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Guns !! & the good ol' US of A


ioneabee

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Browsing through another car forum

 

they are discussing various mods to their vehicles and one of the threads is where they stash their holsters and which guns they've got fixed in the car (and quick release to get at them)

 

just ............jeez ........ why !!!

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I remember when I was in San Jose a few years back, I was in a bar talking to a couple of locals and we got talking about gun laws. They were totally staggered that we arnt allowed to shoot anyone breaking into your house. One bloke said he had a 357 magnum he kept in his truck and a 12 bore pump action under his bed etc..

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You should see the Facebook group, there's at least a post a fortnight about the same thing. I know it's a different culture and it's very hard for a gun-less society to understand... but I don't think a lot of the morons should be allowed access to vehicles, let alone automatic weapons. These are the same people that think increasing the number of guns owned would reduce gun related deaths too...

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That's rife in all american car forums, the 350z is a popular vehicle stateside & I've seen some terribly blase conversations emerge off the back of what people pack.

 

To some it's just a way of life & a necessary evil because they live in rough neighborhoods - others behave like having the means to extra-judicially kill people with ballistic lead is a constitutional right regardless of how unhinged you may be.

 

It's far too embedded in the cultural mindset of Americans now for it to ever change.

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I've been into shooting since I was a child ~ managed to fire everything from paintball guns, BB guns and airguns to muzzle loading 12 bore shotguns & various handguns/revolvers/rifles. Most of the latter whilst I was in America back in the late 90's in Florida.

 

Guns imo, like all weapons do not kill people and are perfectly safe, ....it's just some of the people that get hold of them unfortunately which are dangerous & do kill people.

 

Also I can see why so many Americans do own and carry guns & tbh if I lived there I probably would too but whether that's a good thing or not I cannot say. Far too easy to take a life "legally" over there and for a lot of the people living there I do wonder where is their empathy for another human being? :shrug:

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I get the fun of shooting (in controlled condition)

But due to the shear weight of evidence not the I have a god given right to carry a fire arm

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I've been into shooting since I was a chilld....

 

Guns imo, like all weapons do not kill people and are perfectly safe, ....it's just some of the people that get hold of them unfortunately which are dangerous & do kill people.

 

Also I can see why so many Americans do own and carry guns & tbh if I lived there I probably would too...

 

Totally agree. I too have been into guns since I was a kid. Growing up in a farming area its perfectly normal to see/use guns on a daily basis. To some of my (non rural) friends who have never been around this sort of thing and the only "exposure" they have had to guns is via computer games, it can be a bit of a shock and they struggle to understand why anyone would want one let alone have a dozen like I have.

 

With the USA, one of my work colleagues lives in South Carolina, and he`s got a Glock 17 (if i remember rightly). What I find funny is that its perfectly fine for him to walk about town with it hanging off his belt. But if he wants to wear it more discreetly, then its classed as "concealed carry" and he has to undertake extra tests/permissions to do that.

 

Unfortunately your not allowed a Glock 17 over here, but even so, the laws/checks/tests and rings you have to jump through to get a license/s are some of the most strictest in the world. And, they are currently getting even stricter. Basically if you have a gun license, your Doctor will be informed and its flagged on their computer. Then if for any reason at any time your Doctor thinks you shouldnt have a license, he can just phone up the police and they will revoke it.

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A school friend moved to the states many years ago and when he visits here he says he feels naked without a sidearm.

 

I wonder how many guns used in crimes are legally or illegally owned in the states.

 

I personally dont think it makes any diference, if I tried hard enough I bet I could get a gun within 24 hours, if I wanted to shoot someone, I reckon I could wait that long.

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I personally dont think it makes any diference, if I tried hard enough I bet I could get a gun within 24 hours, if I wanted to shoot someone, I reckon I could wait that long.

 

Probably but the thing is Jetpilot if you really wanted to kill someone then you don't need a gun to do it, ...so many simple house hold items can be deadly weapons if you so choose them to be.

Obviously other things too like you could use a car to run someone down or garden tools to bludgeon someone to death etc etc.

 

It's actually something that quite frustrates me when victims or friends/family of victims blame firearms (or knives for that matter) for killing their loved one. It wasn't the firearm that did this to their loved one it was another human being.

The firearm may have made it easier to do but it could have just as easily been done with a house brick. ...And we all know banning all the house bricks in the world wouldn't stop people being killed by other people. :dry:

 

If you could magically make all the guns in America disappear over night there would still be a high murder rate over there because (and this is only imo) there is something wrong with the way they empathise with other people & relate to life in general. Something needs to change in the mentality of the general population over there before they see any large decline in murder rates imo.

 

 

In saying that though obviously if all the guns did disappear over night the death rate from accidental firearms deaths would immediately drop. They do seem to be lacking in a lot of common sense gun safety handling practices over there. E.g. Don't leave a loaded gun in your bedside cabinet where your 5 year old kid can pick it up etc. :wacko:

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I agree, that is what I was trying to saying, if you want to kill someone, you dont need a gun, just having one makes it easier and if you really want one, illegally here or in the states they are easily found, no different to drugs which are illegal in both and I think they should be made legal too and let the goverments make money not drug dealers and cartels.

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I agree, that is what I was trying to saying, if you want to kill someone, you dont need a gun, just having one makes it easier and if you really want one, illegally here or in the states they are easily found,...

Agree too.

 

The illegal guns in this country are bad but it's on another level in the states. It really is part of the reason why even if they could/did ban all of the legally owned guns in America & stopped there sales it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference purely because of the large numbers of illegally owned & unregistered firearms over there. :wacko::surrender:

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I have a (conspiracy) theory.

 

A lot of staged shootings which will give police/government motive and support for de - arming the public. They'll pass the bill and a fair amount will hand in their weapons and the ones that won't will have them forcibly removed.

 

It was good to have a right to bare arms in the past. Now it doesn't suit the government and their agenda to pacify tge nation.

 

Our government ride us as hard as they like. They know there'll be no uprising and they know they have total control over us because we can't take action or defend ourselves.

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The law here is barmy.

 

As an extension of that, the law regarding self defence needs to change. What kind of judicial system sees the victim end up in jail alongside the burglar/mugger/rapist fir defending themselves?

 

I guess the problems America has are, what do you class as a situation where you need to deploy self defence measures. It depends on how suspicious or cautious and trigger happy the guy welding the weapon is.

 

You should be able to fight fire with fire. If the guy threatening has a gun you should be able to use your gun.

 

If you're dumb enough to mug someone in a state where it's legal to carry concealed weapons then...

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I remember when I was in San Jose a few years back, I was in a bar talking to a couple of locals and we got talking about gun laws. They were totally staggered that we arnt allowed to shoot anyone breaking into your house. One bloke said he had a 357 magnum he kept in his truck and a 12 bore pump action under his bed etc..

 

That's because people breaking into your house here are very unlikely to own a firearm. In The States it's much different, you expect criminals, even low life scum looking for something to steal to finance their next fix to be armed. We are extremely fortunate that we've avoided a never ending arms race between the criminals, the general public and the police that America suffers.

 

Pete

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The law here is barmy.

 

As an extension of that, the law regarding self defence needs to change. What kind of judicial system sees the victim end up in jail alongside the burglar/mugger/rapist fir defending themselves?

Our law is fine, it's based on reasonable force. If you have cause to suspect the other guy is armed with a knife, then you can grab one. If he's bigger than you, you can still grab one. If it's dark and you don't know, go ahead and grab one.

 

If you stab him once to disable him, then proceed to pin him down and carve your name into his back then that's not reasonable. Tony Martin was only done because he shot them in the back as they were running away: He'd have been fine if he'd shot them once in the chest. Victims don't go to jail ever for defending themselves with reasonable force, they go because they went miles over the top.

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I personally dont think it makes any diference, if I tried hard enough I bet I could get a gun within 24 hours, if I wanted to shoot someone, I reckon I could wait that long.

 

It's actually something that quite frustrates me when victims or friends/family of victims blame firearms (or knives for that matter) for killing their loved one. It wasn't the firearm that did this to their loved one it was another human being.

The firearm may have made it easier to do but it could have just as easily been done with a house brick. ...And we all know banning all the house bricks in the world wouldn't stop people being killed by other people. :dry:

 

If you could magically make all the guns in America disappear over night there would still be a high murder rate over there because (and this is only imo) there is something wrong with the way they empathise with other people & relate to life in general. Something needs to change in the mentality of the general population over there before they see any large decline in murder rates imo.

 

 

 

Can't do a drive-by with a toaster.

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I have a (conspiracy) theory.

 

A lot of staged shootings which will give police/government motive and support for de - arming the public. They'll pass the bill and a fair amount will hand in their weapons and the ones that won't will have them forcibly removed.

 

Whilst probably not a staged shooting, this is exactly what the government did after Hungerford & Dunblaine. Rather than address the short fallings of the police firearms licensing team in actually allowing the shooters licenses in the first place, they took advantage of the public outrage at people legally being allowed firearms to push through legislation making certain types of guns illegal - namely automatic rifles and handguns. They even put restrictions on shotguns even though the shooters didnt use them! This meant thousands of perfectly sane law abiding gun owners instantly lost their guns. This had no effect on preventing the possibility of another legally owned shooting happening and certainly made no difference to criminals being able to obtain illegal guns to use in crimes.

 

Our law is fine, it's based on reasonable force. If you have cause to suspect the other guy is armed with a knife, then you can grab one. If he's bigger than you, you can still grab one. If it's dark and you don't know, go ahead and grab one.

 

If you stab him once to disable him, then proceed to pin him down and carve your name into his back then that's not reasonable. Tony Martin was only done because he shot them in the back as they were running away: He'd have been fine if he'd shot them once in the chest. Victims don't go to jail ever for defending themselves with reasonable force, they go because they went miles over the top.

 

Agree, that can be seen in the few cases which have come to court. One I read locally to me was a guy who beat the living crap out of a burgler with a baseball bat. The burgler took the guy to court for using excessive force. The Judge laughed it out of court saying that the burgler shouldnt have been there in the first place so it was entirely his fault.

 

Another one I remember was the guy who shot a burgler who broke into his cottage and I think killed him. Similar to Tony Martin but the burgler wasnt running away. If I remember correctly, he got let off also.

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I wonder how many guns used in crimes are legally or illegally owned in the states.

 

 

 

I cannot think of a single case in The States where one these mass shootings was carried out using an illegal weapon. Even if you have a criminal record in The States you simply get your wife/neighbour/friend to get the gun for you, it really is as simple as that. Yes, it's probably fairly easy to get hold of a gun here if you have the right connections to the underworld but keep in mind that only about 50-70 people a year are killed with guns and looking through the list of recent victims most are in their teens or twenties which would indicate they belong to gangs involved in turf wars. In the States in 2013 there were 33,000 gun deaths, 500 of which were accidental discharges. Around 100 policemen are killed by guns too every year, including several killed by their own weapons. In The U.K just 1 policeman and 4 policewomen have been killed by firearms since 2000. Armed robberies are pretty much a thing of the past, the 50's and 60's probably saw the peak and there's a lot of easier and safer alternatives for the criminal gangs these days.

 

It is very much a culture thing though and guns are deeply embedded in American culture , much in the way that religion is in some cultures. My own personal opinion is that the only people who should have guns would be the armed forces, certain elements of the police, ie armed response units, airport security, etc and vermin control officers, but basically I'm happy with the current restrictions.

 

Pete

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Just found a pic of my old roadster.... plenty of room in the boot!

 

2011-08-28%2009.45.15_zpstd64wzgt.jpg

 

Are you a gangster? :p

That's just standard equipment for Zed roadsters. :):lol:

 

Believe the Coupes had Glock 9mm's next to the spare tyre although most get lost or dumped in rivers after use. :dry::teeth:

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