* Do Gun Laws really only Protect Criminals, Tyrants, and Tyrannical Governments?

[adusa37]

" No Gun Law, or Gun Laws have ever saved any ones life anywhere at anytime."...

[smid]

" No Gun Law, or Gun Laws have ever saved any ones life anywhere at anytime."...

What do you think? Without the means to protect themselves,the populace would be crushed at will by those who have the means and the will to do so.

[norwyn]

More Guns, Less Crime : John R. Lott Jr

[hardin]

There are a lot of stupid senseless laws out there both related to guns and not related to guns. However, I happen to think the background check requirement has saved some lives.

How can you be so supportive of a single amendment of the constitution when you completely cast out every else related to the government that the constitution has created? Is the second amendment the only thing the founding fathers did right?

[sherborne16]

There are a lot of stupid senseless laws out there both related to guns and not related to guns. However, I happen to think the background check requirement has saved some lives.

How can you be so supportive of a single amendment of the constitution when you completely cast out every else related to the government that the constitution has created? Is the second amendment the only thing the founding fathers did right?

Gun laws target and effect law abiding citizens so, yes, only the aforementioned are protected.

[anson34]

Think about this.... A store can put up a "No Guns Allowed" sign on their door... What good will that actually do ? The only people who will obey it are law abiding people who are not going to cause a problem anyway... A criminal won't obey it. That is why he is a criminal, he doesn't obey laws. He will simply know that he has a whole store full of unarmed victims and carry his gun inside...... This latest theater shooting is a prime example... There were "No Guns Allowed" signs on the theater door, so law abiding citizens who could have possibly returned fire and stopped this, obeyed the law and left their guns in their vehicles...but the criminal didn't.

[jamilah38]

Gun laws at this time, are protecting us from having them taken away. First thing Hitler did was round up all the registered weapons to protect his gov't.
PACO, CCW carriers carry so often they forget it's on, so IDK about your statement. I have forgotten caught myself and I did return to my car, kinda feeling stupid.
I wonder how many of those "NO GUNS ALLOWED" signs will or should come down.
"If guns are outlawed. Only the outlaws will have guns." Good guys can be outlaws in this situation.

[artzai]

I think depends on your defenition of "anywhere". Other countries that have different cultures and never allowed the population to have guns can probably say their gun laws save many lives. Certainly they have less gun deaths. But their laws won't work here and those countries are miserable places to live (for me anyway).

It would probably be fair to say the waiting period some states have may have forced someone that was mad enough to kill from getting a gun before he calmed down. But my guess would be that discering gun store clerks have saved more people by rejecting sales to visibly furious people and suspicious people.

Given the ease of any person to get a firearm, legally or not, I think it is safe to say gun laws only really affect those who follow the law. Take CA for example: A guy in CA can buy an AR-15 from a home sale either in CA or ov, take out the bullet button, pick up a 7.5" upper online or across the border, along with a 100rd magazine and with just a couple days and then go on a murder spree.

You have to ask yourself how much the fear of being charged with violating several state and federal firearms laws is going to affect a guy planning on doing murder.

Edit@ wolf: Cool down dude and read the entire answer next time. And maybe think a little more about what you write. To demand proof of a life that was not killed due to a background check is rediculous. There is no proof because no crime got commited. You can't proove something that DIDN'T happen. Even if someone says they were going to kill someone until they got turned down by a BG check, there is no way to know for sure if they would have actually commited the murder.

Thinkingblade makes some good points also and I had not really considered firearm accidents when I first answered the question. I am sure not allowing any 12 year old to go buy a gun has prevented some accidental shootings.

However, I still think most guns laws fall well short if their perhaps good intentions and it is legal shooters that pay the price.

[tiernan]

Yep.

[joachim]

While I agree with the main premise of your question - I do think that the extreme positions beget ridicule. So, I am going to contradict at least part of this extreme statement:

1) Gun laws that prevent or reduce the opportunity for the mentally disturbed from acquiring firearms probably provide us with some protection.

2) Gun laws that make it more difficult and provide steeper penalties for known criminals to acquire firearms probably provide us with some protection.

3) Gun laws that establish age limitations on firearm purchase without parental consent probably provide us with some protection.

Personally? I don't think any of those are particularly controversial. I completely agree with the idea that laws against "scary looking" guns, or caliber restrictions, or suppressors, or magazine size or what have you serve no benefit for the law abiding citizen - and in many cases weren't meant to. They were designed specifically to allow law enforcement to be better armed then we are so that if we become criminals they aren't outgunned. I'm pretty sure I don't like THAT idea, but it is effective in making it difficult to find equivalent hardware to what they COULD be using. The fact that such gear is relatively expensive is probably the only equalizer. That and the proportion of cops that actually are skilled at shooting seems to be only moderately higher than the population as a whole.

So I can't unequivocally agree with your statement, but I think you are more right than not.

Thinkingblade

EDIT - I felt compelled to add this to the discussion. New York's Mayor Bloomberg actually articulated on CNN, essentially the the reason we should have gun control legislation on law abiding citizens is ... to protect the police:
"Well, I would take it one step further. I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say, we're going to go on strike. We're NOT GOING TO PROTECT YOU. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required TO KEEP US safe." (Emphasis mine.)

So, in this sense, the INTENT as stated by Bloomberg of gun control is to protect the police from those of us who would allow the law to restrict the type of firearm we can own. That certainly is explicitly trying to protect government, tyrannical or otherwise.