Why were guns invented to begin with, and how has the world changed since that time?

It's not what I consider, it's statistics. Facts are facts.

This isn't pissing in alleyways.

There are many things that YOU can't consider because you don't know the OTHER side of it (the one abroad). I know, but you clearly don't wanna listen to that.

I'm almost sure that you don't know what it is like to go out everyday worried about the REAL possibility you'll get shot randomly. That is REAL for some people and I've seen it and I know that could be minimized.

And that is why I feel strongly about it, because a lot of those deaths could have been avoided, and none of us are any more important than any of those people who died in vain.

I sincerely hope that you never lose a loved one over the cowardice of a gun, but I assume you your views would be different if you did.

So this is it, THE END.

well.

I've lost two friends due to automobile accidents.

I know MANY people that own guns. I'd go as far as to say most people that I know own guns...

I only ever met one person (not exactly a friend, but I knew him well....) that died via being shot.

If there was an end, you would have stopped already....but you can't because my side is STILL (and will continue...) to win.

Sorry, knox.

I remember seeing a great series on the History Channel about the history of the gun before the channel went to shit.

The first firearms were invented by the Chinese for feudal warfare and then made their way to Europe in the late Dark Ages for European warfare.

I lost an uncle to an automobile accident. But fortunately, automobiles are not being used to control and terrorize entire communities. I've met a lot of people who were shot, I've had guns pointed at me, and I've seen people being shot. So yeah, you win. The dead people lose. It's a game, you win. Rejoice.

Knox should own a gun to protect herself.

She should also play Carmageddon.

It is a game, agreed. Everything is a game...you've been playing one all along.

Yr cards include drawing false assumptions...again, I know someone that was shot. I've been threatened (once) with gun violence (even though I didn't see the actual gun), and I did indeed walk into a robbery once at gun point...that's a story I don't wish to go into...but, yeah....you aren't the only person that has dealt with shit.
And for the ten millionth time....most people that own guns don't WANT to kill anyone more than a driver wishes to get into an accident.

Risks...they are mandatory. Guns might as well be mandatory because they aren't going anywhere.

Sway should buy a gun to protect himself from all the crazies.

Some people don't wanna get the big picture.

No, sorry, you don't know anything about violence. Not like I do.
And that's the truth and you're probably "lucky" like that.

I will....winning feels nice.

But, I'm not paranoid. I realize the risks and am not afraid of them.....I'm crazy, you crazy, everybody crazy. Very few are crazy enough to ever pull a trigger.

Agreed 100%.

Only if I had the ability to word things so well...

Repped.

That could be someone's perspective when they are not seeing groups use guns to control entire communities (and don't tell me poor people can buy THOSE guns, and even if they did, there'd be some serious genocide there), places in certain countries that the only term to describe it is civil war. There are places on Earth where people's lives are really shit, and the chances of something happening to you have nothing to do with awareness or a casuality, they are real.

Of course other social threats have to be addressed but that takes a long time. But you can regulate the industry NOW and fairly easily and save thousands of lives. This is something DOABLE. I'm hoping most countries will sign the UN Treaty, but no surprise, US is the only country that seems to be resisting it.

We know that's possible, because we've seen many places regulate and limit guns and really see a decrease in homicide rates. That is just a fact, it's there to be seen and if people can be saved, why not? Which "liberty" principles should come before human life? In fact, I've seen a DRAMATIC decrease myself since the government started paying people to return their guns and destroying every gun every taken from civilians/criminals.

There isn't much "awareness" that'll make your life less shit if you're living in a violent town in Mexico, for example.

It's about time countries start taking responsibility for the repercussions of their doings in other places.

Cutting those deaths by let's say, half is pretty fucking doable. All you have to do is start introducing regulations to gun industry and ownership. Like I said before, 1,000 million legally purchased guns "go missing" every year. There is a loophole and those are the bits of information that a lot of people have been conveniently ignoring in this debate.

This is the homicide rate in ONE year by every 100,000 inhabitants in these cities:

Washington D.C. had a homicide rate of 45.8 homicides per 100,000 residents, Detroit had 42.0, Memphis had 24.7, Baltimore had 38.3, Chicago had 22.2

Are most of those stabbings? I doubt. I agree there are many OTHER factors to tackle in order to reduce violence, probably more important ones. But on the other hand I know you can easily, within the span of few years cut that by half at least.

The overall homicide rate in the US/100,000 is over 5.

Homicide rate in the United Kingdom by 100,000 inhabitants:
1,49

I didn't say complete disarmament I've been saying there needs to be more regulation, a lot more. The weapons become more and more powerful with techonology, but laws and regulations haven't been updated.

The first priority is to regulate the industry, and then ownership, and that's where people have been getting all butthurt about it: it has to be a permit rather than a right.

What about all millions of guns floating around that have already been bought and paid for? We gonna get the police to confiscate them, Knox?

you mean from civilians? they can ask them all to re-apply for permits.
in some places, they have urged people to hand them in, and it worked.
in other places, they got paid or got tax reduction.

as for confiscating guns from criminals, they already do.
and then this is should be done
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:q.../armas.jpg&t=1

how could "re-applying for permits" for guns that I already own change anything? If I'm a law abiding citizen which like 99.9% of gun buyers are, than this is a ridiculous waste of time, money and resources. Criminals will continue to posses them by any means not to mention find means of gaining an advantage by form of weapon over others. I'm not crazy and I'm responsible. Criminals are not accountable and capable of putting me or my families life in danger and with no regard to laws or consequences at will. I observe and appreciate my ability to keep the advantage over them by owning a firearm.

Your "house security alarm" is a cute story and works well for commercials. I have a good home security system. I love it, but only because if any seal is broken, I'm alerted and just as soon I'm gun in hand. My friend in New Orleans had an alarm.... they even called him. He was on the phone with them. They were on the phone with the police all the while, he ended up shooting the intruder dead, 3 shots by shotgun because the intruder kept advancing towards him meanwhile telling him crazy things like he had other people with him, upstairs and all. This isn't what if scenarios and veiled statistics.... it's real life Knox. This is a one of my brothers best friends who practices shooting at a range with us.

you talk all responsible and concerned, but you really don't have a grip on how the world works.... and just because you're the voice of criticism, doesn't make you right by default or by sympathy.

Let me tell you a story about how they tried to outlaw alcohol here.... it was called prohibition. Let me tell you how it turned out.... ah, nevermind

I've yet to see any argument against gun ownership in this thread that hasn't eluded to ignorant, narrow-minded, vague stereotyping of gun-owners.

.... not to mention any acknowledgment of the vast majority of gun purchases that are made strictly for the purposes of home self defense. You elude to "yeah, cars kill way more people but they're aren't designed to kill people".... brilliant! but you completely undermind and discredit the fact that almost every gun sold doesn't kill people either.... as they get responsibly tucked away in responsible, law abiding citizens homes for the sole purpose of self defense.

I get it, you don't like guns..... but your argument has morphed into so many directions to the point of stubborn bantering just for the purposes of not being underminded. Regardless of your disdain for guns, I'm sure in rebuttal to indifference of opinion you've been met with regarding the issue... you now are more engulfed in your rebuking of guns more than you ever would be or should be for the sake of validating your opinion. Apparently, you don't like being wrong more than you don't like guns.

My perspective is from living in one of the most violent cities on earth, having had guns pointed at me in more than one occasion. I have a perception of THAT real world - the one you're not interested in. There is more to consider than white people paranoia.

Thanks for admitting that yr part of the world isn't every other place in the world.

You should really consider not posting sometimes.

http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/excl...pocalypse.html :p

AGHHHH DUMB AMERICANS THEY ARE GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY BUY A HELLLLLICOPTER AND HEAD FOR THE HILLS CAMO PEACE TACTICS IN THE JUNGLE FLIP FLOPS AND BUTTON DOWNS AND THE WORLD WILL END VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE AND HBO SOFTCORE LITLE VIRGIN ANAL ANNIE UNDIES KILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you don't see anything wrong with the amount of bullets that those guns were capable of firing then I feel sorry for you. Those weapons have only one purpose death and destruction. That's the first place that some regulations on the industry could have an impact. Yes I realize some idiots will tamper with their guns to fire more ammo but there has to be a way to make a gun tamper proof. If you need more than 3 bullets to hit your target than you shouldn't own a gun in the first place because you're bound to have an accident with it.

the voice of reason.

Shamelessly copy-and-pasted from another post in a different thread:

Limiting the amount of ammo a gun can hold? That would put soldiers and law enforcement officers in danger because they'd have to waste more time reloading. If you made a civilian and a military/police grade version of the same weapon, criminals would just find a way to get their hands on the 20 bullet capacity military/police grade models, leaving honest citizens with the 5 bullet capacity civilian grade models vulernable.

Criminals do find a way to get the most advanced weapons that are not available/affordable for citizens anyway. So that makes no difference. This kind of thing is constantly taken from criminals:

Just look at that industry being regulated.

I'm not going to make a drawing for you to understand it since I'm not a teacher anymore.

I already understand what you're getting at, I also understand it's about as pointless as believing God is going to lay it on someone's heart to buy me a new Volvo.

a billion guns go missing every year?

oh no, they estimate 1 million.
http://www.controlarms.org/en

OK first, I know just as many black people... responsible people, that own firearms for protection as I do white, including half of my neighborhood. You just keep going on with the broad stereotyping.

I've lived in very violent places. One place I lived in Baton Rouge was very dangerous and is the time I certified to carry a concealed handgun. There was frequently gunshots going on up and down my street, in and around my apartment complex. Contrary to how you might imagine things, I stayed clear of danger, it's not that hard if you try. Many cases, I actually called the police. However, if the danger came to me (as in breaking windows or doors), I was armed and more prepared to retaliate than an intruder could account for.

One instance before, I was staying in a jetski warehouse that was broken into by meth addicts. My brother woke me up telling me it was being broken into and we locked our door to the small finished room we stayed in. I called the police and was on the phone with them the whole time. I directed them on everything. Through a small window overlooking the warehouse, I kept them posted. I asked them to not come w/ sirens so they could catch them and they did, even sneaking in through all exits catching them with their guns and flashlights blazing. However, during the probably 10-15 minutes before they arrived, one of the guys came up to the door and was surprised it was locked. He started trying to pry it open. They all had crowbars. My brother started making noise and banging back to hope to scare him away, if not just alert him that people were there. He started telling his partners about it and they were kinda debating on how to get in and so on when the police started to come in. Fortunately, everything happened in our favor. I will tell you though, it would have been a completely different situation had I had even a small handgun by my side. I never forget that feeling of helplessness and shouldn't deserve to be put in that kind of compromise at the mercy of wacked out criminals. I think they would have attacked us with the crowbars had they broke into the door, or chose to go there sooner, which till today, we can't believe they didn't do.

I wouldn't have taken the offensive at all and wouldn't have done anything any different, with the exception of warning them I had a gun and insisting that they stop had they broke into the room. If they advanced, I would have shot, no question about it.... but it'd have been warranted to save myself from a situation that I shouldn't have been in and that no amount of laws and stats could have prevented me from being in.

It's interesting that you refer to guns as a false sense of security yet completely commend something like house alarms. In many's point of view, reality is the complete opposite. Nothing wrong with alarms, but they don't physically protect you.

I agree with the majority of the sentiment in here that it's really varying factors based on where you live, but the one thing I can refrain from doing is speaking strongly against foreign and unfamiliar places because I have outlooks based on my tiny corner of the planet. The only reason you're getting flack, is because, you make it an insistence that the world should adhere to your outlook based on your traumatized (and seemingly over dramatized) existence.

I must spread some reputation before.....yep.

must spread rep....

First off, grabbing a random picture of confiscated weapons and eluding to it as happening all the time is about as vague and random as the media publishing a random picture of a dirty city street in Mexico populated by people wearing surgical mask adverting to "The Swine Flu: Epidemic". you are definitely digging hard and deep for anything to add some validity to your rants. It's getting pathetic.

Secondly, that is some bullshit guns. They are hardly advanced.... in fact, they are cheap and outdated. Those are $300 to 400 guns, including the larger one: a cheap AK-47 rifle. Compare this to the average $1k-2000 rifles collectors and hobbiest accumulate.

Your statement is ass backwards to begin with. Criminals most often use the absolute cheapest and shitty firearms, on the brink of not working most the time. One, they don't know how to maintain them and two in most cases are highly inexperienced with using them all together. They don't go shell out thousands of dollars for really or advanced guns. They just don't, I can't stress this enough.... and if anything, your stategically plucked picture proves this.

BTW, that green casing ammo is the absolute cheapest Wolf "Steel Casing" ammo as opposed to Brass casing and it will ruin a gun quicker than anything. A few sessions of firing that without completely cleaning your gun out (as criminals don't often don't) and your shit won't work right. It's what is considered junk ammo. Not very "Advanced" by any stretch.

What I'm curious about is where the fuck did they get those Grenades?

I'm not sure what your whole message is or your big picture with this posting (as with most), but what are you saying? To get grenades is strictly a military issued weapon. This looks like a collection from a small militia or something. You don't get them from the gun shop. You don't get them from Gun Shows. You can't order them from the evil industry. You don't get them in the ghetto. You can't steal them from the mass of incompetent gun owners. My point is, your issues have been all over the place but mostly but something like this eludes all the points you've made. This would reflect a negligence on a military level wouldn't it? This specifically doesn't look bad for the gun industry as it pertains to civilians does it? It would seem now that you have to morph your argument to the direction of claiming to disarm military's as they have some serious issues with liability and responsibility?

That is called ORGANISED CRIME.
Criminals are trained, well-paid, and take over entire communities.
More often than not, the people in these communities wouldn't classify 300 dollars as cheap.
You have absolutely no idea of what goes on outside the US it seems.

They aren't bought from the military. They are bought from the industry, since they don't REALLY need to select who they are selling to on a world scale - no one is doing that control.

I just wanna see you offer a decent reply in response to his utterly brilliant/uber-observant take on the picture you posted.

Where the fuck did that thing even come from? He really made that shit look like some rubbish you pulled from the National Inquirer.

Oh yeah, my bad.... I could have swore this thread was about gun laws as they pertain to U.S. citizens.

I guess I'll just level with you. At this point, I really don't know what you're getting at. Somewhere along the way you've backpedaled all the way back to damning the "industry". As nothing else on this planet is universally / globally regulated, I don't know what you're getting at. Implying maybe that firearm production and sales should be regulated by who? In many ways it is. There is heavy taxes and imports to pay on guns imported and exported. Manufacturers don't sell directly to organized criminals and indipendent malitia. There is always a legitimate middleman. Usually a legitimate militia ally or direct from allied governments. That said, there are so many issues with so many things usually stemming from a governmental level. This has nothing to do with the majority of sales accounted for that are simple civilian purchases.

Your argument is all over the place from what I've read. You first complained that civilians shouldn't have guns as it directly results in criminals getting guns. Now it seems your argument has morphed into an issue with an unregulated industry that feeds firearms directly to criminals. I'm just not sure where you are going with this? As with any other technology that has evolved up to this point, surely you understand they are not going to look back and say, maybe we shouldn't have guns, turns out they're dangerous.... and expect a global revoking of them?