Walter

>It would be the fear of any citizen up here that everyone could purchase a gun and walk on the streets with them, because accidents will happen. Tracy, you are the master of popping up links for statistics, so maybe you could get some statistics on how many of the murdered people, killed by guns, were killed by just criminals, and how many were killed by apparantly normal people like you and me?

You are mixing various arguments. The cliche that guns do not kill people - people kill people, is actually true. Above you express a concern about accidents happening with guns. Certainly there are accidents but the majority of gun related deaths will not be accidents but crime related.

Secondly, imo instead of focusing on whether guns should be allowed or banned one should investigate why gun related crime occurs in the first place. Crime is the problem here, not the legality of guns. Criminals will commit crime and use whatever tools are available. So the question should be why is the crime rate high (or low in Holland) rather than whether the tool used to commit the crime is legal or not.

To prove this point imagine a society which has only law abiding and intelligent people. Give them all guns. There will be no increase or decrease in crime (they are law abiding), no one will use their guns for criminal purposes. There might be an increase in gun related accidents but accidents happen in millions of ways and gun related accidents are not the major cause of gun related deaths.

Law abiding people do not commit crimes per se regardless of whether they have access to a particular weapon or not. To argue that guns are the problem is to argue that we are all potential murderers just waiting to get a gun. It’s ridiculous.

Guns are not the problem. Crime is the problem. And crime is directly related to economic status, education, social wellfare, etc. These are the problems that need attention. Banning guns while failing to address the root cause of crime will remove guns from law abiding people and do virtually nothing to the criminals who will continue to commit crimes for reasons mentioned above and use whatever weapons, guns included, that they can get their hands on.

The only argument you can offer is that you wish to eliminate gun related accidents. Thats is a different issue and opens a different discussion becuase there are far more car related deaths, alcohol related deaths, etc, all of which are already addressed in law.

From a political and societal point of view it is easier to blame the gun than the root cause of gun related death. In the first case we place blame on an object but in the second we must accept responsibility for failing a part of society, the poor and disadvantaged. A tougher pill to swallow.




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>>How do you stop criminals from purchasing them on the street? How do you stop the illegal import and sale of firearms? Afterall, that has been the problem with drugs for years...
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>You can't, just as you can't prevent drugs beeing sold on the streets. However, I don't get the impressing there is a massive trade in arms up here. There is not much of a demand either. In general, only criminals illegally own a gun and they always have their means of getting one.
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>You have been told that you have the right to carry a gun to defend yourself. But how many killings could have been prevented if you didn't. How many lives could have been spared? The hard statistics say that the number of gun-murdered people in the US is about 10 times as high as here in holland. Could you explain why?
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>Walter,