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Topic: Heston Stepping Down As President Of The NRA.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 04-29-2003 09:51 PM
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If ya take away the the rights of people to own guns, only the low-lifes will have them.
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Only the worst, hard-core low life. Minor low-life won't bother. With guns effectively available to anyone who wants them, I'd have thought that the potential for accidental killings was way higher.
Sorry, but I think that is just baloney. Just like gun ban movements, our view of "criminals" is just as over simplified or downright cartoonish. That's one of the reasons why problems in crime, gun violence and drug abuse just keep getting worse.
We're all people. It doesn't matter if you live in some glass tower or a shack. Everyone still shits out of the same hole just the same. The idea that drug dealers and such are so specialized a breed of criminal making them separate from the average trouble maker is crazy. A lot of those kinds of people are one in the same. So we all get shocked when some guy we thought was normal decides to kill some people, or a person who we thought was decent gets busted for running a drug ring. I couldn't believe it when some fellow was busted north of Tulsa in his converted nuclear missile silo for making fully one third of the world's supply of LSD. And there was some clown here in Lawton in league with a car dealer in Chickasha, busted as part of a large multi-national drug import ring (busts from South America to NYC --and Lawton, OK!?).
This same cartoonish vision is also what allows white collar crime (fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, insider trading, industrial espionage, political corruption, etc.) to continue raping this nation at a cost more than 10 times higher than all costs related to violent crime put together.
It takes no effort or imagination to say we need to ban something. Even with no guns at all there will still be plenty of murders. People will get stabbed or beaten to death or burned alive. The problem lies in the minds of people. The apathy of our culture makes it easier for people to use violence as a tool to "solve problems" or really just get their way. We need to put a human face on the situation and take an introspective look at ourselves. What kind of example does each one of us lead for the other? Doing things like banning guns and building more prisons just allows us to go on doing the same shit that contributes to the problem. We don't have to do anything different. Just shove the trash aside.
Now, there is ONE category of gun I would like to see banned. Cheap handguns. Those little .22 ACPs that can be had for under $90 on the street. Those are the kinds of weapons used in more violent crimes than anything else. A gun owner who spent $800 on a Sig Sauer 9mm is not going to be so quick to use it in a crime. Ballistics can easily trace such weapons.
It should also be said many fully automatic guns are illegally imported into the United States by drug dealers. However, the increasing rate of home-made crystal meth use has put a big dent in drug imports. Far more than what the DEA and U.S. Coast Guard could manage. Imports of cocaine are down more than 30% in just one year's time. I guess that might cut down on some of those imported Uzis.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-01-2003 02:03 AM
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The idea that drug dealers and such are so specialized a breed of criminal making them separate from the average trouble maker is crazy.
I would still argue that in respect of firearms at least, organised criminals are in many ways a different issue from minor and petty criminals. In this country, where gun ownership is very heavily regulated and in most cases illegal, I would not know where to start if I wanted to get hold of a gun. I would not be given a licence to hold one legally (I have never done target shooting, nor am I a farmer), so I would have to get one illegally. I don't have the contacts in the criminal underworld to do that. Were I to walk into a pub in a notoriously crime-ridden area brandishing a wad of tenners and say 'Hello, has anybody got any Kalashnikovs for sale?', I somehow doubt if I'd get very far.
The point of this is that (other than the armed forces and a small number of specially trained police officers) only the criminal underworld has access to guns. If anyone could walk into a shop and buy that Kalashnikov, I think this country would be an even more dangerous place than it is already. A few years ago I was mugged by some teenage local yokels in a car park a couple of hundred yards from my mother's home in Wimbledon, south-west London (as in tennis - not, supposedly, a typical urban war zone!). The total damage amounted to cuts and bruises. I can't help thinking that if those teenagers had been able to buy pistols from their local supermarket the outcome could have been one hell of a lot worse.
I do take your point, namely that serious criminals aren't necessarily violent criminals. I totally agree that corrupt businessmen who rip off hundreds of thousands of small investors cause just as much damage to society as a gun-toting drug dealer.
The bottom line is that firearms are a form of technology developed for the one and only purpose of killing people. Furthermore they are designed to achieve that function quickly, efficiently, cheaply, from a distance and (in most cases) with no special skills needed by the operator. Therefore the fewer of these things there are in circulation, IMHO, the better.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 08-27-2003 11:43 PM
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If one could buy guns at the supermarket, the teenage punks would soon be dispatched by a victim or bystander who had armed himself. Muggings are uncommon in Texas where finding someone without a pistol is a challenge. Armed robberies are the norm, true, but who would try to rob a liquor store/gas station/whatever there WITHOUT a gun, knowing that the clerk and many of the customers will be packing?
Actually, that's completely bogus. Texans own the most guns, but Texas actually has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. NYC has extremely strict gun control laws and has one of the lowest murder rates -- the murder rate in Manhattan is the lowest it's been since the 19th century. NYC is ranked 197th in crime rate per 100,000 citizens of 216 U.S. cities with at least 100,000 residents.
In NY, you need a license to drive a car. You need a license to cut hair. You need a license to give a massage. I don't see what the big deal is to get a license to own a gun. And no one needs to own automatic assault rifles.
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