Another problem with ready access to guns is the likelihood that domestic disputes will turn lethal and that suicide attempts are more likely to be carried through when guns are available in the house. Of course, guns are often kept to ward off burglars. This creates another problem - the weapon can be turned against the owner.

I count my blessings that I live in a place where I don't have to have a gun for my safety and can go to and from work with a miniscule chance of being shot. I dare say the students at Virginia Tech thought so as well. But how many of them thought about Virginia's lax gun laws?

To me, freedom from guns is one of my most precious freedoms.

Enjoy your freedom from guns.

It was bought dearly by men, and a few women, with guns.

Like I said, I do enjoy my freedom from guns. The fact that I'm here partly because so many indigenous people were murdered by gun-wielding shooters in the past is not something I'm in a position to rectify. However, the Bush administration is in a position to do something to reduce gun deaths. Although in an election year I don't hold out much hope.

American gun culture is yet another one of those great American institutions that leave the rest of the western world shaking their heads in amazement. Some example of civilised progress the United States turned out to be.

We're entertained by it in cinemas and on telly, shocked by it whenever these mass events happen, and disturbed when it turns up in our kids video games. At the end of the day though, we have to be grateful that we don't have to live like that.

One could say that Americans get the society they deserve.

One could also say that, in the spirit of the "Darwin Awards" (http://www.darwinawards.com - Honoring [sic] those who improve the species...by accidentally removing themselves from it!), the American are doing us all a favour !

Let us know what you think!

A quote from IraqsSlogger today:

"In Iraq, universities struggling to operate in the midst of a war zone have been struck repeatedly by bombings, shootings, assassinations, and abductions that have left behind hundreds of killed and wounded, victims and forced thousands of students and professors to stay away, or even leave the country.
On Monday, the same day as the Virginia Tech mass shooting, two separate shooting incidents struck Mosul University, one killing Dr. Talal Younis al-Jelili, the dean of the college of Political Science as he walked through the university gate, and another killing Dr. Jaafar Hassan Sadeq, a professor from the Faculty of Arts at the school, who was targeted in front of his home in the al-Kifaat area, according to Aswat al-Iraq.
In January, Baghdad's Mustansiriya University sufferred a double suicide bombing in January that killed at least 70 people, including students, faculty, and staff. A month later, another suicide bomber struck at Mustansiriya, killing 40.
Kidnappings of students and faculty are another all-too-common occurrence on Iraq's campuses. Members of the univerisity community have been abducted and murdered for sectarian reasons, or simply held for ransom. At a Baghdad University, one student reported to Slogger that he was abducted by sectarian thugs working in cooperation with the National Guard Forces who were supposed to be protecting the campus.
In January, students reported that violent events had threatened students and that attendance rates at Baghdad University had dropped to six percent.
Earlier this month, the Dr. Qais Jawad al-Azzawi, head of the Geneva-based Committee International Committee of Solidarity with Iraqi Professors said that 232 university professors were killed and 56 were reported missing in Iraq, while more than 3,000 others had left the country after the 2003 invasion."
Puts Virginia Tech into perspective?

jonhtas

americans couldnt care less about the carnage they created in iraq...
only about americian casualties.. and only when it affects them..

Have a look at this, is it wrong and if so why?
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/yoursay/index.php/theaustralian/comments/gun_laws_disarm_the_vulnerable_not_killers/

Ok Is Mise - I'll have a crack.

Firstly - the argument he's putting forward is that gun regulation won't remove guns from the outlaw sect.

Point taken. The thing is, people like Cho, and Martin Bryant weren't criminal masterminds, neither were the Trenchcoat Mafia of Columbine.

In fact, Bryant is mildly retarded, and Cho was a social outcast, as were the teenagers of Columbine. As I recall, the Columbine teenagers took the gun from their parents.

Cho just walked in and bought his gun from a shop - all he needed was a driver's licence. That was it.

Do these strike you as the kind of people that have extensive connections in organised crime?

At the very least, increased gun regulation makes a spur of the moment killing much more difficult - they have to plan to get the gun. For the mentally unstable, this alone may be enough to prevent such bloodshed.

The outlaws who will be going to the effort to get guns will be those in organised crime and drug running - aside from the odd burglar, who generally wants to avoid confrontation, and the occasional armed holdup, most of these people are shooting at other people with guns, not everyday citizens. These people may be outlaws, but they generally aren't the crazies.

Another point to make, is that many of these crazed shooters end by shooting themselves - one of the arguments I've heard is that more people should be armed as a deterrent.

How effective can a gun be as a deterrent, if somebody's going to shoot themselves anyway? How scary can it really be to somebody in this state?

And the most compelling one of all - if the US gun system is so much better, why does this kind of bloodshed seem to happen far more often over there than anywhere else?

Iluvatar people all over the world follow American culture,including Australians. You cand find gun killings in places where guns are hard to find. Its just that it happens more in America because there are more guns and flexible laws through different states.

I cannot possibly imagine me being able to defend myself with a gun. I'd probably shoot myself in the leg or worse. That's why I prefer to live somewhere where I can go about my business without being armed to the teeth. I would regard it as a huge impingement on my freedom if, in order to live, I would have to carry an automatic rifle with me on all occasions. And be ready to use it.

The article by John Lott makes no mention of domestic disputes, lethal accidents or suicides that have ended in gun deaths. Are they not tragedies worthy of any notice? He seems to refer mainly to the US - and rather selectively from what I can gather. Forget the US for a moment. Places like Johannesburg or Capetown make New York look like Disneyland. Guns in Jo'burg are way more readily available. Jo'burg is not getting any safer.

A final note: if the students at Columbine in 1999 had guns it wouldn't have made a difference if the killers carried out their original plan - they wanted to bomb the place. For the greater safety of US citizens, would Lott propose loosening the laws on bomb ownership? I'm afraid of the answer.

hi all,

from what I have gained from americans, they are used to
having guns around.... normal in the family suburban home...

perhaps all hand gun laws in the US should be revised,
say a good long 4 month course....

like when getting a car.... here..... and the age lifted of
course....

a society that gets used to using guns, simply will do so

quite alien to me, think if I picked up a real gun, I would
have an anxiety attack...grin

making excuses will not work, if he had no gun access ?
or easy gun access..... he would have been slowed down a bit...

whats wrong with sensitive metal detectors..... ?

gun was the blame

nothing else

JHH

But did the students have the right to defend themselves?

Statistically, these sorts of massacres account for a tiny percentage of gun deaths and it's easy to blow them right out of proportion. These sorts of massacres need to be treated differently to most other gun deaths.

States such as Vermont, which have very "lax" gun laws also have very low rates of gun crimes, which is also in line with a country such as Switzerland, where people literally are armed to the teeth, yet they manage to avoid killing each other in large numbers in both places.

I think that rather than making crazy statements about Americans all being armed and ready to shoot first and ask questions later, it's perhaps more enlightening to break gun deaths down by factors such as age, sex, race, etc.

For instance, I just pulled this off a google search:

http://www.health.state.ok.us/Program/planning/sos99/firearm.htm

or this:

http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/show/1000427
(Note the declining rate of gun deaths across all categories.)

I'm sure you could go and find out who is doing most of the killing too, but it's probably pretty un-PC to acknowledge that some middle-aged, fat, white guy or his wife who let off a few dozen at the local firing range every week aren't the cause of the problem.

Nothing wrong with letting off a dozen at the local firing range, if that's your thing, but why do you have to bring the gun home with you? Why do you need automatic and semi-automatic guns in the home, or on the street, or in your car?
The trouble is that most gun owners may indeed be nice, responsible citizens but why can't they simply join a gun club, leave the guns there, or borrow them if they want to go on a hunting expedition? The few loonies out there can reek awful havoc with those weapons, so surely the rights of the rest of us to live lives free of the fear of being shot should outweigh the rights of the few people who enjoy guns as a hobby? And the author of this piece is correct, most massacres are not perpetrated by criminals or even gangs - who may be on the wrong side of the law, but are generally not suicidal or crazy - they are perpetrated by hitherto unknown nutters. Most law abiding citizens are simply not at risk from gun toting criminals - they prey on their own, but any of us could find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time with an armed lunatic, bent on a grandiose form of suicide.
Americans now live in armed fear. My husband was there last year and commented to his American host how courteous American drivers were. His host turned and said, "You have to be, you never know if the driver you offend could be a nut and pull his gun and shoot you." I never thought I'd see road rage as a symptom of a healthy society, but perhaps it is. The lack of guns in Australia means the most we risk is a punch in the nose, so we continue to make rude gestures at one another. Long live the safety (and freedom) to be rude, then.

Is Mise - in many posts you focus on the right to defend yourself, and the inferred link is the right to have a gun.

It's a fallacy. The right to defend yourself isn't the right to have a gun. So, yes. Of course people have a right to defend themselves. No, they don't necessarily have a right to have a gun. If you're going to argue that point, be honest about your intentions.

To arm the public, essentially means we've given up on a cohesive society. It sparks a situation where more and more people wield guns, which in turn fuels more people feeling they need to have guns, because others do as well. It's the wild west.

To argue that everybody should be able to arm themselves is to argue that society has broken down. We're not there yet, though I fear that if guns were to become common in public, we'd be well on our way.

ena: Yet states that have concealed weapon laws and so on have very, very low rates of gun crimes and deaths.

The whole point is that there's a very high likelihood that in any place there will be at least two people who are armed, and thus, if one person were to do something stupid, he'd have to contend with at least one other person ready to stop him (literally) dead in his tracks. It's easy to characterise Americans as living in fear, or as the place being the Wild West, but that bears no similarity to the statistics. The places with the worst gun problems in the U.S. are not those with the "laxest" gun laws. Likewise, it also doesn't take into account that there are many other nations (such as Switzerland) where there are high rates of gun ownership, yet very low rates of gun crimes or deaths.

"It's a fallacy. The right to defend yourself isn't the right to have a gun. So, yes. Of course people have a right to defend themselves. No, they don't necessarily have a right to have a gun. If you're going to argue that point, be honest about your intentions."

TRTL: You're wrong on this, and not because of the Second Amendment, but because of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments:

IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Those who wrote the Bill of Rights realised that obviously, they couldn't prescribe every right (they outlined what they considered the most important in Amendments 1-8). Thus, anything not prescribed (whether the right to own a gun, drive a car, etc.) is automatically a right. All of this was supposedly to limit the power of government and preserve that of individuals, although we all know how that worked out...

shorbe - I see your point, I didn't make it clear I wasn't necessarily referring to the US - under their system they do indeed have the right to bear arms.

I was referring to the idea that that should automatically extend to Australia by dint of some vague "right to defend ourselves."

The question is valid.
Did they have a right to defend themselves?

Yes , obviously.
Every animal possesses the right of self defence, that's why we don't blame a cornered kangaroo or a koala bear for ripping the living excreta out of anyone that attacks them.
The same rights extend to humans and what's more is recognised by our Australian courts of law.

There is nothing vague about the right to self defence.
What is vague is the thinking of those who would deny the right.

As I've said earlier - of course there's a right to self defence. Great. We're agreed. Everybody has the right to defend themselves.

Nobody would argue otherwise because it's so obvious.
So unless you'd also like to point out that you have the right to eat, the right to speak your mind and the right to ride a bicycle, it's quite clear that you equate that right as the right to own a gun. If I'm wrong on this point, feel free to clarify.

The right to defend yourself doesn't equate to gun ownership. It's a separate issue. Efforts at gun control are not an effort to rob you of your right to self defence.

By the same logic, I have the right to eat what I wish do I not?
Then why don't I have the right to buy half a kilo of heroin?

Largely because were everyone to have the right to buy heroin, there would of course, be more heroin produced. It is not my right to buy heroin, because of the detrimental effect it has on society in general. A functioning society is why some rights are curbed by law.

Of course, I also have the right to object strenuously to efforts at reducing gun control. Rights are wonderful things ain't they?

TRTL: Thanks for clearing up that misunderstanding.

I'm personally quite ambivalent about gun ownership in Australia (and I don't think I'd own one even if I could), and indeed, things like the legalisation of drugs. In principle, I'm for them (in that I think if someone is minding his own business, then why not?), though I don't know what the unintended consequences would be, and I think Australia functions fairly well as it is already. However, I'd err on the side of punishing those who can't have or use these things responsibly, rather than on a blanket policy.

Having said that, I don't know that the example of heroin is necessarily a good one since the "War on Drugs" has not been that successful on a world scale. It's certainly created more criminals, both in terms of users, and also in terms of dealers (compare the behaviour of both to say, someone buying or selling cigarettes, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, or even non-drug products), and it costs taxpayers a lot of money to maintain this war. I think there are much bigger fish to fry in our society than heroin.

Of course the right to self defence doesn't equate to gun ownership.

But if one is attacked by someone with a gun then a gun is the only practical means of defence.
If one is attacked by someone with a hatchet, machete or an axe then a gun is mighty handy, but, if up to it physically, then an axe or a machete would do the job; messy but possible.

Now the law doesn't say that you cant keep an axe etc. but it does say that you can't keep a gun handy.

The State having removed/forbidden the means of defence ought to assume the mantle of protector.

It hasn't, cannot and will not. The police service does not exist for the protection of the citizen. It's not their job.

So whose job is it? When there is a home invasion how can the home owner protect the family?
As you say, there is no argument about his/her right to self protection, the argument is about having the means.