I am for it,along with good regulations. There should also be awareness about people with physiological disorders. If you are fortunate enough to live in a place with very low crime,good for you. But it still doesn't mean that you can't have the right to be secure and have your own protection when you feel like the other protection made available isn't good enough. People in this world are fresh enough to walk into your home or personal space and violate it. What would you do if someone did that to you? Consider an event like the Cheshire home invasion in CT from 2007 where a family was attacked and the man's wife and two daughters were raped and killed. They might be rare events,but they still happen.

I've been hunting. Doesn't mean I own a gun.

AGAINST. I think the current laws are just ridiculous. I don't really believe in anyone having guns but they're never going to be completely gotten rid of, so they should take a leaf out of the UK's book and adopt similar gun laws.

The point you're making here is not apparent to me

You mean laws which would be completely unconstitutional and absurd? Sis, it's difficult to get anything other than a shotgun or a .22 target rifle. Not here for your lack of freedom

They should be heavily cracked down upon obviously. But not taken away from everyone.

The new technology being developed where only YOU can shoot YOUR gun through it reading your prints is interesting and could be a game changer. Sure "crazy" people could still get one and register his/her prints on it but it would disable people stealing another person's gun and using it to shoot someone.

Against it. I can't believe some people support it

Look at how much lower the gun crime rate is in Canada.

That kind of stuff only sounds good to people who don't know or care about guns

First, that seriously compromises reliability. What if your hands are sweaty or injured and it doesn't recognize the print? What if the electronics fail (electronics inside a gun which is expected to survive hundreds of powder detonations during practice?)

New Jersey introduced a law saying once a gun like that comes on the market, all "dumb" guns will be banned... but police officers complained because the police didn't feel they would trust a "smart gun", so there's an exception specifically for police.

Which raises the question, why is a police officer's life worth more than someone protecting themselves or their family? Answer, it's not and the idea of "smart guns" is stupid.




And I didn't even get to the second point: no one wants that junk on their gun and no one would buy it, which is why no companies have been coming out with them.

People already complain about things like the strength of parts created by "metal injection moulding", or about the inclusion of internal locks which can jam a gun, or about whether a particular part is forged or cast...

No one would buy a gun with electronics, apart from naive people who think it's perfectly safe and would probably leave it on the counter or something.




And are guns banned in Canada? Nope... you even got rid of your long gun registry and destroyed all the data, so it's clearly not availability of guns that controls the violent crime rate...

Maybe the extreme poverty in parts of the US, the lack of a social safety net, no care for people with mental problems has more to do with it?

For it. Sure people will say the Constitution is outdated in that perspective, but I've never understood how people blame the gun and not the person or other underlying causes of such events. I mean, the media jumps on and sensationalizes every time a shooting happens (it's rather unsettling how many have happened in recent years btw). Yet, they never report on every day to day gun crime that happens in cities with poverty and other social/economic issues.

I'm not for or against. I'm realistic.

It would be great if we could eradicate guns, but the thing is, the vast majority of gun related homicides in the US are carried out by criminals with unregistered weapons. They aren't getting them at the stores, they are getting them on the "black market". Guns are just as much an illegal game as a legal one. Taking the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens won't remove them from the population. It would just leave everyone vulnerable.

Look at how poorly alcohol prohibition worked. Getting rid of something, doesn't remove the want. If anything it exacerbates it, and creates a bigger underground market for it, that only a selective group of people have access to. Couple that w/ the fact that the US is attached to a country that loves smuggling illegal things that US citizens want, across borders.

I think, at the very least, to prevent some of these mass shootings, the US needs to up security in public spaces, and address the rampant mental health issues. US sweeps mental health sufferers under the rug. It's almost abusive. Also, there's no reason that people should be able to LEGALLY obtain semi-automatic/automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, and Costco size mags.

What's with all the semi-automatic hate?


You do realize these weapons have been around since before 1900, right? And they are by far the most popular type of handgun?

These are REALLY old designs which have been common for over a century, not sure why people are acting like it's a new threat, and what do they do different from a revolver anyways? Both shoot when you pull the trigger. Idgi.

They may have a long history of manufacturing, but times have changed. I don't think mass killings were an ever increasing issue in the 1900.

I will amend my statement by being more specific, and adding "some" to the front end. I'm not opposed to people keeping certain semi-automatic pistols around for safety, not in these times.

but to name at top 3:

Civilians do not need AR-15s...imo...
Civilians do not need .50 Cal Sniper Rifles
Civilians do not need "cop killer" FN Five-sevens

High power semi-automatic assault weapons, especially ones that can hold kevlar piercing ammunition.... don't need to be in anyone's personal gun racks.

Imo.

1. AR-15 is the new "national rifle", just like the M14 and Garand before it, and even the 1903 Springfield. It's the official rifle used for NRA High Power competition and it is also one of (if not the) the most popular rifles of these times, so there's all that to be considered. I acknowledge that high-capacity semi-automatic rifles are capable of causing more damage than other types with slower rates of fire or smaller magazines, but it's nothing specific to the AR-15.

2. When has a .50 caliber sniper rifle ever been used in a crime? Its something that sounds scary but that no one needs to be concerned about. They are nearly 5 feet long and many weigh near 40 lbs. As for "shooting down aircraft", that's ridiculous, small planes in WWII had a hard time shooting each other down and they had up to eight .50 caliber machine guns firing at 500-600 rpm each. Unlike with the AR-15, you can't realistically use one to shoot crowds of people, so there's really no point to any laws regulating them... at all.

3. You have a point with this one, not that I agree with it.

4. Almost any modern rifle can easily pierce Kevlar even with soft-point hunting ammunition, so "armor piercing" is not something exclusive to "assault rifles".