On the verge is not over it.
It's not even "on the verge". Guns are legal property in the USA, provided you don't fit some fairly limited criteria. When people talk about taking guns, they are talking about taking other people's property. This property is frequently used to protect families and livelihoods (again, wild animals are an issue in many rural parts of the USA, so it's not just defense against humans). This is a very real threat to the victims of such tactics.
The United States is a country that drank
on principle when a bunch of busy-bodies without enough real tasks to do attempted to shove their brand of morality down our throats. Anyone surprised at the reaction of folks who enjoy guns to outright threats simply isn't paying attention to the culture they're trying to rule.
arthwollipot said:
If the offenders were equally distributed between ages and genders, that might be an argument. But the offenders are overwhelmingly under-65 white males, so it makes sense to focus on that demographic.
Right on! And black men commit more violent crime than white men; may as well lock them up, too, just to be safe, eh? Men commit more rapes than women (well, at least according to public perception), so may as well castrate the lot of 'em, right? I mean, we're talking SAFETY here!
See the problem?
Cain said:
What's wrong with presuming white males without criminal records should be allowed to own an unlimited number of firearms?
Not sure what you're getting at here. Can you please clarify?
Is there any other technology in the world where we must first demonstrate competence??
Not that I'm aware of. There are technologies you can't operate in certain venues without first demonstrating competence, and there are certainly requirements within particular groups that exceed federal and state requirements (for example, my family required me to pass the hunter safety course when my grandfather gave me my first gun--they wouldn't give me ammo otherwise). You can own a car whenever, but you can't drive the car on public roadways until you've demonstrated a level of competence.
There are technologies where the manufacturer won't sell the device without a demonstrated level of competence on the part of the purchaser. When my alma matre tried to purchase a type of mass spec they had to have the lab inspected and someone tested for competence before they'd sell to the university. That was to protect the manufacturer, as errors on the part of the tech may be misattributed to the machine, making the seller look bad.
I like the criteria "Is it intrinsically dangerous to innocent people?" A nuclear weapon, or even a substantial rocket, can kill a lot of people just by the nature of the device--it's hard to make those things safe, and when they have problems they can kill people without any human involvement. Large amounts of black powder can, as well, particularly if it gets old. (I'm using some relative terms here because they're necessary--someone in the middle of nowhere in the Antelope Valley could blow up forty acres without killing anyone but himself, while someone in an apartment in NYC couldn't blow up forty feet without killing six people in most cases.) A gun, in contrast, is NOT intrinsically dangerous. A gun is inert, and cannot fire without human intervention. I've had a few loaded weapons pointed at me and never thought anything of it--I was the closest mobile thing capable of pulling a trigger to the weapon by far, and I was looking down the barrel. Bullets are the same--the powder charge in a bullet isn't going to go off by itself. Thus, they are not intrinsically dangerous. Thus, if something bad DOES happen with them, we must look for a HUMAN agent that caused it. Someone, simply put, screwed up royally.
