i guess i presented my frustration in a bad way... didn't mean to start a whole debate.

don't mind guns in video games... less dangerous

Outlawing guns will do nothing more than disarm law-abiding citizens like myself and give an advantage to criminals. The gov't can do that when they are willing to provide me with 24/7/365 protection.

If a bank security guard can carry to protect a bank's money then so can I to protect my family.

Over time (certainly not overnight), the guns in question will disapear from the market. Now, does that mean that no criminal will be able to get a gun? Of course not. The criminal with good enough connections to import guns from outside the country will certainly be able to get them. But the average criminal won't be able to, and will be restricted to less lethal choices.

.....I think the benefits of much stricter gun controls would outweigh the drawbacks.

......Or at least, that's what I think. How's it working in countrys that have done this?



Mark

Please define a "now banned gun". It's a damn broad definition. Let's try enforcing the laws currently on the books before we discuss the possibility of "rounding up now banned guns", and "make owning them illegal".

By the Feds definition, a Ruger 10-22 is an "assault weapon". I too have a concealed weapon permit, and will put my capability in handgun handling/safety up against any law enforcement people I know.

What ruffles my feathers in discussions such as these, are opinions voiced by people who may not have the same appreciation for guns/gun safety that some of us do, but are more than willing to see them taken away from those of us with a passion for them.

My '02 Z will go a damn sight faster than any posted speed limit in this country......should it be banned, or simply governed to a maximum speed of 70mph? Okay, my rant is over...I feel better now.....time to watch Washington and Dallas.

Bill...who would rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.

Ask England, or even Washington D.C. how that's going for them. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Let's not forget South Africa (where 80% of firearm dealers are now bankrupt due to the governments draconian Firearms Control Act) and Australia.

Howdy,

Have the places with very strict gun ownership laws (and some reasonable way to enforce them, which would seem to eliminate any place with open borders) for say ten years or more found a reduction in firearm usage for crime? A reduction in fatalities associated with crime?

That's not a rhetorical question... I don't know the answer.

Mark

This is what happens when governments try to ban guns
By Mark Steyn


(Filed: 05/01/2003)



You would think if "gun control" was going to work anywhere it would be on a small island. Particularly a small island at whose ports of entry the zealots of HM Customs like nothing better than performing intimate cavity searches on the off-chance you've got an extra bottle of duty-free Beaujolais tucked away up there. Surely, if you also had a Walther PPK parked out of sight, these exhaustive inspectors would be the first to notice.

But apparently not. Since the Government's "total ban" five years ago, there are more and more guns being used by more and more criminals in more and more crimes. Now, in the wake of Birmingham's New Year bloodbath, there are calls for the total ban to be made even more total: if the gangs refuse to obey the existing laws, we'll just pass more laws for them not to obey. According to a UN survey from last month, England and Wales now have the highest crime rate of the world's 20 leading nations. One can query the methodology of the survey while still recognising the peculiar genius by which British crime policy has wound up with every indicator going haywire - draconian gun control plus vastly increased gun violence plus stratospheric property crime.

What happened at that party in Aston? I don't mean "what happened?" in the sense of the piercing analysis of Chief Superintendent Dave Shaw, who concluded: "There has clearly been some sort of dispute which has resulted in people coming to the premises with guns, discharging their weapons and causing this incident." You can't put anything over on these coppers, can you? But my question is directed at the broader meaning of the event. Chief Supt Shaw went on: "We have never had to deal with anything like this. In terms of the nature of the incident, it's almost unprecedented in Birmingham." He didn't quite say Birmingham is one of those bucolic tightly-knit communities where everyone in the village knows everyone else and no one locks their doors, but you get the drift: this is some sort of bizarre aberration.

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I think not. When those young men decided to open fire in Birchfield Road, they were making an entirely rational decision. One reason why Chief Supt Shaw has "never had to deal with anything like this" is because Aston was long ago ceded to the gangs. And, if you can deal drugs with impunity and burgle with impunity and assault with impunity and use guns with impunity, who's to say you can't murder with impunity? The West Midlands Police have offered a reward of £1,000 for information leading to the arrest of those involved. Think about that: would you name a known gang member for a thousand quid? Once the funerals have been held and the media's moved on, the constabulary will go back to forgetting about Aston. But you'll still have to live there.

When Dunblane occurred, all of us - even, if they're honest with themselves, the shrieking hysterics baying for pointless legislation - understood it was a freak event: a nut went nuts. It happens, and, when it does, the event has no broader implications. But what happened in Birchfield Road is of wider relevance: it's a glimpse of the day after tomorrow - not just in Aston, but in Edgbaston and Solihull and Leamington Spa.

After Dunblane, the police and politicians lapsed into their default position: it's your fault. We couldn't do anything about him, so we'll do something about you. You had your mobile nicked? You must be mad taking it out. Why not just keep it inside nice and safe on the telephone table? Had your car radio pinched? You shouldn't have left it in the car. House burgled? You should have had laser alarms and window bars installed. You did have laser alarms and window bars but they waited till you were home, kicked the door in and beat you up? You should have an armour-plated door and digital retinal-scan technology. It's your fault, always. The monumentally useless British police, with greater manpower per capita on higher rates of pay and with far more lavish resources than the Americans, haven't had an original idea in decades, so they cling ever more fiercely to their core ideology: the best way to deal with criminals is to impose ever greater restrictions and inconveniences on the law-abiding.

The gangs on Birmingham's streets instinctively understand this. They know, even if the Government doesn't, that the Blairite "total" ban, which sounds so butch and macho when you do your soundbite on the telly, is a cop-out: it makes the general population the target, not the criminals. And once that happens it's always easier to hassle the cranky farmer with the unlicensed shotgun than the Yardies with the Uzis. When you disarm the citizenry, when you prosecute them for being so foolish as to believe they have a right to self-defence, when you issue warnings that they should "walk on by" if they happen to see a burglary or rape in progress, the main beneficiaries will obviously be the criminals. Aston is the logical reductio of British policing: rival bad guys with state-of-the-art hardware, a cowed populace, and a remote constabulary tucked up in bed with the answering machine on.

I see I haven't yet mentioned the touchy social factor which even squeamish British Lefties have been forced to confront: Aston is yet more "black-on-black" violence. The reason I haven't mentioned it is because there hardly seems any point. What's new? Canada also had a Dunblane-like massacre, followed by Dunblane-like legislation, and, like Birmingham, boring, bland Toronto has lately been riven by gun violence from - wait for it - Jamaican gangs. But in neither Britain nor Canada is it politically feasible to suggest that perhaps Jamaicans should be subjected to special immigration scrutiny. As it happens, that Canadian massacre, of Montreal female students 12 years ago, was committed by the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, but, although we all claim to be interested in the "root causes" of crime, they tend to involve awkward cultural judgments. It's easier, like Mr Blair, just to go "total": blame everyone, ban everything.

This basic approach of addressing any cultural factors apart from the ones that correlate was pioneered by American progressives. The corpulent provocateur Michael Moore, in his film Bowling for Columbine, currently delighting British audiences, spends an entire feature-length documentary investigating the "culture" of American gun violence without mentioning that blacks, who make up 13 per cent of the population, account for over half the murders (and murder victims, too). Once you factor them out, Americans kill at about the same rate as nancy-boy Canadians.

But, as I said, it's hardly worth mentioning in relation to Britain. In my part of New Hampshire, we're all armed to the hilt and any gangster who fancied holding up a gas station would be quickly ventilated by guys whose pick-ups are better equipped than most EU armies. The right of individual self-defence deters crime, constrains it, prevents it from spreading out of the drug-infested failed jurisdictions. In post-Dunblane, post-Tony Martin Britain, that constraint doesn't exist: that's why the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea now has a higher crime rate than Harlem.

Meanwhile, America's traditionally high and England and Wales's traditionally low murder rates are remorselessly converging. In 1981, the US rate was nine times higher than the English. By 1995, it was six times. Last year, it was down to 3.5. Given that US statistics, unlike the British ones, include manslaughter and other lesser charges, the real rate is much closer. New York has just recorded the lowest murder rate since the 19th century. I'll bet that in the next two years London's murder rate overtakes it.

Handgun crime 'up' despite ban



Handguns were banned following the Dunblane massacre

A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned.
The research, commissioned by the Countryside Alliance's Campaign for Shooting, has concluded that existing laws are targeting legitimate users of firearms rather than criminals.

The ban on ownership of handguns was introduced in 1997 as a result of the Dunblane massacre, when Thomas Hamilton opened fire at a primary school leaving 16 children and their teacher dead.



Existing gun laws do not lead to crime reduction and a safer place

David Bredin
Campaign for Shooting
But the report suggests that despite the restrictions on ownership the use of handguns in crime is rising.

The Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000.

It also said there was no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession.

Of the 20 police areas with the lowest number of legally held firearms, 10 had an above average level of gun crime.

And of the 20 police areas with the highest levels of legally held guns only two had armed crime levels above the average.

Smuggling

The campaign's director, David Bredin, said: "It is crystal clear from the research that the existing gun laws do not lead to crime reduction and a safer place.

"Policy makers have targeted the legitimate sporting and farming communities with ever-tighter laws but the research clearly demonstrates that it is illegal guns which are the real threat to public safety."

He said the rise was largely down to successful smuggling of illegal guns into the country.

Weapons have even been disguised as key rings no larger than a matchbox to get them in, he said.

Other sources of guns include battlefield trophies brought back by soldiers, the illegal conversion of replica firearms including blank firing pistols and the reactivation of weapons which had been deactivated.

Ammunition

Examples of illegally manufactured guns include screwdrivers being adapted to fire off one round, he said.

The Metropolitan Police said its official figures showed a 20% drop in armed robberies of commercial premises between April and July this year, compared with the same period last year.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said that, since April 2001, the Flying Squad has arrested 39 people in connection with 34 armed incidents and seized 52 weapons.

Operation Trident, which investigates "black on black" shootings in the UK, has made more than 300 arrests, recovered 100 firearms and 1,500 rounds of ammunition since it was established a year ago.

The Home Office said measures were being taken to tackle handgun crime, including an intensified effort against illegally smuggled weapons.

Mark, without even touching the deeper more fundamental issues, would you clarify this as a "non-hunting, designed for killing people" machine?
(IMG:http://www.winchesterguns.com/prodinfo/catalog/images/534103m.jpg)

I got my first couple of deer with one. As have millions of others, since long before I was born. That particular model has been taking deer, elk, antelope, bear and everything else in this country in three different centuries now. I don't know of any that hold three rounds or less--depending up the round it's chambered for, some hold over 10+ in the tube. But you'd outlaw and confiscate that?

The vast majority of all bolt action hunting rifles hold at least four in the magazine--usually only the big magnums that don't. So I'm wondering what your emotions would allow us to own? Ruger No. 1's and Contenders OK? The fat magnum bolt guns that only hold three? But you'd take away the vast majority of all hunting guns out there, which have been there since the 1800's, because you decided we can no longer be trusted with them?

Of course all handguns are out? Even revolvers? Even if I weld shut three holes in the cylinder?

As somebody who claims to like guns and hunting, you just really don't sound like you do. Under your rules the only one I'd be allowed to keep is my biggest and most powerful one--with which I am pretty deadly at over 1000 yds. Doesn't seem too logical. So what sort of handguns (if any) and rifles would King Mark A allow his subjects to own?

Or do you hunt with revolvers?

Many people do hunt with revolvers. Typically deer are hunted with .357 magnum and larger and buffalo and elk (and Hippo's) are hunted with .454 Casull, S&W 460 and 500's, etc. Revolvers are fundamentally a strong design and can be very powerful and used for taking some of the largest game.

Howdy,



Many people hunt with a spear too.

Mark

(IMG:http://www.smileygenerator.us/community/searchsmiley/s/eat_drink-snack.gif)