Should guns be banned entirely in the United States?

Answer 1

No, I own guns, I have owned at least one gun since I was 9 years old, I have never used one in a crime, never harmed a human being with one an have no intention to do so unless my life is in danger. I am 61 now and to take my guns away from me is just wrong. I think that there are enough laws on the books about guns to control them and if they were enforced as they should be there would not be the problem we are having with gun crimes.

Answer 2

By far most have answered no. And I agree entirely. I think that AZTRAIN23 is very far off base. Most gun crimes occur in big cities where guns are strongly restricted. I live in South Dakota and there are very few of us without a gun or two and we have the second lowest violent crime rate per capita in the country. I think that alone debunks your "redneck" theory.

I also think you'd better check your stats again. Even according the very anti gun UN, the US is no where near the top of the leaders for gun related deaths.

And hey take a look at England where they banned most guns and all handguns ten years ago. They have a lot more crime now than the did before the ban and one of the bans strongest supports ten years ago, just came out and admitted that the gun ban was a TOTAL FAILURE.

You can never wave a magic wand and do away with all the guns in this country. if you attempt to outlaw them you would leave us all defenseless to the criminal element and crime would go up.

Look at the work of John Lott and Gary Kleck. Both are criminologist and have done very extensive work, independently on the subject of gun control. Kleck with the intent of proving that it equated to crime control. Their work is the most definitive ever done on the subject and the both concluded that the more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens, the less crime. Duh!

Answer 3

For what reason, SCOTUS has decided in twenty different cases have stated that the police do not have to respond to cases. In emergencies government has no way of being able to provide protection for people (Remember Katrina).

A gun is just a tool that is no better nor no worse than the man that wields it. It is an inanimate object. The first recorded weapon was a rock. It is impossible to ban rocks. To do so government would have to declare itself is God. The problem is that would violate the separation of government and religion.

Answer 4

That would be ridiculous, nor would it accomplish anything. If you banned guns what would you do when people started using knives or other weapons, would you ban those too.

Of course if you read the constitution, you would know that the second amendment gives us the right to bear arms. Moreover, if the only ones that have guns are police and military then you would have a police state, and that's not the society we want now is it.

Answer 5

I don't own a gun or wish to but I do believe they should not be banned. Our founding fathers I believe put that in the constitution so the citizens can protect this country from any enemy foreign or domestic and that would include against our own government..

Answer 6

Well the constitution does not specifically say citizens. It mentions militia.
I think we should ban machine guns. Who needs a machine gun to hunt? If you know how to use a gun then a pistol should be just fine for protection.

Answer 7

To the extremes, yes I think they should. I've answered this many times, but I might as well present the point.

One of the main arguments I hear from opponents of ANY kind of gun control is that if owning guns is a crime then only criminals will own guns. This claim is closely followed by the premise that society is much safer when criminals don't know who's armed. I suppose this means that if everyone carried a weapon, there would be little (but perhaps not zero) crime, as the criminal might recognize that there's nothing the criminal could do to me that I can't also do to the criminal.

Fair enough. This is known as deterrence, and is the same policy cited to stock nuclear weapons during the cold war.

But as an extension of that, wouldn't it follow that the MORE guns a society had (assumed to be possessed by both criminal and non-criminal), the LESS crime there would be? And consequently, wouldn't it follow that the less crime there is, the fewer gun-related deaths there would be?

Let's find out.

Of the 36 richest nations in the world (source: World Bank), the United States of America has the highest rate of gun-related deaths (defined as murders, accidents, and suicides), at 14.24 deaths per 100,000 residents (source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention). Japan had the lowest, at 0.05 deaths per 100,000 residents.

One can logically conclude from this that Japan must be among the safest nations in the world, and the US must be among the most dangerous. Perhaps this is not a surprise.

Based upon our above reasoning (the one where we assume that the more guns there are, the fewer gun-related deaths there are), we should expect that Japan must have among the highest guns owned per capita, and that the US must have among the lowest guns owned per capita.

Is that the case? Are there more guns per capita in Japan than in the US? I don't have the research in front of me, but my strong suspicion is that there aren't. However, I'm willing to be proven wrong if someone can show me a credible source.

Excluding trained military and law enforcement personnel, nobody needs a semiautomatic handgun or an assault weapon; those firearms are manufactured with the explicit intent of killing humans. Nobody but a hunter or a farmer needs a shotgun or rifle; if you are a hunter or farmer, then keep your ammunition separate from the gun and locked up, and you don't need a dozen.

Additionally, I won't say everyone is like this, but everyone I've met who owns a gun has absolutely no concept of responsibility. They're reckless and impulsive and unpredictable. Of course, I thought that way even before I found out that they were armed.

Pretty much, I don't trust anyone I've met who wants guns or wants fewer restrictions on guns. They scare the hell out of me, and those are the ones that have no business possessing firearms.



Rockhanger: No, none of them are members of the NRA, and they certainly aren't what I would consider urban thugs. Most of them are small-town rednecks (and I don't use that term carelessly) with little respect for any laws at all (every single one of them had a lengthy police record and some had spent time incarcerated), much less those that involved public safety including their own. But I also qualified my statement by not assuming that they could accurately represent all gun-owners. I'm sure not all are like them, but what I'm saying is that I've never met one who isn't.


Christopher H: I checked and cited my sources and stats. Where are yours?

Answer 8

NO, (this certainly seems to be the consensus here!)

"thequeenreigns" has it all wrong about "what the NRA says".
Read a little more about the NRA for yourself:

http://www.nraila.org/default.aspx
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I don't know WHO the gun owners that "AZTRAIN23" is talking about but I'll bet that next to NONE are NRA members,.. Practically ALL Gun owners that I know are NRA members and they are among the MOST responsible and law-abiding people I've EVER known! AZTRAIN23's acquaintances are likely urban thugs. It would do him good to get out to a range and talk to a few law-abiding gun owners.
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Answer 9

if guns are banned entirely, our soldiers are going to train with what? bows and arrows? Our Olympic shooters can't train unless they go overseas. Our Coast Guard and DEA agents will go against well-armed drug dealers with what? tasers and pepper spray?

Only law abiding citizens will observe a national ban on guns. Our laws should protect those who follow the law, not put them at a disadvantage against those who break the law.

Answer 10

Banning guns would simply give the rest of the world an advantage. With at least 50% and probably a lot more Americans owning guns I feel more protected. What guns do you think invaders are going to fight if they came to the shores of the US?