"But there are so many untrained, ignorant, and/or irresponsible individuals in America who, like in my previous post, would rather shoot first and ask qeustions later."
How many exactly? I believe the average person who has bought a gun legally is fairly responsible- all the ones I've met have been (that number is probably around 50 by now, not including people that I never realized were gun-owners). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for education, but the media-hyped image of the "redneck irrisponsible gunowner" is getting on my nerves.
Timmie: How can you be so sure? If our country adopted gun control like yours has, crime would skyrocket- here in the US, over 2 million people protect themselves with firearms every year. If your country is anything like Japan, you had lower crimerates than ours long before you illegalized guns. Ours is just a more violent society, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of possible reasons for our higher crime rates. For example- our justice system is turning into a big joke, cold blooded murderers live better than homeless people, at the top of a prison hierarchy, and if bored they can work out at better gyms than my school has, play sports, and in some cases watch television... wheras in Japan it's anything but funny: 95% of the accused just up and confess, usually do to a little physical persuasion on the part of the police force.
You can say lots of things about gun-owner-control and crime rates to compare 2 countries, but you usually aren't saying anything at all: there is no direct relation between gun-owner-control and crime. Sure, you and Japan may have less crime than us, but I'd bet good money Switzerland (which has much more of a gun-culture than the US does), has even less crime. And then there's countries with very strict gun-owner-control and amazing amounts of crime, like Russia and Italy- the US beats those 2, and yes, even Great Britain (when including Wales). That's right, believe it or not, peaceful old Great Britain, so proud of it's "civilized" control over it's subjects, has higher per-capita crime rates than the US does. And to add insult to injury, theirs is going up while ours is decreasing.
(to any that were confused: yes, by gun-owner-control I mean gun control, it's just a much more accurate name)
_______________________
Shot four puppet governors in a line,
Shook all tha world bankers, who think they can rhyme,
Shot the landlords, who knew it was mine,
Yes, its a war from the depth of time!
[This message was edited by DeadeyeDan[ToA] on Jul 13, 2000 at 18:56.]
[This message was edited by DeadeyeDan[ToA] on Jul 13, 2000 at 19:00.]