Is it better to carry a gun or not?

[Elif Godson]

Well not much to say on tha subject, but if he was in the military
and was an acting solder then he had the right to have his weapon
with him and to be carrying it. So in this instance that is to say he
was an acting member of the military according to those anti gun people he was supposed to have his gun, by the way, who ended up stopping him from killing people was it the military or the police ? or was it a random citzen or citzens ?

[Thoran]

Originally posted by Noble Wolf: Most of the arguements I have read, most eloquently support that fact that some people strongly believe that they should be allowed to "own" a firearm, I must say that these arguremnets I do now find to be fairly persuasive. But no-one has convinced me that these firearms should be anywhere other than locked up in an armoury, if not being used for some specific purpose. (note- household defence I still don't see as a justifable purpose) But I also now see that gun control has to take into account the types of firearms ie. sports or hunting rifle versus hand gun. Could I just finally point out,(personal information here) that when I was at Military College one of my juniors, who was in all other aspects considered fairly normal went a little "off" - took some semi-automatic military calibre weapons and proceeded to kill about thirteen or fourteen people in a busy Melbourne street. This chap, I shall always remember; and I really have felt, since then, that maybe, if such firearms were not so readily available that perhaps there might be one or two more innocent people left alive. So if some-one from the pro-gun side could please excuse his actions for me. I believe that I could probably fully support their view from then on. Any takers??? !!!!! My apologies - many typos - 4.30am here!!!!!

Noble I personally agree with your assertion that guns are not good home-protection devices (I prefer a baseball bat), but if I lived in a dangerous area I'd certainly have a different opinion.

Regarding your question, I can only say that if your aquaintance wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and a gun wasn't available, he would have chosen some other means... and there's a million different ways he could have done it, some of which may have killed MORE than the 17 unfortunate lives his violence cost.

Columbine is a good example of the danger of attacking the tool instead of the root cause. If those boys hadn't been able to get guns they'd have no doubt put a lot more effort into the bomb phase of their plan (they had a number of them, but none were detonated), and bombs can be easily and inexpensively build that could have killed hundreds of kids in that school.

In Israel it could be argued that terrorists use bombs because guns are ineffective. The reason guns are ineffective is because of the percentage of armed citizens... ready to react to meet their violence with overwhealming force.

I would close with a counterquestion... how many would this guy have killed if even 10% of your populace were armed?

[ 05-03-2002, 04:06 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

[Neb]

My opinion on the "Armed populace deals with lawbreakers/attackers" thing:

In times of war or, as in Isreal, heavy terrorism, it'd probably be a good thing for the majority of the populace to be armed. It'd discourage attackers and make the people safe.

In times of more or less peace as the situation is now in the US I'd say that a heavily armed populace is a bad idea. It'll make things less safe.

[Spelca]

Originally posted by Sir Taliesin: ... Noble Wolf (love your name btw), you say that only the military and police should have firearms. What about this. You apparently live in Australia, right? What if the country of Indonsia were to hold legal elections and a government was installed that was extremely hostile to Australia, to the point that they attacked your country. Let's us suppose that they invaded and captured the terriotory that you lived in. Would you try to fight back? If so, how would you do it? Would you take up a privately held firearm and defend your country or would you stand by and wait on the Australian Army and retake the area?

LOL, I'm sorry, but I find this a bit silly. How are average people supposed to fight against trained soldiers? Are we going to take our guns and rifles and then crawl around in mud and shot soldiers like in some Schwarzenegger (spelling, sorry) film? I don't think anyone would stand much chance, not even with guns. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Sir Taliesin]

Originally posted by Spelca: quote: Originally posted by Sir Taliesin: ... Noble Wolf (love your name btw), you say that only the military and police should have firearms. What about this. You apparently live in Australia, right? What if the country of Indonsia were to hold legal elections and a government was installed that was extremely hostile to Australia, to the point that they attacked your country. Let's us suppose that they invaded and captured the terriotory that you lived in. Would you try to fight back? If so, how would you do it? Would you take up a privately held firearm and defend your country or would you stand by and wait on the Australian Army and retake the area?

LOL, I'm sorry, but I find this a bit silly. How are average people supposed to fight against trained soldiers? Are we going to take our guns and rifles and then crawl around in mud and shot soldiers like in some Schwarzenegger (spelling, sorry) film? I don't think anyone would stand much chance, not even with guns. [img]smile.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]How did the resistance movements during WWII do it? Most of them had no military training either. What about in Kosovo? What about the average Viet Cong in Vietnam? How did they do it? How are the FARC in Columbia doing it? Seems to me there are a lot of resistance and revolutionary movements in this world that don't have military training. What about the PLO? A palestian sniper killed 7 Isreali soldiers last month with an old bolt-action rifle. Since the average palestian isn't a soldier, how did he or she do it? Training isn't always necessary, just the will and some common sense.

[Talthyr Malkaviel]

Well, although it was only hypothetical, it wouldn't really be all that hard to defeat them Spelca.
No matter how trained you are, a bullet in the head will kill you, trained soldiers aren't invincible, and being fitter, healthier and perhaps stronger won't help if you are riddled with bullets.
Also, many people with their own guns are great marksmen with them.

[ 05-03-2002, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Talthyr Malkaviel ]

[Spelca]

Originally posted by Sir Taliesin: How did the resistance movements during WWII do it? Most of them had no military training either. What about in Kosovo? What about the average Viet Cong in Vietnam? How did they do it? How are the FARC in Columbia doing it? Seems to me there are a lot of resistance and revolutionary movements in this world that don't have military training. What about the PLO? A palestian sniper killed 7 Isreali soldiers last month with an old bolt-action rifle. Since the average palestian isn't a soldier, how did he or she do it? Training isn't always necessary, just the will and some common sense. [/QB]

LOL, sorry, I guess you're a little bit right there. I just imagined myself crawling around in the mud... Hehe. A funny picture really... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Elif Godson]

I got a puddle of mud over here, care to join me

[Animal]

Milamber, I am enjoying watching you disecting my posts point by point, so I'll give you another opportunity. I think there is some confusion in my argument, which I probably could have stated a little more clearly. I am not interested in the governments definition of mass destruction. No, a gun cannot kill whole cities at a time, but in the wrong hands in can by extremely devastating. I understand your point about recreational shooting with a gun, but a fail to see what possible use a 9mm fully automatic uzi with armour peicing rounds could be for hunting. Do you have many deer wearing Kevlar vests were you live? Most of the populace of the world is not responsible enough to own a firearm, but who is to determine that. A good portion of the populace shouldn't be driving either, but they still do. You can make all the laws you wish to control firearms, be people will still find ways to acquire them. There is no solution or law that will stop lunatics from going on a killing spree short of wiping the gun from existance. I have a hard time understanding how you perceive nuclear weapons to be a deterant. Give one to Hussein or Bin Laden and see what happens. The only thing that has stopped the use of nuclear weapons is the knowledge of the destruction they create.
I wonder what the world would be like if, instead of spending billions on creating a bigger better gun, we used the money for disease research or EDUCATION! Yes, if you give a chimp a gun and the chimp blows away a lab full of scientists it's not the guns fault, it's the idiot who gave him the gun in the first place. Perhaps spending some time educating people as opposed to killing them would be a good thing. I cannot turn on the news these days without hearing gunfire and explosions. How is this creating a better world?
I agree with you on one point. Remove guns and people will find other ways of killing each other, but that's one step closer to solving the problem. To your previous point, yes I do enjoy my freedom and rights, but I do not need a gun to do so. Owning a gun for defense you say? Defense from what? Another gun. Guns have no place in creating a better society for everyone, and that's the goal we should all be striving for. WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Falkland Islands, Cuba, Serbia, Bosnia...the lists goes on and on. When is enough going to be enough? I thought we were more civilized than 50 years ago, but we insist on killing each other with guns.

Again, not intended to insult I just enjoy the banter.

[Alexander]

Originally posted by Thoran: quote: Originally posted by Alexander: quote: Originally posted by Thoran: quote: Originally posted by Alexander: You seem to think that any armed Jews would be armed and trained in the exact same way as the Germans were - which, as we know, would not be true.

Not at all, you're right of course about trainging, but it's fairly standard that an armed resistance inside your borders will require many more troops to quell than the numbers of those armed against you. Look at Israel for instance, I'd guess there's at least an order of magnitude (probably several) more Israeli troops involved in trying to control terrorism than there are terrorists.[/QUOTE]That has nothing to do with gun control![/QUOTE]lol... it was admittedly just an observation based on some statistics I was reviewing, and was in no way intended to be part of the gun control debate... My response was just clarifying my statement, what I'm wondering is why did you respond to it and then make an obvious "not a gun control" statement when I replied?[/QUOTE]Because I was talking about the potential armed Jews in Nazi Germany, and you were talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in which the side opposing the military has bombs and so forth).