QUOTE=mook;2126670The reason they aren't owned by private parties is....wait for it....government regulation.
Funny, I thought terrorists had been using them for decades. Thanks for proving regulation doesn't work
A lot of crimes happen spontaneously. A guy has no money and gets drunk. He has a gun in his house used for normal home protection. He decides on a whim to rob the local liquor store. You can't tell me that such instance don't happen all the time. Or that they'd happen just as often because the drunk guy will slur out the five necessary illicit conversations needed to execute the purchase of an illegal gun and then still be drunk enough to think the robbery was a good idea.
Nice fairy tale, but let's get real here. Anyone law abiding enough that they would comply with registering their weapons would never do this. It's simply not in their DNA. Never happened, never will.
Tons of crimes happen every year with perfectly legal weapons.
Untrue.
It's just not an honest argument to say that EVERY SINGLE ONE of them would happen if guns were illegal. They wouldn't. We all know that. It's dumb to pretend that wouldn't be the case.
What's not honest is speaking for what you assume others "know". Nearly all crimes committed with guns are pre-meditated, and committed by people who have already been forbidden by law to have guns. This alone disproves your arguement.
Crimes of passion happen suddenly, and the weapon is whatever's handy, a knife, a hammer, a rock, bare hands...most people don't carry guns on them all the time.
So I don't think it's any stretch to say if guns were illegal the number of gun crimes would at minimum stay the same, but more likely rise severely.
It's true that a lot of crimes would still happen. But it's just not believable that every single crime committed today with a legal gun would be committed if guns were outlawed.
Actually, it's already been proven by Australia, where they outlawed guns, confiscated them, and the violent crime rate has skyrocketed since, especially on weak and elderly citizens who previously had a way to defend themselves. Armed robbery is a certain payday now for criminals there.
If the government wanted to, it could. Maybe not absolutely, but it could eliminate 99% of them. Just like it could stop illegal immigration or drugs. The thing is that we've never really given the government the resources it'd really take to do those things. Quadruple the number of police officers. Devote 20 times the manpower we do now to our borders. Become more and more intrusive, to the point where you have a literal 1984-type state.
It could get really, really spooky. I certainly wouldn't advocate it. But it could certainly be done. And if you don't think it would work, you ought to read 1984 again.
You are in fact advocating it. It starts with gun control and registration, cannot succeed without it. Like complacent Jews in the early days of Hiltler's rise, you are your own worst enemy.
Anyway, my point isn't that we should outlaw guns. We could, but I like them. I don't want to. Besides, it isn't worth it.
My point is that guns are fun and hunting is fun. They can still be just as fun if we register them like we do cars. In the process of doing so, we'd definitely stop some crimes along the way. That's a tradeoff I can live with.
Guns are not toys. Your attitude about their uses disturbs me, and your owning them might make me feel a bit uneasy, I certainly wouldn't feel safe hunting with you, but I'll defend your right to own them without question. I cant' live with the tradeoff.
