Utah Lawmaker wants to designate a state gun

[stefan]

fix't it for ya

except 'beech fixin' the comment the way you have makes it no longer relevant to the original 'slogan' but maybe that was your point

[BruteForce]

it should be: people use guns to defend themselves against their nation

And I fixed it for you.

[hank moon]

And I fixed it for you.

triple fixed!

People once used guns (and other stuff) to establish their fledgling nation and have since developed a fetishistic collector's bent toward guns using the same tired logic but without actually doing anything about the problem of the most powerfully corrupt government on the planet.

[DaveOU812]

How about this...

I use gun to protect my family and home from people who wish to do us harm.

[ratagonia]

Utah has a state vegetable? who did they pick?

They selected one of their own - Chris Buttars.

T

[ratagonia]

triple fixed!

People once used guns (and other stuff) to establish their fledgling nation and have since developed a fetishistic collector's bent toward guns using the same tired logic but without actually doing anything about the problem of the most powerfully corrupt government on the planet.

[Rev. Coyote]

Dave -- it's worked for me! In that case it was a Higgins 16 ga with a shortened barrel and a home-made pistol grip. All he had to do was see it.

On the Utarrr gun: How about the Browning Hi-Power 9 mm? (Didn't know Browning was a Utation.. pretty cool.)

[moabfool]

I promise to not defend any of you who don't like guns. Will any that feel this way please put up a sign in your yard or wear a pin or a hat that lets us all know how you feel? I'd hate to deny any of you the privilege of being a victim.

[trackrunner]

They selected one of their own - Chris Buttars.

T

[mtthwlw]

I think I'm going to make a comment here that will make everyone unhappy... and because it's long it may not even get read. What I don't want to do is turn this super negative. I've enjoyed reading what people have had to say so far and even though this is a subject people seem to get fired-up about, it's been rather tame. I don't want to change that.

First, I'm a gun owner. I have rifles for hunting and for target shooting. I like owning a rifle. I wouldn't mind owning a pistol... but I don't have a need for one.

What I can't understand about the gun debate... What I just don't get is why people believe that we need to have untraceable and unregistered guns around. And why conceal and carry type classes aren't required for ALL gun purchases. My logic: Law abiding gun-toters are generally safe-- or feel safe. We don't have a problem with marauding NRA handgun owners running through the streets terrorizing people (at least, not in the 21st Century, and I never lived in the South when the "law-abiding" folks were terrorizing people in their white suits.)

The problem with easy gun purchases are that many guns are being purchased lawfully (with a "straw buyer" in a US gunstore. See http://tinyurl.com/33n8s3g) and unlawfully distributed to kids, criminals, and gangs in the inner city and drug lords in Mexico.

I hear the argument about "protecting ourselves from the government" but I don't know many reasonably armed folks who have had guns taken away. And I don't know anyone who pays taxes and follows the laws and has trouble with jack-booted federal thugs.

I have heard of cities becoming lawless with poor inner-city youth armed with guns and killing each other with cheap and easily purchased guns. (Remember the time after Rodney King, or Katrina, or after most Raider games?) All of us have read about the power of drug lords in Mexico with their US made guns.

The way I see it, there's a cycle:
Gun makers tell middle class folks that they need easy access to guns to keep safe. We buy guns because we want to or feel that we need to. Then, with a glut of guns on the market, guns become cheap and available to everyone. Poor inner city kids in gangs get ahold of cheap guns. Gun makers tell middle class people that they need easy access to guns to keep safe. White people get scared and arm themselves. With an abundance of cheap guns on the market, poor inner city and gangs arm themselves. Gun makers...

But if guns were less readily available, wouldn't that slow down the cycle? If every gun were registered upon purchase, we'd be able to tell who was buying these guns and shipping them to Mexico. If every purchaser of a firearm had to take a class and pass a test (know how to load and unload, shoot and store) with their weapon in order to buy... wouldn't that slow the process down?

What am I missing here? I know it can't be that easy. I also know that it will never happen. Any other suggestions for limiting the huge numbers of guns that flow into inner cities and into the hands of drug cartels across the border? We all have to realize that too many guns get into the wrong hands. How do you limit that?

[StudChild]

I promise to not defend any of you who don't like guns. Will any that feel this way please put up a sign in your yard or wear a pin or a hat that lets us all know how you feel? I'd hate to deny any of you the privilege of being a victim.

[stefan]

I promise to not defend any of you who don't like guns. Will any that feel this way please put up a sign in your yard or wear a pin or a hat that lets us all know how you feel? I'd hate to deny any of you the privilege of being a victim.

you gotta love when a thread on designating a "state gun" to honor browning gets reduced to this drivel

[LOAH]

mtthwlw -

The biggest problem with micro-managing firearm purchases is that the information all goes toward the biggest potential enemy: The government.

If your enemy knows how much of what you have, they know how much of what they'll need to subdue you. Keep your enemy guessing and there may never be an attack (which is why, I believe, we haven't seen a massive disarming campaign yet).

With that same principle in mind, let's make it easier (how it is meant to be from the beginning) to obtain firearms. Now everyone is potentially armed, even in the inner cities (it's still the USA).

Now let's say I'm a burglar, mugger, rapist, or whatever scumbag. Am I really going to risk my life by crawling through a window if I know there could be a gun on the other side? Am I going to think twice about dragging someone into an alley for their wallet if they could be packing?

The answer is obviously no.

You want inner city crime to drop? Encourage everyone to own firearms and make them readily available.

Of course there will be cases where people misuse them. Those people, however, will be promptly corrected by the responsible gun owners.

If someone has a major gripe with the way this nation was founded and designed to exist, they need to GTFO. They are, in fact, free to leave.

Australia has banned private gun ownership. Their crime rate has also gone way up since the ban. Go fig!




"An armed society is a polite society."

[LOAH]

Oh, and for the topic, I don't believe it's the state's obligation to designate a "state" gun. It really isn't a very important topic to waste time debating about and it doesn't address any issue in regard to protecting the freedom of the citizens. I echo that sentiment toward most of the garbage they squabble about on the hill.

[ratagonia]

Australia has banned private gun ownership. Their crime rate has also gone way up since the ban. Go fig!

Except that it hasn't, and they haven't.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

(Snopes does not allow easy swiping text from their website, so I will only quote a little bit):

Snopes Says:

Although the old adage says that "Figures don't lie, but liars figure," those who seek to influence public opinion often employ a variety of means to slant statistical figures into seemingly supporting their point of view:

Percentages by themselves often tell far from a complete story, particularly when they involve small sample sizes which do not adequately mask normal fluctuations or the potential influence of a number of extraneous factors affecting the phenomenon under study. A statement such as "The number of deaths attributable to cancer increased by 2% between 1973 and 1983" is probably much more significant if the number of cancer deaths increased by twenty thousand among a population of one million than if they increased by two among a population of one hundred. (In the latter case, for example, two people who already had cancer could have moved into an otherwise cancer-free small town, but it's far less likely that immigration would completely account for an increase of twenty thousand cancer cases amidst a city of one million.)

Context is especially important, and percentages alone don't provide context. A statement such as "The home run total in the American League jumped by an astounding 50% between 1960 and 1961" sounds misleadingly impressive if you don't know that after 1960, the American League expanded by two teams and increased the length of its schedule, thereby adding two hundred more games to the season.

Most importantly, percentages don't establish cause-and-effect relationships - at best they highlight correlations which may be due to any number of factors. If (to continue our previous example), the total number of home runs hit by all teams increased by 30% from one year to the next while the number of games remained the same, a great many people might claim that the baseballs used in the latter year had obviously been "juiced" (i.e., manufactured in such a way as to cause them to travel farther when hit). But a number of other unconsidered factors (individually or collectively) might be responsible for the increase, such as an abundance of warm weather, or an expansion in the number of teams which brought more inexperienced and ineffective pitchers into the league.

In the specific case offered here, context is the most important factor. The piece quoted above leads the reader to believe that much of the Australian citizenry owned handguns until their ownership was made illegal and all firearms owned by "law-abiding citizens" were collected by the government through a <A HREF="http://web.archive.org/web/20060225125951/http://www.handgunbuyback.gov.au/" TARGET=_buyback><NOBR>buy-back</NOBR></A> program in 1997. This is not so. Australian citizens do not (and never did) have a constitutional right to own firearms &mdash; even before the 1997 buyback program, handgun ownership in Australia was restricted to certain groups, such as those needing weapons for occupational reasons, members of approved sporting clubs, hunters, and collectors. Moreover, the 1997 buyback program did not take away <I>all</I> the guns owned by these groups; only some types of firearms (primarily semi-automatic and pump-action weapons) were banned. And even with the ban in effect, those who can demonstrate a legitimate need to possess prohibited categories of firearms can petition for exemptions from the law.

Given this context, any claims based on statistics (even accurate ones) which posit a cause-and-effect relationship between the gun buyback program and increased crime rates because "criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed" are automatically suspect, since the average Australian citizen didn't own firearms even <I>before</I> the buyback. But beyond that, most of the statistics offered here are misleading and present only "first year results" where long-term trends need to be considered in order to draw valid cause-and-effect conclusions.

For example, the first entry states that "Homicides are up 3.2%." This statistic is misleading because it reflects only the absolute number of homicides rather than the homicide <I>rate</I>. (A country with a rapidly-growing population, for example, might experience a higher <I>number</I> of crimes even while its overall crime <I>rate</I> decreased.) An examination of statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology (<A HREF="http://www.aic.gov.au" TARGET=_aic>AIC</A>) reveals that the overall <A HREF="http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi003.html" TARGET=_homicid><NOBR>homicide rate</NOBR></A> in Australia has changed little over the past decade and actually dipped slightly after the 1997 gun buy-back program. (The chart found at this link also demonstrates how easily statistics based on small sample sizes can mislead, as when the homicide rate in Tasmania increased nearly eight-fold in one year based on a single incident in which <NOBR>35 people</NOBR> were killed.)

[stefan]

well, since this thread is so off-topic now, i thought i'd post a video from fox news sunday with justice stephen breyer (worth watching all the way through)

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4456313/j...ylist_id=86858

[ilanimaka]

Nevermind...

I just realized pretty much everything I said has already been stated by so many others.

[ratagonia]

Nevermind...

I just realized pretty much everything I said has already been stated by so many others.

The silence is deafening. Yup, fun to throw around colorful slogans. Fun to toss out *information* that is actually fabricated. But a thundering silence when BS is called.

Tom

[oldno7]

I think they should spend many days in legislature getting the state gun picked, once they have that, it should be
mandatory for all citizens of Utah to have this gun. If they choose not to purchase this gun the state should fine them for failure to do so.
Once signed by the Governor, they could call it "HerbertCare".

[Sombeech]

well, since this thread is so off-topic now, i thought i'd post a video from fox news sunday with justice stephen breyer (worth watching all the way through)

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4456313/j...ylist_id=86858

Very revealing at 4:23 actually. During the discussion of the right for THE PEOPLE to have guns, Breyer asks if Wallace likes to shoot as a sportsman, and then states he can still do that if he hops on over to Maryland to do it.

You can't Bear Arms in DC but you can easily go somewhere else to shoot it. Will there be gun rental shops in Maryland? If Wallace wanted to go to Maryland to shoot, would he still be able to own his gun in DC so he can transport it there? ...and then be arrested once he carries it back to DC.

Giving THE PEOPLE the right to Bear Arms is quite different than forcing them to travel across state lines just to physically "bear" it. This defeats the purpose of the Right given to the people to defend themselves.

In 1976, Washington, D.C. enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134% while the national murder rate has dropped 2%.