digsy
New Yorker
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2004
- Messages
- 2,853
elfyx said:
thats just backwards.
are you in the midst of some 18th century war where you live by any cahnvce?
i've had a pretty good idea of both worlds - i come from south africa where guns are totally legal (and my mother owned one when i was a kid) and now i live in the UK where guns are totally illegal - not even the cops carry them.
in south africa (and everywhere where gun violence is an issue) guns create a viscious circle - criminals have guns because cops and people have guns and they steal them. therefore you have an armed criminal element so you need more arms in the police force and more arms in the home. therefore more guns to steal, more guns required to protect ourselves and so on and so forth, round we go again.
ironically most people killed by guns are killed by their own personal weapon that gets wrestled off and used against them. i was terrified of my mother and her gun because i wasnt confident that she would be able to use it. also, gun laws protect the criminal and make it difficult to legally use your weapon. you can't keep it in your car (where considering hijackings it would come in handy) and when its in the house it has to be locked in a safe so when someone does break in you have to ask them to be patient while you go get your gun out!
also the attacker has to be in your abode, not neccesarily on your property before you can act. so if you see someone in your garden you have to wait till they are physically in your house and in your face before you pretect yourself. this increases the opportunity of the criminal to get that weapon from you and use it against you.
break any of these and you go to jail for manslaughter or something else while all you were trying to do was to protect yourself and your family from a guy weilding the weapon he stole from your neighbours the week before.
go to the uk and you just dont see guns. criminals dont have them because there's no where to get them from. ok hunting rifles are allowed but they're not exactly general public household appliances and aren't that common, but most (not all) of the police dont have guns, the public dont have guns and therfore the criminals dont have guns. gun crime isnt undeniable but not nearly at the extent that it is in gun-legal countries.
i'm not saying guns are the route of all crimes and if we take them away we'll be a free and happy society. not at all.
but in the uk i cannot instantly or specifically recall the last incident of a gun related murder or crime i heard or read about.
compare that to south africa where i had a gun held to my head, and more recently a close friend of mine was hijacked at gunpoint and then knocked unconcious with the butt of the gun.
your Republic's right to bear arms is what gets you into trouble in the first place - americans let their "right to everything" get in the way of a clearer vision. yes it is your right to own a gun BUT its also the right of your children to go to school and not be mowed down by the guy from over the road who took daddies gun . the gun owners right seems frivolous in comparison really
and heston can yell all he wants but they wont need to pry any gun out of his "cold dead hands" as it'll be in the hands of the guy who killed him with it in the first place.
BTBS is a very powerful song with a very poerwul message and its the perfect place to showcase the ludicrousness of what heston and his NRA buddies believe is their right.
it rightfully makes a mockery of the laws that these guys support
now if you dont mind i'm going to Free Your Mind to rant some more as i think i've totally gone off the topic here.
