The fact of the matter is that criminals have guns. To “level the playing field” a certain amount of citizenry have to own guns. If you could take away all of the guns belonging to criminals, then it would be more acceptable to talk about starting to ban guns from law abiding citizens.

You say “only the police need guns”. Are you sure? The courts have held that the police department is not responsible to any individual citizen’s personal safety. That means that the citizens are responsible for their own safety. Besides, in some parts of the country the police are over 15 minutes away. That’s enough time for a criminal to slaughter a few households and flee.

So I wonder whether guns are the issue, or maybe its just the people who will take posession and use them regardless of the laws?

Its a terrifyingly interesting topic of discussion, and I thank you for the distraction while I sit on the tarmac at Ohare …

But we do not ban these things because we assume people of a certain amount of responsibility. The vast majority of gun owners in the US are not going out shooting people. It is a small element of a total people that are going out shooting people.

“Perhaps worst of all, they are often associated with gang activity, and this is a huge reason why the gun culture needs to change in this country”

How about we change the overall culture. Morals and values are losing to decadence and bad behavior. Single parent homes, homes where parents are gone 16 hours a day, and kids who are left to be raised by television or baby-sitters who could not care less about giving a child a firm foundation on right and wrong. These are the things that need to change. The decay of society was not caused by guns.

“Sure, if there were no guns, I wouldn’t be surprised if bats and knives became the next big thing with gangs. Then we’d have to have a talk about what to do about it.”

It is statements like that that scare me the most. Where does it end? When do we stop banning and start making people responsible?

I understand your sentiment, but we are never going to agree. I do however respect your view. You have intelligent arguments and I appreciate the rationalness of your statements.

Stay safe and hold onto your beliefs. One day society will make a change that will hopefully work for both of us.

Look, as I have alluded to before, guns are unique from bats, knives, etc. You can run from the latter. Guns have the ability to kill people from long distance. They can be easily concealed.

Perhaps worst of all, they are often associated with gang activity, and this is a huge reason why the gun culture needs to change in this country. Killing people with cars is not high on most gangs’ priority lists. Neither is beating people with bats, or stabbing people with knives. You can’t drive-by beat or stab people very easily, and if you do, it’s very unlikely that you’d instead hit an innocent bystander who’s playing in a playground or eating dinner in their dining room.

Sure, if there were no guns, I wouldn’t be surprised if bats and knives became the next big thing with gangs. Then we’d have to have a talk about what to do about it. If there were no guns, it’d be unlikely that kids would go into their parents’ closets and beat themselves to death over the head with their parents’ bats or stab themselves with knives. To be sure—I haven’t looked into the statistics here—very few kids do this to themselves now in their garages and kitchens, but I could be wrong. It is tempting for them, I know.

Bats and knives have other societal uses too, namely to play baseball with and to cut things with. With cars, for example, you can drive around and go places. Aside from killing things, what are some of the other uses for guns?

If you want to talk about numbers: Lung cancer kills way more people than your puny MVA stats every year. What do we do about it? We take steps to reduce second-hand smoke for those who don’t actively smoke cigarettes in public places. You can’t run away from that either. We encourage people to quit. We impose financial penalties on those who do not. We (think about) regulating them through the FDA as a matter of safety. As far as other, less safe drugs go, well, they are banned, no?

Because someone purposely shot someone else makes guns evil. Therefore we must ban guns. I don’t hear people calling for the ban of baseball bats when victims are bludgeoned to death. Or a call for the ban on knives when people are stabbed to death.

I think the entire argument for gun control is only used as a catalyst for the jump start of new political careers and a talking point for those who want to remain in office.

If guns are banned entirely, innocent, law abiding citizens will not have weapons.”

Good point. We clearly agree on this point. You are very astute.

The catch is, it won’t stop criminals and a number of others from obtaining guns, which in turn endangers those who no longer have guns they relied on for defense.

…

This is nicknamed the Slippery slope fallacy. The assumption that once something happens it will lead to another.

QED, Mr. Philosopher.

Lemme tell you something. I’d much rather have someone come at me with a bat and a knife and a crowbar and scissors and grass clippers(?) and a saw and an axe than with a gun. I can run away from those. Those are less likely to result in lethal injuries and less likely to cause mass casualties than a single, solitary gun even from long range.

Do you really think I’ve never been shot at or robbed at gunpoint simply because potential criminals fear I have a gun in my house or I’m concealing a weapon of my own?

“I say, screw guns. If everybody is allowed to walk around with guns, it’s probably not going to be long until we see people going around with missile launchers and bombs, you know, just in case they get mugged or a gunman enters their classroom.”
You can’t properly argue when You use fallacies as stated above. “…it’s probably not going to be long until we see people going around with missile launchers and bombs…” This is nicknamed the Slippery slope fallacy. The assumption that once something happens it will lead to another.

As for the comment about someone with so much intelligence being so ignorant … how’s about the fact that we are the only civilized nation that has this kind of problem with excessive violence, random and premeditated? And, oh, funnily enough, we are ALSO the only country that lets people run around with guns.

The only people that should be allowed to have guns are people that can handle them and can handle themselves in case of an assault. That narrows my list way way down to, like, trained public authority figures. Who, oddly enough, don’t technically NEED the guns if they are trained properly anyway, because they can defend themselves.

And if we stopped handing guns out like they were candy — even used tax-funded, cash incentive programs to get bad guys to turn in their guns — we would very quickly not need to worry about the bad guys having guns.

But we wouldn’t want a tax increase, or to see our government dollars going to the desperately impoverished/criminal/lower class types, now would we?