I've been a gun owner most my life. I still don't see why someone in the city needs an assault rifle, but I also don't see how targeting law abiding gun owners with legislation will stop criminal activity using guns. Has incidents of criminal activity slowed up since the buy back?.

Many of the weapons in criminal circulation are from legit owners having lost them in burgularies...but what percentage IS that?.

Ownership of high performance vehicles by young people should be in your line of sight 'rock'. How come people like you are more concerned about guns than cars. Cars that kill VASTLY more people?.

Rock Collector, I didnt say that only non-licenced gun owners were at fault. Dont twist words. What I am more worried about is guns that cant be tracked, of which there are many thousands.

I ahve no problem with allowing licenced owners to own more guns if they like. Most simply see it as a hobby, and admire the machines. I would suggest that there are plenty that would rarely be fired (and some never).

What I do think is in order is tighter controls on gun inspection, and on ammunition sales. Currently, you dont need to even sign a declaration that you have all your guns, let alone have the weapons inspected to verify that you still have them. Easy way for guns to slip into the blackmarket. Better to require an annual declaration, and then have random inspections, or inspections every 5 years or the like.

Then, have tighter controls on ammo sales (including reloading supplies, although this is harder of course). Ammo kills when it hits, simply firing a gun doesnt. A licence number should be recorded with every sale, and cross-checked against calibres owned - easy way to pick up if you are buying ammo for an unregistered weapon. Also, if a national database were kept, usage patterns could be cross-checked against ownership, and significant alternations in activity targeted for inquiry. oh, and while we are on ammo, why not make it illegal to mail-order? That's a no-brainer for me.

Simply making it harder to get a legal gun, will drive the activity underground (which is what has happened). It needs more monitoring, not banning.

Quite right Country Girl. I believe I took your words out of context. I apologise profusely. What you said was 'rarely was the problem the legal and registered guns'. Cheez, I hope I got right this time! I'd still dispute that fact. Sorry.

Your comments on having a more rigorous form of annual registration proceedure makes a lot of sense and I meant to comment on this before. Good thinking and don't see why it shouldn't happen, but I'll bet it doesn't!

Aime. I accept there will always be arguments which try to compare the ownership of guns to something else where incidences of death are concerned.
Car accidents relating to deaths overall, has also been compared to the number of soldiers killed in the various World wars.

I'd like to pose a question. Are cars specifically designed to kill things? Therein lies the big difference, would you agree.

It probably doesn't matter what each is designed to do when adding the numbers, but personally, with all due respect, I would rather have the next door neighbour I'd just had a row with, driving around uncontrollably on their property shouting abuse at me from their car, than have them shooting a rifle. If they choose to hold a knife or cricket bat in one hand and an iron bar in another, I'd still consider myself in with a chance.
But this isn't the problem from my perspective.

Legislation will certainly not stop any determined criminal from acquiring a gun, but it should certainly go a long way to help slow down those legal gun owners, whom although they are not criminals at present, perhaps through some form of aggrieved process, could easily become one.

rock collector,
GREAT to see you raise this. Also good to see the moderate tone of all participants, which is not common in this topic.

This is where I am coming from:

1) I support shooter licensing, firearm registration and accountability of legal firearm owners for their behaviour, safe storage compliance and chain of custody records for firearms.

2) Also support limits on certain types such as automatic weapons, heavy-calibre arms and destructive weapons of war.

In my opinion these restrictions are effective in managing legitimate use of firearms to minimise irresponsibles and 'feeding' the criminal market.

Are we together so far?

There are legitimate and illegitimate uses of the argument that 'cars kill many more people'.

It might be legitimate to point out that every day many of us walk into the street trusting that no-one will be aiming to run us down and kill us when they are hypothetically overwhelmed with blind fury for some reason. If you wouldn't go in the road because of such a view of strangers you would be regarded as mentally ill, or at least irrationally phobic.

This is proof that people in general are willing to put their lives directly in the hands of strangers, who are overwhelmingly going to be worthy of that trust. (This is the exact opposite of the model of human nature implied by activists when talking about legitimate gun owners though.)

IT IS NOT LEGITIMATE as a moral argument to imply that an anti-gun activist, or any person, should leave one genuine problem alone because another is more pressing, or more dangerous. Just because they have their priorities different to mine doesn't invalidate any argument they make