Gun Control

[Wilber]

VANCOUVER - TWO MEN ARE DEAD AFTER A SHOOTING IN DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER, AND POLICE SAY IT APPEARS THIS WAS A TARGETED ATTACK. VANCOUVER POLICE RESPONDED TO A CALL OF SHOTS FIRED AROUND 10:15 LAST (SAT.) NIGHT ON SEYMOUR STREET NEAR DUNSMUIR. CONSTABLE TIM FANNING SAYS TWO MEN WERE GUNNED DOWN IN A BLACK S-U-V. AND THAT THE VICTIMS ARE A 38-YEAR OLD MAN FROM CHILLIWACK AND A 37-YEAR OLD MAN FROM VANCOUVER.

- CKNW

Another target shooter goes berserk.

[Wilber]

More out of control duck hunters

[eyeball]

If the gun lobby could bring itself to align with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition they could probably take a lot of heat of themselves and eliminate most of the crime that everyone's freaking out about in one stroke.

LEAP

[myata]

You can only control the guns owned by honest people who are willing to register them.

You must be really really, shall we say, smart to drone this line over and again. The purpose of control is less guns around. So that there's less chance of bad guys laying their hands on them; and less chance of them being used in a trivial crime of a moment. It's not "either" (gun control) "or" (going after bad guys). It's both! Really! Breaking the news to all you people who can't seem to be able to hold more than one idea in the mind at a time.

[Topaz]

Excuse me? You feel that serving in the military is a punishment??!!

I would think that the last thing we want is to have our military used as a dumping ground for criminals. Why inflect these lowlifes on good soldiers? How would you like to have to rely on some gangbanger in the next foxhole to protect YOUR back?

No, our soldiers deserve much more respect than that. Offering to serve your country with the potential of it demanding your very life is the highest form of honour. Dumping hoodlums into the ranks is not just dangerous but insulting.

I suggest we send these "monkeyshines" to work camps on Ellesmere Island. Let them farm for their food!

My point was how many of "these" guys would WANT to be forced into the military? They probably chose 25 years in jail!

[guyser]

You must be really really, shall we say, smart to drone this line over and again. The purpose of control is less guns around. Breaking the news to all you people who can't seem to be able to hold more than one idea in the mind at a time.

Well then , explain to this simpleton how the gun registration = less guns around?

[Moonlight Graham]

For me, i don't see much practical reason why anyone should be allowed to own anything more than a hunting rifle or shotgun. No handguns, no automatic guns etc.

[guyser]

For me, i don't see much practical reason why anyone should be allowed to own anything more than a hunting rifle or shotgun. No handguns, no automatic guns etc.

I agree.

No one should own more than 1986 Lada as their car. Perhaps a Yugo would be okay.

[Wilber]

You must be really really, shall we say, smart to drone this line over and again.

You must be really really , shall we say , dumb not to understand that it is true.

[Keepitsimple]

You must be really really, shall we say, smart to drone this line over and again. The purpose of control is less guns around. So that there's less chance of bad guys laying their hands on them; and less chance of them being used in a trivial crime of a moment. It's not "either" (gun control) "or" (going after bad guys). It's both! Really! Breaking the news to all you people who can't seem to be able to hold more than one idea in the mind at a time.

Talk about droning. In this thread I posted how the United Kingdom, after virtually banning all guns in 1998, saw their gun crime rise every single year and more than double - until they tightenened up their minimum sentence laws in late 2005. In the period 2006/07 they saw guncrimes drop by 13%. So I agree with you - it really takes both initiatives but what you don't grasp is that we already have strict regulations that control firearms and we've had a virtual ban on handguns for 50 years. What we don't have is a justice system that effectively utilizes minimum sentencing. The UK is an excellent example of what didn't work and hopefully, their minimum sentencing will continue to have an effect of gun crime.

Edited January 22, 2008 by Keepitsimple

[Rue]

I have no argument banning hand-guns except for in gun-clubs. All I am saying is it won't resolve the problem. More to the point, what next, knives? Banning is just flaying at the symptom not the problem.

The crux of the problem is gangs and disaffected youth who use guns as part of their gang personna.

If you are asking me personally would I carry a hand gun to feel safe, I would say no. I have lived in a country where people carry a gun on their arm as a life necessity. It doesn't make you feel safe at all.

I would think learning martial arts is a far better solution if what you are looking for is the feeling of safety. Unless you are an absolute expert on fire-arms and have the kind of cold dettached unemotional demenor needed to be able to use one in a crisis you probably will end up freezing and getting yourself killed as the person takes the gun from you and shoots you or pulls their gun on you-not to mention they are completely inaccurate and even when you think you are shooting at someone you might be completely missing them and killing your wife or child or an innocent by stander.

I never liked hand guns. To unpredictable. Using them in a target range is hard enough.

As for rifles I have no problem with seasoned rural/subsistence hunters. They respect their weapons as a life necessity-its not a game or an ego thing to them.

Its us city idiots we have to worry about.

[Pliny]

More out of control duck hunters

See! Registering your vehicle is the same as registering your gun!

[Pliny]

...and the same reaction....one that reacts not to the problem but the symptom and a reaction that doesn't call for a solution but in fact a quick fix to hide the problem to make it go away.

There already is gun control. That is not the issue. One sub-issue, is that guns can get smuggled into Canada easily. That is not a gun control issue but an issue that deals with cross border control of the movement of people and goods. Unless you want every person coming across the border stripped naked and each and every piece of luggage and car shredded you want stop the smuggling of hand guns.

You were doing pretty good here until you got to about the 15th paragraph. You really have to move ahead from Freudian symbology. I think there was quite a bit incorporated into feminism in the sixties so you are really dating yourself.

[myata]

but what you don't grasp is that we already have strict regulations that control firearms and we've had a virtual ban on handguns for 50 years. What we don't have is a justice system that effectively utilizes minimum sentencing.

Like those that let Dawson guy to get three semi-automatic rifles? And, he didn't have to stop at three, someone with a real passion could buy enough to arm a squad. In the US stats, househoulds with more than 40 (forty!) guns were excluded, to avoid skewing the results. We can have that too. You must be kidding.

To guyser: registration = less guns around because 1) somebody who may have decided to get one on a whim, may think twice, given the paperwork and knowledge what his name will be in the registry; 2) somebody wishing to get (n+1) gun, may be asked to explain the reason; 3) someone disallowed to own guns could be made to return those they owned; and so on.

To Wilber: OK you obviously have nothing else (of intelligence) to add here, correct?

[Wilber]

To Wilber: OK you obviously have nothing else (of intelligence) to add here, correct?

To Myata: I give in. All criminals will now register their guns.

[noahbody]

Like those that let Dawson guy to get three semi-automatic rifles?

Link please.

[myata]

Aha. People are born saints or criminals. Can be found from DNA at birth. Saints are entitled to have any kind of high weaponry including explosives, tanks and submachine guns because that's what they're - saints, and will always be, for life. Criminals are put to jail, indefinetly, at the very glimpse of an idea of procuring anything that can be construed as having a remote resemblance to a gun.

Life will be so nice and simple (if we let our fantasies run free and wild).

[noahbody]

Life will be so nice and simple (if we let our fantasies run free and wild).

We really should pass a law in which all criminals must paint their houses blue. That way you could feel secure living in a safe community with white houses.

[Keepitsimple]

Aha. People are born saints or criminals. Can be found from DNA at birth. Saints are entitled to have any kind of high weaponry including explosives, tanks and submachine guns because that's what they're - saints, and will always be, for life. Criminals are put to jail, indefinetly, at the very glimpse of an idea of procuring anything that can be construed as having a remote resemblance to a gun.

Life will be so nice and simple (if we let our fantasies run free and wild).

That's an interesting point so in the interest of fantasies free and wild....have you ever seen the Hitchcock movie "The Bad Seed"?. It's about a little girl in a loving family that is bad, bad, bad - to the point of murder. I do believe that there are people who are born who have a greater propensity to become a criminal than others. Many of them are lucky enough to be kept in check by society's rules and good parents - and become nothing worse than bullies at school and what we might call **sholes at work. Others are not so lucky and given a shoddy environment or careless parents, can fall into bad ways......but the point is that some people have more innate violent or criminal tendencies than others. It's just a fact of life - people are born with weak hearts, bad kidneys, deformities, etc. The imperfect brain shows up in many ways - schiztsophrenia, paranoid delusions, Down's Syndrome - so it shouldn't be too hard to accept that some people, for the most part, are born to be bad.

[White Doors]

You must be really really, shall we say, smart to drone this line over and again. The purpose of control is less guns around. So that there's less chance of bad guys laying their hands on them; and less chance of them being used in a trivial crime of a moment. It's not "either" (gun control) "or" (going after bad guys). It's both! Really! Breaking the news to all you people who can't seem to be able to hold more than one idea in the mind at a time.

Why are you so quick to give my rights as a gun owner away?

What other rights are you going to sacrifice because you are scared of those rights?

If you don't like guns, don't own one. It's really quite simple.

The fact that I own guns is none of your business.

[White Doors]

For me, i don't see much practical reason why anyone should be allowed to own anything more than a hunting rifle or shotgun. No handguns, no automatic guns etc.

Good don't buy one.

What right do you have to tell me that I can't?

[White Doors]

I agree.

No one should own more than 1986 Lada as their car. Perhaps a Yugo would be okay.

Bell bottoms should be banned for tripping hazard.

I don't agree with them and because I don't - no one else should be able to own them either.

There - problem solved.

[myata]

Why are you so quick to give my rights as a gun owner away?

Hear the gun loving folks talking. That's what it's all about (and as appears, with tacit approval from this government). Owning guns is actually, a right. All good folks should have one (or two; or 5.6 per househould). That'll keep bad folks with guns at bay. And the more bad folks tote their guns - the more, and better, guns should the good folks be getting.

Because, as we already figured out here, the good folks, they are, and will always be good, and therefore, should be let have as much ammunition as they can carry away. With no restriction or reservation. For the bad ones, we'll simply have to build x,00 more jails and hire y00,000 more police.

That'll get us less crime for sure. Oh wait, don't they already have it all, south of St Lawrence? Should check how they fare there, crime wise. Must have forgotten the notion of it, by now?...

[Wilber]

Hear the gun loving folks talking. That's what it's all about (and as appears, with tacit approval from this government). Owning guns is actually, a right. All good folks should have one (or two; or 5.6 per househould). That'll keep bad folks with guns at bay. And the more bad folks tote their guns - the more, and better, guns should the good folks be getting.

Because, as we already figured out here, the good folks, they are, and will always be good, and therefore, should be let have as much ammunition as they can carry away. With no restriction or reservation. For the bad ones, we'll simply have to build x,00 more jails and hire y00,000 more police.

That'll get us less crime for sure. Oh wait, don't they already have it all, south of St Lawrence? Should check how they fare there, crime wise. Must have forgotten the notion of it, by now?...

Why is it you have such a hate on for people who own guns and obey the law but resist coming down hard on those who use them to break the law? Why do you hysterically have to carry your arguments to the extreme? I don't think anyone is advocating what you are ranting about.

A huge reason we need more police is because they have to arrest the same 1/2% of the population time after time after time because the rest of our system refuses to deal with them. And yes some people need to be in jail because they will continue to victimize others until someone stops them.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Guns are the property of the owners. Property comes under provincial laws, not federal. The feds know this so they carved a nice little hole in criminal law for it and subverted provincial rights.

I do not own a gun, because I have no need or desire for one. I figure when Safeway quits selling meat, I will hunt it down myself but until then I will buy it. I don't shoot at targets and don't play paintball. But some folks do, and they enjoy it.

Hand guns have had to be registered in this country longer than I have been alive. Long guns don't often get used in crimes, but even so they are now required to be registered as well. Fine, so be it. My objection to the gun control laws is simply that its cost is horrific, and I don't see how it prevents crime. It does restrict citizens rights to own property, but the feds gave that away in the 1982 Constitution Act anyway.

Why would we not have simply made it a capital offense to use a weapon in the commission of an offense? Why not simply make all violent crimes capital crimes? Why not simply make conviction of capital crimes punishable through a sentence of duration of natural life without chance of parole?