BHXSpecter wrote: |
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Yes, guns are a weapon. So are knives, and blunt instruments. During the 80s a man killed and raped two women at knifepoint. There are cases where people have been strangled with a phone cord or killed with a weapon of convenience. |
Having access to a weapon makes it more likely the weapon will be used. So the more easily accessible we make guns, the more likely they are to be misused.
Yes you can treat any other object as a weapon, but clearly none of them are as dangerous as a gun. IE: you trust a 6 year old to be able to use a steak knife, but you'd be crazy to let your 6 year old handle a gun.
And despite the fact that knives are widely more available to literally everyone in the country, they are used in less than half the number of homocides as guns (src:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004888.html )
Remove guns and they will just go to the next weapon of convenience or learn to start making makeshift guns |
Saying that "if you take away their guns, they'll just use something else" just doesn't hold water. If you provide someone with the means to do something, they'll be more likely to do it.
Just because criminals find a way to circumvent the law does not mean we should "give up" on trying to have laws. It's absurd.
This logic simply does not hold up when you apply it to any other topic:
- "If we make drinking and driving illegal, people are going to do it anyway, so we might as well not bother."
- "People are going to find a way to get through locked doors anyway, so we might as well sell lockpick sets."
- "People are going to find a way to escape arrest anyway, so we might as well get rid of the police dept."
For whatever reason... people only accept this as a valid point about guns. It gets laughed off for just about every other topic (and for good reason).
When the put those bans on stores people just started recruiting people to buy some for them or they went store jumping to get the parts. In case of meth, when they couldn't get the chemicals from stores they resorted to using the acid in car batteries as a catalyst. |
Yes, people found a way around it. That's not in dispute here. What's in dispute is: "Is it effective?".
We both agree it's not 100% effective. The next question is, how effective was it? For your meth example... was there a drop in meth production after those bans were implemented? If yes, then that proves it was at least somewhat effective.
Just because we can't solve 100% of a problem doesn't mean we should just throw our hands up and say "oh well, nothing can be done about it!"
Also, misfires are normally because someone has tweaked their gun and gave it a hair trigger or clean it without ever checking to make sure it was empty. |
I've heard stories of guns going off when in someone's car due to them hitting a bump in the road, but that's anecdotal. But yeah whatever this is a side point.