+265 Everyone who is calling for stricter gun laws in light of the tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, may I offer this little tidbit: If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars drive drunk, and spoons make people fat. Remember: Hold the person accountable for their actions, not the means they chose to utilize. amirite?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I completely agree with you. However, stricter gun laws may make a difference. For example, Canada's gun laws are crazy strict, and our crime rates are much lower. Although, there's been a recent incident where someone used a crossbow for murder....so I guess there's always ways around it :P

by Anonymous 13 years ago

You don't need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Arizona. You also don't have to go through a background check. That's more than likely why they want to put new laws into place.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Then again, it's difficult to drunk drive without a car, misspell words without a writing utensil, and get fat without a spoon, but there are still ways to get around it

by Anonymous 13 years ago

A person still has control of the car, the pencil and the spoon.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Well, if a mentally unstable person can get hold of a gun without any problem, even though he has been in a mental hospital, then there WILL be problems.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

can you all explain to me then why violence goes down over 60 percent in places without guns?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Why would you ever need guns? If we had super strict gun laws and no one had guns then I can't see crime wouldn't go down. Also yes, you should hold the person accountable but why not just prevent it in the first place?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

guns make it a hell of a lot easier to kill people.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

@ under_score Name one

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Canada? I think.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Australia.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Austrailia put in place a law that no one could legally own guns. The crime rate went up 300%. Guess who got their guns back

by Anonymous 13 years ago

There was NEVER a law that said no one could legally own guns (that's just untrue). There were always tight restrictions, meaning you had to have a legitimate reason to own a gun: Occupational (armed forces, farmers and police), Members of approved sporting clubs, hunters and collectors. No random citizen has ever had the right to own a gun without a full background check, reason and a licence. There was a buy back program in 1997, for semi automatic weapons and pump action guns, as a ban on them was put in place. If you felt you needed a semi-auto gun or a pump action gun you could apply for exemption. But NO ban on guns altogether. That 300% statistic was taken from the state of Victoria, with a population of 4.5 million people. In 1996 before the buy back program there were 7 fire arm related homicides and in 1997 there were 19... a difference of 12 people is hardly significant when you put it in the context of population

by Anonymous 13 years ago

"Guess who got their guns back" Not Australian's as the ban was never lifted, and the same laws are still in place.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

You have a point, but you can't just give a gun to everyone. Like someone else said, guns make things easier.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

My opinion if we make gun control stricter is this: criminals with the intent to kill/be violent will keep/find new guns to use because they don't care about breaking the law, and innocent people who follow the regulations will be defensless against them.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

The only reason it might be hard to get a gun is if you have a criminal record and so on. I live in california and the only difference is that we can't own full auto weapons and there's a I believe 15day wait period/background check from when you purchase it till you can get it. I highly doubt any civilian would go running to a gun store expecting to get one right away to go shoot a criminal terrorizing their neighborhood.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I agree with you, ominousanonymous, but I believe the stricter laws will remind people that they are essentially bing watched by the government, which ultimately will lower the violence

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Yeah, but by getting rid of guns, it would make it more difficult for people to kill each other.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I agree. We should also hand out nukes because if they destroy a city, evidently, you can't blame the nuke

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Someone had to make a command for that nuke to be dropped, and then a plane crew had to bring it into place and drop it, the nuke, as well as a gun, is a tool that does nothing on its own, only what someone else makes it do

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Less guns = less people being shot. Hopefully.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I hear "Guns don't kill people, people do" a lot. Also "If you make owning a gun illegal only criminals will have guns." Both true in theory but they don't translate into real life. Paraphrasing a statement from Bill Hicks, in one year, there were 23,000 deaths from handguns in America. In the same year there were 14 deaths from handguns in England, where it is illegal for a civilian to own a gun. Obviously the USA has a far greater population than America, so if we scale the population down to the same size as Britain's, and scale the amount of gun deaths accordingly, that's 4,600 deaths. 4,600 in a country where guns are legal and readily available and 14 in a country where they are not. Also, it's true that guns don't kill people, but by that logic neither do bombs. I could plant a bomb and kill hundreds of people, and it would be me killing them, not the bomb, but if I didn't have the bomb in the first place, I wouldn't be able to kill anywhere near as many people.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

OP, I love you! Lets be best friends.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

um no americans and their guns goodness me

by Anonymous 13 years ago

It's too easy for the wrong people to get their hands on a gun.

by Anonymous 13 years ago