Shoot a camera, not a gun

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@Roger,

there ya go with that ammunition control bit again. I'd be quite intrigued to learn how you would go about doing it? And why it is that you continue to assume that we here are just target shooters? Targets pose no threat to me, none whatsoever, so why in the world would I spend countless rounds of ammunition putting holes in them? I don't!! That's why my ammo stores will last a life-time (apart from the fact that I don't go looking for people in whom to deposit any :D :D) A paper target has two basic purposes: to acquire basic weapons competency; and for folks who are into shooting paper holes, to enjoy themselves. So, lay it on me, sir, propose you ammo control scheme, in full recognition that you know about reloading :) BTW, I love the little bit of France i've seen: Normandy, which left me in tears; Chartre whose charm is remarkable and hospitality to those of us who must apologize for not speaking French is touching, and, of course, Paris is exotic to me, where I've been now for the last three years in row. But I digress...
That's right: there I go again. Because I think it's the most realistic option.

1) Show ID and a firearms certificate in order to buy ammunition.

2) Limit the amount of ammunition it's legal to store at home.

There are plenty of other things where there are already controls on how much you can hold without a special permit, including, in many countries, petrol in jerricans. Or, of course, dope.

Is it a guaranteed solution? No. Will it decrease ammunition stocks in the long run? It's hard to see how it wouldn't. I'm not looking for a fix tomorrow, but even if things are a bit better in two or three decades, the bottom line is that they're still better.

Cheers,

R.
 
Also althought not a quick fix in the long run there would be less firearms in homes in control was better. Itl take long, maybe generations but in the end it would work. Regarding amo,if people had to account for their usage then maybe....
Best regards
 
. . . Second: why are you all apparently so comfortable with Police having firearms?. . .
Dear Frank,

You keep conflating ban and control.

I'm more comfortable in a country where ANYONE who carries firearms is trained in their use and safety, whether they're police or not. I'm less comfortable in a country where any Rambo fantasist can buy just about any weapon readily imaginable.

A question: if carrying a gun makes society safer, why are US murder statistics so high? As I said near the beginning of this thread: it ain't the guns (there are plenty of gun-owning countries). It's culture.

Cheers,

R.
 
I'm interested in the theory that armed civilians, perhaps female teachers tooled up with assault rifles, would cut down crimes, perhaps by mowing down the assailant over the heads of the kids.

My nipper has played out some of these scenarios in arcades, but knows the difference between theory and fantasy.

As for a recent incident, when highly-trained personnel went after a shooter: the outcome was seven hits on the perp, nine hits on innocent bystanders.

Statistics apparently say that trained law officers hit their target 35 per cent of the time.

Of course I'm sure we'll hear from some well-armed people here that they would do better. But if I'm being held up by a burgler or mugger can I just say, please stay well away, Rambo...

Edit. Roger just posted the same time as me, with the same Rambo accusation. Clichéd or not, it will do.
 
These are data I took from the US's National Center for Injury and Disease Control, WISQARS Unit, and just for the purpose of looking at the role played by at least one sub-culture in the US, I have broken out the data by race (here is the link if you'd care to peruse it on your own:

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html Doggone it, I pasted the direct link here to the data below and when I check it out, it didn't work. Sorry. You'll have to use this link and search through the drop down menus in the left hand side.

for those who don't, these a excerpted from the WISQARS site, homicide by firearms by age by race by gender expressed as a percentage per 100,000 population for the years 1999-2010

Black males aged 15-29 77.9%

White males aged 15-29 26.6%

I choose this age group because it represents arguably the most violence prone range at least in the US

Here are the data separated out across all age groups and combining all races across the same 10 year time frame.

Homicide by Firearm 24.5%

This is a remarkably useful site with only minimal political/ideological bias.

Ah ... that explains it ... Adam Lanza looks white in the press photos over here
 
Ah ... that explains it ... Adam Lanza looks white in the press photos over here

I didn't put up the post to "explain" anything :bang: I put up the post because some folks were talking about data and others also about culture. CDC is about as apolitical as you can get. So whether the shooter is white or black has not to do with the shooting % per se, but instead, IMHO, the discrepanies noted in the CDC data point to the issue of how culture needs seriously to be looked at as an independent variable. :bang:
 
Highly trained?? Trained??

Highly trained?? Trained??

I'm interested in the theory that armed civilians, perhaps female teachers tooled up with assault rifles, would cut down crimes, perhaps by mowing down the assailant over the heads of the kids.

My nipper has played out some of these scenarios in arcades, but knows the difference between theory and fantasy.

As for a recent incident, when highly-trained personnel went after a shooter: the outcome was seven hits on the perp, nine hits on innocent bystanders.

Statistics apparently say that trained law officers hit their target 35 per cent of the time. Of course I'm sure we'll hear from some well-armed people here that they would do better. But if I'm being held up by a burgler or mugger can I just say, please stay well away, Rambo...

Edit. Roger just posted the same time as me, with the same Rambo accusation. Clichéd or not, it will do.

Well, Paul, those officers were NOT highly trained, and sadly using ammo that may well have been "round nose" and not hollow point. Reports are that the 9 bystanders were injured by fragments and ricochets - no never mind, they were still injured, though the context suggests that the rounds that missed the target likely hit something else before the fragments struck the bystanders. I don't know. I haven't (yet) seen the AAR. FWIW, SWAT, EMST, CIRT, those guys and gals are highly trained. Street NYPD? likely too much less so.
 
I didn't put up the post to "explain" anything :bang: I put up the post because some folks were talking about data and others also about culture. CDC is about as apolitical as you can get. So whether the shooter is white or black has not to do with the shooting % per se, but instead, IMHO, the discrepanies noted in the CDC data point to the issue of how culture needs seriously to be looked at as an independent variable. :bang:

OK got it ... differences within US culture (racial differences in the example you posted) matter ... and differences between the US and other cultures don't matter ... I understand now
 
@ Paul T,

no one here who is armed and trained and qualified on targets that shoot back can accurately predict what their % of hits will be in any force on force confrontation. The variables are multiple. I can say that among the highly trained SWAT and ERT guys I've been allowed to train with, when the stuff hit the fan, their hit rate was 100%, yep. Took one officer, one round with 5.56 out of his M4 to neutralize the attacker. In another such incident, the arriving SWAT trained officer, scored 100%, 3 rounds, 3 hits of 5.56 and another arriving officer 7 rounds, 7 hits of 9mm Hydrashock as i recall, to neutralize the same attacker who survived the 5.56 hits.

No one who goes armed that I know is Rambo (sic). I don't know how many times you've been to a firearms range or have been to a firearms training course where live ammo was being fired on reactive targets, video displayed simulations, etc., but I reckon in the last 20 years I've been doing that, I never met one single Rambo (sic). So, I've got some knowledge base about responsible, trained non-sworn citizens.

The Rambos live in an entirely different world and the ones I've been unfortunate enough to encounter were from an entirely different culture. Fortunately in those encounters, no one died, even though in two of them I had justification to use deadly force. Now, does that make me a Rambo in your eyes? If so, i'm sorry, so be it. I've been called many things, but, I think it was Ogden Nash who said something like "I don't care what you call me, as long as you just mention my name in passing." :)
 
OK got it ... differences within US culture (racial differences in the example you posted) matter ... and differences between the US and other cultures don't matter ... I understand now

Gee, Sparrow, what, are trying to start an argument? I don't know about other cultures, I don't prescribe for them what to do or how they should live their lives, or organize their laws with respect to firearms ownership. Do as you want. I may think of what the EU does as nuts so far as firearms ownership is called, or Japan as stupid, or Australia and NZ as idiotic, but, end of the day, it's none of my business. I don't live there, and I'm sure folks who do are quite pleased with the way they find it. I've often invited folks who don't like the US, to leave. I however will be staying :) Not sure who said, but it went something like "you makes your choices and you takes your consequences." I'm fine with that. :)
 
Changing peoples perceptions on guns is going to be the biggest and hardest thing to do there unfortunately.

It's been in the American culture ever since it's foundation.

Who knows, maybe oneday they will wake up and learn just how bad it is to have a firearm. A weapon that if kept in a house could be stumbled upon by a young child and accidently fired, all in the line of 'protection'.

Yup, getting people to change their FEELINGS about inanimate objects being dangerous will be difficult, but not impossible.

BTW, there are no children in my house to accidentally stumble into my firearms.
 
One round fired, one round connects.

One round fired, one round connects.

I'm puzled by the idea about engaging some lunatic in a firefight in a highly populated area with people ducking for cover all over the place. What scares me about this idea is that a lot of people actually believe they can neutralize the threat from a guy armed with automatic weapons moving around firing at will with a single to just a couple of rounds and not risk hitting some of the ones they try to protect. I personally would be scared, shaking all over and though being quite good I doubt I would hit a moving target in less than 5-10 rounds without bringing other lives in danger. Who knows where the stray bullets end up.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/man...ty-sheriffs-deputy-drops-him-with-one-bullet/
:D
 
Ah... Fascinating. Thanks!

But this causes me to wonder: 'arms' ain't just guns. What about the right to keep and bear hand grenades? Or surface-to-air missiles?

Lots of posts follow because I've just got up. This is a subject which fascinates me because on the one hand, I own guns and enjoy shooting, so I don't want to lose my guns, and on the other, I'd really quite like to see a decline in the mass murder rate. Or -- and this is important -- in the murder rate in general. As others have pointed out, an awful lot more people are shot 'retail' (one at a time, whether by accident or design) than are shot 'wholesale' in mass shootings.

Cheers,

R.

It is legal to own grenades in certain states. It is cost prohibitive and requires licenses, background checks, taxes, proper storage.
 
The Rambos live in an entirely different world and the ones I've been unfortunate enough to encounter were from an entirely different culture. Fortunately in those encounters, no one died, even though in two of them I had justification to use deadly force. Now, does that make me a Rambo in your eyes? If so, i'm sorry, so be it. I've been called many things, but, I think it was Ogden Nash who said something like "I don't care what you call me, as long as you just mention my name in passing." :)

Part of the problem in these sorts of discussions, especially here where it has stayed relatively civil, is that reasonable gun advocates don't tend to associate with their less savoury bretheren, and the anecdotes responsible, trained folks have tend to support their vision of a workable existence with unrestricted guns.

But an anecdote or two is not data. The data says the picture of gun ownership in the US is very different than police with 100% hit rates and reverently responsible owners at well-run clubs and gun ranges. Very, very different.

When one side presents data, and one side presents an anecdote, where is the discussion supposed to go?
 
Same here. I am a good shot with rifle and pistol but I don't entertain empty fantasies about Saving The Day With My Trusty Side-Arm. Sure, I might be able to do it. But I don't fantasize that I'd be able to.

If it's going to be assault rifle against pistol, I'd rather have the assault rifle, thanks. And for home protection? Well, how about a double-barreled .410 mole gun loaded with bird shot?

When I lived in California, a lot of farmers liked AK-47s for shooting coyotes. Apart from that sort of vermin control, it's hard to think of many good reasons to own one.

Cheers,

R.
Home protection with a .410 loaded with bird shot is good, if birds are attacking you.
 
Right. I'd feel less comfortable around you if your (civilian) grandfathers had fed their families with the heavy anti-personnel weaponry we've been talking about...

If you think the Bushmaster rifle used in the CT shooting is heavy anti personnel weaponry, you don't want to know what real heavy anti personnel weaponry is.
 
Right. I'd feel less comfortable around you if your (civilian) grandfathers had fed their families with the heavy anti-personnel weaponry we've been talking about...

You would rather have had his family starve to death just so you can feel comfortable?
 
Fascinating discussion for a camera site, unlike many another OT thread, this one has remained reasonably calm.

As someone in the UK, where gun crime is relatively low and guns are rarely seen in day-to-day life, I'm intrigued as to why americans are paranoid enough to feel the need to defend a right to carry guns. Is it really so unsafe and is that not actually just linked to the high gun ownership?

I see the idea of some comfort in the perceived ability to defend yourself but why the ready access to weapons far beyond actual need? It's been known for crackpots to go on the rampage with a (military) tank but does anyone advocate the need to own an anti-tank missile launcher in the house, "just in case"? Surely, the removal of overly powerful guns from general society can't be argued to be a Bad Thing. I accept that a small number of people have legitimate reasons to own these things but self-defence is surely not legitimate. Pest-control, people in danger from wild animals etc, yes.

If, as one poster says, you can keep your proficiency by using airsoft pellet guns, paintball guns etc, then why not limit yourselves to such non-lethal machinery for "sport" purposes? You can't legislate the crackpots and criminals out of existence, any more than terrorists and similar threats but surely you *could* legislate to mitigate their acts on society.

I am puzzled by the gun-culture in countries like the US, maybe I just haven't seen enough of the world to understand!
 
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Yes, his opinions are enlightening to me; however he has presented his opinions more as the Laws of Nature rather than simply his own ethos and interests, which I expect they are.

One would not have learned that even after the Twin Towers attack more than 40% of the US population approved of gun controls from his posts.

The hijackers used razor blades, not guns.
 
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