A question of guns - sort of debate...

I'd press the button. Guns are too noisy, and I hate loud, sudden noises, and I just don't like them, period.

I'd rather go back to the bow and arrow, or even clubs. Something more basic, and less lethal, overall. Plus, I like the sound an arrow being released makes. Very pleasant.

 

I'd absolutely press the button. That's the epiphany I had after the Sandy Hook shooting is that gun control is useless because the paranoid gun nuts are going to go and buy up all the assault weapons before the ban kicks in, so it's a self-defeating principle.

The only way to end the violence and stop the bloodshed would be to ban guns completely and round up and destroy every single gun in America, sans police and military. That's never, ever going to happen. So because of the fact that there are guns and they've been so widely available for so long, deranged lunatics will still continue murdering first graders (Sandy Hook), shooting up high schools (Columbine) and college campuses (Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, etc.), putting a bullet through the brain of a Congresswoman (Gabby Giffords) and attempting to assassinate presidents (Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Hoover, FDR, Garfield, McKinley, JFK, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton).

So yes, I absolutely would press the button.

 

No of course not, there are a lot of completely legitimate uses for guns. Hunting, pest control and so on, plus uses that aren't violent like flare guns, and railguns for scientific research. Guns are also very effective in military exercises, and military intervention is a necessary 'evil' in some cases (e.g. the bin Laden assassination). You don't just eliminate technology because some people use it for bad reasons.

(I don't think firearms should be kept for self defence purposes, but you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.)

 

I'll press the button. It will not end violence, but I think it would make violence a lot harder to inflict. Also we really do not need to hunt anymore in the 21st century to stay alive.

Are we also talking about things worse than guns, such as nukes and chemical weapons?

 

I'd definitely press the button, simply for the reason that it would probably lead to much less violence as you would instantly remove the easiest tool for murder (well, I don't know what the crazies tend to use, but killing someone with a gun would be the easiest way), hence discouraging most people from murder attempts. Since you would be removing all guns it would also be a level playing field, so there would be no extreme militias arising in the power vacuum. Also lack of ranged weapons makes it harder to do assassinations, mass attacks e.g. Kenya mall, and engage in conflict in general. Of course extreme governments and violence will still exist, but without guns they'd find it difficult to repress their people. Everywhere would probably end up more stable because of it.

Given those parameters, I don't know why you wouldn't press the button. Business? Well, that seems cold enough to induce the next ice age.

 

Australian banned all firearms and even had a Buyback, their crime rate went down and they have had no massive shootings; NRA and Right-Wing groups here in America answered with "Woopty-Doo". What exactly do you think my answer is...

 

Firearms aren't banned in Australia, you just need a license/permit to own them (as it should be).

 

Yes, I'd press the button. We had a case in the UK of a ten year old boy killed because he happened to be crossing a car park in front of one gang member who was attempting to kill another gang member, not to mention Dunblane...

I know that 'guns don't kill people, people do' but guns facilitate the killing of a lot more people en masse and a lot more indiscriminately. The only good reason for guns in Britain is for the Police to have some to deal with extreme scenarios of gun use in Britain. In the button scenario there would be no need for guns to counter guns!

 

My thoughts exactly. It would be a lot harder to kill people en masse with clubs or stones, or even knives. Guns also distance the killer from the act; I think it would be a lot harder to have to, say, choke a person to death, than just to shoot them from afar.

One might say that guns depersonalize killing, and make the act easier, and more abstract in a psychological sense.

 

I would not push it.

While I do believe guns should be regulated I don't believe getting rid of them is the answer.

 

Hmmmm, you must not have seen the multiple slaughters of kindergarden schoolchildren in China by a man with a kitchen knife. It's happened several times.

 

But with guns, you can slaughter people with kitchen knives and guns. Yes, guns aren't the only way, but countries with gun restrictions have lower homicide and suicide rates, and massacres occur most commonly with guns. The Port Arthur Massacre couldn't have happened with a knife, nor could have the Aurora Massacre.

 

Though not nearly on the scale of gun violence here; China has a population many times ours. In all of those attacks, 25 died. As a % of population, gun violence here is the greater threat. Not to mention, if the people in China had assault rifles in those cases, I bet the death rate would have been much, much higher.

And I still think it's harder to go off and kill a bunch of people, the closer one has to get to the act. Taken along with the overall acceptance of violence in our society, in films, video-games and in general, guns make for a toxic America, especially given the wild-west, vigilante mentality that seems to lurk within the American psyche.

I'm gonna press that button...twice! =p

 

To everyone saying they would push this button: would you also push a button that removes every car from existence and prevents cars from ever being created again? Keep in mind that cars are responsible for almost exactly as many deaths as guns per year in the US (10.38 vs 10.3 per 100k population respectively in 2011).

 

Absolutely!

So, to be really controversial, does it also allow those who "own guns for self-defence" to de-personalise thieves etc breaking into their homes? Does that mean that if your gun allows you to shoot dead a thief breaking into your home, whom it later turns out was breaking into your home not to hurt anybody but in some stupid act that if they hadn't encountered you, the gun owner, might have been something they were caught for, spent time in prison but had the time to be educated in prison and went on to form a career outside, helping others who might be tempted to engage in crime... or any other sort of scenario...

Not to mention how that gun owner lives for the rest of their lives with the fact that they killed another.

Now if you pressed that button and no criminal had a gun, so no-one needed to have a gun in 'self-defence'...

 

I would probably not press the button. I'm fine with people owning guns, I just want to make it harder for bad guys to get guns. I agree with "guns don't kill people, people kill people, but the gun makes it a whole lot simpler."

 

I hate guns, and I would push the button.

 

Nope, people will simply develop a new way to harm people in an efficient manner, isn't that what the military does? Create more lethal/protective gear every day? Also, I am a strong believer in gun rights.

I was attacked with a pocket knife in school, I was in one of the outlying towns of sandy hook, in school. But I still feel that even when guns are used for violence, it is not the guns fault.

 

The difference I see is that cars don't kill people on purpose most of the time, but guns do.