Why isn't fast food banned? Because one big Mac won't kill me. 10 Big Macs throughout a week won't kill me. Even a month of eating just big Macs won't kill me. In any event, my eating a big mac doesn't potentially hurt/kill others.

One bullet can probably kill me. 10 bullets will certainly kill me. 100 bullets will probably leave nothing much of me. There's a big difference.

Guns can do that. The entire purpose of guns is to kill living things. Most guns are manufactured with the intent of killing people. They are weapons. They may not be Tomahawk missiles, F-35 JSFs, or M1A3 Abrams MBTs but they are weapons nonetheless. In the hands of the wrong people, they end up killing others who did nothing. Even in the hands of people who are just gun enthusiasts, they can cause harm by either ending up in the hands of the wrong people or even accidents. Stating that gun ownership causes less harm than fast food doesn't make much sense at all. A Big Mac isn't manufactured in the intent of being used as a weapon to kill people (unless it's a government conspiracy, in which case all bets are off anyways). I'm pretty sure that the guys at McDonald's are sitting around at boardroom meetings discussing how to make Big Macs become more lethal. That's the difference between fast food and guns.

we have a moral responsibility to do so.

Who's morality do you suggest to represent? Morality is an opinion. I think it would be immoral to take a gun away from an old women, my mother for example, someone who's only purpose of having a gun is self defense and keeps it in her purse when she goes out. She couldn't stop an attacker with out it. Should she just be allowed to be mugged because the muggers life is supposedly more valuable than her purse?

Do less guns create less ills? You don't need a gun to break into a house or kill somebody, you don't need a gun to rape somebody, you don't need a gun to mug my mother, all you need is a sick mind. Guns are not a gateway tool to harm. Anything can be used to harm if the assailant is willing.

Sure, morality is subjective. Sure you can't prevent violent crime BUT you can make it much tougher to commit. Homicide rates are much lower in Europe/Australia. That is a fact.

According to your train of thought, why don't you condemn or ban fast food? Heart disease is the number one killer in the US. Fuck all the people killed by fast food yeah?

Because, as already explained, fast food is something that you do to yourself. I don't eat that crap, some I have zero fear of someone giving me heart disease because of their unhealthy food choices. But I absolutely support measures to make healthy eating easier and more affordable. Several countries are now considering a sugar tax or a fat tax.

The basic problem with heart disease is one of economics. Basically, poorer people are actually poorer in real terms than they were 30 or 40 years ago. Families have to work longer hours and have less time/money to prepare healthy meals. Meanwhile, fast food is cheaper. But that's really a discussion for another topic.

Smoking can be attributed to 17x the amount of deaths compared to guns. Please ban cigarettes.

Again, smoking is something you do to yourself. As for second-hand smoke, yes, I'm totally in favour of banning smoking in public places. You can't smoke in bars in NZ and I love it. As a matter of fact, the NZ government is aiming to make NZ smoke free by 2025.


But that is all completely irrelevant, because fundamentally, you have missed the point.

Your argument is a Nirvana fallacy ("Even if we ban guns, people will still die, so why bother?"). Perfect is the enemy of good.

But as @phantom said, the US is not a civilised country. Nowhere else in the developed world has that kind of mindset.
Your problem is not guns, that's just a symptom. Your problem is your culture.

I know plenty of people with guns. They hunt or target shoot, but the idea that you would need a gun for "protection" is quite foreign to almost every other country in the developed world.

No-one is actually suggesting banning all guns, but people in the US seem genuinely afraid that they will be "defenseless" if stripped of their arms.

Why is this?
When I've asked people before, I hear responses like "it takes the police 10 minutes to get to your house".

But that doesn't address the fear of home invasion in the first place. Is it really that common in the US? And if it is, WHY is it?

It's simply not a concern for anyone I know in any other country (excluding war zones, etc). Clearly, if it is such a problem, having a gun isn't deterring people from doing this.

Maybe instead of looking at the short-term symptoms, you should be asking yourselves what is driving people to be so desperate that they are willing to risk their lives breaking into other people's homes knowing that the occupants are potentially armed.

The problem is essentially escalation (the "Chicago Way").

10: "All the criminals have guns, I better have one too"
20: "Shit, if I'm going to rob that place, they probably have a gun, better go armed"
30: goto 10

Breaking this cycle means addressing inequality, racism, and poverty. People in the US aren't inherently worse than everywhere else, but your system is set up to incentivize criminals to carry a gun.

The worst part is that your political system is such a mess that the gun lobby has convinced/paid your government that the CDC can't even study gun deaths.

Sure, morality is subjective. Sure you can't prevent violent crime BUT you can make it much tougher to commit. Homicide rates are much lower in Europe/Australia. That is a fact.

Taking away guns does not make it tougher to commit crime. You don't need a gun to mug an old women. And you must mean Western Europe has a lower homicide rate, lets not forget about all the wonderfully high homicide rates of other European countries like Albania, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania ect ect.... All with wonderfully strict gun control. These European countries have higher homicide rates than US and other western European countries. That is a fact.

Americans look at things differently than a European would. Americans are about the individual, not the collective.

Its kind of funny though that the legal age for alcohol consumption in the US is 21, in most countries you are an adult when you turn 18 (including the US). So you can restrict/control the way of life of an adult for 3 years because of some few crackheads who misuse alcohol yet you feel its a violation of individual rights if you attempt to control/restrict/or do something about guns?

Sure, morality is subjective. Sure you can't prevent violent crime BUT you can make it much tougher to commit. Homicide rates are much lower in Europe/Australia. That is a fact.

Taking away guns does not make it tougher to commit crime. You don't need a gun to mug an old women. And you must mean Western Europe has a lower homicide rate, lets not forget about all the wonderfully high homicide rates of other European countries like Albania, Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania ect ect.... All with wonderfully strict gun control. These European countries have higher homicide rates than US and other western European countries. That is a fact.

Eastern Europe has many problems. Ukraine just had a civil war. You really think gun control is going to work in a country that just had a civil war? I think the less said about Russia the better. The US is not like any of those nations in any way, shape, or form. Most of those nations were former Soviet Bloc. I fail to see how that argument works here.

The only reason gun control would not work in the US is because there is no willpower here to implement it en masse. That and the fact that there's so many guns already on the street, it would take decades before that could all be cleaned up, by which point, every Republican would be screaming bloody murder. Gun control works where it is implemented correctly. Australia is a pretty good example.

Ukraine just had a civil war. You really think gun control is going to work in a country that just had a civil war?

Calling it a civil war just plays into Russian propaganda, what with Russian tanks, soldiers, and anti-aircraft weaponry being within Ukraine's borders.

[Edit:] Reduced to a single sentence to avoid going off-topic.

Americans look at things differently than a European would. Americans are about the individual, not the collective.

Its kind of funny though that the legal age for alcohol consumption in the US is 21, in most countries you are an adult when you turn 18 (including the US). So you can restrict/control the way of life of an adult for 3 years because of some few crackheads who misuse alcohol yet you feel its a violation of individual rights if you attempt to control/restrict/or do something about guns?

This is also stupid - and we would probably have a lot fewer problems with college binge drinking and risky, stupid behaviors if the legal drinking age was reduced back to 18 again. This is one thing Europeans get right; because drinking a beer or a glass of wine is not taboo and risky, but rather something you can just do, legally, it doesn't have the kind of mystique that develops for many Americans.

The problem is essentially escalation (the "Chicago Way"). 10: "All the criminals have guns, I better have one too" 20: "Shit, if I'm going to rob that place, they probably have a gun, better go armed" 30: goto 10 Breaking this cycle means addressing inequality, racism, and poverty.

That's not really how it happens, though. Home invasions are usually done unarmed/with knives because there's much harsher penalties for getting caught with a gun.

However, if the home owner has a gun they're at a distinct advantage, while if they're elderly/outnumbered a gun is really their only chance if the invaders get violent.

your system is set up to incentivize criminals to carry a gun. The worst part is that your political system is such a mess that the gun lobby has convinced/paid your government that the CDC can't even study gun deaths.

The only real problem with our system is that we allow parole/give people slaps on the wrist.

82% of property crime offenders commit crimes after getting out of jail

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/once-a-criminal-always-a-criminal/

The majority of criminals commit crimes within even a few years, and if you expand that to a longer time period, 90%+ are back in jail for other crimes.

http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx

If someone does a violent crime, and it's proven in court, they should never get out of jail. This would end our issues.

Seventy-three percent of those convicted of robbery or assault had an arrest record, as did 67% of murderers, and 53% of rapists.

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/vfluc.txt

...

The US is at about 10.53 while other countries, like the UK, Australia, etc. are below 1. Even Germany is at 1.01. I mean clearly there's a gap there?

Superficially, it seems that way, but...

You have to account for the fact that in the USA where gun deaths are high, the by far overwhelmning number of guns is legal, simply because you can just buy most kinds of "normal" guny in the next shop downtown after you get your driver's license. Legally.
A very considerable number of guns in Germany is illegal and virtually all handling is illegal, too, because it is an expensive and complicated process of being allowed to even own one.

But owning comes with a lot of regulations, too. It is not trivial at all for "the common guy" to be even allowed to take his gun home. If you are a hunter (which is a 1-year education and a state exam) you are allowed to have the gun at home, unloaded and locked in a safe, and the ammunition locked separately. You are allowed to carry the gun (unloaded) on your way to the hunting ground (and obviously fire it for hunting) and that's it. If you are only a sport shooter, the gun remains locked in the club, you can't even take it home unless you have some special relations with people who will bail for your reliability, blah blah. Again, everybody is equal, only some are more equal, as usual.

Any kind of alcohol or crime-related story and you are deemed "unreliable" and will never get a gun in your life (actually, I agree on this part, this is the only good thing about the regulation).

That's for owning a weapon. Carrying one, under any circumstances, is illegal for everybody except military and police, and the very, very few people who have a carry license (that's about a thousand people in the entire country). Unless you are the bodyguard of a high-profile politician or a security guy working for the federal reserve, your chances of getting a carry license are zero. (Ironically, Merkel recently had the ingenious idea of hiring people who previously failed the entry test or the psychological evaluation for police service as a kind of "poor man's police", and let them carry guns. I feel so much safer knowing these people carry guns.).

So... buying a gun from a trunk is that much easier and straightforward for the average person (and the average criminal). Which is why so many people do it. You obviously don't know how many there are, but you can bet they make up the greater part of guns in fluctuation.

In summary, for drawing a conclusion on the success of banning guns, you must compare the same death rates, not legal ones on one side, and illegal ones on the other. Very, very few people die to legally owned guns here (the 16 people killed in the Erfurt amok run in 2002 are one example).

But again, my problem with these regulations is that they punish the wrong people, and do not punish those who deserve it. The MacDonalds argument above is a good example.

If you eat a dozen burgers per week, you will die early. I couldn't care less. This needs not be illegal. If you smoke (at home) I'm not bothered either. If you smoke Marijuana, I couldn't care less. You aren't hurting me, nor anyone else. Same goes for owning a gun, and, with reason, even carrying one.

It should be illegal to smoke in the presence of others, especially children. Why? Well because you harm them, and they cannot defend agains this. There is not much of a difference between smoking and beating your child.
It should be illegal for companies like McD to target children. Why? Well because they are too gullible, and they are not experienced enough to properly oversee the consequences for their lives. Selling burgers to children is more or less the same as selling alcohol to them.

Now, owning a gun, and pointing a gun at a person are very different things. I do not see why the former should be illegal. Pass an exam so to prevent the most stupid accidents? Agreed. Deny people who have a criminal [drugs, alcohol...] history? Agreed. Other than that, there's no reason to regulate it any more.
On the other hand, I do not agree with the virtually non-existing penalty for pointing a gun at someone (or shooting). If you point a gun at someone, other than in dire self-defence, police should shoot you at sight. And if they get hold of you alive, you should get 20 years, no parole possible. But that's not the case.
It's the same as with drinking and driving. The penalties are harsh when you are caught driving with low alcohol which is well below the legal threshold, or slightly above it. But if some drunk fucker with 2.8 permil runs over a child, losing the permit (which is not a hindrance) is the only penalty. No 20 years for killing that child because hey, temporarily insane due to alcohol.

That's what I don't agree with.