Mowflow said:
I never read the gun laws thread and I don't want to get into an argument here. But I'm sorry bigdog, your argument just does nothing to even put the slightest doubt in my mind about what gun laws should be.
I know you have a military background and therefor no doubt represent the large percentage of responsible, sensible American gun owners. However, my heart just bleeds every time I hear about some nutter bringing an untimely end to the more often than not young life's of innocent people at some school, cinema, college etc.
Other countries have similar or even more lax gun laws yet they manage to avoid having these horrific incidents with such alarming regularity. Perhaps as you say it is something that needs to be done about society as a whole, if you have a messed up society then the worst thing you can do is arm them with semi automatic weapons which should be completely unnecessary in any civilised society. Whatever the cause, my thoughts and heart felt sympathies are with the families of the children that were so cruelly taken from them today.
What SHOULD the gun laws be? And since when has a law kept a law breaker from breaking the law. I have no doubt this idiot in America knew that killing was illegal. Yet did it anyway.
It is most definitely about how society has changed. So we should work on that. Solve the problem with people willing to lash out in the most violent way possible. And not be so focused on the particular instrument that an evil person uses.
Why did the US founding fathers write the second amendment? Look at the federalist papers about citizens owning guns. The very men who created our country realized that those in power will always have a tendency to want more power and the wealth that goes with said power. Our founding fathers made sure that the average citizen had the means to topple such tyrants. The fact that whether a society is civilized or not is not the issue concerning guns and their ownership in our constitution. It was to the founding fathers. An insurance policy against the very government they founded should that government become uncivilized towards it citizens.
My military training had nothing to do with the values and respect of the laws that I have. That was taught to me by my parents. And then reinforced by my 20 years in the military. I do understand what you mean though. The fact is that the vast majority of guns owners are very responsible.
To Stuart and Carol.
I respect your views. Please don't try and diminish my views by putting words in my mouth that I didn't speak nor post. The constitution gives me the right to bare arms. That's all the justification that is needed. And until the citizens vote to change the constitution it will remain a "right"
I only put those figures up as an illustration. Pointing out that for all the death and destruction caused by all the items above the gun homicides level. All those deaths seem to be a non issue. And we willingly accept them. And if we can willingly accept that level of death from those things (in the name of freedom). Then why can't we accept (in the name of freedom) that some times a bad person will use a gun to do bad things. If we just made Fags, Cars, alcohol, Baseball bats, drugs illegal. We could have saved nearly 800,000 lives. Instead the government talks about making guns illegal. I believe for reasons stated in my prior post. Even though more die from those other instruments than guns. That is a fact. You can see two paragraphs above about why we were given the "right" in our constitution to own guns.
I would hope that neither of you would deny that a lot of the problems concerning violent acts such as this one has more to do with societal attitudes and values, Or lack thereof. Than it does with guns. Quite frankly and sadly. We have a rather large population of cruel heartless people that don't care about anyone or anything to include themselves. It's my contention that guns did not create that view. We the people, our government, And the media created those attitudes. But a lot of folks only focus on the tool.
I've also noticed perusing articles on google, that the UK has one of the highest crime rates in the world. Can anyone verify that? 
