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#debate

originally posted in:Secular Sevens
Edited by Ric_Adbur: 1/17/2013 5:20:02 AM
20

Gun Control

Jred, Baph, and I discussed this a bit in Steam chat earlier, and we disagreed heavily on what should be done. I don't like debating in chatrooms, because it's difficult to type long arguments at that speed, so I thought I'd make a thread about it. In the past, I have been of the opinion that gun control is similar to the war on drugs - banning firearms will do nothing but take them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, while doing effectively nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining them, and also turning otherwise upstanding citizens into criminals for no good reason. However, recently I have also been swayed by the argument that certain weapons do not belong in the hands of the public due to their inherent danger. In the wrong hands, certain classes of weaponry are much more dangerous than others. Fully-automatic action weapons, for example. They have the potential to cause much greater harm at a much higher rate, and with much greater efficiency than if a semi-automatic weapon were used in the same context. It is the same reasoning behind why missiles, explosives, bombs, artillery, and other such weaponry is kept out of the hands of private citizens. Full-auto weapons aren't necessary for personal defense purposes, nor for hunting, and are in fact overkill in both roles. So there are only three reasons for someone to have them; 1 - they are a member of a military or law-enforcement group, 2 - they are an unstable or unethical individual bent on wanton violence, or 3 - they just think it's fun to shoot. I do not think 'fun' is a sufficient reason to balance out the danger of allowing such weapons to continue to be available to the public. Thoughts?

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  • I think focusing on banning "assault weapons" is stupid. I think you're rather privileged if that's the danger you choose to focus on in a western nation. Fact of the matter is high caliber weapons firing jacketed steel core rounds are hardly used in murders in the US, they're just not effective for anything other than a shooting spree where the gunman doesn't mind dying, and this isn't as common as other types of homicides. I think the more effective approach is to study what conditions make certain places have a higher concentration of violence and crime than others, and develop solutions that address violent crime as a whole, not just school shootings.

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