Shrike, when you paid out your 2000$, you didn't complain did you? If you having to sacrifice two games (100$ isn't that much overall people, it's 1% if you make 10,000) a year so I can be sure that I don't get shot by your FAL because while you were gone someone stole it. Besides, it was your choice to buy an assault rifle modified to civilian use.
$2000 is a moderate price for an assault class rifle.
You can simply have an AK-47 smuggled in from Africa, and it would probably cost you less than $500. Sure it would not be legal, but you'd have it - and that's what really matters.
Point being? If you put high taxes (and a registration fee annually is a tax) on each firearm, you're just going to force people to go get illegal ones. There's no way around that, it cannot be denied.
Just like people don't want to pay $60+ a month for cable bills, but still want to get all of the channels. You can just pay a 1-time-fee of $200 or so (varies) and get a cable descrambler.
First off, I own a gun, that I use to go hunting with, a shotgun to be precise (I own 2 guns if you count my home made potato gun <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> )
Now, I think that the only way you could really have gun control is to destroy all weapons in the planet, and never make new ones, but somebody will, and there will always be guns, and then there will always be gun related fatalities. One way or another, somebody who wants a gun badly enough will get it.
and remember, guns don't kill people, (I DO!! j/k <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->) people kill people
<!--QuoteBegin--SmokeNova+Feb 19 2003, 06:02 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SmokeNova @ Feb 19 2003, 06:02 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Shrike, when you paid out your 2000$, you didn't complain did you? If you having to sacrifice two games (100$ isn't that much overall people, it's 1% if you make 10,000) a year so I can be sure that I don't get shot by your FAL because while you were gone someone stole it. Besides, it was your choice to buy an assault rifle modified to civilian use. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I paid out $2000 for that rifle because it's *worth* 2 grand. Paying out *another* 100 bucks a year in registration fees isn't going to let you "be sure that you don't get shot by my FAL because while i was gone somebody stole it"... it's going to cost me a hundred bucks a year i could be using for something else, such as a decent gun safe. I'm a responsible gun owner... that FAL stays locked up in a 600 pound safe one floor below ground level... anyone who goes to the effort of getting that thing out and open without trashing what's inside (and without getting shot by somebody in my house) is probably coming out on the losing end of profitability. It's going to do a hell of a lot more to prevent that gun theft for me to drop that 100 a year into some kind of security for my house, rather than it going to the local police department who will show up *after* the gun has been stolen, and fill out paperwork on it...
Now, take another example. My family's firearm collection is fairly extensive... it was started by my grandfather on my dad's side, and has been slowly growing since the 1920s. I *am* one of the people who would be shelling out a couple grand a year, simply for *inheriting* a collection. Either that, or i'd be forced to sell off a large number of them, and then *still* pay a few hundred on the ones i choose to keep. I don't feel that I should be required to pay every year for something I own simply because it makes you feel safer that there aren't people out there buying guns to shoot up the town with... all you're doing is increasing the demand for people to *not register* their weapons, which is counterproductive to your idea.
Did I ever say that the prices were absolute? It could easily be that you pay 100$ a year to register all your rifles, 25$ for all your handguns, 35$ for all your hunting rifles/shotguns. and who says it has to be every year? The entire point of a discussion is that people discuss something without becoming totally *I am this side, and this side only, and if I change sides then I have been forced*.
I agree that total firearm control won't work, so why not just make it so we can be sure of who has legal firearms?
The thing is, current laws (once the "gun show loophole closure" gets put into place) *do* track who's got legal firearms. When you get situations like the DC murderers (the media calling these guys "snipers" is just laughable, really... a ratings-grabbing move), you might want to take note of the fact that the rifle they were using was *illegally* purchased from a shop out here in Washington state, which already had a couple <i>hundred</i> citations for violations. When i bought my FAL, there *was* a background check involved... and a few pages of paperwork to boot. The fact that these laws are badly enforced is not a reason to punish those who choose to register their firearms (in accordance to the law you'd establish).
In America, at least, the right to keep and bear arms is a Constitutional right guaranteed to every citizen. As is the right to vote. As is the right to fair and equal treatment regardless of race, although that's a more recent addition. While some may claim that the need to "maintain a militia" (defined as the ability to get together a group of *civilians* to form an organized, armed group) is something that has been replaced by the National Guard, i would argue that some of the most recent laws in the US (such as the "Patriot Act" and other "anti-terrorist" laws) already dangerously encroach upon our civil rights... an armed populace is the final defense against the removal of civil rights by an oppressive government, and represents a check and balance which I would rather keep around.
I'm perfectly happy to discuss this matter <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I do feel, however, that the firearm control we have in the 'States now is, if anything, slightly oppressive. At a federal level, I feel that maintaining the restrictions to Class III firearms and the establishment of a national background checking system is appropriate. However, certain things such as the "assault weapons" ban (a pervasive law which lists a number of "evil features" on firearms, and classifies one as an "assault weapon" if it has more than two of them built into it) and the high-capacity magazine restrictions seem pointless, as they accomplish no real reduction in the amount of firearm crime, and yet make it seem as if our politicians are accomplishing something in the "war on guns." I'm all for closing the gun show loophole, and i don't mind the fact that my local shops are required to include a trigger lock with any gun they sell (a device which, if placed on a dangerous (ie, loaded) firearm, runs a fairly high risk of causing it to discharge)... but some of the proposals for "gun control" being pushed today are nothing short of the beginnings of an insidious effort to shift national opinion even further towards a gun ban.
The entire problem , then, is not really getting people to register but rather getting shops to register with the gov't. Besides, if people were required to get a license, it'd be much cheaper to pay the one-time registration fee (such as you buy a beretta 9mm handgun for 125, you pay an extra 25 for National registration) and take the course then to tax citizens so those who don't go for a license wouldn't have to pay for those who do.
The entire purpose I'm saying is that people would Have to take a Firearms Education Course, 6weeks, 2days a week, 2 hours a week, basically going over safety and such, basically drivers ed for guns. Then you get licensed to own up to a certain class of firearm. You pay an extra fee when you buy your gun to help recoup losses incurred from the course.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--><b>SmokeNova:</b> Over the last few years, I think "self-defense" homocides are slowly starting to outnumber the real "homocides". <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> This is a bad thing? I'd rather the criminals be dying than the victims...
Figured i'd dig this up... <a href='http://thomas.loc.gov/' target='_blank'>http://thomas.loc.gov/</a> Wonderful site for looking up legislative information. Type in "HR648" to the Bill Number field, and hit enter.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. For example, in Warren v. District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981), the court stated: `{C}ourts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community.'.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Citizens frequently must use firearms to defend themselves, as evidenced by the following:
(A) Every year, more than 2,400,000 people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals--or more than 6,500 people a day. This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
(B) Of the 2,400,000 self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse.
Where am i going with this? I'm not quite sure... honestly, anybody can throw numbers around, but it's the reasoning behind them that makes sense to me.
There's a man in NYC right now who's being charged with illegal posession of a firearm because he shot a man breaking into his mother's apartment... her third attempted robbery in the last six months, since word got out in her neighborhood that she had won about 100k in a local lottery. Both the son and the robber had "unregistered" handguns, but in NYC that doesn't mean much... the process for registration not only involves more money than legally registering a fully-automatic weapon in many states, but several *months* of processing time... which, had the man in the case in NYC taken the time to do, would have resulted in him being unarmed at the time another armed intruder broke into his mother's apartment, since he'd only bought the handgun a week ago. Does this seem fair to anybody?
You can't take the statistics from an densely populated urban area and apply to sub-urbia or rural area's.
Out here in Vt, a man was shot dead because someone thought he was trying to break in the front door. The dead guy had blood alcohol content of .15 , which means they killed a guy who was trying to get in the house because he thought it was his...because he lived right next door.
and if the robber had broken in, so what? it's posessions. You can just get some more. that's the entire point of house insurance.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->more than 2,400,000 people in the United States <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This isn't a statistic for a "densely populated urban area".... this is the total number for the US.
I feel sorry for the guy in vermont... honestly, i do. Accidental death is always tragic, regardless of the cause... and it's a situation where the gun owner should be charged with manslaughter (accidental death).
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->and if the robber had broken in, so what? it's posessions. You can just get some more. that's the entire point of house insurance. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The thing is... the robber *did* break in. Armed with both a knife and a handgun. Based solely on the news story, we can't tell what happened... but apparently, an Air Force soldier decided the situation was dire enough to warrant deadly force. If someone's armed, well... you might lose your posessions. Then again, you might also lose your life. Statistically (and this is based on national statistics again, not any particular reason), resisting an attempted crime with a firearm has one of the *lowest* injury-to-victim rates of any reaction you can have... attempting to escape is about 50% more likely to get you hurt, and *complying* with the criminal is almost TWICE as likely to get you hurt.
GrendelAll that is fear...Join Date: 2002-07-19Member: 970Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, NS2 Playtester
edited April 2003
It's very simple.
If you restrict the public's access to guns, YES they can still buy guns illegally, but it becomes MUCH harder because there are less guns available.
The reason why it's so hard to take guns off criminals is because there are an estimated 300M + guns in circulation in the US.
Yes, you read that right. Over three hundred MILLION. i.e. about one for every man, woman and child. People who say that "hey criminals can still get guns illegally" are missing the point. You think that the average criminal buys a weapon imported from Chechniya or something? Are they stolen from the army? Of course not. They are stolen from people's homes.
Anyone who believes that having a heavily armed society helps to reduce gun crime should compare the UK and the US.
In the UK it did used to be legal to own firearms for target shooting, but you had to have it signed by two professionals and have your house checked by a visiting police officer. You also had to go through a thorough background check i.e. no history of mental illness or criminal record. Once you owned a gun, you then had to be content with the fact that police were legally entitled to enter your property to verify that the weapon was securely stored and stored in a different place to your ammunition. There were also strict limits as to how much ammunition you could posess.
That system actually worked really well because only people who were able to get firearms were highly regulated and had to make a determined effort to obtain them. Sadly, after the incident in Hungerford, the government banned all firearms above a .22 calibre as a response to a knee jerk public reaction.
There is a constitutional right to bear arms, but I've never heard of a right to bear ammunition. Perhaps that would be a good compromise.
Seriously, I have yet to hear or read a single reasonable, sane, or justifiable need for anyone outside of military or police service to own any kind of gun, aside from a single rifle made specifically for hunting game for those who ingage in such activities for food.
Just something I want to add about the whole "let your insurance cover it" idea.
I could be wrong on this, but an insurance company only reimbusts you so many times, and the more your broken into, the higher the premiums are/more likely you are to be refused.
I know this because my father always laments about insurance companies not being a surefire solution to being ripped off. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I have not looked into this, but it makes sense...
-putting down an animal that is in alot of pain (due to being hit by a car, disease, etc) and by animal, I mean from dogs to moose, et al. When you are way out in the boonies, you can't always have a vet come out to put an animal down (expensive too) and many times moose with broken legs lay on the side of the road for hours before a policeman or CO can put it down (with a gun no less).
-fishing... just aim away from the boat remember! We regularly subdue 100lb halibut this way.
-Protection. When out in the bush, camping, berry or mushroom picking... you are in bear territory. Pepper spray be damned. (It can blow right back at you. And this is when a bear will most likely attack, because it wasn't downwind of you to know you were there and you surprised it.) I know of times when a gun could have/did save people from (though rare) cougar and wolf attacks as well.
This probably applies only to people living in the country. (Probably particularly northern canada-like regions too where you can drive for hours without seeing another person)
Gun control is like communism in a way. It's great in theory and on paper... but in implementation, it has been a joke. Up here in canada it sure has been. The biggest problem with it in canada... is it wasn't phased in properly. They should have started it with the individual province deciding if they wanted to or not... or maybe a volunteer registry (I guess technically canada's registry has proven to be volunteer.... heh)... then over time... made it law. Instead, it was relatively "slapped on" and expected to work. A sudden harsh change like that can never be expected to work when dealing with millions of people. A referendum could have worked here as well.
Comments
You can simply have an AK-47 smuggled in from Africa, and it would probably cost you less than $500. Sure it would not be legal, but you'd have it - and that's what really matters.
Point being? If you put high taxes (and a registration fee annually is a tax) on each firearm, you're just going to force people to go get illegal ones. There's no way around that, it cannot be denied.
Just like people don't want to pay $60+ a month for cable bills, but still want to get all of the channels. You can just pay a 1-time-fee of $200 or so (varies) and get a cable descrambler.
Unfortunately, that's the way it goes.
Now, I think that the only way you could really have gun control is to destroy all weapons in the planet, and never make new ones, but somebody will, and there will always be guns, and then there will always be gun related fatalities. One way or another, somebody who wants a gun badly enough will get it.
and remember, guns don't kill people, (I DO!! j/k <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->) people kill people
I paid out $2000 for that rifle because it's *worth* 2 grand. Paying out *another* 100 bucks a year in registration fees isn't going to let you "be sure that you don't get shot by my FAL because while i was gone somebody stole it"... it's going to cost me a hundred bucks a year i could be using for something else, such as a decent gun safe. I'm a responsible gun owner... that FAL stays locked up in a 600 pound safe one floor below ground level... anyone who goes to the effort of getting that thing out and open without trashing what's inside (and without getting shot by somebody in my house) is probably coming out on the losing end of profitability. It's going to do a hell of a lot more to prevent that gun theft for me to drop that 100 a year into some kind of security for my house, rather than it going to the local police department who will show up *after* the gun has been stolen, and fill out paperwork on it...
Now, take another example. My family's firearm collection is fairly extensive... it was started by my grandfather on my dad's side, and has been slowly growing since the 1920s. I *am* one of the people who would be shelling out a couple grand a year, simply for *inheriting* a collection. Either that, or i'd be forced to sell off a large number of them, and then *still* pay a few hundred on the ones i choose to keep. I don't feel that I should be required to pay every year for something I own simply because it makes you feel safer that there aren't people out there buying guns to shoot up the town with... all you're doing is increasing the demand for people to *not register* their weapons, which is counterproductive to your idea.
I agree that total firearm control won't work, so why not just make it so we can be sure of who has legal firearms?
In America, at least, the right to keep and bear arms is a Constitutional right guaranteed to every citizen. As is the right to vote. As is the right to fair and equal treatment regardless of race, although that's a more recent addition. While some may claim that the need to "maintain a militia" (defined as the ability to get together a group of *civilians* to form an organized, armed group) is something that has been replaced by the National Guard, i would argue that some of the most recent laws in the US (such as the "Patriot Act" and other "anti-terrorist" laws) already dangerously encroach upon our civil rights... an armed populace is the final defense against the removal of civil rights by an oppressive government, and represents a check and balance which I would rather keep around.
I'm perfectly happy to discuss this matter <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I do feel, however, that the firearm control we have in the 'States now is, if anything, slightly oppressive. At a federal level, I feel that maintaining the restrictions to Class III firearms and the establishment of a national background checking system is appropriate. However, certain things such as the "assault weapons" ban (a pervasive law which lists a number of "evil features" on firearms, and classifies one as an "assault weapon" if it has more than two of them built into it) and the high-capacity magazine restrictions seem pointless, as they accomplish no real reduction in the amount of firearm crime, and yet make it seem as if our politicians are accomplishing something in the "war on guns." I'm all for closing the gun show loophole, and i don't mind the fact that my local shops are required to include a trigger lock with any gun they sell (a device which, if placed on a dangerous (ie, loaded) firearm, runs a fairly high risk of causing it to discharge)... but some of the proposals for "gun control" being pushed today are nothing short of the beginnings of an insidious effort to shift national opinion even further towards a gun ban.
The entire purpose I'm saying is that people would Have to take a Firearms Education Course, 6weeks, 2days a week, 2 hours a week, basically going over safety and such, basically drivers ed for guns. Then you get licensed to own up to a certain class of firearm. You pay an extra fee when you buy your gun to help recoup losses incurred from the course.
Over the last few years, I think "self-defense" homocides are slowly starting to outnumber the real "homocides".
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is a bad thing? I'd rather the criminals be dying than the victims...
Figured i'd dig this up... <a href='http://thomas.loc.gov/' target='_blank'>http://thomas.loc.gov/</a> Wonderful site for looking up legislative information. Type in "HR648" to the Bill Number field, and hit enter.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. For example, in Warren v. District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981), the court stated: `{C}ourts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community.'.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Citizens frequently must use firearms to defend themselves, as evidenced by the following:
(A) Every year, more than 2,400,000 people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals--or more than 6,500 people a day. This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
(B) Of the 2,400,000 self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse.
© Of the 2,400,000 times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, 92 percent merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8 percent of the time, does a citizen kill or wound his or her attacker.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where am i going with this? I'm not quite sure... honestly, anybody can throw numbers around, but it's the reasoning behind them that makes sense to me.
<a href='http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-nyshot203139093feb20,0,4533534.story?coll=nyc%2Dtopheadlines%2Dleft' target='_blank'>http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/...eadlines%2Dleft</a>
There's a man in NYC right now who's being charged with illegal posession of a firearm because he shot a man breaking into his mother's apartment... her third attempted robbery in the last six months, since word got out in her neighborhood that she had won about 100k in a local lottery. Both the son and the robber had "unregistered" handguns, but in NYC that doesn't mean much... the process for registration not only involves more money than legally registering a fully-automatic weapon in many states, but several *months* of processing time... which, had the man in the case in NYC taken the time to do, would have resulted in him being unarmed at the time another armed intruder broke into his mother's apartment, since he'd only bought the handgun a week ago. Does this seem fair to anybody?
Out here in Vt, a man was shot dead because someone thought he was trying to break in the front door. The dead guy had blood alcohol content of .15 , which means they killed a guy who was trying to get in the house because he thought it was his...because he lived right next door.
and if the robber had broken in, so what? it's posessions. You can just get some more. that's the entire point of house insurance.
This isn't a statistic for a "densely populated urban area".... this is the total number for the US.
I feel sorry for the guy in vermont... honestly, i do. Accidental death is always tragic, regardless of the cause... and it's a situation where the gun owner should be charged with manslaughter (accidental death).
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->and if the robber had broken in, so what? it's posessions. You can just get some more. that's the entire point of house insurance. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The thing is... the robber *did* break in. Armed with both a knife and a handgun. Based solely on the news story, we can't tell what happened... but apparently, an Air Force soldier decided the situation was dire enough to warrant deadly force. If someone's armed, well... you might lose your posessions. Then again, you might also lose your life. Statistically (and this is based on national statistics again, not any particular reason), resisting an attempted crime with a firearm has one of the *lowest* injury-to-victim rates of any reaction you can have... attempting to escape is about 50% more likely to get you hurt, and *complying* with the criminal is almost TWICE as likely to get you hurt.
The choice, to me, is pretty clear...
If you restrict the public's access to guns, YES they can still buy guns illegally, but it becomes MUCH harder because there are less guns available.
The reason why it's so hard to take guns off criminals is because there are an estimated 300M + guns in circulation in the US.
Yes, you read that right. Over three hundred MILLION. i.e. about one for every man, woman and child. People who say that "hey criminals can still get guns illegally" are missing the point. You think that the average criminal buys a weapon imported from Chechniya or something? Are they stolen from the army? Of course not. They are stolen from people's homes.
Anyone who believes that having a heavily armed society helps to reduce gun crime should compare the UK and the US.
In the UK it did used to be legal to own firearms for target shooting, but you had to have it signed by two professionals and have your house checked by a visiting police officer. You also had to go through a thorough background check i.e. no history of mental illness or criminal record. Once you owned a gun, you then had to be content with the fact that police were legally entitled to enter your property to verify that the weapon was securely stored and stored in a different place to your ammunition. There were also strict limits as to how much ammunition you could posess.
That system actually worked really well because only people who were able to get firearms were highly regulated and had to make a determined effort to obtain them. Sadly, after the incident in Hungerford, the government banned all firearms above a .22 calibre as a response to a knee jerk public reaction.
Seriously, I have yet to hear or read a single reasonable, sane, or justifiable need for anyone outside of military or police service to own any kind of gun, aside from a single rifle made specifically for hunting game for those who ingage in such activities for food.
I could be wrong on this, but an insurance company only reimbusts you so many times, and the more your broken into, the higher the premiums are/more likely you are to be refused.
I know this because my father always laments about insurance companies not being a surefire solution to being ripped off. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I have not looked into this, but it makes sense...
-putting down an animal that is in alot of pain (due to being hit by a car, disease, etc) and by animal, I mean from dogs to moose, et al. When you are way out in the boonies, you can't always have a vet come out to put an animal down (expensive too) and many times moose with broken legs lay on the side of the road for hours before a policeman or CO can put it down (with a gun no less).
-fishing... just aim away from the boat remember! We regularly subdue 100lb halibut this way.
-Protection. When out in the bush, camping, berry or mushroom picking... you are in bear territory. Pepper spray be damned. (It can blow right back at you. And this is when a bear will most likely attack, because it wasn't downwind of you to know you were there and you surprised it.) I know of times when a gun could have/did save people from (though rare) cougar and wolf attacks as well.
This probably applies only to people living in the country. (Probably particularly northern canada-like regions too where you can drive for hours without seeing another person)
Gun control is like communism in a way. It's great in theory and on paper... but in implementation, it has been a joke. Up here in canada it sure has been. The biggest problem with it in canada... is it wasn't phased in properly. They should have started it with the individual province deciding if they wanted to or not... or maybe a volunteer registry (I guess technically canada's registry has proven to be volunteer.... heh)... then over time... made it law. Instead, it was relatively "slapped on" and expected to work. A sudden harsh change like that can never be expected to work when dealing with millions of people. A referendum could have worked here as well.