Gun Control

[Done 2]

Hey Girlygirl's husband,

you wouldn't happen to be MY husband, with another wife? ha ha, just joking.

Do you post to CGN? Just curious.

My husband does his own loads as well and competes in the BCRA Sniper competition (I think that's what it is called) and in tactical shooting as well.

I had a brief stint in the military years ago and of course was trained on how to use a firearm. Before we had kids I tried shooting at the range (back when the one in Port Moody was still open) but didn't really like it anymore.

Whenever there is a shooting reported in the paper, we always ask, "I wonder if that gun was registered". Vast majority of time they aren't.

I agree that there are a lot of careless idiots out there, but we are extremely safe, and our house would have to be blown up by a missile in order to gain access to my husband's firearms. They aren't used for home protection, they are his hobby.

[transformer 1]

My father was a police officer. His weapon was stored in our house--the gun in one location, ammo in another. My two brothers were career military men who were trained to shoot weapons of course. I would be perfectly comfortable if any of them decided to carry a weapon as a civilian because they know what they are doing. If I were properly trained, I would not have a problem carrying a legally-obtained, licensed weapon either.

Many lives could be saved if someone would have a licensed gun on them when some "psycho shooter" decides to open fire in a public place. A person properly trained to discharge a weapon could take out the nutjob in a nanosecond, thus preventing further carnage. The nutjob should not have been allowed to purchase a gun legally in the first place if the laws we have currently in place were actually followed and all of the loopholes were closed.

We have the right to defend our lives and property. If I'm in a life or death struggle, I plan on surviving no matter what it takes. All scumbags can consider themselves warned...

[nina874 48]

Not something that has ever crossed my mind!!

I suppose if I lived in a country where everyone had a right to one, which meant that all of the small time bad guys and idiot teenagers could get hold of one, I might want one too.

Here in the UK the bad guys have them but as a general rule they just shoot each other, which is kind of a cost effective way of dealing with the gang problems.

[Beka 0]

Thanx, grrl, for the invite. I have weighed in on this issue before on R&R and had become tired of discussing it with folks who hold the point of view that guns are a necessary household appliance. The U.S. is the only post-industrialized nation in the world which has such loose regulations concerning gun ownership. It is also the world's leader in gunshot deaths.

I live in a large Canadian city which has a population of approximately 3 million. At this time of writing our local death rate for 2007 by shooting is somewhere around 60 people. Most of these have been young black males who belong to gangs and have been shot by rivals. Occasionally an innocent gets caught in the crossfire. This is always a tragedy. These clowns obtain their firepower illegally from your country.

Your average honest Canadian citizen does not own a gun and does not, moreover, feel the need to own a gun. We believe that owning a gun does little to protect us but that it may in fact escalate a mugging, rape, or robbery from an admittedly terrifying experience into something which will result in deaths, sometimes of the victim. Most criminals are not killers. They usually want money or items which they can turn into cash and then they leave. When honest citizens own guns disasters can occur. There will be accidental deaths. And there will be an escalation in violence whenever criminal activity does take place.

I have only ever met one private citizen who owns guns and he is a gun collector. Up here cops and gang members have guns. Farmers and hunters have rifles. The rest of us live safely without them.

With you on this one green. I think NZ and Canada are very similar in a lot of aspects (except you guys get far colder). My husband has guns because he is an olympic clay bird shooter - had to go through huge process to get license for it and it expires every five years. The guns are locked in a gun safe completely dismantled and ammo is kept in another safe, never ever would it even cross my mind to use them for defense. I think giving 'everyone the right' to bear arms is a bit like the chicken and the egg - the bad guys get guns so the good guys get guns, someone breaks into your home they are going to bring guns because they 'know' you will probably have one. Break ins in NZ involving guns are extremely rare and the site of a dog is usually enough to give them a scare. But I guess if you knew that the strange man coming through your door had a gun, owning a gun might be the only option.

[transformer 1]

I think giving 'everyone the right' to bear arms is a bit like the chicken and the egg - the bad guys get guns so the good guys get guns, someone breaks into your home they are going to bring guns because they 'know' you will probably have one.

I see what you mean about the "chicken and the egg" idea, but I don't think that the majority of Americans actually have weapons in their homes. Many people don't want guns around when they have children in the house. I also don't think that most criminals commit crimes using guns. Most break-ins are done when people aren't even home by drug addicts seeking things to hock for more drug money. Most of the shootings I hear about turn out to be drug or gang-related and typically involve two criminals out to get one another (a drug deal gone bad, revenge killings, etc.). I don't have any hard facts to back that opinion--I'm just going on information from the reports I hear on the news.

I don't have a weapon in the house currently, but I want to maintain the right to purchase and carry a weapon if that is something I decide to do someday. I can't shrug off the nagging feeling that it can't be a good thing for only the government, the military, and the criminals to have all of the weapons...

[marnie723 0]

In the newspaper here in Texas several days ago a man shot another man to death in a case of road rage gone bad! They were road racing & the loser got angry, got out of his car with a baseball bat at an intersection & starting banging the other man's car. The man IN THE CAR, who had the option to drive away, shot the baseball bat welding guy 3times and isn't facing ANY CHARGES because it was considered self-defense!! Now since I've debated this before & see a pattern in how a pro-gunner thinks they might be saying "well good thing he had that gun" But since I've lived in a country with strict gun-laws I see this as a completely unbalanced assault, taken to a crazy level of violence & can't believe the guy in the car didn't just drive away or move in some way....crazy.</p>

[gadgetlady 4]

Do you know for sure that he couldn't get away? Maybe his car was blocked in, etc. If they're not charging him with anything it's likely there are some details to that effect.