[ISL]

A revolution that worked: American Revolution.

By some measures, it began in Lexington (the linked Economist column is "Lexington"), when the British government moved to seize citizens' arms.

We must better understand how it is that those who would choose to harm many people reach such a decision. Guns are a tool. So was anthrax, in the post-9/11 mail scare, and it could have been much worse. Mutual respect, understanding, education, kindness, and vigilance are our greatest bulwarks against tragedy.

Banning guns won't solve the problem.

[skyhook_mockups]

My perspective is different since I come from a country with a different culture. Here in Australia there is essentially zero gun ownership by private citizens. We also had a gun buyback (1996) and changes in legislation after the Port Arthur massacre[1]. Basically, I would feel really nervous just being in the same room as a gun.

So from my perspective statements such as 'Guns are a tool' just don't wash. They are the only tool that comes to mind that are specifically designed to kill humans. There is no other use (besides sport shooting) that I can think of for a handgun. The same goes for high powered fully automatic military style rifles. Zero use for hunting an animal, perfectly tailored for hunting humans. That's disturbing to me, and I wouldn't want to live in a society that vehemently fights for the right to bear these arms.

Of course it is better to fix the root cause (mental illness, lack of empathy, education etc). Fighting the root is really hard and will take America generations of effort. Removing semi and full auto weapons can be done over night (the actual effectiveness could be argued ad nauseam, but at least the laws could be in place and some claw back of the 300 million odd weapons could begin).

Psychos would still rampage, but there's a lot less damage you can do if you only have a knife, or you have to reload after each shot.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#The_P...

PS: I'd be happy to be corrected, but from the little I know about the issue, the meaning of 'right to bear arms' in the US constitution has been twisted away from the original intent of organised and well disciplined militias, to: hey look ma I bought a M16 from Walmart today hur hur

[mrmincent]

There was a study released on the effectiveness of the gun reform in australia after Port Arthur, with a pretty clear result. In the 18 years prior to the reforms, there were 13 mass murders, and in the 10 years from the reforms to the study's publication, zero mass murders. People will take what they want from that sort of data (one person basically told me that the study was unreliable because it didn't take into account lead poisoning), but hopefully it might be useful to some.

The study is available at http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/assets/pdfs/Other-Research...

[xyzzyz]

> The same goes for high powered fully automatic military style rifles. Zero use for hunting an animal, perfectly tailored for hunting humans. That's disturbing to me, and I wouldn't want to live in a society that vehemently fights for the right to bear these arms. > hey look ma I bought a M16 from Walmart today hur hur

It's a sad thing that your opinion will soon be discredited on the basis that you do not know the fact that automatic weapons are much more strictly controlled in the US, and that they are very rarely used by criminals.

I also live in a country with a strict gun control (to get a gun, apart from a plausible reason to own one, doing an expensive course on gun usage and safety, tons of paperwork, psychological tests and similar stuff, you also need to have one of the 16 county sheriffs to approve, and they usually don't). The result is 20 homicides using guns last year, in the country of 40 million. Recently I was having a lunch in a bar, during which two policemen entered the bar, also for a lunch. I have seen their guns at their belts, and it made me feel just as uneasy as when taking night bus home, with drunk people shouting insults at each other, even though I knew that they would only use guns to protect me.

[skyhook_mockups]

Thanks for the correction. I'm clearly showing my ignorance when it comes to some of these issues.

I based my M16 bought at Walmart caricature on the little I've learned from news media and documentaries like Bowling for Columbine.

You can substitute M16 for shotgun, and Walmart for Corner Gun Store and add in a mandatory 24 hour waiting period, which maybe doesn't make for quite as nice a sound bite, but is just as ridiculous.

[Turing_Machine]

"I based my M16 bought at Walmart caricature on the little I've learned from news media"

Maybe you should stop believing everything (or anything) you read in the news media.

[angersock]

Please educate yourself about American gun availability before you give the wing nuts a reason to discredit your point. We do not sell automatic weapons without a whoooole lot of paperwork and money, we could not remove the weapons overnight, and your Walmart example is tasteless.

[jacquesm]

Automatic vs semi-automatics is brought up frequently. The simple fact is that for killing a bunch of people in an enclosed space a semi-automatic is the 'right' kind of weapon, full-auto would actually be a lot less efficient. You'd run through your ammo quicker and you'd put many rounds into the walls and the ceiling.

[skyhook_mockups]

As I mentioned, I'm from Australia, so if I misrepresented anything about the US then I'm happy to be corrected.

In my original post I described an exaggerated caricature of gun ownership. The point still stands though: that any private citizen (regardless of the amount of paper work they filled out) can choose to sleep with an assault rifle (or shotgun or semi-auto pistol etc.etc.) under their pillow at night is rather .... disturbing.

[apl]

  > We do not sell automatic weapons without a whoooole lot
  > of paperwork and money

Availability of money has zero bearing on mental health and fitness to carry a weapon, so that criterion goes right out the window. What kind of paperwork is required? Does it entail thorough background checks etc.?

Erecting barriers isn't sufficient; we need the appropriate type of barrier.

[FelixP]

The short answer is that it is very hard to acquire fully-automatic weapons in the US today. Aside from the fact that anything available for sale to civilians will be both prohibitively expensive (1-2 orders of magnitude more expensive than a comparable semi-automatic weapon) and most likely an antique (only weapons manufactured before 1986 are available to civilians), the acquisition process itself is pretty arduous (e.g. FBI background investigation, signoff from head of local law enforcement, etc.). From my understanding, these weapons are almost never used to commit crimes.

The real danger are handguns - something like 3/4s of gun deaths are from handguns.

[Tyrannosaurs]

Another revolution that worked: the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia - non-violent, no guns. And another: the Egyptian revolution last year. Or the 2003 revolution in Georgia. Or 2005 in Kyrgyzstan, and I could go on.

All successful, all non-violent, all more recent than the American Revolution.

Seriously, if you think you need guns to defend yourself, you're basically saying you live in a state which has failed worse than communist era Czechoslovakia or Egypt under an effective dictatorship.

[taylodl]

So how are things going in Syria?

[Tyrannosaurs]

Considerably more dead on both sides than during the non-violent revolutions.

Just think, if you'd given the Egyptian's guns that could have been a bloodbath too.

[Gatsky]

That's a lovely notion, but time and time again, harm minimisation has been the only successful method to deal with issues like this (eg needle exchanges for IV drug users, allowing abortion to prevent women dying awful deaths from botched backyard attempts).

I'm happy for you to start a worldwide movement to end violence and abolish mental illness, but until then, I would rather that nobody has the ability to murder large numbers of people when they feel like it.

And seriously, how many people can successfully weaponise anthrax?

[phpnode]

Guns are tools that kill. They have no other purpose. How anyone can defend the concept of gun ownership in a civilised society is genuinely beyond me.

[dexen]

> Guns are tools that kill. They have no other purpose.

The other† purpose is to keep countries and people in check. The mere ability to immediately use firearms is enough to stop a lot of possible troublemakers.

A country keeps armed forces: military and border guard to keep external actors in check, police to keep unruly citizens in check. A private person keeps arms to keep in check potential burglars, assailants etc., and any other actor who could come in force, of which there are some historical examples discussed in other posts.

† aside of the sporting, hunting and collector activities.

[skyhook_mockups]

I have no problem with the military and police having access to weapons. They are (or should be) highly trained, Psych tested and they work within a regulated, highly structured, hierarchical organisation. All of this serves to keep the wanton violence (almost completely) in check.

The issue arises when every schmoe off the street can go in and purchase a fully automatic, purpose built people killing machine.

I also don't buy the people vs. the government scenario you allude to. Could you really picture a reality where a group of citizens could overthrow the US government just because they had some AK47s?

In the event of run-away government, a far more rational and realistic scenario would be for mass protests that essentially halt the economy over night. There are countless examples of almost completely bloodless revolutions happening in exactly this manner (Polish Solidarnosc and more recently Egypt during the Arab Spring immediately come to mind). The alternative is a bloody coup which usually ends in civil war or military dictatorship.

[richo]

You're right, distributing them with wild abandon is working perfectly.

As you were.