5 year old given rifle as gift, kills 2 year old sister

[Kenbushway]

WRONG. I see this argument all the time and it really annoys me because it is absolutely wrong. Guns can be used to kill people, sure, but that is not their only purpose by any means. They are primarily a recreational object but they can also be used for killing. I and many people I know have done a lot of shooting.

I think you got that backwards...
They where meant to quickly and easily kill living beings...
That a lot of people now go to a shooting range and use their guns for target shooting is a good side-effect/evolution...
But 2 reasons why this happened are that we don't have to hunt our own food anymore and there is law-enforcement for when dangerous people need to be stopped...
But guns aren't toys or sports-equipment, they are power-tools for killing animals and humans...

Yes actually people do have to hunt for their own food still. Not everyone lives the life you do, nor does everyone want to. You maybe comfortable eating the shit they put in the food at stores, other don't want to (and they are better for it). Also not everyone can afford to go the store and buy the food needed to feed their family. There is more than just your lifestyle out there in the world.

 

[Rincewiend]

WRONG. I see this argument all the time and it really annoys me because it is absolutely wrong. Guns can be used to kill people, sure, but that is not their only purpose by any means. They are primarily a recreational object but they can also be used for killing. I and many people I know have done a lot of shooting.

I think you got that backwards...
They where meant to quickly and easily kill living beings...
That a lot of people now go to a shooting range and use their guns for target shooting is a good side-effect/evolution...
But 2 reasons why this happened are that we don't have to hunt our own food anymore and there is law-enforcement for when dangerous people need to be stopped...
But guns aren't toys or sports-equipment, they are power-tools for killing animals and humans...

Yes actually people do have to hunt for their own food still. Not everyone lives the life you do, nor does everyone want to. You maybe comfortable eating the shit they put in the food at stores, other don't want to (and they are better for it). Also not everyone can afford to go the store and buy the food needed to feed their family. There is more than just your lifestyle out there in the world.

That's why i said "A lot of people", not "Everybody"...
So again, the majority of people in the USA that owns a gun doesn't need it to hunt to feed themselves, a minority still does...
The majority of people that hunt do it mostly for "sports" and expanding their food options...
Clear enough for ya, sport?!?

 

[teya]

Would all of you who are against private ownership of weapons but who also eat meat be willing to pay the people who raise that meat additional money per pound so that they can cover the losses from predators that they'd incur without a gun?

This would also go for anyone who wears wool, mohair or angora.

I swear, the disconnect between urban and rural in this century is unbelievable. You would think the clothes you wear and the food you eat was replicated.

Gun owners, you are not helping by shrugging off parents who irresponsibly give way-too-young children guns. You can tell a 5 year-old "only with adult supervision" till you're blue in the face, but that doesn't mean he's always going to pay attention to you.

For the record, I learned to shoot bb guns at six, and handled my first shotgun at 12. Seems like reasonable ages to me.

 

[MacLeod]

^Remember many countries around the world have tighter gun laws than the US and many of those countries citizens eat meat.

 

[Kenbushway]

I think you got that backwards...
They where meant to quickly and easily kill living beings...
That a lot of people now go to a shooting range and use their guns for target shooting is a good side-effect/evolution...
But 2 reasons why this happened are that we don't have to hunt our own food anymore and there is law-enforcement for when dangerous people need to be stopped...
But guns aren't toys or sports-equipment, they are power-tools for killing animals and humans...

Yes actually people do have to hunt for their own food still. Not everyone lives the life you do, nor does everyone want to. You maybe comfortable eating the shit they put in the food at stores, other don't want to (and they are better for it). Also not everyone can afford to go the store and buy the food needed to feed their family. There is more than just your lifestyle out there in the world.

That's why i said "A lot of people", not "Everybody"...
So again, the majority of people in the USA that owns a gun doesn't need it to hunt to feed themselves, a minority still does...
The majority of people that hunt do it mostly for "sports" and expanding their food options...
Clear enough for ya, sport?!?

"we don't have to hunt"

That is what you said Sport.
Not my fault you didn't put what you actually meant.

 

[teya]

^Remember many countries around the world have tighter gun laws than the US and many of those countries citizens eat meat.

And guess what? I bet their farmers are allowed to protect their livestock.

 

[Avon]

the constitution should only cover the right to weaponry from when it was written; so muskets. you can still hunt with a musket. you can still go to shooting ranges with muskets. but it'd be a lot harder to do a massacre with a single shot weapon that takes 20 seconds to reload. so muskets for all!

 

[1001001]

And another...

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/05/06/Boy-accidentally-shoots-wounds-sister/UPI-38111367857151/

I just cannot understand why people with children do not secure their guns.

 

[gturner]

^ We also had cannon when the Constitution was written, and they were often privately owned. People even owned warships back then.

Among other snags with that idea, the Founders up-gunned as often as they could. The 1819 Hall breech loader, developed in about 1811, became US military issue and in one case were awarded to civilian children by the government (those particular rifles are worth a fortune now).

And of course that means that any media source fancier than a hand-cranked printing press would no longer be protected under the first Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruled under Heller that the 2nd Amendment protects the right to commonly used arms, those typically chosen by the people for their own defense. The people, through the market, mark the line that the government can't cross.

 

[farmkid]

WRONG. I see this argument all the time and it really annoys me because it is absolutely wrong. Guns can be used to kill people, sure, but that is not their only purpose by any means. They are primarily a recreational object but they can also be used for killing. I and many people I know have done a lot of shooting.

I think you got that backwards...
They where meant to quickly and easily kill living beings...
That a lot of people now go to a shooting range and use their guns for target shooting is a good side-effect/evolution...
But 2 reasons why this happened are that we don't have to hunt our own food anymore and there is law-enforcement for when dangerous people need to be stopped...
But guns aren't toys or sports-equipment, they are power-tools for killing animals and humans...

That's what guns were originally developed for, but that's not what they're used for anymore. I know a few people who have bought guns for hunting (most of whom have several guns and only one or two are for hunting), but most people I know with guns have them for purely recreational purposes. Not a single one of them bought them for killing someone.

Are you really going to tell me that the primary purpose of guns is for killing things when they almost never are used for that? When at most 1 in 1000 times one is used (and probably much less than that) that it is used with the intention of killing something? Sorry, but that's ridiculous.

Gun owners, you are not helping by shrugging off parents who irresponsibly give way-too-young children guns. You can tell a 5 year-old "only with adult supervision" till you're blue in the face, but that doesn't mean he's always going to pay attention to you.

I don't think anyone is condoning the parents' actions in this instance. For the most part, the pro-gun people here have said that either 5 is way too young, or that the kid should never have had access to the gun without close supervision, or both.

And no, I would never expect a 5-year-old to be perfectly obedient. That's the purpose of a gun safe/trigger lock. They can disobey all they want, but if they can't get access to the gun unsupervised they aren't going to kill someone in an accident such as this.

For the record, I learned to shoot bb guns at six, and handled my first shotgun at 12. Seems like reasonable ages to me.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. That's similar my own experience and that of my children.

 

[iguana_tonante]

^Remember many countries around the world have tighter gun laws than the US and many of those countries citizens eat meat.

And guess what? I bet their farmers are allowed to protect their livestock.

And guess what? We are perfectly fine with that. Now show me that having 9 guns for every 10 Americans is needed to defend their livestock, or that 5-year old kids need their rifles to protect their pet hamsters from wolves, and you might have a point. Otherwise, you are just grasping at straws. And missing them.

 

[teya]

^Remember many countries around the world have tighter gun laws than the US and many of those countries citizens eat meat.

And guess what? I bet their farmers are allowed to protect their livestock.

And guess what? We are perfectly fine with that. Now show me that having 9 guns for every 10 Americans is needed to defend their livestock, or that 5-year old kids need their rifles to protect their pet hamsters from wolves, and you might have a point. Otherwise, you are just grasping at straws. And missing them.

I see a lot of people saying, "There is no reason to own guns in this day and age."

Maybe not to them. Other people in other places have other perspectives.

And to make *your* point, you ignore what I said about kids and guns.

 

[gturner]

And guess what? We are perfectly fine with that. Now show me that having 9 guns for every 10 Americans is needed to defend their livestock, or that 5-year old kids need their rifles to protect their pet hamsters from wolves, and you might have a point. Otherwise, you are just grasping at straws. And missing them.

What would it matter if we had ten guns per American, or a hundred? The people with lots of guns (I used to own thirty or so) commit probably 0.1% of the crime. Many of the states with ridiculously high rates of gun ownership, like Wyoming, have lower homicide rates than England or Italy. Places where they're banned, like Chicago and DC, might as well be a Yugoslavian war zone.

If high rates of gun possession caused crime, wouldn't soldiers and police make up 90% of the prison population?

 

[iguana_tonante]

I see a lot of people saying, "There is no reason to own guns in this day and age."

Maybe not to them. Other people in other places have other perspectives.

You are right, I'm sorry. For some reason, people are just speaking for the overwhelming majority of people in western nations who live in urban and sub-urban communities, forgetting about the tiny percentage that lives in the wilderness, fighting bears and wolves on a daily basis. That completely destroys our reasoning, because everybody knows that ignoring a few outliners is something you just can't do when speaking about entire nations. So I'll rephrase. "There is no reason for people living in civilized places to own guns in this day and age. Exceptions allowed for wild folk and ravagers".

What would it matter if we had ten guns per American, or a hundred? The people with lots of guns (I used to own thirty or so) commit probably 0.1% of the crime. Many of the states with ridiculously high rates of gun ownership, like Wyoming, have lower homicide rates than England or Italy. Places where they're banned, like Chicago and DC, might as well be a Yugoslavian war zone.

If high rates of gun possession caused crime, wouldn't soldiers and police make up 90% of the prison population?

Conspicuous strawmen aside (nobody has ever said that guns cause crime), care to back up your statistics with numbers, or are we going to believe that you pulled them from your arse as usual?

Because:

Firearms Homicide Rate per 100,000 population in Wyoming: 0.9 (source)
Firearms Homicide Rate per 100,000 population in England&Wales: 0.07 (source)

 

[gturner]

^ Gee, you compared firearm homicide rates instead of homicide rates. If you do that then Russia seems like one of the safest countries on Earth, even though their homicide rates dwarfs America's, and by that sleight of hand measure the Rwandan genocide killed about three people.

 

[MacLeod]

^The next argument iguana, will be that the UK has a higher violent crime rate than the US. But crimes can be recorded differently from country to country, I think in the UK any crime commited agaisnt a person is classed a sa violent crime. I.e if you punch someone causing no serious injury maybe not even a bruise it would be classed as a violent crime.

Both having restrictive and less restrictive gun control have there pros and cons. It's a trade off yes you might suffer a rise in violent crime, but would that be compensated for by a fall in the homicide rate?

Which is more valuable a human life or the right to own a gun?

 

[MacLeod]

^ Gee, you compared firearm homicide rates instead of homicide rates. If you do that then Russia seems like one of the safest countries on Earth, even though their homicide rates dwarfs America's, and by that sleight of hand measure the Rwandan genocide killed about three people.

The overall homicide rate in the US is still something like 4 times the UK.

 

[iguana_tonante]

^ Gee, you compared firearm homicide rates instead of homicide rates.

I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about guns.

Now I see that actually this unfortunate kid killed his poor baby sister using a military-grade modified spork. My apologies. Terrible stuff. Just terrible.

 

[Miss Chicken]

And guess what? We are perfectly fine with that. Now show me that having 9 guns for every 10 Americans is needed to defend their livestock, or that 5-year old kids need their rifles to protect their pet hamsters from wolves, and you might have a point. Otherwise, you are just grasping at straws. And missing them.

What would it matter if we had ten guns per American, or a hundred? The people with lots of guns (I used to own thirty or so) commit probably 0.1% of the crime. Many of the states with ridiculously high rates of gun ownership, like Wyoming, have lower homicide rates than England or Italy. Places where they're banned, like Chicago and DC, might as well be a Yugoslavian war zone.

If high rates of gun possession caused crime, wouldn't soldiers and police make up 90% of the prison population?

I think is unfair to compare a small, mainly rural state to the whole of Britain.

Also it would seem that you are taking Wyoming's lowest figure and using it as the 'murder rate'. Because of its small population Wyoming murder rate can flutuate greatly year from year.

Number of murders in Wyoming since 2000

2000 - 12
2001 - 9
2002 - 15
2003 -14
2004 - 11
2005 - 14
2006 - 9
2007 - 16
2008 - 12
2009 - 11
2010 - 8
2011 - 18

When Wyoming's number of murders is in single digits - Yes, it is below the British murder rate. However in those years when it is 14+ the murder rate is considerable higher that Britain's.

Tasmania has a population slghtly smaller than Wyoming's (though our capital is twice the size of Wyoming's largest city) and the number of murders in year in Tasmania since 2000 has ranged from 3 to 11 so sometimes there has been a three times increase in the murder rate from year to year (we tend to average around 8 murders a year).

Going on the above figures Wyoming has averaged about 12 murders a year since 2000 which means it has an average murder rate of over 2.0 per 100,000 which is actually higher than Britain's murder rate.

 

[Stoo]

Right. Its not useful to take one empty and rural bit of America and compare it to the whole of a densely populated and highly urbanised country,

Firearms Homicide Rate per 100,000 population in Wyoming: 0.9 (source)
Firearms Homicide Rate per 100,000 population in England&Wales: 0.07 (source)

Ok people keep doing this and it's slightly annoying. Isn't it *total* murder rate that matters? And our total murder rate is indeed less than america.