In the neighborhoods where these sorts of things happen, that's true. By the time these kids are 8 or 9 they are working as runners, lookouts, and holding onto a few things for the big kids.

maybe. i would still fire. and not a paint gun.

ah shit! :lol2:

Wait a minute. Not every kid that's stuck in the slums with his poor family is in the drug trade. There are plenty of victims on the other side of the tracks.
That's like saying the scumbags that we saw on the news, looting after the hurricane, are representative of New Orleans residents. :headshake

No, REALLY, Bruce? Nah, all poor folks are drug dealers with guns. I'm sure of it! I'm poor. I have a gun. And I take meds. QED! :D

Rich, you are BS'ing again, and lame to an amputated and not merely gimpy degree. I'd really rather you grew some common sense, but then again, you never showed much of that under the RichLevy handle in AoL Chat, either. Carefully fatuous or visibly hemipygian, take your pick -- you haven't got the brains you credit yourself with having.

If you're going to carry a shooter of any description around, it must be lethal to save you in any possible threat scenario.

Watch out, everyone! Somebody let UG watch a "Rambo" rerun again! :worried:

If that's how you feel, go back to watching Desperate Housewives and put him on ignore.

Heheheheh! What's "Desperate Housewives"? You could always go back to watching "General Hospital" and put ME on "ignore"! ;)

In DC, where honest citizens voluntarily surrendered their right to own guns, 9-year olds wind up with bullets in their heads while watching Sponge Bob with grandma in their living room. There's at least one or two of these per year where the bullet enters the home through a window or through a floor or ceiling of an adjacent unit and kills a perfectly innocent child - sometimes a sleeping child.

In Virginia, where its legal to carry a fully visible firearm, these things are unheard of.

Gun control is not only ineffective but counterproductive. The higher the firearm restrictions, the higher the proportion of gun ownership among the criminal element, the higher the crime rate. Duh. I live in VA and have met all the requirements to own and carry a firearm. I have chosen to stick with knives and do not own a gun. However, I praise the effort of the NRA (not across the board but in general) and will vigorously oppose any proposed restrictions on the rights of Virginians to own and carry firearms.

But which is cause, and which is effect?

Fair question. I'll research instances where gun control was relaxed and where gun control was tightened and compare the before and after crime rates and report back.

But, common sense seems to apply here - when controls are tightened, its the honest, law-abiding folk who "turn in their weapons" which tilts the balance in a predictable direction.

DC is fond of laying some of the blame for its gun crime problems on Virginia by pointing out that while guns are "not available" in DC, the bad guys just cross the Potomac and load up. Ummmmmmmmmm.

I may be wrong about this, but...

When I have visited the DC area (been a few years now, admittedly), it seemed to me that the middle class enclaves were mostly in northern VA. The poor folks lived in DC proper. Could the difference in shootings be more about socio-economics than gun laws?

The demographics of DC aren't quite that simple but one cannot ignore the overwhelming correlation between median income and gun-related crime in the DC metro area (or any other in America).

But, given HM's question, if the causal relationship between gun control and gun crime is unknown then the defacto revocation of the fourth amendment seems a little draconian if not downright small-minded.

What, and give up the fun of reminding you in perpetuity that you're old enough to know better -- and so clearly do not? :lol: C'est rire!

As a rule, on this matter the NRA-ILA has the right idea. For convincing demonstrations of just how right the NRA is, read Stopping Power, by J. Neil Schulman; More Guns, Less Crime, John Lott -- this is his comprehensive study encompassing all 3015 counties in the United States over a period of fifteen years; That Every Man Be Armed: the Evolution of a Civil Right, by Stephen P. Halbrook, the Constitutional lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court against certain provisions of the Brady Act and got them repealed; and the final condemnation of any kind of gun control: Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" is the Key to Genocide, by Simkin, Zelman, and Rice. These people all know what they're at.

I've studied all these texts, and more besides. They are why I know gun banning is inimical to the existence of a genuine republic, and how important gun banning is to keeping crime high and genocidal episodes practicable.