Your Thoughts on Gun Control?

[RichPlaystation]

As a person, I would ban guns, therefor I am a dictator..... I guess *shrug*

[Ramius762]

The poster does not imply that if you ban firearms you are a dictator. What do all of the dictators have in common? All of them have banned firearms during their time "in office". What were the results? These "gun control experts" disarmed entire countries and left the citizens helpless to resist the genocide their public official(s) chose to inflict.

For example...

Hitler was elected to power in January 1933. Because of gun control registration laws enacted 5 years earlier, Hitler already knew who owned the guns. Mass seizures of weapons would render the German people helpless. Hitler was to enact another gun control law in 1938. The very day after Kristallnacht, a Nazi-led night of lawlessness and murder against Jews, the Jews were forbidden by law to own a gun, a club, or any sharp-edged weapon. Rendered defenseless, and with census data and National ID Cards identifying who was Jewish, it was easy for the government to arrest the Jews and send them to concentration camps. Over 5 million Jews were slaughtered in these death camps. Many political opponents, pacifists, Slavs, Gypsies and others were also murdered during Hitler's regime. Nearly 21 million people perished under Hitler because they had been rendered defenseless by gun control laws.

World political leaders embraced the 1971 rise to power of Idi Amin in Uganda. Before Amin seized power, laws had been enacted that made it illegal for private citizens to own firearms. Amin immediately called for the slaughter of all soldiers whose loyalty he questioned. Over 16,000 men disappeared over the next few months. Amin said that his god told him to throw all the Asians out of the country. Then he said he was told to throw all the Englishmen out. Their lands and businesses were confiscated. Chaos broke out and in the end 300,000 innocents were brutally murdered in Uganda including a Supreme Court Justice who had dared to rule against Amin. Gun control did not bring peace to Uganda.

The moment Pol Pot seized power in Cambodia in 1975 he set out to disarm the population. The people were totally unaware and defenseless against what was to come. The entire population of Cambodia was herded onto collective farms. The whole country was turned into one big concentration camp where people had no homes, no possessions and even no families. A kind word to a child could be a crime big enough to sentence someone to death. Pol Pot's vision of a Communist "utopia" called for the "purifying" of the country by eliminating religious leaders, monks, nuns, priests, preachers, the Vietnamese along with other "undesirable" ethnic groups, professionals and intellectuals. Even those who wore eyeglasses were marked for death. Pol Pot's goal was to decrease the population of Cambodia from 7 million to 1 million. Fortunately this brutal murderer was stopped before reaching his goal, but the death toll was still staggering. There were 2,035,000 innocents murdered. Gun control did not benefit the people of Cambodia.

While these are extreme cases, it shows a disarmed society is subject to attack, not only from internal threats such as criminals, but from their own government officals as well. While our governments are not going to order the slaughter of millions, it is far easier to chip away at the civil liberties of a disarmed society until it becomes more of a police state and the rights everyone enjoyed are now gone.

References:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Ohara/debbie22.htm

[Ramius762]

Originally Posted by X-Kal

I guess the logic is that it's a bit harder to kill a dozen people with a knife in a grand killing spree than it is to kill a dozen people with a gun

A mass killing spree can occur with any type of weapon. People will use what they have at hand. Take an incident that happened in Japan, as an example, where firearms are out of the hands of the common citizen:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...ng-tokyo_N.htm

TOKYO (AP) — A man plowed into shoppers with a truck Sunday and then stabbed 17 people within minutes, killing at least seven of them in a grisly attack that shocked a country known for its low crime rate. The lunchtime violence in the Akihabara district, a popular electronics and video game area, sent thousands of people fleeing.
The assault, which occurred on the seventh anniversary of a mass stabbing at a Japanese elementary school, was the latest in a series of knife attacks that have stoked fears of rising violent crime in Japan. A 25-year-old man, Tomohiro Kato, was arrested with blood of his face. "The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people," said Jiro Akaogi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

"He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything," Akaogi said. The violence began when the man crashed a rented, two-ton truck into pedestrians. He then jumped out and began stabbing the people he had knocked down with the truck before turning on horrified onlookers, police said. Police confirmed seven deaths — six men and one woman — but they could not say whether the victims had died of injuries from the truck or were stabbed to death. Reports said the attacker grunted and roared as he slashed and stabbed at Sunday shoppers crowding a street lined with huge stores packed with the latest in computers, electronics, videos and games. "He was screaming as he was stabbing people at random," a male witness told national broadcaster NHK. Another witness told NHK that the suspect dropped his knife after police threatened to shoot him. Amateur video filmed by mobile phone showed policemen overpowering the bespectacled, bloodied suspect. The attack paralyzed the district known as Electric Town and sent thousands of Sunday shoppers into a panic. Amateur video taken five minutes after the rampage showed shoppers helping victims and a man screaming, "Ambulance, Ambulance!" At least 17 ambulances rushed to the scene, and rescue workers feverishly tended to victims in the blood-pooled street. As night fell on Akihabara, several pedestrians stopped by and prayed at the crime scene. A bouquet of flowers, bottles of green tea and incense sticks were placed at the site. Japan boasts a low crime rate compared to other industrialized nations and Tokyo, with a population of 12.7 million, is considered relatively safe. But stabbings, once rare in the country, have become more frequent in recent years.

In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan. In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people in a shopping area, injuring two of them. A spate of knife attacks also have occurred in schools, the worst on June 8, 2001 when a man with a history of mental illness burst into elementary school near Osaka killing eight children. He was executed in 2004.

[Ramius762]

Here is another example of someone armed with a knife conducting a killing spree where private firearm ownership is banned. This time, however, the killing spree was focused on the police!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25475269/

5 die in knife rampage at Chinese police station
Attacker reportedly sought revenge after being accused of bicycle theft

BEIJING - A man armed with a knife stormed a police station in Shanghai on Tuesday, stabbing at least five officers to death, authorities said.
The Shanghai Public Security Bureau said in a news release that a 28-year-old man with the surname Yang set a fire outside the building's gate and then rushed inside and began attacking officers.
Five officers died after being taken to a hospital, while four other police officers and a security guard were hurt, the statement said. Some had chest wounds and others had bloodied faces, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a witness with the surname Yi.

Yang, who is from Beijing and unemployed, said he was seeking revenge after officers at the station in Shanghai's Zhabei district investigated him last year for allegedly stealing bicycles, police said.
Yang was taken into custody at the station.
Officers not armed?
It was not clear how the attacker managed to stab so many police officers and why he was not detained after setting a fire outside the building. Though Chinese police are permitted to carry guns, the attack took place in an office building and it was possible officers there were not armed.
A woman at the Zhabei district station referred questions to the Shanghai Public Security Bureau. Phones rang unanswered in the bureau's propaganda department.
Violent street crime is rare in China, where private gun ownership is virtually banned.