O/T they clearly need to step up gun production in the states

Isn’t the argument in this thread that it should be attempted to make it less intrinsic and prevalent though in the hopes that eventually it won’t be a high risk zone?

 

Because flood protection is effective at prevention. Owning a gun doesn't stop an armed robber entering your house, it just makes the situation more volatile and introduces a background risk of accident/misuse

 

There's a burglar in your house waving a gun around - I'd say there's already a high risk.

Anyway, we're going round in circles. Fortunately we live in a country without this problem so I'm pleased that neither of us will ever have to make this decision.

 

That scenario does happen though in America.

 

But burglars never shoot unarmed people though.

 

0.04% of gun homicides in the USA happen during burglaries in a person’s home. Of those, a third are shot with their own gun.

 

Yep. No idea how you change that thinking though. You are commenting English point of view. We don't have the same attitudes towards gun ownership as they do. Plenty of high risk zones in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Camden etc etc. How do you turn those around?

 

I've searched high and low for this stat.

 

That scenario does happen though in America.

Not usually no. Even armed robberies in this country tend not to have fatalities. You shoot someone you ve upped the severity of the potential sentence big time. Plus most wrong uns arent killers.

 

There really are some silly illogical comments on here particularly from one poster. The simple fact is that the real problem with guns in the US is the psyche of American gun lovers. Canada has arguably more guns per capita than the US but gun deaths are miniscule in comparison to the 95 gun deaths per day in the US. Only a tiny number of those are intruders or householders. That psyche believes they have an irrevocable right to carry a firearm because of the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. They need a dictionary not a constitution. It's an amendment. Prohibition was introduced by an amendment and revoked by an amendment. Also the first words of the 2d Amendment says "In a well organised militia". The US dissolved militias when the had the US armed forces and a national guard. Until they have politicians with balls and a willingness to change, things won't change. Universal gun ownership has no place in a civil society.

 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17155596/gun-ownership-polls-safety-violence

“Individually, several studies have found that the presence of a gun in a home elevates the risk of death. A 2014 review of the research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, found that access to firearms was associated with a doubled risk for homicide and a tripled risk for suicide. A 2017 piece by Melinda Wenner Moyer in Scientific American also ran through the evidence, concluding that gun ownership was associated with a higher risk of homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings.”

“People often think that guns will potentially protect them from a home invader. But these kinds of events are relatively rare (and even then, the presence of a firearm can make it more likely that such a situation will escalate into deadly violence) — while the chances that a gun could be used to fatal ends in a domestic dispute, suicide, or accidental shooting are much higher, as the research on individual risk demonstrates.”

 

Wary of anything in Vox. However, the comment with regards to home invaders reads like an opinion to me. Unless I've missed them I didn't see any stats to support this opinion.

 

Well it took me less than two minutes on a google search. I guess it depends what you want to find.
Of course stats are always disputed. I guess that a major reason people have guns is supposed protection. In fact, the number of deaths from all causes during burglaries is minuscule in all the stats I have just googled. Also you are more likely to get killed by a child under six than by a terrorist incident and much more likely to be killed by accident by yourself or a family member.

 

Post it then?

 

You could start with no bullets. It would take a while but why not start somewhere?

To be honest I used to get really wound up about this but I gave up on America after Las Vegas. If they can't sort their stupid selves out after that then there's no hope for them whatsoever.

 

We did it, Australia did it straight away. And thankfully there hasn't been another Dunblane.

 

Yet it’s not that difficult to get hold of a shooter if you wanted to.

 

Yep. I'm afraid the more I see of the workings of American politics and the psyche of a large percentage of its population though I'm afraid the more convinced I am that it's a completely broken society. Gullible, self righteous and rotten to the core.

 

But thankfully very few people want to and they’d have to make a conscious decision to do so and have the connections etc. It rules out every accidental shooting and those by ‘ordinary’ people who snap in a moment of anger and are able to just pick up their gun but would never dream of buying one on the black market to carry out a preplanned attack.

 

I'm not disputing your sentiment, but there are perhaps more firearms in private hands in the UK than you might think...just under 600,000 firearms and 1,500,000 shotguns in 2017.
Up until the 1990's you could own virtually anything except a machine gun. The main law changes took out semi automatic weapons ie Military grade, one shot per each pull of the trigger, it did leave semi automatic available for the smallest standard calibre .22. though.
The next big change was the prohibition of handguns almost completely ( there are one or two exceptions ) Personally I have no complaints with either law change, although strangely enough Northern Ireland never followed suit.
To own a firearm in GB, there are only two main reasons, target shooting and vermin control/hunting. For target shooting you must be a member of a Home Office registered club, and pass that club's training and discipline procedures which include a number of probationary visits. For vermin/hunting you must have written permission from a landowner, without either you will not be allowed to own a firearm.
America's problem seems to be that almost anyone can buy a gun with only cursory checks (it varies from State to State, but none are stringent by UK standards...here you have to apply showing the Club you are in, the Police will confirm that with the Club, you have to supply two independent referees ( who are acceptable to the Police) to vouch for your character and family background etc...you have to supply information of any mental issues you may have or have suffered from and also the name of your GP. You must reveal any criminal convictions and they will be taken into account.
All in all it's a strict but fair system, that does not allow firearms to be owned by those who may use them for the wrong purpose... why decent, right minded non criminal gun owners in the US can't see that as a positive thing I can't imagine.