Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocky7
Gun control cannot survive a movement toward small government. Conversely, gun control (as well as an endless list of other controls) is inevitable for a Statist. It has always been thus. It is also logical.
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I do agree with that. Gun control cannot survive a movement to small government. Unfortunately neither Canada nor this province seems to be moving in that direction.
I do ask, whether or not you do approve of some sort of small control. Education, waiting periods, etc. personally, I believe that at some point education and proof of competency without a criminal record is enough. I throw out other ideas of control as a suggestion or conversation piece to see what's there however with other items we as a society have restricted (vehicle operation comes to mind) education and proof of competency remain my preferred methods.
You can make the argument that driver training is ineffective due to the amount of people who ignore the rules of the road. Firearm training usually does not lower the incidences of misuse due to the fact that those who are going to misuse them will not regard safe operation, handling, or legal use. however with training/education, they do not have the excuse of "well I was never made aware or told" it's a weak excuse at best, but let's just eliminate that out of the potential excuses we have to mollycoddle criminals.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocky7
We have every right to question - and should question - why any government would insist on controlling the private ownership of guns in the name of public safety when such controls always result in either no measurable benefit at all or make things worse. Dr. Langmann's study in Canada was the more recent of these scholarly studies.
if anyone is interested in reading it it can be found herehttp://jiv.sagepub.com/content/27/12/2303.full.pdf
When those who hold, or seek, power persist in arguing that our surrender of some of our freedom will result in a better society despite failure after failure and despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, is there not some point where you begin to question their real motives? It seems to me that you must - unless you believe they are cretins. I do not. Gun Zombies are many things; stupid is not one of them. They need to be outed.
None of that is a "slogan", although I do agree it sounds odd to people who are used to a steady diet of anti-gun propaganda.
I would agree that we ought not to raise our voices, but that's it. We decide to either tell the truth or not. It's that simple. It will take a time for the truth to sink in, yes. People who are frightened lose some of their capacity to hear. If the fear is strong enough, they go deaf. I have seen this happen in urgent circumstances and I believe it also happens when the fear has been cultivated over years. Fear is fear. We must be patient. But we must never shirk from the truth of history and experience and the cold, hard facts that are available to us.
I think Rugatika, for instance, has it exactly right. If we have any sort of registry, it ought to be a registry of those who are banned from owning a firearm (with good reason). The rest of us have a right to do as we like, the right to the means of self-defence and the right to be left alone and not tracked.
Waiting periods, training, prescribed storage and background checks all sound nice, but they are all proved ineffective. That seems counter-intuitive but it is true nonetheless. I presume the occasional benefit that one would expect should come from those measures is more than offset by frustrating those who were not able to purchase or use a firearm immediately in anticipation of an attack or some violence and therefore were unarmed when the attack came. That is only an educated guess on my part as I have seen no study that would explain why those nice-sounding measures either have no beneficial effect or cause more death and victims of violence. There is no free lunch. |
To come along with this idea, to further explain my idea of slogans and weak arguments (none found in your posts btw, I just want to be clear on why and what I'm mentioning) the first knee jerk reaction can be found in a post in this thread and other. It's usually around the line of "if you're for gun control, you're along side of these dictators." or something similar.
Instead of saying these slogans, the catch phrases of guns don't kill people, all the normal things, I'd prefer reasonable discourse. Truth is, there's a kernel of truth in them, but people have heard them so many times it's a joke to most. Growing up in a church environment, the first words out of people's mouths when tragedy struck was always "god has a plan". After hearing that or any other cliche, no matter how well intentioned, it loses it's meaning and sincerity. When cliches form the crux of your argument, I think you just might have lost.
Personally, I appreciate the information and the direction towards that study. I also appreciate the honest conversation. Save for a few posts, this has been a productive discussion.