Quote Originally Posted by capt_cope View Post
So much stupidity in this thread.

Amazing how so many of us trick our guns to do things they aren't intended to do! Now that I know the only purpose of a gun is to kill people I'm shocked it even goes bang when I'm shooting at a piece of paper 500 yards away. Not to mention the coyotes, grouse, pheasants, rabbits, and deer. Be nice guys don't tell my guns the truth or they might stop working.

When you start out with these ridiculous arguments, like "the only purpose for guns is to kill people" or "Guns cause kids to have horrible lives and kill people" you not only set yourselves up for failure, you look mighty stupid in the act. You've effectively lost the battle with your first strike.
Agree with you about so much stupidity in this thread.

However, when you start out not recognising that guns were, from the very first, invented and designed to kill people (Yes I know you can kill animals with them, I know you can go target shooting, but their principal purpose always has been to kill people) you've lost the plot in an attempt to convince youself that guns are therefore totally acceptable. You also make the mistake of assuming that people who are anti gun do so from the point of view of ignorance, something I would strongly dispute in my case, or are anti ALL gun use, not the case at all. However I would guess that no amount of argument would change your mind as you are steeped in the US gun culture from childhood. Perhaps if you lived for a time in another country where guns were not common you might then understand.

In the UK, we had a school shooting back in the 90's at Dunblane, where a nutter went into a school and killed 16 kids and 1 adult before killing himself. I believe these guns were legally owned. Subsequent legislation to control gun ownership was put in place. This may or may not be the reason we have not had a repeat of this occurrence. Yes we do have a minor problem with illegal guns in some of our inner cities, and the shooting of teenagers, but this is largely a certain section of the community (it would be politically incorrect for me to identify them) involved in teenage gang warfare, and the killings are largely confined to this group.

I tend to feel that the easier it is for people to kill, particularly those who are mentally disturbed, whether through mental illness or temporary insanity due to an emotional disturbance or the like, and killing with a gun is much easier than bludgeoning someone to death with a hammer or getting close enough to stick a knife through their ribs, the higher the rate of homicide will be. The US has approximately two and a half times the number of homicides per head of population than the UK or virtually all of Europe does.