h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think guns are bad apart for police officers to defend people

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Mort

I agree with you, Chuckles, the Silly Piggy, guns are bad - and I'd go further and say that police officers shouldn't carry them either!

Yup. Police carry guns -> criminals feel the obligation to arm themselves -> police feel the obligation to protect themselves. This is a positive feedback cycle.

Although gun crime is on the rise in the UK .

Historically the gun and bows and arrows and variations thereof are the only weapons that was ogiginally invented as such. Knives were initially tools and swords came from them though much later. The only thing that the gun can stand for is that humans are unsatisfied with one way to kill each other and are finding new ways to do it

BAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

The level of elequence your post posesses implies that you are a mental giant of enourmous stature

The gun is a collection of metal fragment forged in such a way as to fire ballistic missiles, maybe the badness is with the bullet as this actually kill.

But 1 thing you seem to have missed is that the gun is non-sentient, without a gun-tooting, brain-dead moron using it indiscriminately it is no threat to anybody ergo it can not be intrinsically bad.

By the way if the last sentence upset any gun-tooting, brain-dead morons, I do apologise.

Make Love not War

Yeah, heard it before - guns don't kill people, people do.

But the gun kind of helps.

Violence begets violence. It's an old saying, but it is true. Why carry a gun, if not for using it? And in carrying it, another person can justifiably conclude that you might use it, and will start carrying one himself. And that causes another person to carry one.
A gun has no other use than to kill a person (besides hunting rifles, but clearly, we aren't talking about those).
People that own guns claim they have it for selfdefence. That might be their reason for it, but that is not the way it works. If you are robbed, give the robber what he wants. Nothing is worth losing your life over, and that is exactly what will happen when two people point guns at eachother. One will end up being shot.

Oh, and the "guns don't kill people, people do"-phrase?
That's only half the story. People change when they carry a gun. The shopowner who has shot a would-be robber. Would he have attacked the robber if he had a knife? And, to make it even, if the robber was threatening him with a knife? No, because people tend to avoid violence when it is hand-to-hand, when you look into the eyes of the person you are up against. So, true. Guns don't kill people, but they do make people kill people.
The only reason not every gunowner is not a murderer, is because they haven't been in the situation (yet) where they would use it.

Guns are a bad idea. They've never been a good idea. They will never be a good idea.

A gun is merely a tool whose purpose is to harm others or prevent others from harming you. In the absence of that tool, people merely find another.

Dead is dead, whether from a shot or a shovel to the head.

True. However, guns have made killing so incredibly easy that children die as a result of accidents, both inside and outside of the home... as do adults. Furthermore, I think it's fairly safe to assume that gun powder was one of the deciding factors (if not the biggest) in the successful invasion of America by white settlers.

An afterthought: a nuclear missle is also a tool meant to be used to harm (as a threat) or defend against harm (as a deterrent), but I don't think that anyone should have one of these either... let alone ten thousand of them.

Children and adults die of accidents with cars, too. Are they a bad idea?

I just saw on History Channel this weekend covered a battle between Apaches and US dragoons at Cieneguilla and showed how the Apache tactics and weaponry were superior... the bow and arrow had approximately the same effective range and accuracy as the rifles carried by the dragoons, with twice the firing rate.

The real problem for the natives was that there were too damned many white people. Is breeding evil?

The nuke analogy is not comparable. It's like saying we shouldn't have jet skis because supertankers are so dangerous.

Of course they do but this misses the point entirely. That point being that cars aren't designed to kill; they aren't weapons... not intentionally, anyway. Guns, on the other hand, are designed to kill and in the most convenient manner, and they bring many unnecessary deaths to our society as a result. Rather than someone's son coming home from school with a black eye, a chipped tooth, or even a stab wound (in the extreme cases), they come home in a body bag.

Are cars a bad idea? Probably.



Undeniably true. But despite what the History Channel has to say on the matter, guns made 'our' mission a hell of a lot easier, a heel of a lot more possible.



No, it's natural. Invading someone's country is 'evil' (sticking with this word you've chosen).

It's not an analogy at all, actually, but rather a more extreme example of precisely the same thing, the same mentality.

Incidentally, when someone buys a car or a jetski, he or she is not thinking 'Hey, I wonder how many people I can kill with this thing, or how many people I can prevent from killing me with it'. When someone buys a gun, he or she is thinking precisely these things. The very same would apply to nuclear weapons.

"Rather than someone's son coming home from school with a black eye, a chipped tooth, or even a stab wound (in the extreme cases), they come home in a body bag."

Don't you find it at all interesting that the use of guns by young men didn't become common until after gun control laws were introduced? The fifties and sixties saw gang warfare, but guns were simply not part of the equation.

Also interesting is the nature of gun control laws. For instance, in California it had long been legal to carry a weapon in public so long as you carried it openly. It was when the Black Panthers started toting shotguns in public for reasonable self-defence concerns that the law was changed.

As the saying goes, "God created man, Sam Colt made them equal." Of course, thanks to legislation, the criminal is now more equal.

"No, it's natural. Invading someone's country is 'evil' (sticking with this word you've chosen)." - Then I have to wonder what your point is. Straw man?

"Incidentally, when someone buys a car or a jetski, he or she is not thinking 'Hey, I wonder how many people I can kill with this thing, or how many people I can prevent from killing me with it'. When someone buys a gun, he or she is thinking precisely these things. The very same would apply to nuclear weapons."

I would say that your gift of mind-reading is flawed. A lot of people buy guns for hunting, so they're probably thinking about what kind of animals they're going to bring home. A lot of people buy guns for competition, and think about what scores they'll record and awards they hope to win. A lot of other people are simply collectors, and are thinking about how cool the new piece is and how they'll show it off to friends.

And as a self-defense advocate I would think, "My god, I hope I never have to use this."