The next time a gun enthusiast wants to compare guns to cars or swimming pools, just ask this:

[Tommy_Carcetti]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Sissyk (a host of the General Discussion forum).

When's the last time you heard about an army giving its soldiers cars for the purpose of running over enemy soldiers?

When's the last time you heard about an army giving its soldiers swimming pools and having them try to grab enemy soldiers and drown them in the pools?

Yes, guns are tools.

They are also extra-ordinary tools, and ought to be subjected to extra-ordinary levels of regulation.

[Skittles]

1. there's really no point arguing with people like that

they're ADDICTS

[starroute]

2. Are they arguing for the same sorts of controls as on cars or pools?

Cars have to be registered and can't be sold or given away without filing to transfer the registration. Drivers have to be trained and licensed and hold insurance.

Even a swimming pool will increase your insurance premiums, and often with state laws or the insurance company require that pools be fenced. There is also a federal law requiring drain covers.

So are the gun enthusiasts you know remanding gun registration, training, licensing, insurance, and physical barriers to prevent gun accidents? That would be a really good thing.

[hack89]

3. Interestingly enough, guns did not increase my home owners insurance

when I asked why they asked about my type of dog but not my guns, the agent said there are so few gun accidents compared to other types of accidents that there is no reason to.

You don't have to register and insure cars to own them, only to drive them on public roads.

[beevul]

4. Thats not entirely accurate.

Cars have to be registered and can't be sold or given away without filing to transfer the registration.

That's not true. They can be sold and given away paperwork free left right and sideways. They can still be driven on private property, such as offroad, race tracks etc.

Paperwork only really comes into play when you want to drive on public roads.

Drivers have to be trained and licensed and hold insurance.

No. Drivers have to be trained and licensed, and hold insurance (not in all states), ONLY to drive on public roads. That might not be much of a distinction to folks who live in the city where there isn't much of any private property to drive on, but it means something entirely different to rural people.

So are the gun enthusiasts you know remanding gun registration, training, licensing, insurance, and physical barriers to prevent gun accidents? That would be a really good thing.

Gun registration? Never.

Training and licensing? See concealed carry (public carry, as opposed to simple ownership).

[starroute]

10. And 12 year olds can drive farm trucks out to the fields -- but so what?

It doesn't have much to do with the real world.

Or are you arguing that there should be no regulation of guns so long as people never take them off their own property -- and can be heavily fined if they do?

[passiveporcupine]

11. And cannot shoot off their own property...meaning

bullets have to stop at your property line or sooner.

[Rex]

5. So you are saying we should regulate items based on their sole purpose?

The more dangerous, the more well regulated? I have no problems with that, it makes common sense.

[hunter]

6. Gun fetishists. Not "enthusiasts."

Many gun "enthusiasts" are psychopaths.

They dream of shooting "bad guys" but their definition of "bad guys" is very frequently twisted.

I'm not kidding, if I had a habit of shooting "strangers" on "my property" there would be dozens dead. Who's sleeping on the sofa? Oh well, there's a sleeping household dog there too. Go back to bed, self.

I'm so glad to have been the child of artists. If there was some naked stranger in the house when you got up in the middle of the night to take a piss then you simply figured he belonged to someone.

Young or old, just another crazy in the house, like everyone else.

Otherwise Spot would have already eaten them.

Damned good dog that Spot.

[TrollBuster9090]

14. As a gun owner myself, I have to say that...

1. I'm ENTIRELY In favor of taking measures to make sure that only rational, law abiding citizens have access to guns, and that they're kept out of the hands of criminals and nutcases. (This is obviously the opposite of what the NRA wants, because they represent the gun MANUFACTURERS, not the gun owners. The easier it is for criminals to get guns, the more scared regular people become, and the more guns THEY buy. And around and around we go, until there are more guns in America that people. They don't care, they make money either way.)

2. The best way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is to have a national registry, or mandatory STATE controlled registry's. (There's nothing in the Constitution or BoR that says you have the right to bear arms IN SECRET, or without REGULATION or RECORD.) This is important because most criminals get guns from straw man purchasers. If you have a registry, every time you catch a criminal with a gun that he's not supposed to have, you can look up who was SUPPOSED to have it, and ask them why they no longer do. And finally,

3. My experience is that most of the people who rabidly oppose these measures (the gun nuts) are not 'psychopaths.' A lot of them are just pathetic losers and cowards, who have dead end, low paying jobs. And the only thing that makes them feel important is the idea that they can carry a gun around, and it (apparently) makes them feel invincible, or at least important. Does anybody really believe that a pathetic deadbeat like George Zimmerman would be going around his neighborhood confronting and challenging teenage boys that he thought were 'thugs' if he didn't have a gun in his belt that he thought made him 'invincible?' Hell no, he just would have called the police on Treyvon Martin, they would have showed up and (hopefully) found out he belonged in the neighborhood, and that would have been the end of it. Zimmerman would never have had the 'liquid courage' to get out of his car and confront Treyvon. Ditto for a middle aged software engineer like Michael Dunn. Does anybody think HE would have been challenging a car full of teenage African American boys about the music they were playing if HE didn't have a gun in his pants that he thought made him immortal?

Nope, the most rabid gun owners are not psychopaths. The most rabid gun freaks tend to be the most INSECURE people, and are just compensating.

[daleanime]

7. Let's just give them the same regulation....

even that is too much for most ammosexuals.

[Stevepol]

8. Amen!!

[struggle4progress]

9. I'm really concerned about the growing number of crazies who take swimming pools to schools

in order to drown students en masse

[Godot51]

12. Not tools...

Guns are not tools; they are weapons.

Guns are designed to kill, human or animal.

If a gun is a tool, please build me a house with your gun. Dig a garden with your gun. Create something with your gun.

Hammers are tools which, occasionally, can be used as weapons. Perhaps a nail gun could be used as a weapon but why, since a real gun is designed for the job of shooting and killing not attaching one material to another.

Knives are tools that can be designed and made to kill. Swords are weapons, designed to kill. Try craving turkey with a sword.

Guns are not tools; they are weapons.

[TrollBuster9090]

13. Or you could simply point out that cars have a number of uses BESIDES killing people/things

But no matter what you say, you'll inevitably be hit with their bottom line, catch-all argument "but gunz are guaranteed in the CONTITOOSHIN, and cars AREN'T! Our divine Founding Fathers put gunz in the constitooshin because...blah blah blah...tyranny...blah blah blah...Nazi Germany...blah blah blah...Sparta Georgia...blah blah blah..."

*eyes*
Yeah, yeah. Well...

1. There is no evidence in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or even in the Federalist Papers (aside from one sentence written by Madison that suggests it indirectly) that the Founders thought that guns were meant to be a defense against tyranny by the government.

2. There IS evidence in the Militia Acts that they were talking about private citizens owning arms for State MILITIAS when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, (In fact, the Militia Acts even MANDATE that men of a certain age MUST own a rifle for the purpose of serving in the State militias, and that the FEDERAL government will have control over the militias that supersedes State control.)

3. George Washington even USED the Militia Acts to use State Militias to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, which was a perfect test case of the 'Tree of Liberty/blood of Tyrants' doctrine these morons always spew...

4. Thomas Jefferson even created the first 'gun free zones' by BANNING WEAPONS from university campuses,

5. When they wrote the 2nd Amendment, they were talking about black powder muskets that even a professional soldier couldn't fire more that two or three times a minute. They might have thought twice if they'd known we'd end up with weapons that even a child can fire 50 times per second...and...

6. While the Founding Fathers were wise for their age, not everything they wrote in the Constitution and BoR is brilliant...like not giving women the right to vote, and counting African Americans as 3/5ths of a person (something the GOP conveniently forgot to read when they were reading the Constitution on the House floor in 2010)...

[IronLionZion]

15. You'd be surprised

a conservative asshole would gleefully start talking about the army waterboarding people and using humvees to ram blockades and knock down walls (on top of the people inside). Israeli armored bulldozers have buried people alive before. Indian/Pakistani armies have run over crowds of people with jeeps.

Death by sinking ship/submarine is drowning


They'll always come up with ever more creative bullshit because they don't want to admit the real reasons:
1. They like playing with guns
2. They have a lot of deeply irrational fear
3. They have wet dreams of killing a lot of people if they had the opportunity self-defense.

You don't want to see how their eyes light up as they tell you their excuse for having high-capacity magazines.

[Sissyk]

16. Locking.

Please see the pinned thread at the top of General Discussion

Thank You!