Originally Posted by
hawkesnightmare
What are you referring to here? Just curious.
Does ownership of guns inherently make you a murderer? How come other countries can own guns and not have astronomical crime rates? This suggests it's a problem with the culture in USA.
Originally Posted by
hawkesnightmare
To be fair, math and literature is harder to learn than "Don't point that at people."
This is misleading, everyone knows you aren't supposed to point guns at people. There is a high number of accidental deaths, but the most amount of firearm related crime is most certainly on purpose.
Originally Posted by
hawkesnightmare
The way our gun laws are set up are as follows: If you are not a convicted felon, do not have a history of domestic violence, or do not have a debilitating mental condition, you are eligible to purchase and own a firearm. This includes chronically depressed people, but if that person is denied the right to own a gun, and is robbed, it might push that person over the edge, instead of that person owning a gun and being able to defend themselves and possibly gaining self confidence because of it.
Well that's not quite correct because different states have their own laws.
There's been quite a few cases where mentally ill people have purchased guns and then used them, either on themselves or others.
Originally Posted by
hawkesnightmare
The only storage regulations are that they must either be kept in a locked case, or have a trigger lock on them. Everyone that I know does this, and most other people that I have seen also do this. Shooting ranges will not let you shoot unless you have everything locked up, so everyone that goes to a range does it. Please do not assume that most gun owners are irresponsible hicks.
Again, depends on the state, and clearly the laws for your state are inadequate. Just having a trigger lock is not enough.
I would have said the bare minimum is to have to gun stored in a bolted down locked case, with ammo stored separately.
Originally Posted by
protonitron
Your point is a good one, but I feel like just making people more responsible in general is a lot harder that it seems. And being less acceptant of irresponsible people affects the whole country in many ways and would be pretty expensive. I know that at present there are not many other solutions but I don't feel like your system is entirely sensible. Just because you make schemes to make a more trustworthy population doesn't mean that you should make it easier to get guns or that gun crime would stop. Although a greater concern for education and mental care would certainly not be a bad thing whatever the circumstance.
Haha yes I agree, it's not an easy thing to do.
If someone is a criminal they can get a gun, even in countries with strict gun laws. USA isn't having problems because guns are easy to acquire, it's because they have a lot of people who are criminals.
Originally Posted by
Ele
Thinking about shootings and armed robberies, are they more often perpetrated by legal gun owners or illegal gun owners?
If it's by illegal gun owners (which I'm inclined to think it is), then clearly the law's ineffective. We need to look at why that is (I'm guessing it's to do with socioeconomic issues) and think of initiatives/policy to address the causes.
Sorry but if they are illegal gun owners, doesn't that mean they have broken the law already? How will adding more laws be effective?
Originally Posted by
Oracle
If you bothered to look up the liberal perspective on gun registry, you would see that liberals are the predominant political group in America who advocate using mental health as a denying factor for gun ownership. The major groups that outwardly have expressed that mental health should not be a factor with gun ownership have been libertarians or conservatives.
In fact, liberals are the most likely to advocate stricter gun registration and gun ownership laws based on medical and criminal history. It's one of the defining political standpoints of liberals in America. Don't take potshots at liberals if you're just going to be using a blanket generalization of "liberals lose their minds over any discrimination".
I didn't look up their official statement, I'm just going by what I see them post. Obviously liberals is quite a big group, I was referring to just some people who happen to be liberals.