LadyPact
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Oddly enough, I've been trying to write a proper response to this for two days. I'm going to give it one last shot.
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
It's actually simple, you're supposed to follow the directions to get where you want to go.
No, it wasn't simple. You say, yourself, that the option limitation of the poll created the necessity of instructing people how to chose an option. That's why simple polls on complex issues don't work.
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The poll options are really restricted in terms of length - I had to summarise. And governmental tyranny was a prime consideration of the founding fathers. Of course, it really doesn't apply any more.
Fair.
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Well let me explain what I was aiming to achieve here.
The first question is based on "Are guns a problem?" - if somebody doesn't believe weapons are a societal problem, then any further discussion with those people is moot. They're always going to oppose any measure because they don't think there's an issue.
That's true of both sides of the debate. It's impossible to get away from. If someone doesn't believe any weapons are acceptable under certain circumstances, it's just as bad.
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The rest are about determining people's underlying beliefs about whether their right to a gun is more important than the harm they do or not. People who believe they're not will probably be in favour of gun control.
I think you have to add something here. Most people don't think their gun is a societal problem because they don't use their weapon in the way that other people misuse theirs. Isn't that really the bottom line of what gun control is supposed to deter? The reason people want gun control is because they don't want people dead in the commission of a crime, right?
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People who believe their right to a gun trumps any societal harm will probably have some foundation for that belief. Which (paraphrasing) is usually about their constitutional rights or about the need for a gun to protect themselves from a tyrannical government or their fellow citizens.
Yeah, this is going to be a problem. I don't think I'm in the position to speak for those who base their belief on the second Amendment because I'm not the person who is saying "it's my right and that's it". Frankly, I'd say there are better people on these boards to address that aspect than me.
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That's pretty much it. I did cover self defense (protecting yourself from other citizens) and the hunting thing is just a particular application of owning a gun, not a foundational reason why for you have a right to one. Plus, 99.99897% of the three hundred million guns in America are not used for fucking hunting. I'll also note that in countries such as Australia and New Zealand with gun control laws and low firearm deaths, you CAN hunt with a gun if you're actually a fucking recreational hunter.
More my area. 
The fact that you call it "recreational hunting" tells me that we have different perspectives. Granted, many people who hunt do so for the sport. I'm still used to a percentage of the population that people really do hunt for food. During these debates, too often, people want to discount that.
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Well, there are roughly 70 million gun owners in the USA. Of these, 35000 per year murder themselves or others with a handgun (of which around 250 are considered justifiable self-defense). 75,000 shoot someone with non-fatal results. Over the course of the average lifetime, that means roughly 4% of gun owners will murder someone as over 2 million people needlessly die due to firearms. And around 15% of gun owners will shoot someone, resulting in 6,000,000 woundings due to firearm. I dunno about you, but gun owners seem kinda like assholes to me.
Your own numbers are saying that 96% won't murder a person and 85% will never wound someone. How are you determining that the majority are the assholes because the minority are the real reason you would like to see gun control? I'm also curious as to why people don't draw the parallel? We know there are X amount of vehicular homicides a year, Y amount of injuries that are related to DUI's, who knows how much damage gets caused by texting and driving, and we're pretty convinced that cars are a huge contributor to polluting the planet, yet, we don't have people saying that all personally owned vehicles should be gone because of the criminal or irresponsible actions of the minority. Is that because driving is a privilege and not a right?
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Here's the question you really need to be asking: Should everyone in America walk around being potential targets for the 15,000 murders a year or potential self-suicides for 17,500 a year just so 250 of you can defend yourself with a handgun?
First, I think you should probably kick out the self-suicides (that seems redundant) that are not murder/suicide situations. Everybody has at least twenty things in their house that they could use to kill themselves and most of those methods are easier, cleaner, and just as readily available. (Since you like gender differences, I'm sure you realize that women are more likely to use methods that don't make a mess or disfigure themselves.)
What I find most advocates of gun control focus on is the ease a firearm gives someone to kill another person or multiple people. In addition, there has to be some concern about accidental shootings, which is a completely legitimate issue. Most accidental shootings are not hunting accidents and can usually be traced back to something that could have been prevented.
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There's a twin problem here. People babble about the Constitution but they're full of shit. Guns are not about Constitutional rights, guns are about power.
Frankly, I would have used the term "equalizer". That's what any weapon is. It's about evening the odds against your opponent.
I went and I looked at your profile. The chances of you going up against an attacker that <hypothetically> is a foot taller than you, has a significant weight advantage, a much greater arm and leg span, and for fun, let's say the potential is combat trained... The odds just don't seem to be there.
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Think about it. A gun puts the power to end someone's life in the palm of your hand. We all know that power corrupts, but do you seriously expect me to believe that the kind of power a gun gives you doesn't? And how many people threaten their spouse, threaten their neighbours, use the gun to try and get their own way.
You and I have much different ideas about offense and defense.
Offense? That's the power corrupting part you are talking about. Your own numbers say so. Defense? The majority of people who will never shoot at a living, human target unless a very limited circumstances come to pass? You have to consider that, too.
Personally, I don't have a problem advocating that any person being attacked should pick up anything within reach and try to use it as a weapon. If it gives you that three seconds back that you lost during 'element of surprise' so you can get away, I'm all for it.
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The most ardent gun defenders are those who have little personal power. They know a gun gives them power and they're afraid of dealing with life without that power to mask their insecurities.
Physical power in my case? You win. I have very little chance of overpowering most opponents by physical strength alone. I know a few things that give me an advantage *if* I have element of surprise.
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Part of the problem here is that the Founding Fathers erred in their wording of the second amendment. It becomes clear from reading associated statements that they were terrified of a military coup and regarded the people as the only military force which could be trusted. However this was in a time when the people were bound together by a common set of interests and were inevitably the products of a religious society where adherence to social conventions kept the vast majority of people in line. The people might disagree but they were often unified around those things they all agreed as important.
It should be obvious that these conditions simply no longer apply. Very few people need a gun to defend themselves against predators, the United States has a professional army with arms beyond the dreams of most gun advocates and the society itself is fractured, torn by strife and ravaged by crime which has been enabled by the gun. Your high rates of violent crime are a product of the ready availability of weapons. The people are not united and many of them are uneducated, suspicious, paranoid or mentally unstable.
You do realize that a part of this argument is very ineffective when talking to anybody who has lived where the wildlife actually will kill you. If you really want to shake a stick at a bear or a charging moose, sorry, but my money is on the animal.
I would ask you what your definition is of predator in the human sense? This thread seems to recognize that you aren't in the "all guns are evil" camp and more what people do with those weapons.
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The second amendment is clearly and obviously about the establishment of the people's right to participate in militia of the United States to act as the country's arm to repel invasion and put down sedition. Any other reading is a deliberately deceptive piece of legerdemain designed to advance an agenda.
First off, the United States now has a standing army, which makes the militia largely redundant, although it does still exist and every member of the National Guard is also a member of this militia.
Second, there is no indication the founding fathers felt that private citizens should settle disputes with weapons. Any notions of self-defense were about defending the country from invasion and defending yourself from a harsh and rigorous land in which predators still roamed. The gun was a necessary component of self-defense against a grizzly, bobcat or mountain lion.
The very existence of the Bill of Rights is testament to the understanding that the Constitution needs to be updated on a regular basis. It's not a document of legend, it's not the tablets given to Moses on Mount Sinai. It's a framework for a society which was thought about very seriously - the Federalist papers reveal just how much thought was put into the framing of the document and Federalist 84 details the opposition of some of the founders to the Bill of Rights itself.
If there's one thing which comes through clearly it's that the founders expected to the US to engage in rigorous debate around how their society worked and that this should continue after they were gone. The people of the day understood that rights are the flip side of responsibilities and that you cannot have one without the other. The bombastic children of today who constantly rave about their "constitutional rights" have no fucking concept of responsibility. This constant screaming about "rights" is not only delusional but it reflects the degree to which actual adulthood has declined. This is because actual ADULTS understand that the health of their society is important and they are prepared to think about how that should be maintained without screaming about someone daring to impinge upon their 'rights'.
OK. All of this is exactly why I'm not the best person to talk about this with from a federal right basis.
The founding fathers could have never envisioned weapons that would shoot hundreds of rounds per minute. The founding fathers considered threats to the country, not the individual, to be the prominent concern. These were also the same people that, as long as you obeyed archaic laws, such as owning human slaves or (Dear God) that you could beat your wife and your children, but were obeying certain 'Christian' laws, you were still considered a man of good reputation.
You're not sitting here skipping the recognition of the civil threat. You are concerned about people on American soil, (usually American citizens) killing each other. Perfectly reasonable. The question is, and always will be, how do we prevent loss of life that is criminal?
As a side note, in the high majority of circumstances, I don't put self defense or action in the line of duty in this area. We know that in certain situations, to prevent additional death, we have to eliminate the person killing. When we kill the person who is, literally, shooting at other people so we can prevent him from killing more, I can't argue.
I may be the odd person out on some of my views on this but we should look at improving the areas where we fail. (Trying to hurry, because Father's Day and all.) Whether it's a right or a privilege, if you're convicted of a felony, you're out. You forfeit. Same goes for DV. Before you tell me that we already do that, it's not effective because we don't do follow up.
I have real trouble believing in this day and age that we don't have the technology for a national background check system and the ability to impose reasonable waiting periods.
Any profession where access to firearms is a requirement, institute *regular* mental health screenings and make them effective. That's police, prison guards, military personnel, etc.
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Mass shootings only account for 2% of gun deaths. The rest are kids shooting their parents, parents shooting their kids, their neighbours or anyone else in range.
We don't really do a great job when it comes to violent juveniles. We refuse to put the money into 'at risk' kids and that bites us in the @ss on a number of levels. We have sucked so much money away from mental health resources that we can't determine the dangerous adults, either. We just don't want to pay for it in dollars and cents, until after something happens.
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The crowned Diva of Destruction. ~ ExT
Beach Ball Sized Lady Nuts. ~ TWD
Happily dating a new submissive. It's official. I've named him engie.
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RE: The Gun Control divide - 
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