Americans still don't want more gun control

[Michael Tee]

<<Columbine showed that this logic is invalid as well. All the firearms that those students used were either stolen or purchased illegally - so it shows that even high school students are capable of acquiring illegal firearms.>>

Actually all it shows is that SOME high school students can acquire guns illegally.

My argument wasn't that nobody would ever be able to figure out how to get an illegal gun, it was that some would and some wouldn't.  So the number of total gun crimes would be less than if everybody could get the gun legally.

It stands to reason that if you make something illegal, it raises the cost and increases the difficulty and risk of acquiring it.  You'd have to be crazy to say that it's still available to everyone who wants one.  Some won't be able to meet the increased prices, some won't know how to find the underground characters who deal in guns, or will be afraid to get mixed up with them, and some won't want to take the risk of breaking the law and getting caught.

[Universe Prince]

I posit that, while respecting the right to own guns, making their acquisition all the more difficult for all the right reasons will reduce gun deaths.

Is there any evidence to support this position?

[Amianthus]

MY logic must be flawed?  You should look at your own a little more closely.  It's impossible to verify in any way.  Depends purely on speculation.

It depends on less speculation than your logic does. You claim that if firearms were common, everytime someone got mad at someone else, there would be a gun fight. I pointed out that firearms are common in the US already.

[Amianthus]

It stands to reason that if you make something illegal, it raises the cost and increases the difficulty and risk of acquiring it.

Availability of alcohol and public drunkeness both went up during prohibition. Prohibition has never been shown to reduce availability of what you're prohibiting.

[Michael Tee]

<<It depends on less speculation than your logic does. You claim that if firearms were common, everytime someone got mad at someone else, there would be a gun fight. I pointed out that firearms are common in the US already.>>

Yeah.  So are gunfights.  With one or two exceptions, more gun deaths per capita than any other industrialized nation.

[Michael Tee]

<<Other than putting everyone capable of violence (everyone) into fishbowls for lifetime observation , (which is what they are doing in London) , or restricting access to guns so harshly that Pol Pot would be embarrased by the measures , what could you actually do to make someone who is willing to plot his violence for months , helpless and frustrated to do so?>>

The obvious flaw in THAT argument is that everyone who starts out plotting violence doesn't last the whole month.  Some of them will give up when they can't get the guns as easily as they thought they could.  The ones who stay the course aren't the ones who the gun-control policy will stop.  It stops the others, the ones who aren't so smart, resourceful or daring.

[larry]

If there are lessons to be learn from the VT murders, it is that an un-arm society is a defenseless society. That is why the Jews were murdered by the millions, they had no weapons and Hitler said they were all mentally inferior to the Aryan race. Americans should never give up their guns. We cannot trust the government to remain loyal to the people and for that reason the citizen cannot be refused the right to own firearms.

[Amianthus]

Yeah.  So are gunfights.  With one or two exceptions, more gun deaths per capita than any other industrialized nation.

The vast majority of our firearm homicides are due to the other prohibition we're currently working under - the "Drug War." Enacting a prohibition to solve the problems of a previous prohibition doesn't seem to be the way to solve problems.

[Plane]

<<Other than putting everyone capable of violence (everyone) into fishbowls for lifetime observation , (which is what they are doing in London) , or restricting access to guns so harshly that Pol Pot would be embarrased by the measures , what could you actually do to make someone who is willing to plot his violence for months , helpless and frustrated to do so?>>

The obvious flaw in THAT argument is that everyone who starts out plotting violence doesn't last the whole month.  Some of them will give up when they can't get the guns as easily as they thought they could.  The ones who stay the course aren't the ones who the gun-control policy will stop.  It stops the others, the ones who aren't so smart, resourceful or daring.

I don't thnk of Cho as smart resorsefull or dareing .

Just persistant.

The incident we ar discussing and the Columbie and the  Nicklemines incident would not be affected by the canges you are proposeing, neither would professional crime or gang crime .

The only benefit you can hope to claim is the person who isstimed in becomeing harmfull in a single fit of rage
........what if he has a second fit of rage?