i know a lot of our members are from the uk,so this is kind of a moot point. though if i am under the right impression,a shotgun is permissible in the uk. but a lot of hoops have to be jumped through.

now as it sits. i own two firearms. a 1936 .22 that has been sawed off to near pistol lenght (it looks like an old pirate pistol,actually.) and a .38 revolver. ive shot the .22 a few times. the .38 has still yet to be shot. i stand to inherit many rifles from my father. everything from a ww2 era sniper rifle to a (infamous) ar15. my dad is disabled due to a neck surgery,but still hunts. the ar15 barely kicks,so he uses it for hunting instead of a shotgun. besides for being black and scary looking,its no different than a similarly chambered wooden stocked semi auto rifle. my friend has an ar15 chambered in...225(?) i know its smaller than my dad's. and it cant even be legally used to hunt deer. its inhumane to try to kill one with a .225 chambered gun. (sgain.i may be wrong on specs here. my dad's can take down a wild boar. which is what he uses it for.)

i think a lot of people's fear of guns comes from them being unfamiliar objects. only heard about when used for horrific crimes. i was raised in the mountains of west virgina. until i was 10,i lived in a town of a few hundred people. we had one cop. a very rural place. if not for hunting...we would have went hungry. i am not exaggerating. in the 80's, you either worked construction,or had a death wish and worked in the coal mines. my dad worked construction. and during the bitter winter? we were on welfare and my dad made up the difference with hunting. to this day i hate the taste of venison. i ate so much of it as a kid. this is why we moved to florida. my dad didnt want me raised in an area where this was the norm. welfare WAS a job in west virgina. the point of this is: at my house,my grandfather's house,my aunt's house. guns were kept out and unlocked. i was raised to know not to touch them,unless i had use. and to treat every gun as if it were loaded. guns were everywhere and nobody was shot..on purpose. we did have a friend that had his arm taken off by a stray .306. he didnt even hear the shot before happened.

people that want strict gun control in america are fighting a losing battle. for one,its in the constitution. (and the nra is a powerful lobby) the cat is out of the bag. there are millions of guns in the country already. that genie is not going back in the bottle. the "gun show loop hole" ,is a myth. you cannot buy from gunshows without a background check. hell,its not that hard to MAKE a gun. Paliuntods,or slam fire shotguns can be made very easily. and if the barrel is a certain length,and you arent selling them? perfectly legal. i dont think people want to face the fact that you will never be 100% safe. it just isnt going to happen. do guns make it easier to kill? yes. point and click. but are they the problem? no. its the person behind it. people didnt blame pressure cookers for the boston bombing. its silly to blame guns for day to day chaos. people WILL find a way. hell. the uk had to ban samurai swords because people started using them for crimes. human decency is the only thing stopping your neighbor from bludgeoning you to death with a flower pot. we need to address that.


politically,i am a hard core leftist.but i dont see why the people on the left cant see this.

im all for keeping them out of the hands of legitimate nutjobs. but i also work in the medical field. the hipaa law forbids ANY sharing of medical record info,unless signed off on by the patient. i think this hampers both the authorties in keeping guns out of the hands of crazies,but it also keeps help out of the hands of people who want psychiatric help,but dont want to be labeled crazy. i think an outright ban would work...if america did not have an entrenched gun culture and a healthy distrust of government. if all manufacture stopped tomorrow,there would still be enough guns for every many woman and child to have one. in america we see this as every bit of a right as dirty jokes are.

i personally do not carry. im a bit of a hot head. but i do treat everyone as if they are. either legally or illegally. especially living in miami. a hi-point is probably the most carried and shittiest gun around,but im not taking the chance.

I think the issue with gun crimes whether it's gang violence or mass shootings isn't something that can be fixed with gun control. The guns are just tools used to do the job of a sick mind in either event. Before I go any further, I'm not comparing a mass shooter to gang violence. Say what you want about gang violence and it's affect on the communities it happens in but I look at it completely different than someone going into a public place/building and just opening fire. I've seen people make the argument that neither should happen but if we look at the history of gangs in America, gun violence between rivals isn't something new. It's not just this urban thing that sprung up over the decades and got worse with the drug trade. Look at any point in history, on any part of the globe, there's always been communities with less resources than the other communities and in them communities there has always been wars between rival factions. What started as sticks and stones has grown into pistols and rifles. How many times has a city gotten tighter with gun control only to hurt the citizens wanting to legal carry? Someone on the other side of the law don't give a shit if the gun is legal to carry or not, they're living/caught up in a life that it's better to get caught with it than without it. They also have an upper hand on anyone living within the laws of their communities too. What could you do in front of a man with a loaded gun aimed at you empty handed? Running or fighting back, you're pretty much dead either way unless you're highly trained in that situation and then my point here is irrelevant cause you're not generally the person in these communities we're even talking about. I think the best way to combat the gang violence in communities is really for the communities to deal with it in a way they find works best for them, not some old and out of touch politician who probably has more in common with the out of touch judge that wants to give you years on drug charges. That's neither here nor there, though, we're talking gun control. In the case of urban communities that see a lot of gun/gang violence, I don't think gun control is the answer on paper or in actuality.

Mass shootings on the other hand seem to me more of a mental health issue. Now, I know, the shootings couldn't happen if no guns were around for them to grab in the first place but that's not the world we live in. There are almost 400 million guns in America (feel free to fact check cause I couldn't find the article I remembered reading this in after proofreading this to be sure I had it right), including both legal and illegal, in no way could you ever get rid of them. You could be more strict on gun control but I don't think that solves the problem because we've seen people use cars or bombs for example to perform mass killings. Sure, more mass shootings than bombings or people mowing down people with cars but couldn't we make the argument that in a country with hundreds of millions of guns, the best form of defense for the average citizen against gun violence is them also having a gun? If a guy walks into a bar and he's the only one with a gun and he decides to open fire, what can the other people really do other than take cover and pray for the best? Now if he walked into a bar where multiple/all the people had guns and were trained on how to use them, wouldn't the odds be stacked against him?

tl:dr buy at least one gun and learn how to use it and there's more problems involved in areas where gun violence happens than just the guns themselves. If it's not gun violence, there's still violence. Combat the violence with education and more money in the areas it takes place in.



I know I made a tl:dr up above but after re-reading to see if I missed anything from your original point, I now realize you pretty much summed up just about my whole view on guns and the gun control in general but I still figured I'd throw my two cents in anyway.