You've explained nothing. You completely avoided the topic. Are you actually claiming that guns do not make killing easier?
What part of the word/term "irrelevant" didn't you understand? Hint: guns make it "easier" to defend ones self, and defensive uses exceed criminal uses in the US. Again, read the data, or stop running your pie hole.
You missed your calling. You should write books about conceal/carry of rocks. I mean rocks...guns....what's the difference?
Only an idealogue like yourself would see no qualitative difference btn the two.
And only those who are not well read (read ignorant) on the topic make such comments. Again, resources for your education were supplied.
In fact, here's what you said:
My contention is that any intentional use of a gun during a crime gun should carry a stiff penalty as an aggravating factor--maybe slap on 10-20 years. I would even increase such the penalty for the negligent use of firearms. We already have increased sentences for the use of a gun in assault or battery. I just take that idea and push it a little further on criminal killings and irresponsible gun use.
Wow, your reading comprehension is so bad you use quotes I never said? The above never came from me, so "In fact, here's what you said" aint what I ever said. This does not bode well as proof of your debating skills...
Since a gun makes killing or harming another person easier, our leaders decided that some crimes committed with guns have increased penalties, see aggravated battery and assault.
Which has no effects on actual crime rates, thus we go in circles due to your ignorance of the topic and focus on the tool vs the outcomes. The data has shown gun laws either have no effects on crime rates (and crime rates are what matter...duh) or they increase crime, but they don't lower it. Again, see article above by Dr Lott on the effects of guns on crime rates, etc,.
If criminal penalties as a modifier of behavior mean nothing, as you aver, then we can just shitcan a huge rationale for criminal law--deterrance (the other being punishment).
More babble, minus any objective data to support it. Your type always, and predictably goes from the "guns make it easier" to "guns are deigned to kill" arguments, all of which are worthless and fail to look at both data and history. What guns are intended for is irrelevant. Cars are intended for driving to work, yet kill 40,000 per year. Pools and bikes-designed for biking and swimming respectively-kill more kids per year then guns. What guns are USED for is what’s relevant. There are negative and positive uses for guns.
A negative use of a gun is when a person commits a crime using a gun to commit it. That person is what is known as a criminal and all legal and or physical punishment should be applied to said person.
The positive use of a gun would be to prevent a crime or save a life, such as the 120lb women who shoots the 210 rapist, the 80 year old man who prevents the burglar from coming into his home and doing him harm, or the shop owner who protects his life work from looters after a storm, and so on
In that context, the ONLY relevant question is, what is the ratio of good to bad uses of guns? Between 700,000 (FBI’s data) and 2.5 million (Klecks data) times per year a gun is used in the in the US. in the positive sense Guns are used approximately 5 times more often to prevent a crime/save a life then they are to commit a crime.
So why not just remove all guns from the hands of citizens to reduce crime (which is not even possible nor constitutional but mentioned here for the sake of argument) which should lower crime? On a much larger historical picture, history has shown us over and over and over what happens to a population that is disarmed by it’s own government: they become subjects, slaves, or dead. Hitler knew that all too well when he said:
“History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so." --- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitlers Tischegesprache Im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1942.
Thus, why the Second Amend exists and reveals a universal truth: the right to self defense - be it from criminals or a tyrannical government - is a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT no government can grant or take away. Those who do not view armed self defense as a basic human right, ignore the mass graves of those who died at the hands of tyrants.
Great men of peace and war agree on that. For example:
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." -Mohandas K. Gandhi
and
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." -- The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)
Guns are a necessary evil but necessary to a democracy and that fact was recognized by men far smarter then we are. For example;
"A FREE people ought...to be armed..." -George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790 in Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790.
And:
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws
make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides,
for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and punishment - (1764).
And a more recent opinion:
"That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." --George Orwell
This is no less true today then it was then, perhaps even more relevant today then it was then some have argued.
Use your logical mind, do some research, leave what you think you know of the topic behind, and you will be shocked at what you find.
