Gun Control thread (merged many)

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

That's the issue Oberon - you don't see yourself as having any less liberty than a US citizen. I completely agree.

However.

If I had my way and severely restricted firearm ownership there, an awful lot of people would have lost a liberty and yet remain with exactly the same amount left.

This isn't making quite as much sense as I thought it would.

Might be a very roundabout way of getting to "different strokes", but replace "strokes" with "bolt cycles" and suddenly it's a little less homespun.

I'm going to the pub.

No, I do understand what you mean, I mean I've never had that liberty to begin with, so I do not know the difference of not having it.
I suppose that is the problem on any law which removes a certain object from peoples lives, it's the taking away of something, something which means a lot to some people.
I think, honestly, that taking away firearms from the American public as a whole would never work, there's a history of the gun within America that's as old as the nation itself, the two are very deeply intertwined. You could go as far as to say that America was built by Colt and Smith & Wesson (and Winchester, of course). I don't think there are many other countries who have that deep an engrained weapon...except perhaps Japan and the Katana. So trying to remove that from America just is not going to work. However, I think that serious thought should be given into making the people who own firearms as well informed about their care and attention as possible in order to prevent unfortunate incidents.
Those who use firearms illegally, you're going to struggle to deal with that because there's a good underground market for firearms, but regulation could possibly help give further in-roads into dealing with it.
For example, a policeman patrolling a street in a random American city spots a stereotypical gang-banger style youth walking along with a Browning tucked into his sagging pants, he stops the car, gets out with his pistol pointed at the gangbanger (and his camera switched on) and asks him to show him his firearms license. The gangbanger will either do so or state that he doesn't have one/the dog ate it/it's at home (etc) in which case the police officer would have the ability to confiscate the pistol because it was improperly holstered and carried without a presentable license. If that gangbanger wants his gun back then he's got to show his license, and even then he will get a citation and/or his gun rights confiscated (for a permanent or temporary amount of time) for improper holstering of a firearm. Chances are though that he'll just forget it and go get another pistol, and then there's the chance that the cop will pick him up with that pistol and we go through the process again. The cops will get quite a collection of pistols and they could probably give them back to the company that manufactured them for re-selling as required, or get them melted down and profit from the scrap value. Either which way, for a short amount of time, the gang-banger loses his firearm. Alternatively he draws on the officer and the officer and the other officer patrolling with him take him down. Either which way the problem is fixed, either permanently or temporary.