Post by Rankkor
I just realised one thing... It's only controlling guns and not bows. Damn you can carry hand crossbow (really small crossbow which can be carried in 1 hand)... It is not gun it is bow. Gun control is about guns not bows. I just found major hole in this thing...
You may call me troll if you want. It is not forbidden.
there's A LOT of problems with this.
A: Forget the movies, reloading a crossbow takes A LONG LONG LONG time to do so. At most you can do 2 shots per minute with a crossbow. Unless you're the best marskman in the world, you're not gonna hit anything with it, as bolts suffer from wind and gravity more than bullets do.
B: Hand-crossbows don't pack as much punch as you think, and if you wear thick enough clothes, the crossbow will cause light wounds that would in no way incapacitate a threat. Not to mention that a crossbow is borderline impossible to use in close range.
C: And this is the biggie, bows and crossbows are still legislated by any law related to guns since they are still projectile weapons. I think only slings are the one type of unregulated projectile weapon in the world (And even then, some regulations exist for them).
Here's the thing. I don't think we can expect one solution to be equally applicable for everyone. What works for Denmark won't necessarily work in the United States because we face different circumstances and different problems.
I think the biggest problem with guns is gang violence, and no legislation we make is going to keep them from obtaining guns, because they already have the smuggling connections needed to bypass them.
Honestly, I have a hard time imagining a way to reduce violent crime without taking freedom away from people. If you control guns, people will kill each other with knives. If you take away the knives, people will kill each other with homemade machetes and sharpened rebar.
The problem, I think, isn't with guns, but with people. We can do things to limit what murderers can do, like banning automatic weapons or reducing magazine sizes, but really, I think a lot of this reactionary legislation is just people trying to feel safe instead of facing the facts.
Brilliantly put brother, I'd like to add a few things to this:
Correlation =/= causation.
It is true that some countries with a high and tight control on how many guns (if any) can be obtained legally by the civilians (Such as Denmark and japan) have a low rate of gun-related deaths. But if this is true, does that means EVERY country where guns are highly regulated have a low mortality rate with guns?
NOVenezuela is a country with a lot of gun control. For starters, you can only own one gun per household, that gun can only be a small caliber revolver, everything else is illegal. The weapon, and the ammo for it are prohibitively expensive, and the number of permits needed to own, and use one would probably make a life-sized statue of yourself. You need a permit to own one, another one to carry it with you, another one to use it, another permit to get the first 3 permits (Inceptionā¢).
Does this makes venezuela a safe haven in latin america? A utopia where gun-related deaths are unheard of, and extremely rare? Nope. In fact we have an average of 16.000 gun-related deaths in the country per year. For comparison, the United States, a country with well over 10 times the total population of ours (We have about 26 million, whereas the US has 260 millions), has 15.900 gun-related deaths per year on average.
If you want some harder numbers, this means the total number of deaths per 100.000 population is about 5.1 in the US, whereas in venezuela its a whopping
50.3*
This is because only law-abiding citizens obey the law, whereas the criminals don't give 2 rat's asses about what the law says. Just because you make drugs illegal doesn't mean people won't get high. Just because you make it harder to get guns doesn't mean people won't get guns. All "gun-control" does, is hamper the average joes in their capacity to defend themselves.
When was the las time you saw someone get mugged in a gun convention? ohh right. Never. You'd have to be mentally deficient to try to rob someone in a place loaded with guns. But, sneak a gun into a "gun-free" zone, and presto, you have a buffet of completely helpless people, ready to plunder.
Reducing the violence and making a zone safer, has nothing to do with increasing or decreasing the number of guns. However restricting gun sells does makes the population less capable of protecting themselves in a dangerous environment. This is specially true in venezuela, with the colombian FARCs right next door smuggling guns into the country and selling them to gangs, you now have mafias armed with AK47s, UZIs, and Glocks. Meanwhile, what do average joes like me have to fight back? A machete.
Seems fair.Edit: Also, this would be better suited to the Debate of the Day thread, or its own dedicated thread.
Yeah but FatalHeaven isn't doing the debate thread anymore, so we gotta make do with what we have. In an effort to try and garner more participation I've been updating this thread every other day, rather than every day, so there's still more room to discuss this topic.
(*)My numbers may be (and probably are)
a little bit off. Its kinda late :P so my apologies if they are.