It is becoming increasingly apparent that all you know of the gun situation in the US is one side's propaganda or the others. Admittedly, I grew up in a very urban middle-class environment, and don't know much more than that myself, but at least I know that more exists. :/
Are you taking into account exactly how small the UK actually is? How easy it is to control things when you have a smaller group size that's more densely populated wrt area space? The entire country of Germany can fit inside the state of Texas. We've already established that needing background checks for guns is necessary so you aren't as likely to hand a gun to someone who has a trigger finger when he's mad. What you've said wrt how people carry guns simply doesn't happen as often as you think it happens. It's why you got an incredibly confused response. What is your angle? Edit to point out: I want to understand what's understood of America's gun control ("there is none" is false), and why it's being argued it needs to take a "UK" stance.
So you're saying that, living in an urban area, I wouldn't be allowed to own a gun for anything but decoration (not allowed to take a gun out or discharge it)?
I still think that keeping a gun cased in a populated urban area is probably wise in order to prevent causing a public panic. In cities here, somebody carrying a gun openly is so literally unheard of that, unless they were in police uniform, if I saw somebody strolling down the street with a gun I'd quite probably go and hide somewhere.
Also, to be frank, I think the last thing we need to do is give power tripping racist cops another excuse to stop random people on the street.
Anecdata: I live in West Virginia, and once you get at all into the backwoods you start hitting food deserts where a lot of people need to hunt to eat. It's also actually a bit of an ecological issue- most of the natural predators for white-tailed deer are either rare (cougars) or extinct (wolves), so human hunters are the only thing keeping the population down to manageable levels. Not that this makes me any less freaked out that earlier this year the state legislature voted to make it legal to carry a concealed handgun without a permit, but.
If you were on your own land, maybe you'd be able to do that? I'm not sure what the UK ordinance is on that. I'm fairly sure you can fire guns on some private land, for instance they shoot pheasants at my local farm, but I'm fairly certain that firing a gun in my garden would probably break some law. Or maybe it doesn't? It's just... not done. I'm not actually a lawyer I can't quote specific legislation at you. I'm am honestly bewildered at the fact that I'm having to argue this at all when the only point I ever had was that there's a time and a place for loaded weaponry because it's fuckin' dangerous. Which just seems. Like the most obvious thing in the world. There is some serious culture clash happening here.
We're arguing the same thing? Like. Literally the exact same thing, but you keep bringing some sort of superior air about it that is swathed in stereotypes and media portrayals that we're arguing points against it, which happen to look like we're arguing for rooty tooty point and shooty all willy nilly.
Unless you're in an open-carry state (Ex: Texas) all those guns will be cased. I have seen one instance of an uncased gun brought into my store and that was a retired policeman with his sidearm under his coat. He brought it to the counter immediately and offered his concealed-carry permit without being asked. No one really walks around with their AK over their shoulder in WalMart unless, well, someone's spreading rumors that "'Bama gon' take our guns!" and they feel the need to display their 'MURICAN SECOND AMMENDMANT RIGHTS alongside their Confederate flag bumper sticker and TruckNutz Edit: And then they're already pretty scary without the gun.
Guys, all that would be necessary would be to specify a difference between populated urban areas and open wilderness when you're creating your legislation. Or... don't? That wasn't really my primary concern anyway. Just keep the requirement for a stated reason, the two referees, and perhaps also restrict types of weaponry that aren't used in a hunting or sport setting and that seems like more than enough to keep everyone happy and safe here.
My original question is "What if I live in an urban area but want to travel to the wilderness to hunt". Someone else posited a similar scenario, where a family wants to hunt to cut down on grocery costs and live a short drive away from a forest, but that is still not their land. Are you or are you not arguing that we shouldn't be allowed to do this? Do you believe that "wants to hunt off of own property" is a reasonable reason to own a gun? Should the people in this hypothetical be allowed to own firearms for this purpose? I also, for the record, do not care what the UK's laws are in this instance, I am asking you what your beliefs are re what you think the USA's gun laws should look like.
Also literally nobody here disagrees with the fact that there is a time and place for loaded weaponry. Fucking duh.
I am going to put something forth here but just fyi I'm out and may not be able to engage with responses until tomorrow. I am one of those people who has a pistol for "personal defense", but my family is very military and I've taken gun safety classes and practiced with it. I have it because the area I live in is very high crime, as in I can literally hear two separate incidents of gunshots every night, and the police here are awful about responding and pretty bad about queer people too. I'm currently working on getting concealed carry. I am in favor of gun control in the sense of background checks and free education (possibly some sort of safety certification test in case you have knowledge from elsewhere, but otherwise mandatory education), but overall tighter gun legislation rather than current legislation being actually enforced would not benefit me. The people who I hear shooting are mostly gang members and guns being harder to access legally would not hurt their access and would probably give them more funds, because the gangs around here run guns. Just contributing because that's a viewpoint I feel is not yet represented here. Edit: and it is in a locked container during the day and we have no kids in the house.
Coupla big differences. 1. England has not had a frontier culture for about a thousand years. The US experience of the frontier is much more recent. 2. In England, hunting has been an upper-class recreation for a couple centuries. In the US, hunting has been until very recently, the main way just about everybody living in a rural area acquired meat to eat. Even now, in rural areas, game is an actual component of the diet, especially for the rural poor. 3. Because of this history, firearm possession is widespread in the US and they are passed down through families and informally bought and sold between acquaintances. That all being said, there is far too much violence committed in the US using firearms. I don't know a solid solution is to this that would not be draconian in its implementation, but I'd be willing to try to work on something. Unfortunately, as I noted above, discussion of this is messed up by the magical thinking of both "sides". Throw in a manufacturer's lobby group posing as a membership organization (I'm looking at you, NRA), and it's a difficult task.
I already said I was wrong there. I was talking about the point I had when I came into this thread to talk about it. And I mean, forgive me, but I wasn't particularly trying to encode much nuance when I was making my initial metaphor about something completely unrelated to specific gun control legislation.
I kept bringing up "handgun" because that's used for both hunting game and harming people (mutually exclusive reasons). Are people only allowed to use hunting rifles? What if they can't handle the kickback of them? Are they just fucked outta luck?
@BlackholeKG I honestly feel like you keep moving your points around and shifting your stance as it suits the argument you are currently in with the person you are currently talking to rather than the discussion as a whole. Maybe I'm wrong, this discussion is going very fast and can be kind of confusing, but I'm nonetheless getting very annoyed and should probably stop participating in this conversation entirely for a while.
