It wasn't a mistake hundreds of years ago. We needed guns to ensure your countrymen didn't re-take the colonies, and mandate mushy peas for breakfast.
America needs guns because we'll probably be refighting the Civil War again sometime in the first half of the 21st century. All of this "states rights" and "government overreach" stuff is straight out of the Civil War playbook.
The election maps already pretty much mirror civil war maps. It's kind of scary. General Sherman had the right idea when it came to dealing with the hillbillies. The Union just didn't take it far enough.
More proof that crazies going on killing sprees with guns isn't an American phenomenon. Some nutjob killed 85 people at a summer camp in Norway. Makes the thing with the congresswoman in Arizona a few months ago look tame by comparison. Actually it makes pretty much any of the American shooting sprees I can think of, including the VA Tech Massacre, seem tame by comparison. The big difference is that you Europeans have no way to protect yourselves from the crazies, so they end up killing like three times as many people when they snap, and now your stupid gun laws have resulted in one of the worst spree killings in world history. In the US this thing would have been over in about five seconds, because everyone packs heat when camping. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14265094 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/world/europe/24island.html
I can just see all the chavs in England with guns. Not a very good thing mind as they are all thugs. Don't ever see it happening here mate they way people are over here.
I'm just saying they go around looking for fights in groups and being thugs. Adding guns into the equation would make it worse. Add that to druggys and normal thugs and you will have a problem.
Have you considered the fact that they can do that because they know people are unarmed? In the immortal prophesies of Chris Rock:
Exactly. I think increasing the weaponary available to the wider population can only be a good thing. I'd like to see small pox and dirty bomb legalised too. Europe needs to learn that when you outlaw guns, only guns will outlaw. The US should use its low figures for gun homicides to show the rest of the world the error their ways.
The gunman in Norway was politically motivated. It wasn't a "summer camp" he attacked, but rather a gathering of young people who were politically active with the Labour Party in Norway. Personally, I have a hard time believing that acts like this are going to be prevented simply because other people may be packing guns. Note that the recent shooting in Arizona was not prevented by Arizona's extremely gun friendly laws. The person who has the willingness to shoot first is always going to have the advantage, regardless of who is or isn't carrying.
Unlike black ops then. I keep getting killed even though I start shooting them first. Bloody annoying it is.
They say that even if you have a hand gun it's best to let the grizzly attack you without shooting it. Shooting it just pisses it off.
Depends on what you're shooting. If you're carrying some metrosexual little woman's gun, like a .22 or .32 (which is probably what Alterego has in his European carryall next to his ipad), then I probably wouldn't try shooting the bear. But if you're packing a man's caliber, like .460 Weatherby Magnum, I don't think you need to worry about pissing it off because it will be dead in one or two shots.
Statistically speaking, they aren't too bad. Apparently it's like 3 deaths per 100k of population. That also includes drug smugglers and organized crime related deaths. The effects on everyday citizens is unlikely to be significantly higher than any other nations. Granted if you step back from the numbers, even 1% higher alone might account for x amount of human deaths.
I would be carrying a rifle if I lived in Grizzly country. Handguns are for murdering your friends and relatives. Other than suicide, that's the majority use of handgun violence in the U.S.
Last figures I saw were much, much worse. I saw 4 deaths per 100k. The UK was 0.15. So that's about 26 times as bad. I think the general populous having guns is a very bad idea indeed. Be interesting to find out if this Norwegian killer was using legal guns. I think the last mentalist who went on a killing spree over here was a legal owner.
A major problem that we have here is that the National Rifle Association is so strongly opposed to regulation that they'd put a gun into almost anyone's hands. Reasonable regulation of gun ownership would help keep guns out of the fringe wackos' hands and thus dramatically reduce these types of lunatic shooting sprees, but the NRA will go to war against any regulation of gun ownership.