OZgriffiths wrote:
The world around you is proof that your gun laws are a failure though.
Your gun
homicide rate alone per 100,000 people (3.7), as of a few years ago, was the same as the combined firearm homicide total of all these relatively equivalent countries:
Australia (0.09); Britain (0.04); New Zealand (0.17); Germany (0.06); Ireland (0.36); France (0.22) Japan (0.02); Italy (0.36); Poland (0.02); Hong Kong (0.12); Finland (0.26); Switzerland (0.52); Belgium (0.29); Sweden (0.19); Denmark (0.22); and Israel (0.94). Bear in mind that Israel is in a fair state of war which will be causing that number... And lets not look at your firearm-related suicides and
Yes, there are a lot of nutters with guns out there in the USA. Is leaving wide open access for all to concealed weapons, assault rifles, high capacity pistol magazines, gun show weapons that can be bought and taken home the same day without any checks, etc etc going to stop that or keep you safe from them? You've already seen the outcome. When Australia saw a nearby country having problems with high gun ownership, corruption, gang warfare, political instability etc, we went in, became a functional police force and removed the guns from the gangs. Solomon Islands, Operation Anode for those of you who want to look it up. The killing stopped. Now people can hate each other all they like, its just a hell of a lot harder to kill anyone.
I can run anywhere in Australia at a moments notice, any time of day or night, without fear. Ok, the folk in bad neighbourhoods might throw a few jokes at me as I go past, but that is as bad as it gets.
Your country has many years of psychological retraining needed to deal with the obsession with firearms, violence, the paranoia etc. There's also years worth of policing and political redevelopment required to remove the weapons from the undesirable elements of society, so that there is less cause for that paranoia. Unfortunately, all that is unlikely to happen. But maybe if it does, in 10 or 20 years time, those of you who have proven you can play nicely with each other and the rest of the world can be allowed your shiny toys back again.
Before getting too satisfied with your country, you should 1st look at the rape rates of Australia. Looks like a few women in the AU would have liked to have a gun handy.
I live in a safe community with the average house price running 1M and my wife now needs to run with the dogs due to some nut job stalking her on a run one pleasant morning. We also have a problem with home burlaries because crooks like to steal from people that have good things to steal.
Yes, crooks do have cars and will travel outside the "shit hole" places they live and cause trouble for the law abiding folks.
But swinging around to the other side of the coin, I had to do some work in the ghetto of Chicago and even though I'm 6' 2" and 215, I had to hire 300+ pound football linemen as body guards and this was for daylight hours.
For all the supermen that train all over the world without fear, I guarantee that you would not train in these rat holes even if guns never existed. It's like entering a whole different world.
And keep in mind that Chicago already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation... But I guess those folks didn't get the memo.
So until we see headlines reading "Midldle aged suburban father of 2 goes crazy half way through his fartlek and guns down....", I can't see a single reason why they should not be able to carry for self protection.