Gun control...

Questioner wrote:

Texas will be over shortly to set up the new Republic.

*eyeroll tongue-in-cheek*

That should be a logistical nightmare. How do you plan on separating Texas from the mainland?

Carrying a handgun is a crime over here.

If he's carrying a gun and he's not a policeman he is a criminal.

a large number of relatively preventable homicides are more likely to be avoided by strong weapon controls. Why? Because many killings occur simply because guns are at hand making the deadly expression of passionate impulses more likely.

From the BBC website.

Quote:

'Five dead' at Texas skating rink party shooting At least five people have been killed and three injured in a shooting at a roller-skating rink birthday party in the US state of Texas, police say.

The shooting happened after an argument broke out at the party in the city of Grand Prairie, close to Dallas.

The gunman is among the dead, having shot himself after opening fire on fellow guests, police say.

Details about the incident are sketchy but police say the row was a "domestic disturbance between husband and wife".

"It appears to be a domestic situation, at this point," Reuters news agency quoted police spokesman Steve Dye as saying. "That is our initial finding. And it appears the suspect did die from a self-inflicted gun wound."

Police said they first received a call about the shootings at Forum Roller World shortly after 1900 local time on Saturday (0200 GMT on Sunday) and responded immediately.

Witnesses described seeing people fleeing the rink in panic after the gunman opened fire.

The injured party guests were taken to hospital and there was no immediate information about their condition.

This shooting wouldn't have happened if there were tougher gun laws in America.

I know it's no way near the same magnitude of what happened in Norway, but this sort of thing seems to happen quite a lot over there. The figures speak for themselves, when you compare the incidences of gun crime in the UK and USA, there are significantly more crimes in America.

The gun nuts

like to imagine a situation where the law abiding, gun toting citizen is able to prevent a massacre by taking out some crazed gunman. Actually I think fantasy is a better word than imagine. They do have fantasies, in that they are the brave citizen shooting the bad guy, but the whole idea is fantasy.

And I would like to ban the sale of guns designed to kill people. Norway and Mexico provide good reasons for that.

But I agree that if people were allowed to carry weapons around with them there would be more shootings and killings over trivial things, and instead of someone waking up with a split lip after a night on the town that led to a drunken quarrel, they would perhaps not wake at all.

Knives don't kill anyway near as many people as guns.

But if we were allowed to carry guns around with us here in Norway, how many would be killed in the course of a year, or ten years? I suspect that the number would be higher, and would that be any less tragic?

Crazies can kill more people with guns than they can with knives.

Knives are essential for everyday living, especially in the kitchen, guns are not.

I've read that the US makes 5 million more guns per annum than it can sell legally. Where do you suppose the excess goes? Even if the numbers were significantly less, added over the years, this leads to a staggering number of unaccounted for guns. Many with the sole purpose of shooting people.

Then there is the constant pressure from the NRA and like minded apes who insist on challenging any attempt to at making weapons less lethal or lesson the amount a person can own.

My brother, when 17, walked into a store in Wash. and bought a gun. He's not a citizen. He bought a gun. No papers, no checks, nothing. Huh? I'd say the US has done a pretty piss poor job even trying to state they've even tried any form of gun control.

It doesn't exist in comparison with other nations.

Isn't a lot of it that we're not starting from the same place? Many people in America fear gun control, because they don't want to give up their gun with all the guns that are there already.

Over here we think there's enough guns already, and we could do with limiting them even more. Any suggestion of liberalising the gun ownership laws would lose millions of votes.

Absolutely. Also there's the American sense of entitlement, in this particular instance, backed by a second amendment right. There is a LOT of ground that would have to be covered to put in place some realistic gun control measures, and I'm not overly optimistic that it can be covered.

Hell, the politicians can't even agree to not force us into default which ought to be a no-brainer.

How nauseating. You [N]RA types always justify your "right" to have the means to easily kill your fellow human beings by clothing it in patriotic terms. Patriotism is the last refuge of cowards, in this case people who can't otherwise justify their destructive values.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

Here ya go Dave. An answer to the above, very dated letter you have found.

We don't want them David.

OmSigDAVID wrote:

izzythepush wrote:

We don't want them David.

Its a matter of Individual rights,
REGARDLESS of what u want.

In other words,
any Englishman who wants the means
to competently defend his life from predatory violence
is within his natural rights to arm himself accordingly.





David

No, we are a sovereign nation, and we make our own decisions. We don't want them. If that upsets a few sad gun nuts, then they can get out. This isn't the 51st State.

We are a free society,

we make our own laws. We don't take orders from Americans.

izzythepush wrote:

Carrying a handgun is a crime over here.

Yea; in North Korea, too.