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Old 01-11-2016, 06:03 AM
 
809 posts, read 994,693 times
Reputation: 1380

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The irresponsible gun owner in my opinion is the one who lets it pass into unworthy hands. Just as we punish people who buy alcohol or dope for minors, we should punish people who treat firearms like any other appliance. Did King Arthur ever sell Excalibur? How would he have felt to find out that he'd given or sold it to a knight who then sold it to an assassin? Gun owners who cannot respect their weapon's potency enough to ensure it never falls into lesser hands are not responsible gun owners.

Responsible gun owners would make sure that their status is defined by the exclusion of their lessers to the ranks.

 
Old 05-08-2016, 07:16 PM
 
3,106 posts, read 1,762,194 times
Reputation: 4557
The way I describe VT to out of State friends is that we're Libertarian Blue versus Massachusetts being Socialist Blue. There is a very big difference between the two mindsets.
 
Old 05-09-2016, 09:02 PM
 
542 posts, read 697,847 times
Reputation: 1330
I have mixed feelings on the gun issue. I don't own one, never have. Years of living in Vermont have shown that there are plenty of responsible gun owners that use guns to legally hunt. At the same time I have to say that in my small town over the years we have had lots of people killed with guns. The victims were typically girlfriends, wives, coworkers, neighbors and then suicides, occasionally we get hunting accidents. Frankly this goes on year in year out all over the country in every town. It adds up to thousands of deaths each year. If it were up to me I'd allow people to own a gun but in a very regulated way. They would be required to be kept in an armory. They would not be in your house. When hunting season came, or you wanted to target shoot you would go to you gun locker and sign it out for a period of time. All guns would be registered. Unregistered guns would be a serious crime. I believe this would prevent most of gun violence I hear about. The crimes of passion, drunkenness and mental instability that are so prevalent today would be very much curtailed.
 
Old 05-10-2016, 10:50 AM
 
809 posts, read 994,693 times
Reputation: 1380
If you want guns to be tightly controlled, make the first purchaser responsible for it use over its entire lifetime. Sending a grandmother to jail because the gun she bought thirty years ago was used in a murder would make every gun purchaser very, very careful to destroy his/her weapon rather than lose it, have it stolen, give it as a gift, lend it, pawn it or sell it. Eighty percent of gun homicides are caused by those guns. With a law mandating eternal responsibility, we'd suddenly have 250,000,000 gun control agents, formerly known as gun owners.
 
Old 05-11-2016, 05:40 AM
 
3,106 posts, read 1,762,194 times
Reputation: 4557
Quote:
Originally Posted by squarpeg View Post
I have mixed feelings on the gun issue. I don't own one, never have. Years of living in Vermont have shown that there are plenty of responsible gun owners that use guns to legally hunt. At the same time I have to say that in my small town over the years we have had lots of people killed with guns. The victims were typically girlfriends, wives, coworkers, neighbors and then suicides, occasionally we get hunting accidents. Frankly this goes on year in year out all over the country in every town. It adds up to thousands of deaths each year. If it were up to me I'd allow people to own a gun but in a very regulated way. They would be required to be kept in an armory. They would not be in your house. When hunting season came, or you wanted to target shoot you would go to you gun locker and sign it out for a period of time. All guns would be registered. Unregistered guns would be a serious crime. I believe this would prevent most of gun violence I hear about. The crimes of passion, drunkenness and mental instability that are so prevalent today would be very much curtailed.
I'd say that VT is probably not the State for you then. NY to the West or Massachusetts/Connecticut to the South would be a closer fit. Note that VT is tied with Maine for the lowest violent crime rate in the nation. NY/MA/CT have much higher violent crime rates while also having very restrictive gun laws. I would also add the following. Note that it talks self defense, not hunting.

Chapter I, Article 16 of the Vermont Constitution states:
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence [sic] of themselves and the State — and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.1



 
Old 05-11-2016, 09:05 AM
 
809 posts, read 994,693 times
Reputation: 1380
Yup, a lot of battering men need to defend themselves against the Vermont women they batter.
 
Old 05-11-2016, 09:18 AM
 
542 posts, read 697,847 times
Reputation: 1330
I don't think siting this violent crime statistic really has any true connection to guns. Trying to compare a very rural state to a state with complex urban issues is apples and oranges. Violent crime includes assaults, rapes, robberies and murders. Implying we have less of those in Vermont then CT or MA because we have more guns is simply flawed thinking.
My thoughts are that the more guns we have in our homes or our trucks or holstered on our person the more people will end up being killed by guns. The vast majority of these people killed will not be some bad guy trying to do you harm. While I am in agreement most of the gun laws in effect or currently proposed do almost nothing to actually improve the rate of gun deaths, I still hold to the idea that more guns do not make us safer, they make us all less safe and as a society we would be well served by radically altering the way we deal with all these weapons and try to alter the gun culture mentality we have here in the USA.
 
Old 05-11-2016, 07:04 PM
 
3,106 posts, read 1,762,194 times
Reputation: 4557
Quote:
Originally Posted by squarpeg View Post
I don't think siting this violent crime statistic really has any true connection to guns. Trying to compare a very rural state to a state with complex urban issues is apples and oranges. Violent crime includes assaults, rapes, robberies and murders. Implying we have less of those in Vermont then CT or MA because we have more guns is simply flawed thinking.
My thoughts are that the more guns we have in our homes or our trucks or holstered on our person the more people will end up being killed by guns. The vast majority of these people killed will not be some bad guy trying to do you harm. While I am in agreement most of the gun laws in effect or currently proposed do almost nothing to actually improve the rate of gun deaths, I still hold to the idea that more guns do not make us safer, they make us all less safe and as a society we would be well served by radically altering the way we deal with all these weapons and try to alter the gun culture mentality we have here in the USA.
VT has the lowest per capita death rate by guns in the nation too, not just the overall lowest violent crime rate. Did you notice that it was a guy carrying a gun down in MA that stopped that crazy guy from killing even more people than he did yesterday? Guns in the hands of responsible people save many lives each year. The crazies that shoot up schools and similar places all know that it is a target rich environment where they can wreak havoc in seconds knowing that the police are minutes away. They almost never go where there is a likelihood that someone will be able to defend themselves and others. Hopefully you know that the criminals who are responsible for the majority of the gun violence in our cities are always going to have guns even if everyone else is disarmed. Many of the guns used in the drug trade come into the country illegally expressly to support the drug syndicates. Those guns are untraceable because they were never in the system at any point in time.
 
Old 05-12-2016, 09:25 AM
 
542 posts, read 697,847 times
Reputation: 1330
I don't know where you got your info siting that Vermont has the lowest per capita death by guns. I just looked around and could not find that stat. The Kaiser Institute put Vermont at 32 out of the 50 states. Again a difficult number to quantitate to anything meaningful as there are so many variables in the states your comparing. I would again reject your argument which seems to simply be more guns make us safer and if we want to be super safe get rid of gun laws.
To your other point that good people with guns are saving lots of lives. I am sure it happens. I know that the NRA loves to put out these stories about the great things guns are doing for our society, keeping us all safe. Makes great press. I think on balance though there is much more needless deaths caused by guns then lives being saved by them. As a matter of fact just thinking about gun incidents around my little town I find them to be just tragedies. Nothing heroic, no one saving people. Here are a few I recall over the years:

My friend and his fiance have a drunken argument. She goes to the bedroom pulls his handgun out of the night stand goes back kills him and his 20 year old son. She goes to prison

There is a young couple living up the road from me, one night he shoots and kills her then turns the gun on himself.

A friend of mine gets in an argument with a co-worker, he says meet me down on river road so I can kick your ass. They other guy shows up but has a pistol and kills the guy. the shooter goes to jail for 7 years.

A mans wife has a stroke and dies, he grabs a bottle of JackDaniels and his gun and blows his brains out.

A man is picking blackberries by the side of the road. Someone thinks he is a bear and kills him.

A local drug dealer catches a junkie stealing his drugs he drives her out to the woods and executes her

There is a party of young guys at a hunting camp. They get very drunk and start shooting various things. In the morning they see they have shot into a tent and killed the people inside.

So these are the types of things I have seen over the years involving guns. This is how I view guns in my town. There is nothing good about them. They are designed to kill things. Why people seem to love them so much is beyond me. I recognize your legal right to have one, but if your trying to present an argument that they are good things, things that we need more of, with no restrictions. That if we just arm everyone and the world will be a safe place. I am afraid I just don't believe that.
 
Old 05-12-2016, 12:37 PM
 
Location: Inis Fada
16,966 posts, read 34,633,323 times
Reputation: 7722
Quote:
Originally Posted by squarpeg View Post
I don't know where you got your info siting that Vermont has the lowest per capita death by guns. I just looked around and could not find that stat. The Kaiser Institute put Vermont at 32 out of the 50 states. Again a difficult number to quantitate to anything meaningful as there are so many variables in the states your comparing. I would again reject your argument which seems to simply be more guns make us safer and if we want to be super safe get rid of gun laws.
To your other point that good people with guns are saving lots of lives. I am sure it happens. I know that the NRA loves to put out these stories about the great things guns are doing for our society, keeping us all safe. Makes great press. I think on balance though there is much more needless deaths caused by guns then lives being saved by them. As a matter of fact just thinking about gun incidents around my little town I find them to be just tragedies. Nothing heroic, no one saving people. Here are a few I recall over the years:

My friend and his fiance have a drunken argument. She goes to the bedroom pulls his handgun out of the night stand goes back kills him and his 20 year old son. She goes to prison

There is a young couple living up the road from me, one night he shoots and kills her then turns the gun on himself.

A friend of mine gets in an argument with a co-worker, he says meet me down on river road so I can kick your ass. They other guy shows up but has a pistol and kills the guy. the shooter goes to jail for 7 years.

A mans wife has a stroke and dies, he grabs a bottle of JackDaniels and his gun and blows his brains out.

A man is picking blackberries by the side of the road. Someone thinks he is a bear and kills him.

A local drug dealer catches a junkie stealing his drugs he drives her out to the woods and executes her

There is a party of young guys at a hunting camp. They get very drunk and start shooting various things. In the morning they see they have shot into a tent and killed the people inside.

So these are the types of things I have seen over the years involving guns. This is how I view guns in my town. There is nothing good about them. They are designed to kill things. Why people seem to love them so much is beyond me. I recognize your legal right to have one, but if your trying to present an argument that they are good things, things that we need more of, with no restrictions. That if we just arm everyone and the world will be a safe place. I am afraid I just don't believe that.
Do you have news article links for these events? Dates? I would like to read more.

Why would you move to ban guns when it appears alcohol and drugs had plenty to do with these incidents?
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