The gun, or the criminal?

Yay more politics.

So, if someone shoots with a gun, and they shoot another person, and that other person dies, the person with the gun committed a crime. We can all agree with that. But, which is the source of the crime? The gun, or the criminal?

What the president(U.S. president i.e. Obama), and many politicians here think, is that the gun is what causes the crime. So, remove the second amendment, which allows guns, and therefore crimes shouldn't exist. But, what about in England (or UK? correct me if I'm wrong please!) they commit crimes with knives. Bloody knives (literally!) are restricted there, along with guns. Since people couldn't commit crimes with guns there, they start using knives. Then knives are restricted. What next, sporks and heavy cast iron frying pans!? Lawl probably.

Anyways, before we get too off track, if you make a law that makes guns illegal or hard to obtain (which Obama is trying), people will still have guns. Mainly criminals. It's called the black market. You can't stop them entirely, or much at all even, unless you literally go house to house and melt them all. Like, criminals don't gaf if something's illegal because they're just gonna do whatever they want in the end. So why will it make a difference?? Yeah, if you remove guns it'll save this/that possible future crime, but because the criminals won't have a gun in their hand, they'll use bombs or knives or idk cast iron frying pans (just an exmaple) to commit it, since they're gonna use whatever that causes death and destruction to do whatever stupid nutty plan they have. It's not the gun, that causes crimes, it's the person who pulls the trigger, or the criminal.

So, what's your opinion on this? Should guns be banned, or should the U.S. government spend more time and money trying to stop criminals themselves, regardless of the guns or bombs or frying pans (example again lol) they use?

Yeah, but nobody's ever taken out an entire movie theatre with a knife.

Anyways, before we get too off track, if you make a law that makes guns illegal or hard to obtain (which Obama is trying), people will still have guns. Mainly criminals. It's called the black market. You can't stop them entirely, or much at all even, unless you literally go house to house and melt them all. [/B]

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But, what about in England (or UK? correct me if I'm wrong please!) they commit crimes with knives. [...] Since people couldn't commit crimes with guns there, they start using knives.

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Clearly you can make guns illegal and/or hard to obtain to ensure criminals won't have guns, because, as you've acknowledged, the UK already has.

most of the arguments against gun control are stupid, embellished and provide insignificant specific cases so yeah

The US government should do both. Of course the gun is not the source of the crime, but in countries with gun control like the UK there are (for example) much less gun deaths and less crimes. Gun control has lots of positive aspects.
I recommend watching "Bowling for Columbine"

Whilst the person with the gun is at fault, I can imagine at least a few people who commit crimes with guns would be deterred from doing so in the first place if they didn't have such easy access to such a destructive weapon.


Like, yea, sure, they could still turn to knives and other melee weapons, or go on the black market (which a 'petty' criminal probably isn't going to do), but I don't think everybody is going to think "I'll just use a knife instead and still commit the crime". Knives etc still leave yourself pretty vulnerable when compared to a gun, which at least a few people will think of as a deterrent from doing it in the first place when they think "oh no, but I'm now at risk of being hit back and I'm a sissy!"

I concede that there isn't always a direct correlation between gun ownership and homicide rate (eg. gun ownership in Switzerland is high but the homicide rate and general crime rate is low), but in America, there are so many gun-related deaths every year, it's madness to ignore it.

I'd love to see all guns banned, and there's absolutely no justification at all for a society to allow anyone to obtain semiautomatic weapons, but what Obama wants to do is perform a background check on someone who wants to buy a gun. That's setting the bar so, so low, I don't understand how anyone can possibly be opposed to it. Even if you're of the mindset "it's all on the criminal" then surely even so you'd want a background check to make sure a criminal doesn't get a gun?

Knopekin said:

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Hai said:

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Tao said:

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Guns are deeply rooted in America, which is why I doubt they'll ever be fully illegal in all circumstances. Like, where I live, people literally practice target shooting or are hunting in their backyard timber here at least once a week. It's a tradition for father/mother to go shooting with their daughters/sons who're interested in it.

My point though was that if you make guns or whatever illegal, criminals and crimes will still exist. Knives were just an example of what they'll use next, taken from the UK; if they want guns, they'll have them. If you take away their tools, and they'll just use new ones. True, no more gun violence, but there'll be a spike in whatever new violence they use. You can't stop violence by taking away weapons, you can only truly stop it by preventing people from becoming criminals.

I'm not saying guns should be banned or anything like that...but I do remember watching something about South Korea...they talked about their low crime rate and the fact that Korea's gun laws were much more stricter than in the U.S...

Lucanosa said:

Guns are deeply rooted in America, which is why I doubt they'll ever be fully illegal in all circumstances. Like, where I live, people literally practice target shooting or are hunting in their backyard timber here at least once a week. It's a tradition for father/mother to go shooting with their daughters/sons who're interested in it.

My point though was that if you make guns or whatever illegal, criminals and crimes will still exist. Knives were just an example of what they'll use next, taken from the UK; if they want guns, they'll have them. If you take away their tools, and they'll just use new ones. True, no more gun violence, but there'll be a spike in whatever new violence they use. You can't stop violence by taking away weapons, you can only truly stop it by preventing people from becoming criminals.

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im not sure if u read my post wrong but the second paragraph is the sort of thing i was saying was stupid and something too insignificant to factor into the decision to ban guns but anyway

Would the criminal be the criminal without the gun?

Gun control also prevents accidental shootings- how many children in the US have mistakenly shot someone because they were able to access a gun?

There are so many guns in the US already so banning guns is not practical. I don't know if there is a solution to the violence problem, but if there is one perhaps it would be to look more into the cause of violent tendencies in people and not worrying about the weapon they use. Something is wrong with people mentally and wrong with our society and it's deeper than it may seem. I feel like part of it is due to the unnatural way that most people, especially in big cities, live these days. I think humans as animals have naturally violent feelings and need a way to get them out, but in our civilization it is hard to do, so people suppress them too long and then choose unacceptable ways of expressing these feelings and end up killing. Life in cities is hard and frustrating for many, so connecting with nature more could help calm people down.

It is true that guns don't kill people, people kill people. However, people with guns kill more people than people without guns. Guns are far more effective at taking lives than knives or even explosives. Gun control won't stop all gun violence, but if it could stop even 10 percent of mass shootings, it would be worth it. The NRA uses many logical fallacies to get people to oppose any form of gun control whatsoever even if it seems reasonable to most people. The NRA does not represent gun owners but rather the gun industry. The gun industry actually has a financial interest in mass shootings occurring because people panic and buy more guns whenever there is a mass shooting which leads to more gun violence which leads to more people buying guns and so on, so I'm not surprised that they support guns laws which lead to more mass shootings.

The gun is the weapon, but the criminal is the one who chose to murder. Even then, this gun business is getting out of control. Everytime I go out in public, I panic that I'll accidentally upset someone and they'll shoot me. I fear for my life when I go out in public. People shouldn't have to live like that.

what a boring topic

i say the criminal

thats like saying cutlery is the reason why you eat food

remove cutlery, people wont eat food

is that correct???? no

i think the criminal is way more likely if they have a weapon that can kill easier and from far away. people are less likely to go on a killing spree if all they can get is a knife. if they cant get the opportunity they wont do it.
if they just have a gun lying around they might get a serious impulse and use it, it's a lot easier to just do it if you know it will ne easy-ish

Lucanosa said:

Guns are deeply rooted in America, which is why I doubt they'll ever be fully illegal in all circumstances. Like, where I live, people literally practice target shooting or are hunting in their backyard timber here at least once a week. It's a tradition for father/mother to go shooting with their daughters/sons who're interested in it.

My point though was that if you make guns or whatever illegal, criminals and crimes will still exist. Knives were just an example of what they'll use next, taken from the UK; if they want guns, they'll have them. If you take away their tools, and they'll just use new ones. True, no more gun violence, but there'll be a spike in whatever new violence they use. You can't stop violence by taking away weapons, you can only truly stop it by preventing people from becoming criminals.

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I do understand the cultural significance of guns in the US, and I definitely agree that steps need to be taken to help prevent things like mass shootings (I've been reading about US shootings recently and there is a huge gender difference, something like 2% of shootings are committed by women, so we should start with toxic masculinity). But the fact remains that if you take away people's guns, people will commit crimes, but crucially they won't commit crimes with guns, which will decrease the death count exponentially.


And one of the worst things about guns in the US is that, forget about criminals having guns, it's the police.

In the UK, the police have killed 52 people in about 60 years. In the US, police killed 377 people last year, down from 626 in 2014. Police in the UK very rarely even carry guns, and because almost all situations are defused bloodlessly, it's especially heartbreaking to hear yet another story of cops shooting unarmed black children.




Fun fact discovered while checking things on Wikipedia: In the UK, gun laws are so strict that Brits who want to compete in the shooting events in the Olympics have to train overseas and don't receive any government funding because their sport is illegal.

Ares said:

thats like saying cutlery is the reason why you eat food

remove cutlery, people wont eat food

is that correct???? no

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I mean I see where you're coming from but you have to eat

you don't have to kill people

And I saw someone mention Switzerland and I just wanna add more about the gun laws in Switzerland:
Ammunition can't be kept at home (it stays at a shooting range/military barracks), boys do military time til they're 28, and concealed pistol permits are incredibly difficult to obtain.

So yeah saying "Well the Swiss have guns and they're doing fine!" is kind of... pointless.

Guns should not be banned. Like you've said already, people don't actually need a gun to commit a crime. You've got knives, swords, bombs, etc. You even see some reports on the news of people using their car as a weapon to run people down. Take guns away from the civilians and now you've given criminals the upper hand using illegal methods to obtain guns. Criminals will always find a workaround.

Knopekin said:

Yeah, but nobody's ever taken out an entire movie theatre with a knife.

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Get a few people involved with knives and it could turn pretty messy.