Han wrote:

So responsible use
isn't universal, and when that gets extended to weapons of the
Bushmaster ilk, the consequences are rather horrible.

Collectively, I can imagine there are over 1 million man-years of
Bushmaster-ilk ownership and usage without a single horrible consequence.

I still have
to hear of a reason that I would consider valid for owning such a
weapon in an individual's home. I can see the "fun" of firing it at
a range, but then it should be locked up in a really effective way so
it can't possibly be used irresponsibly. If that can't be guaranteed
(I know), then the weapon shouldn't be owned by individuals, just
like real military weapons.

In England, guns are locked up at approved "gun clubs." How's that working
out for gun-related violence? Actually not very well. Not very well at all.


The (IMO) terrible thing is that you are probably correct. All
because the genie is out of the bottle by now, and it will be
impossible to retrace all those weapons in circulation.

So quit lamenting over what may have been. Time to move on. Get a weapon of
your own to protect yourself and the one's you love.


Obviously weapons have their uses. And I am indeed anti-gun for
private citizens, other than really self-defense weapons. Do we have
to go back to the Al Capone days??

There were slightly more than 500 homicides committed last year with a rifle
(of any sort). That's chump-change in the grand scale of things. Over 100
million people own rifles and you'd punish them for a piddly 500 deaths?
Outstanding!


Registries are used to track down lawful citizens and lawful weapons.
How does that stop crime? Ever?

Perhaps, as someone else said, there isn't enough effort and money
spent to prevent the weapons from falling into the wrong hands. The
weapons Spenger used were legally produced and sold, except Spenger
illegally got his hands on them. Soon we'll know how he managed to
do that. I wonder how you then will propose to prevent the same
thing from happening again.


I don't believe you can. It's just something we have to accept because ALL
remedies proposed are obviously worse than the problems the purport to
solve.



Gang deaths are just to be written of?

Yes.

Suicides too?

Yes.

Apart from the
fact that those events are officially illegal, they are also tragic,
though not (perhaps) on the same level as the deaths of those first
graders and their teachers in Newtown, CT.


Gun homicides are NOT, in the main, tragic. They help to improve society
overall.


Larry, we do all kinds of things to prevent falls, accidental
poisoning, traffic accidents, and so on. But we should ignore
firearms-related deaths?

Yeah, pretty much.

Come on ... And homicide by gun is easily
prevented. Get rid of the gun.

Arrant nonsense.
1. You CAN'T get rid of the gun. Americans WANT their guns. Trying to remove
280 million firearms from American society is a fool's errand. Remember the
dismal failure of prohibition? Anyway, wishing for something impossible is
evidence sufficient of a deep-seated psychological problem.

2. Further, just ATTEMPTING to get rid of guns has proven to be
counter-productive. Most recently, Australia tried it and best estimates
indicate only 7% of the gun-owning citizenry complied. England also
attempted gun removal and gun crime increased. Canada started down that
road, and after expending a significant amount* on the project, finally gave
up.

Moreover, attempting to remove guns from society may very well - in the
short run for sure - INCREASE gun homicides as we will have to be stepping
over the bodies of slain federal agents littering the sidewalks and byways.

-----------
* Over $2 billion as of 2004, 27% of the RCMP budget. This amount covers the
registration of 1.9 million Canadian firearms owners and 7.8 million
firearms. Extrapolate that to 180 million firearm owners in the U.S. and 280
million guns.