05-05-2012, 01:34 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Greg
As an experienced shooter and combat veteran, I can give you a fact;
I fear idiot neighbors with firearms more than I fear an armed home invasion.
I'm fine with Hawaii's restrictive firearm laws.
I agree that I'm more afraid of idiots with guns than I am with a home invasion. But unfortunately, strict gun control laws only weight the gun ownership towards the criminals. Mexico has much stricter gun control laws than the US, and look what's happened there: when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. I don't have any figures to back this up, but in Alaska and Texas, virtually anybody can have a gun at any time and almost any place. Is the crime higher in either place than it is in Washington DC where handguns are outlawed? I don't think so. I think its the other way around.
For a few years I lived "in the hood" in NE Portland in the 90's. There were homicides in my neighborhood every week. We could hear gunshots from our property EVERY night. Did I rush out and buy a gun? No- we got a rottweiler. Instantly our house was no longer cased every night, people stopped trying to look through the mail slot in the front door (if the mail was delivered outside it was 100% guaranteed stolen), and when some dirtbag came too close to the house we were instantly notified by the barking dog. None of those things would have happened just by buying a gun. I believe in gun rights. But I don't think most people should have guns. Like everybody else I think that law abiding citizens should have them and criminals should not. Gun control laws, unfortunately, produce the opposite effect.