Fuck the ATF

Mr. Freeze said:

What in the blue hell makes you think that laws will be followed?

Criminals do not follow laws BECAUSE THEY ARE CRIMINALS. Do you SERIOUSLY think that any additional laws are going to make it harder for criminals to obtain weapons?

Most laws wouldn't work if they weren't enforced. That's the point, if there are so many criminals with their hands on so many guns then let's enforce some laws to take them away instead of just taking it as a given and handing out pistols to everyone.

Maes said:

Whatever happened to red muzzle caps that all replical/toys are required to carry, at least in the EU? Despite that, you can find "real" looking airsofts if you look enough.

Ball-shooting machineguns that I've seen sold at fairs and games conventions had no orange muzzle whatsoever.

They're already banned as a child's toy here.

Hasn't someone tweaked their Nerf guns to shoot heavier projectiles? If true, then take THAT, gun control lawyers! *SPLAT*

No-one has mentioned the word Nerf before me, so I'm assuming that airsoft guns don't include the Nerf-like variety.

Bank said:

take another look at our gun laws so that fewer people are getting shot, or better yet our laws and the way we handle violent crime so there's a possible future where guns don't need to be in everyone's hands.

Well, that "ideal" sitation you paint is already a reality in the EU and elsewhere, but I think you'd be disappointed at the results: yeah, private ownershit of handguns and the market for it is nearly nonexistent. The only non-cop citizens that can legally operate acquire a handgun are either:

• Security guards working for an authorized company (and then only after screening and registering with the police, and only for operating: they can't buy and own their own handgun, only carry the one issued to them by their employer, and only while their shift lasts).
  
• Ex-cops.
  
• Powerful and influential people like politicians, which adds a controversial classist/elitism element to gun possession, since only someone rich enough/powerful enough can have the privilege of owning one legally, and the rest are implied to be lesser scum.
  

But the results in gun related murders?

• Many countries with strict handgun laws are more lax on the ownership of hunting rifles and shotguns, so most circumstancial gun crimes not perpetrated by "regular" criminals/mafia are done with such long firearms, if available.
  
• Non-underworld related handgun crime (which are concealable, easy to use etc.) still do happen, simply because of illegal ownership/using illegal channels to procure handguns, SMGs and even frag and flashbang grenades! And then again there's homemade weaponry and modification of prop guns (which are ALSO illegal to possess).
  
• A significant percentage of handgun murders in Greece are perpetrated by disgruntled police officers for personal reasons, which supposedly belong to the "screened and selected few" that have the privilege of owning guns.
  
• School "massacres" still occur, but they are different in nature: e.g. a disgruntled student in Greece actually knifed two other students who bullied him. They both survived, and didn't get their faces blown off...so I guess that's a win for gun control?
  
• There were a few wackos who did stupid pointless shit like shooting at people with air rifles "for fun", "merely" wounding them "a bit" and then getting a nice billyclub sodomy by the police. A few more creative types used crossbows or homemade bows & arrows (!)
  

So sorry, even if you theoretically abolish ALL possibilities of legal ownership of EVERYTHING, someone needing a gun for some serious killing will find a way to acquire one, through illegal channels, and if not, well, he'll resort to something else like stabbing or even bomb planting.

Mr. Freeze said:

Your need to FEEL safe does not trump my right to BE safe.

Thats more of an opinion then a fact, as I can swap the meaning of those two words around and still have a valid point.

I'm with Bank, fuck all you gun nuts.

Even though this thread is about airsoft guns, it obviously got into a dumb gun debate so, someone just asked to compare two countries. Here we go!

In Switzerland, adult males are issued and required to keep their service weapons at home. How does Switzerland's crime rate match up against the United States'?

I'll just go off intentional homicide rates in general. I'll also list other countries by how strict their gun control laws are to attempt measuring effectiveness. The following are national intentional homicide rates per 100,000 throughout the 2000s:

Nation	       Rate    Control	 Population
---------------------------------------------
Mexico: 	11.8	Lax	111,211,789
United States: 	5.6	Lax	309,488,000
Switzerland: 	2.8	Lax	  7,782,900
Malaysia: 	2.2	Strict	 28,310,000
Canada: 	1.8	Strict	 34,137,000
England: 	1.6	Strict	 51,446,000
Australia:	1.4	Strict   22,381,776
Italy:		1.2	Strict   60,231,214
Germany: 	1.0	Strict   81,757,600
Greece: 	1.0	N/A	 11,306,183
Singapore: 	0.5	Strict	  4,987,600
Japan: 		0.5	Strict	127,380,000

Of course, these numbers don't really provide a lot of other factors such as region, culture, non-gun murders, etc.

Bank said:

Guns have one purpose and that's to kill, as I've said in literally every gun control thread on Doomworld I don't like that any fucking idiot with a gun can pull a trigger and end a life. I don't care about how responsible all of you gun owners are or how many tests you have to take to get one or how free you need to feel, guns absolutely do kill people and if there were less of them fewer people would be killed.

I strongly agree. If everyone wants a gun, either for defense or recreation or whatever, then that leads to an increase in the supply of guns and larger gun companies. There will be more guns in the world, and it will be easier for criminals to get guns.

Of course, this is a cycle, and if we change our ways now, people will cease having guns to defend themselves while the previous cycle is still giving guns to criminals for a time. In this case, I say we suck it up until the gun business adapts to be smaller due to less demand. Buy tasers, install alarm systems, etc. until there are less guns around. Don't fight fire with fire.

ducon said:

No, with real guns.
In France, airsoft guns are often used by mafia wannabes.

Huh.

And they actually kill people with them?

phi108 said:

I strongly agree. If everyone wants a gun, either for defense or recreation or whatever, then that leads to an increase in the supply of guns and larger gun companies. There will be more guns in the world, and it will be easier for criminals to get guns.

Of course, this is a cycle, and if we change our ways now, people will cease having guns to defend themselves while the previous cycle is still giving guns to criminals for a time. In this case, I say we suck it up until the gun business adapts to be smaller due to less demand. Buy tasers, install alarm systems, etc. until there are less guns around. Don't fight fire with fire.

This will likely never happen. While people carry guns to defend themselves, entire countries do the same thing. Even if there is an all powerful world government that banned any weapons, how are they going to enforce it? With weapons? I don't think is will ever be realistic.

On a side note, guns are fun. My family and I were shooting wine glasses this past weekend with a pistol. None of us are very good shots so we cleaned up the rest with a 16 gauge because you don't really need to aim. It was awesome.

Danarchy said:

With an airsoft gun? Hahaha...


All airsoft guns I've seen (like other toy guns) have orange muzzle tips so you can tell they're fake 100 yards away. Some that I've seen were even clear. Plus, they are made of plastic instead of steel, which makes them obviously not real when seen up close. Anyone who is dumb enough to spray paint theirs to look real deserves getting shot and/or arrested.


Yeah, well maybe some people want to fire guns without the risk of accidental death, you moron.

Anyone arguing against gun control in a thread about airsoft guns either doesn't know what AirSoft is or is an idiot.

Guns are tools not toys, I know what airsoft are and think they are stupid... u will never learn to respect a weapon like that.

Do you cry like a baby when a kid uses a nerf gun too?

Ha ha, nice try.

Here is a nerf gun:


Here is an airsoft gun:


I hope that illustrates my point for you.

I'm with both Bank and Belial. I'm actually afraid to go into some of those states or cities where they let people carry guns in places like a starbucks.

It appears that in the US these practice weapons are regulated. They require an orange muzzle to import or distribute. Various countries restrict or ban them because they look a lot like guns (potentially alarming or confusing law enforcement) and some restrict the muzzle velocity due to potential harm from the pellets.

Danarchy said:
Anyone arguing against gun control in a thread about airsoft guns either doesn't know what AirSoft is or is an idiot.

It looks like the present case isn't helping your proposed Law of AirSoft threads much: Someone said "Gun control is dumb" in general, which inspired someone to disagree and shoot back.

Controlling things airsoft guns is definitely part of gun control, which is part of this notion of a larger ability to control what products people use. I'm still quite convinced they should only be controlling products that go off on their own or have a high accident rate. To a certain extent, guns fit this, which is why people who are idiots with guns around others should be stopped from using them (maybe we could go muslim on them and cut off their trigger fingers :p ).

The rest of my argument is that it's not about safety at all. Protecting a few people from being shot deprives millions of people of an opportunity to shoot guns, even if it's just shooting wine glasses (that's an expensive target) and that's not right. Human lives are not worth putting in place huge infrastructure to tell individuals what to do.

On the same token, drugs, lockpicks, hacking tools, chemicals, etc. should be largely legal too. When we find a murderer we lock him up, shoot him on sight, lobotomize him, etc, but until then we give people the benefit of the doubt.

Some countries seem to have cultures that encourage extremely low crime. Japan comes to mind. They like to fit in and don't seem to commit a lot of crimes. I found that very odd, considering they tolerate the Yakuza.

Also, comparing Canada's gun control laws to countries like Japan is misleading. Nobody in Japan has a gun. Lots of people in Canada have guns.

Gun control doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. There have been record numbers of gun sales in the past few years, yet a NOTABLE DECREASE in all manners of violent crime across the board. Ever since the 1970s as states made it easier to conceal handguns, crime lowered in those states. Florida is the prime example. High rate of gun ownership and CCW licensure and crime has dramatically lowered since then. My state of New York has relatively strict gun control, yet we have a lot of violent crime.

Because YOU are scared I have to give up my right to gun ownership to protect myself and my family and NOT be scared!? I may need it to provide someday, too. Life on this planet will never be a dance through the field of daisys.

I see alot of WE ARE BORG in here.

And I'm still tryin' to figure out what this Airsoft thing shoots. Is it just a pellet gun?

They fire plastic pellets.

Yeah, they're pretty much less deadly than either pellet guns or BB guns.

bytor said:

Because YOU are scared I have to give up my right to gun ownership to protect myself and my family and NOT be scared!? I may need it to provide someday, too. Life on this planet will never be a dance through the field of daisys.

I don't mind if people own guns, but I never got the notion that some people have where they need their guns to sleep at night. I've never felt myself in mortal danger from anything. I used to live in the city and I'd keep my door unlocked all the time, and nothing ever happened, even after the group of druggies moved in upstairs (well except for them dropping trash all over my front door and having parties at 3 in the morning).

Danarchy said:

I used to live in the city and I'd keep my door unlocked all the time, and nothing ever happened.

*looks Danarcy's profile*

*City: WA*

Aha. Would you do the same in LA, a city with an estimated 120000 gang members?

Bank said:

guns absolutely do kill people and if there were less of them fewer people would be killed.

Actually, all people will be killed. Sorry. :D


This thread brings to mind a classic movie, The Hunted

Bank said:

Most laws wouldn't work if they weren't enforced. That's the point, if there are so many criminals with their hands on so many guns then let's enforce some laws to take them away instead of just taking it as a given and handing out pistols to everyone.

Sorry, only now I read this post carefully.

Enforce some laws to take them away from criminals, you say?

Laws against criminal weapon and gun possession are already in place in most jurisdictions (so, it's already illegal to own guns to begin with), and owning a gun while having a criminal record is already an aggravating factor in most jurisdictions, and pretty big fuckup even if you don't have one.

Needless to say, the same laws say that should you be discovered with an unlawfully possessed weapon, it will also be be confiscated upon arrest/discovery (the "taking away the guns" part of your idea). So I don't see what new are you proposing here.

Stricter gun control of the kind you suggest will only affect law-abiding citizens who give two damns about the law, not criminals who already have guns or who plan on acquiring them, if they can't get arrested to begin with. And choking the legal gun market will at most inconvenience the few (at least in the EU) legal gun owners and hunters, not criminals. Last time I checked grenades, AK-47s and sawed-offs were not sold in legal armories.

What you really mean is having strict anti-gang and anti-crime policies, more numerous and more powerful police that goes out, RIGHT THERE IN THE STREETS and arrests THE BAD GUYS, aka the mob, the Triads, the MS-13, the "niggaz", the "bad mothafuckas" etc., not a police that harasses family guys because you wanted a plinking gun or airgun to shoot rats in your yard.

magicsofa said:

Actually, all people will be killed. Sorry. :D


This thread brings to mind a classic movie, The Hunted

I believe there is a distinct line between dying and being killed. Killing is depriving someone of their right to live.

Maes said:

Stricter gun control of the kind you suggest will only affect law-abiding citizens who give two damns about the law, not criminals who already have guns or who plan on acquiring them, if they can't get arrested to begin with. And choking the legal gun market will at most inconvenience the few (at least in the EU) legal gun owners and hunters, not criminals. Last time I checked grenades, AK-47s and sawed-offs were not sold in legal armories.

This is such a defeatist attitude and this is partially why the problem isn't being solved. Guns can be taken out of the hands of criminals but no one is fucking trying. I'm not talking about choking the legal gun market because it'll magically make "mobsters" turn over a new leaf, I'm talking about actually enforcing smuggling laws in addition to other weapon control laws. If I wanted to I could get a gun illegally and it wouldn't be that hard. That's a problem.

Maes said:

*looks Danarcy's profile*

*City: WA*

Aha. Would you do the same in LA, a city with an estimated 120000 gang members?

Probably not, no. But most people who feel the need for guns live in the country or the suburbs, where the crime rate is even lower.

Bank said:

This is such a defeatist attitude and this is partially why the problem isn't being solved.

I don't see what you would solve here in the EU by doing this: gun laws are already as strict as they can be without forcing gun store owners to close them down.

Bank said:

Guns can be taken out of the hands of criminals but no one is fucking trying ... I'm talking about actually enforcing smuggling laws in addition to other weapon control laws. If I wanted to I could get a gun illegally and it wouldn't be that hard. That's a problem.

Bingo, now we're talking. Controlling illegal weapon smuggling requires more powerful police and more control over organized crime, which NO police force in the world has ever achieved. The mafias that are behind those are not random crazed old men with a shotgun on their front porch, nor rednecks with a confererate flag and a shotgun on their pickup: they are hardened MS-13, Russian mafia, Chinese mafia, etc. you name it. The relations of organized crime and police/states are another matter.

HOwever since in the US you have (or had) some of the most permissive legal gun ownership laws, from the context of the previous posts I understood you wanted to choke that AND ONLY THAT, which will be ineffective (read my post about the situation in the EU. We're far from the gun-free heaven you advocate).

Danarchy said:

Probably not, no. But most people who feel the need for guns live in the country or the suburbs, where the crime rate is even lower.

No. The 'burbs are a mess around here. Cops get shot at for just driving down the street. The inner city is filling with professionals. Inner city property is high dollar.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/05/09/minorities_exit_cities_moving_to_suburbs/
Also, in my city's suburbs, the illegal immigrants are growing at an incredible rate. Suburbs=crime. The Feds aren't enforcing IMMIGRATION LAWS because the companys want cheap labor.

Bank said:

This is such a defeatist attitude and this is partially why the problem isn't being solved. Guns can be taken out of the hands of criminals but no one is fucking trying. I'm not talking about choking the legal gun market because it'll magically make "mobsters" turn over a new leaf, I'm talking about actually enforcing smuggling laws in addition to other weapon control laws. If I wanted to I could get a gun illegally and it wouldn't be that hard. That's a problem.

And what gun laws aren't being enforced? Do you propose a Gestapo search and sweep, house-to-house, to remove all guns from the public?

It's not guns that scare me, it's the thick twats who use them. Someone was firing an airgun at my dad's place of work yesterday. The pellets couldn't penetrate the second layer of glass in the windows - but what happens if they did, and they hit someone who was walking around in the building?

Armed police turned up to investigate, then claimed that the bullet holes were actually caused by thrown stones. British police, they'll do anything to avoid spending four hours leaning over a fresh batch of paperwork that nobody will read.

EDIT: When I say yesterday, I mean two weeks ago. Doesn't time fly!

Bank said:
If I wanted to I could get a gun illegally and it wouldn't be that hard. That's a problem.

One reason to control guns is to make them rare. Smuggling a gun across the border is one thing, and may require contacts or secure transportation through different administrative areas, while burglarizing a house and getting a (commonly available) pistol and rifle with ammo is another. If a population of 5 million people have 1 million guns, the chances some crook will take one are higher than if there are only 100,000 guns. The availability of the guns may detract some crime, too, but not in proportion to the ease of obtaining them.

myk said:

If a population of 5 million people have 1 million guns, the chances some crook will take one are higher than if there are only 100,000 guns.

Not even the US have such a proportion of legal gun ownership, and one of the requirements to be issued a lawful permit is to have secure weapon & ammo storage in your house (some even go as far as demanding that you store the gun dismantled, unloaded, and separately from ammunition). The chances that a gun-owning house will get robbed are very low already in the EU, primarily due to the fact that there are very few people with handguns (and most of them are cops, so who would dare burglarizing the house of a cop?) and most guns are going to be hunting shotguns. Gangs prefer more macho stuff like Scorpion SMGs, AK-47s, uzis, sawed-off shotguns, nickel-plated .45s etc. and even grenades and flashbangs, if they can find them.

Most of these things aren't even found in armories, let alone in private houses. There are however occasional reports of thefts from army caches and more rarely, from police caches (usually with an inside accomplice).

Maes said:
Not even the US have such a proportion of legal gun ownership, and one of the requirements to be issued a lawful permit is to have secure weapon & ammo storage in your house (some even go as far as demanding that you store the gun dismantled, unloaded, and separately from ammunition).

Really? According to the Wikipedia article on US gun culture, 25% of the adult population owns a gun, mostly legally. The numbers I threw above weren't meant to represent anything, though. I hadn't even checked any specific figures. I was just illustrating more guns versus less guns available to the population as a matter of circulation and usage.