit about statistics please, I was sure that that would mean there was actually 101% in the population, which isn't mathematically possible...

Besides, who decides what rating a person's judgement should have?

A Dub in Glasgo

I read it to me that 100% of the people who have achieved the average judgement rating of 70% will decide. Not 100% of the people will attain 70% judgement rating.

Sparks

And who decides whether a person has reached a "70% judgement rating" then? Indeed, who defines how you measure such a rating?

monument

"questions were due to be raised in the Scottish Parliament about tightening the law on airguns" - http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/hi/news/5036278.html

Tightening the law on airguns over in Scotland makes sense. Banning all guns because of this is nonsense. Telling sports people like Sparks they cant have guns because someone went on a rampage with an airgun is crazy.

Balfa

Sparks wrote:

So 100% have a judgement rating of 70% and 1% have a rating of 10%?
Er, can we get someone in here that knows a bit about statistics please, I was sure that that would mean there was actually 101% in the population, which isn't mathematically possible...

oh my god. okay, i'll hold you by the hand and spoon feed you.

Take Sparksonia, a fictional nation with a population of 10, as an example.
9 of the people in Sparksonia have good judgement. Since these are fictional people, i'm deciding that if you were to measure their judgement, you'd find they'd ALL score 8 of 10, 10 being perfect judgement. 1 person, billy, has poor judgement. We'll say he scores a 2.
So averaging, the entire population of sparksonia (100% of the citizens) would have a judgement rating of 7.4 or 74%. But billy (who happens to 10% of the citizens, in this case) by himself has a rating of 2, or 20%.

So, coming from someone who "knows a bit about statistics", the population (statistically speaking, not geographically speaking) is 10 people. our first sample, which reveals a statistic of 73% is equal to the entire population, hence that statistic is equivelant to the parameter of the population. Our second statistic, based solely on billy, is 20% . Just because you do two measurements, one of 100% of the people, and one of just 10% of the people, that doesn't mean you have 110% people which, as you mentioned, is a mathematical impossibility. Similarly, in my post above that you didn't understand, i pretended to take a theoretical measurement of 100% of the population, followed by another theoreical measurement of 1% of the population. I never said anything about 101%.

Besides, who decides what rating a person's judgement should have?

Now i hope you'll understand that it's not decided, and in practice it doesn't need to be decided, or measured, because even little billy gets to vote. It just so happens that, naturally, some people have better judgement than others. The hope is that there are enough sensible people to outvote billy

If you need any more information, feel free to ask.