One often hears the quote “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” being used in support of the pro-gun lobby. This quote is partially true (people kill people) but very misleading as it displaces the very real role of technology in the killing.
Guns do kill people and are designed to do so. Look at the horrific school shootings that occurred in the US. These shootings, without fail, used very specific types of firearms. These weapons are specifically designed to kill lots of people with ease. And so they do. Any pistol that holds a dozen bullets and can be reloaded in mere seconds is designed specifically for interpersonal combat at close range. Such a tool is not recreational in nature but a killing machine.
This is not misplaced animism, but an acknowledgement of the role of tools that within a specific context do the very task they are designed to do. One may argue that these damaged and sick individuals are to blame, and not the weapons of choice, because they would have found a way to kill people regardless. And perhaps they would have, but they wouldn’t have been able to kill so many so quickly.
These violent tools also replicate a culture of violence whereby one is in a position to even begin to think of such a tool. Any society that saturates itself with such tools and the language (discourse) that accompanies it is setting itself up for a future of such attacks — they are part of the cultural package.
The role of symbols — of culture — in such attacks and in violence in general needs to be acknowledged. What comes first? The violent rhetoric? Or the violent tools? I think they are created together and build on each other. If a tool is created that can hold 12 rounds and be reloaded in seconds and then becomes part of the acceptable repertoire of available tools, it creates the conditions for horrific acts to be done. In South Africa, the tools are readily available and it is deemed to be acceptable to have them in the house, in the shop and on one’s person. A culture of violence permeated with violent tools.
Removing the tools and changing the available tools can go a long way. The notion that if the criminals are armed we need to be armed to defend ourselves is to condemn society to an internal arms race. I do believe in strict gun control and the scrapping of these tools from public circulation. Items such as hunting rifles should be allowed under strict criteria of training and storage as well as limits on what constitutes a hunting rifle — no magazines of more than three rounds for example.
If the tools are removed the very way they are thought of changes. I personally think this is the difference between American gun violence and the very paucity of the same in Canada.
Guns are readily available in Canada and only recently has there been a system created to regulate them. No pistols or assault rifles were allowed or even available and the penalties for having them were severe.
In Africa violent crime is far too prevalent and the tools to commit atrocities are often far too accessible. So I do argue for strict gun control in South Africa (in fact the world). Naysayers will claim they need to defend themselves against the well-armed thugs. I still say this logic is flawed and dooms society to an internal arms race. The harsh reality faced by people that decide to defend themselves is that the criminals are more likely to use violent force. Most people will not willingly shoot another human.
Guns play a large part in facilitating crime and making certain crimes possible. For sure the guns are already in the hands of the criminals, but the step is not to further arm people.
The changes required are to make violent weapons and the very thought of them repugnant. The laws must also reflect this attitude with harsh sentences and there must be programmes designed to scrap weapons and disarm society.
You are flogging a dead horse. The subject matter can also be argued that just because you don’t like arms therefore those that want to be should not be. A society that wants to have laws that are paternal in nature does not succeed. Freedom also entails the right to control ones life in totality including being armed if one needs to.
Listen Buddy, you can kill multiple people with a wooden club not to mention a car or a rock. You can quote stats until you are blue in the face, the fact of the matter is people kill people no matter what the method. Why don’t you address the reasons for murderous behavior instead of harping on a tool? Take away the tool & we come up with another creative way to do it. You opinion is tantamount to an infringement of freedom and has no depth.
Compare arms control within SA with nuclear arms control in the world. Compare the the US, UK and others who have nukes with the criminals and the others such Iran, Korea with the poor SA civilians who feel threatened. Or you want it the other way around? Iran, Korea the criminals as we are made to believe. They still get the stuff anyway.
Controlling the criminals is seemingly impossible. Solution: like Iraq was flattened for supposedly having dangerous stuff, we could decide to knock out every criminal looking guy just in case he has a gun.
The answer: don’t make the stuff! Close the arms industry. But,there goes another few jobs.
It is much easier to obtain a few everyday “legal” chemicals, components etc and fashion your own bombs, which in the hands of an average person will be far more lethal than a gun in the hand of an average person.
Illegal guns are apparently quite easy to obtain, outlawing them won’t change that, so they are a convenient killing device. But a lack of guns won’t stop a determined person from killing. In fact, he might end up doing more damage.
I suppose we could stop car accidents etc. by banning cars….
Though, I do admit that I am in favour of strict gun control, but not an outright banning of them.
“For sure the guns are already in the hands of the criminals, but the step is not to further arm people.”
So lets make certain criminals never face any armed citizen as it would put them into a hazardous work environment!
Michael, here’s a sign for your next-door neighbor to put up…
This household is well armed and able to protect itself; however my neighbor, Michael, hates guns and is unarmed…help yourself. In deference to his strong stance against lawful citizens being able to arm themselves, we promise not to offend him by coming to his aid with our “tools”.
Noko,
One may argue that most of Europe may be seen as having some paternalistic laws especially concerning gun control. They are hardly a series of failures. Your notion of freedom is flawed; the society you envisage is fraught with fear and intimidation masquerading as freedom.
So now you’re blaming the efficient tool? The mere fact that the gun is designed spectacularly well to do what it does doesn’t mean that it kills. The blame still lies with the person killing.
I have never understood your type of logic around guns and everybody using Canada as an example. WE LIVE IN SOUTH AFRICA. People have every right to arm themselves and defend what is theirs. Would you rather we play the helpless victim? Or flee the country to “greener” pastures in terms of safety?
“I would rather have a gun and not need one, than need a gun and not have one.”
I do not own a gun by strong choice but your arguement is flawed in that it is the people who do the killing not the weapons. Canada has a higher proportional gun ownership than the US but it’s death by guns figures are massively lower than that of the US. So what does that prove, the answer is much longer than a short blog in Thought Leader can show?
Set a gun free (other than hunting/sporting) target for SA in say 20 years and then put a planned/agreed/sensible plan into action to achieve this starting FIRST by agressively taking guns away from the criminals and then in stages from the law abiding citizens – can our society achieve this???
Brent
Guns kill people?
So do motor cars, but both are rather beside the point.
What I posses or don’t posses in my own house or bear upon my person is none of the states business.
Such possession does not impinge upon any other persons rights, and presents no rational grounds for prohibition and lawmaking.
This has never stopped the bureaucrats from invading areas of personal life where they have no business, applying contortions of reason to justify encroachment upon civil liberties in the name of ‘public interest’.
The issue is not restricted to SA or to firearms
“Listen Buddy” – Do people really talk like this?
Mike you are clearly not getting my point about the interface between tools and culture. A tool so imbued with interpersonal violence can only add to the problem at hand. Of course people may use a rock or club, but one cannot kill 15 people so easily with one and a society that creates and spreads violent technology of certain types creates conditions for violent acts. And I do not use any statistics those are usually indicated by things referred to as numbers (for example 2, 3, 99% and so forth). I suggest a closer reading of what I actually wrote rather than a knee-jerk reaction based on an ideological position based on a tainted notion of freedom.
And Mike – I do engage with reasons for violent behaviour elsewhere as well as built into my argument here. A violent culture creates violent weapons that feedback into the violence that besets us all in South Africa.
Poverty is often paraded out as the ultimate cause of violent crime. When that is shown to be false by the very low crime of even poorer places people ten posit that it is levels of inequality that cause violent crime – poverty amidst abundance. That doesn’t pan out as exemplified by many other regions of the world.
There is something else going on here. Violence arises from a culture of violence that has been created through various powerful discourses – one of them is the struggle discourse such as making a region ungovernable (ie in the Cape right now) coupled with the violent past of repression through Apartheid. Add to that a notion of freedom that means we can carry arms and kill those that transgress our properties and indeed find that acceptable and you have a recipe for even further violence.
From Michael Moore’s film “Bowling for Columbine” I learnt that Americans have a constitutional right to carry arms. So too Canadians. Yet the two countries are total opposites of the “aggressive society” spectrum.
In South Africa, the state is unable to protect the society that it serves, therefore we should apply our universal right, to protect ourselves, our families and our property.
We are not seal pups on a barren Canadian white snow wilderness.
The real issue here, is the inability of our police force to control and apprehend illegal gun owners.
Legal gun owners are generally responsible people, who rarely use their firearms to commit crime.
People have a right to protect their property as well. You cannot take away individuals guns while affording corporations the right to carry arms to protect their assets (e.g. cash-in-transit vans).
Guns are effective at defense because most times they are utilized as weapons, they are not fired, but only used to threaten. It is the simple fact that one can easily exert deadly force makes them ideal weapons, because this actually paradoxically results in a more peaceful situation.
The fact that on rare occasion, guns actually have to be fired, and the sometimes people are killed does not detract from the basic fact that dangerous criminals are not afraid to exert deadly force, and that we must be able to protect ourselves from them.
I have never owned a gun, possibly (probably?) never will, but I support the right to arm bears. I mean, to bear arms.
I agree with most of the other respondants that your logic is flawed. I don’t have to like guns to know that I dislike infringements of people’s rights even more.
I think it would be much more productive to channel energies into fixing and improving the police force and the criminal justice system than to take away one of the only tools left to private citizens to defend themselves.
Also, to address the root causes of our violent and insecure society. The private ownership of guns is NOT one of those causes.
I suggest that many people making remarks here should look at the laws of this country a little more carefully. You cannot kill a man for stealing your stuff or breaking in. You are given the right to use deadly force only if actually threatened with death yourself.
As for the threat of deadly force being a good deterrent that has never been proven in any reasonable society – funny enough it only works on police states the very opposite of the freedom you talk of.
Again, I am certain that specific type of guns – all pistols and anything that holds more than 3 rounds should be banned. They have no place and serve no purpose beyond what they were made for.
Rolux – Canadians do not have a ‘constitutional right’ to bear arms. Most types of pistol and any machine gun or assault rifle is banned. There are news laws in place that register every firearm in the state.
It has been shown too many times that having a gun in your house does not help but can actually make you a target by those wishing to have guns and do not forget the thug climbing through your window will gladly kill – are you so sure you would do the same?
You are obviously young and still naive. Remind me again what type of gun was used to kill a million Tutsi people in Rwanda ? and the magazine capacity of the guns the hijackers used on 9/11 ?
GUN CONTROL : The belief that government with its great wisdom and moral superiority can be trusted with a monopoly of deadly force.
I like quotes from great men, forgive me if I hide behind them, I couldn’t have said it better:
“Though defensive violence will always be a ’sad necessity’ in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.” [St. Augustine]
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve to encourage rather than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” [Thomas Jefferson]
oh, and this one ……..
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity” [Sigmund Freud]
I suggest that Michael Francis should look at the law reports of this country a little more carefully. Our Courts have recognised private defence in protection of property, dignity, unlawful arrest, unlawful entry, attempted sodomy, trespassing and defamation, according to Snyman.
But, is this thread not typical of the moral bankruptcy and intellectual dishonesty of the Gun Gestapo? Gun owners offer a debate on the constitutionality of the Firearms Control Act so your average gun grabber runs off and starts a new thread rather than debate the issues.
All that is left now is to ask Michael F just how far he and his ilk are prepared to go to force their taste in beer on us. We know now how much a small technicality like our Constitution means to them.
Hey, Michael, why do you not explain to us how implementation of the Canadian blueprint of the FCA shot up from 2Million Canadian dollars to 2 Billion dollars?
Hazard a guess how much the spectacularly unimplementable FCA has cost South Africa?
I have to side with Jim and was going to bring up Rwanda. Michael, I think you look at SA through theoretical Canadian eyes. So I notice you only target private gun owners, not the arms dealers, SAPS and SANDF who supply most of the guns used to commit murder in SA. Also you do not provide any solutions to the reasons private individuals want guns – to protect them from violent criminals. But then you deal only in broad theory; not practical issues.
Do you really think the banning of private gun ownership would have a negative effect on crime, any crime?
I do not own a gun. The only solution I can think of to crime, is first fortify, then run.
@Jim Stockley
Imagine a Rwanda full of guns. There would have been a massively higher death rate.
I thought my article was quite clear on the nexus between culture and the tools within that culture. what I find in the respondents is a knee jerk reaction and personal attacks. Nothing you say negates any claim I have made about the role of guns in interpersonal violence.
And as for your quotes from ‘great men’, I find that using other peoples ideas can be helpful if you build on them instead of using them to think for you.
St Augustine’s words should be read with doubt as that particular book has been rewritten so many times to justify so many different views. Thomas Jefferson had questionable morals and a political reason for arming the populace to create a militia for a liberation struggle and Freud clearly had his own issues to deal with. And I am not scared of weapons and I am quite a decent shot with a rifle and even competed in Nationals as a teen in Canada.
I have never argued here for a complete banning of all weapons, but for certain types designed for specific purposes such as mass killing. And if honest law-abiding people have guns why not register them? Where is the destruction of freedom in that? Why not have strict rules about who and how they are kept?
@Brett
I would love to change South African taste in Beer as I miss the wonderful cask ales of the UK but would never force my tastes on another as your choice of beer does not mean I may die in a hail of gunfire.
My post here was not in response to another post about the constitutionality of the gun issue. It is a stand alone post as a reflection on the gun culture and the role of violent technology in killings.
The very culture of violence that permeates South Africa is reflected in the responses. Protecting one’s property means potentially killing another, which is not protected by the laws in SA.
And as for the cost associated with the FCA in Canada it is not an issue. If we wish to look at costs as the basis for implementing laws then we could by extension of that logic get rid of all laws and have everybody self-regulate their behaviour.
One can agree or disagree with gun control. No matter your stance on that issue the role of technology and culture cannot be ignored. What has to be decided is what is the response and what we deem acceptable.
Japes
I think that changing the mentality of South Africans would go a long way to changing not just crime but what we think of as acceptable in society. The amount of private guns in South Africa is clearly not a deterrent against crime the notion is blatantly false. Guns may provide a sense of security but they do not reduce crime. There needs to be a state level response to the appalling crime wave, not individual commando units or self defense forces. And it has been shown many times over a gun does not provide real security and many people are shot by their own gun. Most people in SA are good people (in the moral sense) and would not willingly kill another. These types of people become victims of their own morality if they arm themselves. They would not kill when they would have needed to and that hesitation means they die. They have also armed themselves with a false sense of security that they actually do not have.
And yes people do horrible things without guns (ala Rwanda), but guns enable even worse behaviour. They are a vicious tool designed to kill and they inculcate that very violent culture in societies that deem them to be acceptable.
Man up, Michael. Be honest.(Not only about private defence being a ground of justification in our common law for protecting property by force…)This is clearly a clash of world views. Is it not funny how intolerant of dissenting views those are who have brought these epidemics of violence across the world with their permissive attitudes? One obviously cannot find common ground with you arguing principles of constitutionality and individual freedom. So, lets shatter some of your prejudices:
Do you not think your argument about certain classes of firearms being inherently too dangerous to be possessed by civilians falls flat when measured against the Swiss example? You know, the country where most adults have to keep an Sturmgewehr 90 in the cupboard in case the citizen army is mobilised?
More guns=less crime. In South Africa too. Read how our homicide rate plummeted between 1994 and 2000 as a million black gunowners joined the ranks at http://www.gunownerssa.org/crimefree/samurder.html
You seem to have as little respect for other people’s hard-earned as their rights. Not exactly a posterboy for responsible accountable government.
Do you think gun control in Canada is unrelated to the Liberals’ fear of seccessionist talk by the Bloc Québécois? For a simple cost-benefit analysis of gunownership in Canada see
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161208214765&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112188062581
Michael, Are you really post-doctoral; maybe at UKZN where such things can be bought. We’re not talking about property, we’re talking about life (you know heart beating etc). As for Rwanda, I cannot agree. If you did some research (you know books etc) I think it would tell you that guns enable a well placed defender to hold off a greater number of similarly armed attackers at a distance. Attackers are no where near as persistent when they know death is a peep round the corner away (unless they are well trained, stoned or witchcraft comes into it). No other hand held weapon can do this. I reckon, armed Tutsi’s in their houses could have held off armed Hutu’s and killed enough of them to make them think twice.
Go take a walk in Durban, off Kennedy Rd, in Kwa Mashu (Piesang R), or Kwa Dabeka, all maybe at night to recognise how desperate and vulnerable people are (if you say you have I’ll call you on it). They must either defend themselves, the state must defend them or they must leave. They generally have none of these options and so are permanent victims of criminal gangs who rape and plunder at will. Ask about the police, they just laugh; SAPS might come the next day, if at all and this is at best. At worst they are part of the robbers. Otherwise continue from your tiny safe Canadian perspective, but don’t go out
Michael,apologies for the personal attack, couldn’t resist the Freud quote. If Rwanda’s killers only had machetes and the intended victims had access to guns then there wouldn’t have been a massacre. If the killers had guns and the victims were disarmed by gun control (the case?) then the massacre may have been larger but not necessarily so as it would have been louder and attracted more attention. We’ll never know, the victims had no means of defence but “people killed people”.
There was no need to build on the quotes I gave, they made my point in precise language and required no embellishment.
If the gun control you propose ‘trusts me’ with 3 rounds in the magazine, then why no 4 or 6? I have carried and used guns for decades and the lawful circumstance under which I would legally kill people remains constant, whether armed with an R1 or a single shot rifle. The criminals already have high capacity AK47s etc and no law is going to disarm them.
As Jefferson said (irrespective of his morals)
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”
This country would be better served at this time if SAPS used their resourses to arrest criminals. If that were achieved and we had Canada’s crime rate, I might be inclined to support gun control BUT if we had Canada’s crime rate then where would be the need?
One does not have to be Rambo to have rights. The Gun Gestapo have turned the basic premise of a rights culture – that it protects the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us – on its head. They have put all kinds of qualifications and tests (The ISS even proposed mandatory eye tests to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee) in the way of especially our elderly retaining property they had legally acquired, bought and paid for. Michael says our elderly gun owners will not be able to pull the trigger, make themselves kill someone in self-defence, which, according to one Michael Francis, justifies abrogating our elderly’s freedom of choice and their sense of dignity and security (and the rape of a whole host of their constitutional rights).
Even Antony Altbeker admitted his data sets did not support the conclusions GunFreeSA (and MichaelFrancis) were drawing from them for use in the old ‘guns are ineffective for self-defence’ red herring.
That armed civilians are so circumspect about shooting another person in self-defence is praiseworthy. One has to wonder about those who see this as grounds for criticism. That circumspection probably accounts for the extremely low accidental shooting death rate and for the statistically insignificant rate at which gun owners commit crime.
That armed civilians might hesitate when the situation dictates that they ought to be forcefully defending themselves , our society and our social norms, and that the public good might be better served if they responded with force more readily might be reality. What kind of reason for reproach is that? One needs to look at the role of the SAPS’ political commissars in contriving this outcome. It was a long process of intimidation and softening up. Gunowners were bullied and prescribed to how their firearms were to be stored in the privacy of their homes despite S14 of our Constitution(all the time people like yourself were repeating the lie like a mantra that guns were ineffective for self-defence.)
For a long time the SAPS summarily locked up anyone defending themselves with a firearm. That stopped at the end of 2002 because gunowners raised a stink over the arrest of Wilheminah Gole, who shot a couple of armed robbers who attacked her in her spaza in Diepsloot and the prosecution of Devlin Harmse who defended his family with a cricket bay.
When are you going to offer proof for any of the generalisations you fling about like dung?
@Brett
My noting that decent honest people don’t like to shoot people was not a reproach; it was simply acknowledging that they often become victims of their own weapons due to their decency.
South Africa is full of weapons and yet the violent crime rate is one of the highest in the world obviously guns do not reduce the crime rate.
As for the Swiss, they are well armed and well fed, watered, lots of banks little incentive to rob each other, a peaceful culture and strict laws concerning what one may do with their rifles (not pistols my main point of contention).
@Japes
Your knee-jerk reaction is based on an ideological position and not based on facts. Your Rwandan example has logical flaws; if the Tutsi were armed they could have held off their attackers is ridiculous and not very well thought out. In the scenario you envisage the attackers would be as well armed as the defenders. You also miss out that in a genocide all people are targeted so I presume we would have to give the children guns as well?
South Africa obviously needs an overhaul of the police force and policing in general. Right now I, as many others do, pay for private security to ensure our and our properties safety. The poor have no such luxury, but arming the population clearly does not and will not work on reducing crime. Nowhere in the world has the rate of private gun ownership been shown to reduce crime.
I see the gun ownership issue as reflective of a culture of violence that is prevalent in this society. This can not help but inculcate an internal arms where there can be no winner.
And yes Japes I have walked through and spent much time in very poor communities and understand that they are often victims of violent well armed thugs. Handing these people guns will do nothing to protect them but increase reasons to rob them adding more guns into the pool of weapons available to the thugs.
@Brett
You claim that the crime rate plummeted due to new black gun owners after 1994 is not backed by credible statistics. Correlation does not equal causation as one would learn in a first year statistic course. John Lott’s model is not all that credible and he has been subject to serious methodological criticism. His model is also restricted to the USA
One little thing about Quebec and secession. There was a referendum years ago and they chose to stay. If talks started again and they chose to separate from Canada they hardly need to be packing pistols. The gun control laws in Canada had nothing to do with this issue.
@Jim Stockley
No worries it is a good quote if one wishes for a reaction.
My point about the limited rounds is that that would impose limits on types of weapons. No more pistols with 12 rounds clips. The three round clip I refer to is what is often the internal clip in a hunting rifle and some shotguns. Personally if I was to arm myself for defense I would rather a rifle as I know I wouldn’t miss although the neighbours would be potentially unsafe or a shotgun would do wonders with much less potential for harming random strangers at a distance. I would never arm myself though.
I would love to see a massive drive to disarm SA similar to the Mozambique one of a few years ago. Some great art arose out that made from AK47 scraps. Lots still needed there as well.
To reiterate: Between 1994 and 2000 1 million black South Africans who did not share our culture of gunownership which was passed on from generation to generation became gunowners. The homicide rate persistently declined. There was no epidemic of accidental shootings. There was no epidemic of abuse or criminal use of licensed firearms. The only reasonable deduction is that there is a strong negative correlation between rates of gunownership and homicides rates. The higher the rate of gun ownership, the lower the homicide rate. More guns=Less crime.
You offer mindless generalizations – I offer proof. http://www.gunownerssa.org/crimefree/samurder.html
You say you do not reproach our elderly gunowners because they are loath to take lives. Yet, you use it as justification for the dispossession of their property and the trampling of their constitutional rights underfoot.
Denial is far from rebuttal. Your denials are particularly absurd because everyone can see that, if there had been a correlation between homicide rates and the rate of gunownership homicides should have doubled as the rate of gun ownership did. Instead homicide rates declined while all those people were getting licensed handguns.
Brett
I have never said there is a correlation between decreasing level of gun ownership and a decrease in crime. You simply cannot comprehend that if I disagree with your claim that more guns equal less crime it doesn’t mean I think the exact opposite. The world does not operate in binary distinctions.
My claim is that high gun ownership means there is a culture of violence prevalent in society and equipping people with guns builds on the overall culture of violence. And more guns means that crime will be more violent.
Switserland has a higher rate of handgun ownership than South Africa. One more fact that Michael has got wrong, that he will misdirect, gloss over, or avoid. Just like he avoids debate over the abuses of our Constitution and fundamental rights that are a sine qua non for his gun confiscation fantasies.
If you are ready to concede, Michael, that there is no correlation between rates of gun ownership and homicide rates it undercuts completely any moral basis to your expressed preference for gun control. There is no reason to infringe upon other peoples’ freedoms and choices since gun control then serves no public purpose. There is no mischief that is being addressed by gun bans: It is a naked, arbitrary exercise of public power. I like the definition of fascism that describes the use of public power for personal private ends. It implies that you are a perfect fascist manipulating the use of public power to force your taste in beer on everyone else.
@Brett,
You are a bit hung up on this beer thing and it really is a poor analogy. Comparing South Africa to Switzerland is also pointless. That country is rich, well policed, well serviced and little reason exists for interpersonal property crime such as robberies or high-jacking. South Africa has an extremely violent culture and people like you add to it. A violent society does not need violent tools to enable horrific acts. Don’t bother responding I am bored of your rhetoric and lack of real engagement with the issues raised.
A preference for a brand of beer is an arbitrary thing, unjustifiable, unsupported by fact or logic, a simple subjective perception of an appealing taste – like your distaste of handguns.
Regarding Canada
More than 20,000 Canadian gun-owners have publicly refused to register their firearms.
Many others are silently ignoring the law.
The provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have dumped both the
administration and the enforcement of all federal gun-control laws right back into Ottawa’s lap, throwing the Canadian government into a paper civil war.
And all at a cost more than 1,646% the original projected cost (the original cost was estimated at 5% of all police expenditures in Canada).
“The gun registry as it sits right now is causing law abiding citizens to register their guns but it does nothing to take one illegal gun off the street or to increase any type of penalty for anybody that violates any part of the legislation,” according to Al Koenig, President, Calgary Police Association.
“We have an ongoing gun crisis, including firearms-related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them”,
according to Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino.
The system is so bad that five Canadian provinces (British Columbia joins Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Ontario) are refusing to prosecute firearm owners who fail to register.
A bill to abolish the registry has been tabled (introduced) in the Canadian parliament which, if
passed, would eliminate the registry completely.
Fact: Criminals don’t register their guns.
http://www.gunfacts.info – download “A Guide to Debunking Gun Control Myths”, a free e-book online
Quote: “The notion that if the criminals are armed we need to be armed to defend ourselves is to condemn society to an internal arms race.”
And the alternative? Too awful to contemplate!
The alternative to what you facilely call an internal arms race is to fail to be able to defend ourselves and to be slaughtered by armed criminals in even greater numbers that the current 89 per day!
That is no alternative at all – an internal arms race? So be it.
“One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.” Jeff Cooper
There are several facts which are absolute brick walls to gun control and its validity as a crime fighting tool or as a means to take guns from criminals hands.
The first is that there is no known causal relationship between the level of firearm ownership and crime. In 200 years of desperate searching gun control have yet to find this elusive and incredibly unrelated link.
Then we test the hypothesis and examine all the laws passed anywhere in the world to restrict firearms to law abiding citizens. All the interventions tried.
The National Academy of Sciences could not find a single one in all that has been passed in the USA.
The CDC via its review committee could not either.
In reality this is very easy for the gun control advocates to prove. All they need to do is show a statistical percentage of laws passed anywhere in the world have reduce crime or the supply of guns to criminals.
But this total failure will be ignored because it is reason and gun control is not reason it is emotion. Gun control has yet to produce a valid reason for control.
Michael Francis are you trying to suggest that a woman raped and strangled with her own stockings is morally superior to a women that has a dead rapist at her feet and smoking gun in her hand?
Should women just lie back and enjoy being raped. Because you are suggesting if they fight back or object this is somehow wrong. Should rape victims on the off chance of starting a violence race meekly submit or do you have some better response? Should crime victims and murder victims do the same? What language do criminals understand? Please tell us because all others seem to have failed.
I suggest that you produce a self-defences study with a gun that shows a disadvantage to being armed. A valid one not concocted or paid for by gun control which has not been soundly refuted as rubbish. There are at least 20 in the USA knock yourself out.
The act of violence arises through the combination of the gun and the person using it. The fact that guns are readily available in our society just makes it that much easier for a murder to happen. It is indeed unfortunate that the world we live in is so saturated with violence that so many people become so offended at the very thought of not having a weapon. I believe that the fewer guns we have in the world, the better the world will be. The glorification of violence by the media certainly does not help matters either. Why is it that people feel the need to exterminate each other to continue their own existence? There is a great need for a worldwide shift in thinking away from competition and towards mutual care.
Kate do you not understand that there is no known causal relationship between levels of firearms ownership and crime. This simple facts blows your complete emotional propagandistic argument out the water because you are claiming guns do have a causal relationship. That is a lie, no matter how you dress it up with dead and battered babies or raped women.
First produce the verified, peer reviewed and accepted by criminologists the proof of your statements that guns cause crime. When you find it make sure it is claimed as the worlds first because it will be. Until then how about realising that removal for no reason of any property is an Act of TYRANNY and OPPRESSION.
“Guns don’t kill people. Bullets do.”
(Sledeghammer, sometime in the ’80s)