So basically: “Stop liking things I don’t like!”
Amiright?
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No - that IS the point. For the VAST majority of guns out there will never hurt ANYONE. What kind of delusional world do you live in where you can filter out the fact that millions of guns are used every year in the US in a non-violent manner against paper and steel targets, and use the small percentage who use guns to kill others as a way to confirm your biased thoughts?
You’re not the only one with these irrational thoughts. Pocket knives under 4" used to be fine to take on air planes. You have ONE attack with box cutters in millions of flights and suddenly they are banned. Where is the rational logic behind that?
Swords were also made to kill people, and there are sword attacks every year. Though I don’t see people generally having the same cognitive bias against them, even though their potential for abuse and their original purpose are exactly the same.
You’d probably shit yourself if you saw my ciupaga on the wall. Hopefully you will learn to stop worrying about the imagined potential ax murdering, and embrace the reality that such events are exceedingly unlikely.
As for the original video - very cool. This is literally right out of the Shadowrun RPG game with their smart systems. I really want them to use this tech for pistols and then with something like Google Glass. Right now this tech is waaaayyyy out of my league, but eventually this will be reasonably affordable.
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Most people and laws make some sort of allowances for hunting tools, despite hunting no longer being a primary means of survival. It’s only within the past century that the majority of hunting has gone from being a means of attaining sustenance to being a “sport”, after all.
I personally see modern hunting in developed countries as needless, with the exception of things like controlling certain wildlife populations that lack sufficient natural predators and the like. But overwhelmingly I would prefer to have the necessary hunting required for healthy forests and whatnot carried out by professional wildlife conservation officers.
However, I recognize that there are logistical hurdles to overcome in managing such vast amounts of wild land and admit that the selling of hunting permits does at least save on government costs by transferring some of the burden to the public.
Hunting is actually the one area outside of killing people where firearms make sense compared to other missile weapons, if only because they allow for cleaner, more humane kills and don’t require highly trained and skilled operators like bows do.
Criminalizing hunting bows seems like it might be unnecessary, chiefly due to their lack of usage.
In contrast, criminalizing the possession of hunting longarms, which are far and away the most common hunting tools, seems reasonable if properly implemented - training and licensing of the usage of such weapons makes sense, as do controls on ownership, since ideally the only people we’d have using them are those who would employ them professionally to control wildlife populations as suggested above.
Replica swords aren’t actual weapons. They are, as the term “replica” implies, decorative objects. Are they still big sharp pieces of metal that are capable of hurting people? Certainly. But despite their appearances, they aren’t constructed to be suitable weapons like actual swords were, and would not serve well in actual armed combat.
You can still use one to stab an unarmed person, but any sizeable sharpened piece of metal - or even a sharpened stick - serves that purpose just as well. If you really want to kill someone with a melee weapon, there are far better choices available essentially everywhere, typically in the form of common household tools like hammers, axes, shovels, and the like.
The thing about all of these options being discussed, however, is that realistically speaking, people don’t use them for killing people all that often.
The worst culprit is, unsurprisingly, hunting longarms, for the obvious reasons of their being the most lethal for the least investment of effort and personal risk. In the US and Canada, there are roughly 1000 hunting accidents per year involving firearms, around 100 of which are fatal. Given the amount of forested land and the number of hunters in the US and Canada, that’s actually a relatively low number.
On the other side of the equation, longarms also aren’t a terribly popular choice for criminal purposes, chiefly due to their large size and cumbersome natures. They also aren’t popular choices for things like suicide, again for much the same reason.
You can’t really carry a longarm without attracting notice, and if you intend to kill someone, being noticed is antithetical to that purpose. Their bulk also makes them ill suited to usage in close quarters such as urban environments - and it’s especially hard to shoot yourself with a rifle or shotgun.
Still, every year people do carry out homicides with longarms. Not nearly as many as are carried out with handguns - the numbers are something like 1 in 20 employ longarms - but still enough to be a concern, and definitely enough to warrant controls - some of which we already have in place, a few others which couldn’t hurt to add.
In contrast, hardly any homicides are carried out with hunting bows or replica swords. You’re more likely to have your head bludgeoned in with a golf trophy than you are to be shot with a bow and arrow or stabbed with an overpriced wallhanger, if only because they’re so much less commonly found in the average home.
The major problem, of course, is handguns.
Every gun is built with a different purpose and role in mind. For example, a hunting rifle is built for precision, stability, and stopping power, but not rapid rate of fire or for close quarters usage; a machine gun is built for rapid fire and suppression from a defensible point, but not for accuracy or mobility; et cetera. Using the wrong gun for the wrong job makes things more difficult.
The entire point of using a handgun is to kill people in close quarters. They exist for the sole purpose of urban combat. They are small, compact, easy to conceal, and sufficiently lethal and accurate at close range.
This is why police carry handguns, as opposed to the more powerful and accurate longarms that a soldier would carry for usage in the field. This is also why the vast majority of homicides are carried out with handguns - you don’t need a lot of firepower, accuracy, or even a large magazine of ammunition to kill someone if you’re close enough and employing the element of surprise.
I’d be more than prepared to see longarms de-restricted if it meant we could eliminate the handgun problem. If people absolutely have to privately own guns, let them have bolt action rifles and pump action shotguns instead, by all means - just get rid of the handguns, which exist purely for the purpose of urban killing. All the “responsible gun owners” of the world still get to enjoy their target shooting and their deer hunting, while urban environments gets to enjoy fewer shootings, armed robberies, and the like.
As for hunting bows and replica swords? If once we handle the handgun problem, we see a massive spike in Legend of Zelda killings, then we’ll worry about those. 
If giving private citizens killing machines so they can use them as toys to shoot bottles results in even a single human death, I can’t see how it’s worth it.
You are valuing your perceived right to amuse yourself with bangs and flashes and the violent destruction of inanimate objects more highly than you’re valuing human life. You’re offended at the thought that you might have find other ways to amuse yourself in exchange for preventing human suffering and death. You’re placing luxury entertainment above basic human empathy and decency.
Talk about a sense of entitlement.
Your “right” to gun usage comes at the cost of bloodshed. Rationalize it however you want, you’re trying to excuse the facilitation of 70% of annual homicides in this nation just to enable a needless collective power fantasy.
Private gun ownership isn’t about practical need, it’s about emotional and psychological fulfillment. People don’t like feeling weak, or like they aren’t in control of their lives - but give a person the power over life and death, and they feel empowered and important. They gain a sense of agency, of authority conferred by might.
No private citizen has any legitimate need for a privately owned firearm that outweighs the cost in human life that is a direct result of our current gun culture and climate. There is absolutely nothing that can be accomplished with private gun ownership that couldn’t be accomplished with communal or governmental gun ownership.
Want to go hunting? You already pay to get a hunting permit and (depending on region) firearm license, you could just as easily rent a rifle from the government as well for the duration of your trip.
Want to go to the shooting range, to hone your skills for the aforementioned hunting? Again, you could use a range owned weapon.
Want to carry a firearm for “self defense”? The overwhelming majority of violent crimes with firearms are not prevented by privately owned guns, despite (as you mention) the millions of guns in use in this country - and if there weren’t so many millions of firearms around, just maybe people wouldn’t feel the need to arm themselves for bear just to feel safe?
Still want to carry a firearm for “self defense”, despite all that, “just in case”? You can own and carry any of countless less-lethal alternatives available for civilian usage, with more being developed all the time, instead.
There is no rational reason to allow private ownership - especially of handguns. Exceptions might be made for hunting and sporting longarms, but there’s really no excuse whatsoever for the prevalence of handguns in our society today.
Aside from hunting and pop can plinking:
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You forgot the most dangerous part of hunting. Supposedly (told this by a Dept. of Wildlife officer) that the most dangerous part of hunting are out-of-shape hunters having heart attacks trying to drag a deer back to the truck. Yes, this results in more deaths than guns while hunting.
You joke, but even common knives are HEAVILY regulated in Australia. Having all but banned guns, murders were still happening. Apparently, practically any knife is a “regulated weapon” and you will have to have an excuse to carry one. Sorry, but if my Leatherman Wave can get me arrested on any street in Australia, that is going too far.
References:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317215402AAXM5a1
Way back in school, I remember hearing that even carrying a cricket bat (think “baseball bat”) can get you in a lot of trouble. Too lazy to google for references.
There are plenty of sports to engage in that do not directly contribute to human misery and death.
Even if you insist upon using firearms for entertainment purposes, there’s still no rational justification for private ownership and lax restrictions.
If you are an American, you must have slept through much of your history classes.
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Sorry, but the Wiki shows that guns ARE used defensively more than you would think…
Higher end estimates by Kleck and Gertz show between 1 to 2.5 million DGUs in the United States each year.[1]:64–65[2][3] Low end estimates cited by Hemenway show approximately 55,000-80,000 such uses each year.
From here:
The difference is that a heart attack is a medical condition that afflicts only the unhealthy individual, not a tool which can be employed to kill others.
A classic slippery slope argument.
Humans who want to kill other humans will always find ways, but that doesn’t mean we should be making it easier for them. Victims of knife attacks are a lot more likely to survive than victims of shootings, and the perpetrators run much higher risks of being caught or foiled in the attempt.
Making it harder for people to kill each other results in fewer deaths. Don’t believe me? According to [this article][1] at the Washington Post, “(Australia’s) firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides.”
That’s a heck of a drop. Sure, people are still killing each other with knives, but no more than they were while guns (specifically semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns, in this case) were legal.
As for the issue of your beloved Leatherman Wave, I fail to see how that has anything to do with gun control.
That said, I personally don’t understand why anyone would need to have a multi-tool on their person at all times - surely it would be suitable to keep one at your home and perhaps one in your vehicle? There’s really not all that much you need one for while walking down “any street in Australia”, or in other public spaces.
At the very worst, couldn’t a sane person just, ya know… remove the knife blade from the multi-tool and have ready access to everything else?
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
What i find most interesting is that pulling this rifle’s trigger doesn’t directly fire the weapon. By pulling and holding the trigger you are giving the weapon permission to fire once the weapon is correctly oriented in reference to a predetermined target.
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Yes, but it is telling that heart attacks claim MORE victims on the hunting field than the guns. You have to take a safety class to get a hunting license. This is a good idea and makes hunting quite safe indeed.
The slippery slope is what I am afraid of. First, guns are banned. People still die, so the politician, in an effort to “do something” start to crack down on knife ownership. Do you think that it would be OK to ban people carrying a multi-tool? Don’t tell me that it can’t happen, because it DID happen in Australia.
Ahhhh. You want to talk numbers. Good. I have handy the numbers for US and Australia for 1995 (before their big band) and 2007 (latest numbers I have handy). Let’s look at the trends:
Murder:
Australia: down 24% (so far so good)
USA: down 31% (we beat them)
Violent Crime:
USA: down 31% (Go USA)
Australia: UP 40% (W.T.F?)
Wow. if we had their bans, we could have MORE murders as well as an increase in violent crime. Sign me up!
As I said, slippery slope. First, guns are banned, and then knives.
My Leatherman Wave is perhaps the most useful thing that I own. I find myself using it multiple times per day. Knife, pliers, screwdrivers, I use almost all of it. Does taking this useful tool out of the hands on an honest citizen make anybody any safer? If you think so, it sounds like you would enjoy prison. Nobody is allowed to own anything there.
You could also remove the paranoia from your brain an realize that America is, on the whole, a rather safe country. In fact, the majority of the crime is confined to a small percentage of the zip codes. You don’t like guns – I get it. However, get over it. I am around a lot of people with guns. I have yet to be killed, and I know of nobody who has killed anybody (except tasty animals).
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You’re right, I must have slept through the history lesson which explained that we still live in a Colonial frontier, relying on hunting game with firearms for much of our basic subsistence, fielding militias to compensate for the fact that we lack a professional army, and sharing borders with hostile foreign powers like the French and Spanish.
But by all means, rationalize thousands of firearm homicides every year with a vague implication that the American people might at any moment be required to rise up in armed insurrection against an abusive government exploiting an Imperial Colonial holding from across an ocean that can only be crossed via weeks or months at sea in wooden ships.
You know who else romanticized the events of the American Revolution and tried to apply them to a completely different and incomparible situation? The Confederated States of America, during the American Civil War.
In their eyes, the North was Great Britain and President Lincoln was King George. They were just exercising their patriotic duty to forcibly resist an abusive government that was trying to deprive them of their rightful property (id est, slaves) - no different than levying taxes on a Colonial holding to fund a war in Europe!
Since we’re on the topic of history, here’s an interesting tidbit. The WTC attacks of 2001 resulted in the deaths of approximately 3000 people. In the same year in the US, firearm related homicides resulted in nearly 11000 deaths, almost four times that amount.
Thirteen years and two overseas wars later, not much has changed. We’ve toppled two foreign regimes and created messy power vacuums that will probably leave the regions destabilized for decades to come and which will ultimately be filled by other equally unsavory factions. Meanwhile, homicide rates back home have barely changed at all.
For all our guns, even those in the hands of our professional military, we haven’t solved the problems of foreign terrorism or domestic crime. If anything, they’ve gotten worse.
History repeats itself - just not in the way our romanticized patriotic mythology would lead us to believe.
And that’s why I cannot take your arguments seriously. You’re admitting to one of the most common and best known logical fallacies.
You are in effect admitting that your entire position is irrational. Meaningful discourse is therefor impossible.
[quote=“Glitch, post:35, topic:36211”]
And that’s why I cannot take your arguments seriously. You’re admitting to one of the most common and best known logical fallacies.
You are in effect admitting that your entire position is irrational.
[/quote]No, I am admitting that OTHERS (especially politicians) will give in to this irrationality, as I DEMONSTRATED in Australia.
And don’t get me started on this guy…
Flamethrowers? Automatically deploying knives? Ban this sick filth!
Won’t somebody think of the children?
So, the situations determine what is a right? Sorry, but I thought that rights were inalienable, and not subject to the whim of circumstance. By that same logic, the 4th amendment is null and void because we now have cryptography, e-mail and cell phones, so the NSA is completely right.
No doubt that an armed revolution would be very difficult. However, the fact that is COULD happen helps keep politicians in check. What is all comes down to is that the Constitution is a piece of paper and nothing more. The government has to govern with the CONSENT of the governed. Arms help reinforce that point.
The civil war is NOT a good example, as it was clear-cut: north vs. south. It was a war. If the government becomes too oppressive in the next century or two, it will be more like an insurrection. Look how well the US has maintained control of Afghanistan and Iraq. It will be more like that, with no clear way from the outside to tell which side a person is on. That is a completely different situation from one where the enemies are on different sides of a geographical line.
Too bad even basic fact checking proves you wrong in this. Just one example from hundreds of google results:
http://thepublicintellectual.org/2011/05/02/a-crime-puzzle/
In the last 35 years (give or take a year or two), murder has gone down by almost 50%. Just a quick eyeball on the graph, it look like it has gone down by maybe 15% or 20% since 2001. It is much easier to prove your point when you invent your facts.
True, but that has more to do with foreign policy, NOT gun politics.
Yes, Germany banned all private gun ownership back about 70 or so years ago. Russia, and China tool. Those stories ended well.
The important question is WHERE do you use it? In your own home? In or around your vehicle? The sorts of places that I suggested you keep it, and where it would be perfectly lawful to carry one?
How about walking down a public street? Tighten a lot of screws on public property, do you? Make a lot of utility cuts at the library? Strip a lot of wires at the local deli? Find a lot of use for a good pair of pliers while shopping for household goods?
Maybe you have a job that requires these tools - that’s fine, you can access the tools on your worksite. Maybe you’re a Maker, and tinker around with stuff at home. That’s fine, you can access the tools on your own property.
But I say again, “There’s really not all that much you need one for while walking down “any street in Australia”, or in other public spaces.”
You’re the one who brought up Australia’s weapon restriction, not me. I was merely commenting on the fact that it is triflingly easy to comply with something like a restriction on carrying knives in public spaces.
But since you’re brought up safety, let’s examine the topic. You’re correct that the US is far from the most dangerous place to live. International homicide rates are much worse in various places such as parts of South America and Africa. For example, Brazil has nearly five times our homicide rate.
Then again, Brazil is nowhere near as developed a country as the US is. It’s only natural that affluent first world countries will have lower homicide rates than countries in less developed and more economically challenged parts of the world, right?
Then explain why America has a homicide rate five times the size of comparable affluent first world countries like France and the UK.
Better yet, explain how our homicide rate is also five times the size of China’s.
Even better still, explain how places like Syria, Iran, Israel, Cuba, Yemen, Serbia, Kosovo, Vietnam, Lebanon, Libya, and Kuwait - areas famous for being hotbeds of violence and instability - have vastly better homicide rates than we do.
I’m not at all impressed by the US beating out places like Rwanda, or even glorious mother Russia. For being such a progressive modern nation and such an influential world leader, we sure don’t compare very well to minor figures like Luxembourg in terms of preventing our citizens from murdering each other.
I just thought of my next bumper sticker: “Guns aren’t batshit-crazy, people are!”
Wow. Just wow. The fact that I should have to JUSTIFY where and why I carry a multi-tool just says it all for your state of mind. Should I have to show journalist credential to pull out a pointy pencil in public? The point is that this is supposed to be a free country. As long as I am not hindering or hurting others, it should not matter what I do.
And there are other countries in Europe where all citizens are given rifles to take home after their military service, and yet the murder rate is lower there, despite practically all adults being armed. Not to mention places like Russia where guns are very hard to come by for citizens, yet the murder rate is five times higher.
