Hello again, Loud Dogg.
You said you were 15, didn't you?
I would like to see guns banned, but my mind is changing, why not have a required lisence (like a car linseed) for people who own guns. I know there is a license now, but it needs to be stricter and more limited. (Such as in Germany)
When I was your age (I'm 25 now), I thought pretty much the same as you, and for many of the same reasons: "Guns are designed to kill"; "killing is wrong"; "turn the other cheek"; etc. In fact, I often argued on message boards in favour of gun control.
About 3 of 4 years ago, for various reasons, I started to change my mind, and eventually concluded - like you seem to now - that guns are not moraly different to cars (a tool that can be useful or vital, but is dangerous if misused), and should be licensed as cars are.
(That was before I came to The High Road, and realised that even that was too restrictive
)
I don't necessarily expect to be able to change your mind overnight, but I'll tell you a few more of the things that made me change my mind.
Firstly, I live in a very safe town in a (relatively) safe country, the UK.
I do not need a gun, and it is very unlikely I will in the forseable future. However, I came to realise that other people have vastly different circumstances.
Some live in areas far from help (police or otherwise), where there may be dangerous animal, or dangerous humans.
I might not need a gun, but there certainly are those who do. Many people of this forum need or have needed one.
Now,
some people do need guns, some don't. But who has the right, legally or moraly to say who is allowed one? Who has the right to deny another person the ability to defend themselves, just because "someone" somewhere may misuse a defensive weapon? I eventually realised that the answer is "no-one".
Secondly, there are crime statistics. My country, with strict gun laws, has little gun crime. The USA, with much freer gun laws, has lots of gun crime. Proof that easy availability of guns causes gun crime?
But Switzerland has lots of guns. In fact, almost every houshold, by law, contains a proper, fully-automatic, military assault rifle. (Not one of the tame versions restricted by the US "assault weapon ban"). But they don't have much gun crime.
Jamaica, someone else mentioned, and Mexico both have very strict gun laws. And lots of gun crime. At the very least, this suggests gun laws don't stop gun crime (or at best turn gun-murderers into axe/knife/club/rope murderers).
And although I said the UK had relatively low gun crime, it is increasing. I heard a police spokesman on the radio yesterday saying it had increased 40% in the last two years, and is expected to rise further. In fact, UK gun crime has risen significantly since 1997, when
all handguns were banned. Most of this gun crime is related to drugs gangs. I.e.
nothing to do with the sort of law-abiding citizen who obeys gun laws, and everything to do with people who's life and livelyhood revolves around smuggling things into the country that they are not supposed to have.
(There is a third major reason, but its rather long to describe, and a bit grim, so I'll leave you to think on what I've said. I'll post the rest later).