Another gunman shooting! We need stricter gun control laws!!!

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

The executive VP of the NRA famously said the following:

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

After dwelling on it for a while, I'm left with this question:

When did that 'good guy with a gun' stop being a police officer?

Please spare me the anecdotes of this cop shooting that innocent person or whatever. These things do happen. There are rotten apples. Really. Even here in Australia.

What I want to know is not about the individual but about the symbol, the representative of law enforcement. The Police Officer. The Good Guys with the Guns, as opposed to the Bad Guys with the Guns.

Obviously it was never as simple as 'cops and robbers' but if the police are no longer the good guys with the guns, if law-abiding citizens are (essentially, vigilantism), then who are the bad guys?

One question, many facets.

Respectfully, Charan, there's an aspect of reality that you don't appear to be considering here. In the US (I obviously can't speak for anywhere else) a police officer, while still "a good guy with a gun" has his hands tied in far too many situations. In far too many cases they are not legally permitted to actually prevent many crimes of violence. Sure, they can respond to them after the fact, but that response doesn't stop the initial crime for which the police officer isn't present.

There have been a few times in my life when I have received death threats that, due to the nature of circumstances surrounding them, seemed credible enough to have me worried. When I called the police I was politely told that they would tell the person threatening me to leave me alone, but until he actually acted on the threat there was nothing more they could do. Are these the "good guys with guns" I'm to rely on to keep me and my family safe?

I respect anyone's choice to own, or not own, a firearm. I respect the opinions that shape those choices. For myself, though, there is no choice. Given the experience described above, the couple times I've stared down the barrel of loaded guns wielded by people who wanted what I had, and the three times I've been robbed with a knife to my throat, there's no way I'm waiting on the police.

-EDIT-

There's also a reason these mass shootings, or armed robberies, or drive by shootings, etc, don't happen in police stations. The type of people who commit these crimes are typically cowards. They go where they know people haven't the means to defend themselves, knowing that armed response is far enough away that they have time to complete their crimes before the police arrive.

Re-reading my post I feel the need to apologize. I think I may have come across more aggressively than I meant to. Sorry for that. While I do feel very strongly on the issue, I do mean it when I say I respect other people's position on the matter.

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Septile wrote:

Regulating and outlawing the things people use and indulge in has been show to be completely ineffective in so many cases that I am extremely unlikely to be convinced that it is the solution, better education, better quality of life, better healthcare so people with psychological issues can be taken care of rather than left to their own devices, those are solutions. But they're much harder, and people would rather go for the quick and easy.

You are absolutely right. Catching these people or changing their minds before they decide to harm others is the only solution. Yes guns allow people to do greater harm but at the end of the day the psycho is going to hurt someone. Look at China and the recent string of guys walking into schools and going on kid stabbing sprees. Same issue but guns weren't involved.

And from my personal experience I have seen a few crazy people go on violent physical rampages. They're clearly insane and become super aggressive but are easily subdued but at the same time what if they had a weapon? How many ticking timebombs are out there anyways? God I'm glad I live in a rural area.

I personally believe a guaranteed base income for any adult would fix so many of these problems but let's see a politician sell that to the middle class. Oh buy they'll just use it for drugs oh they are lazy etc.

This is always a contentious topic, but you have to realize that these people almost never obtain guns legally. It's fairly rare to see someone who has a gun license and obtained their gun through proper sources to do a shooting, or even have their gun used in a shooting. All in all it's not about what is legal, because killing people is illegal, and there are better ways to kill a lot of people instead of using a gun, the problem is that the news glorifies the killers, instead of just kind of making sure that they're ignored and focus more on the victims.