20 most trigger happy countries

I misunderstood. A hired gun in the US is a bodyguard/assassin.

Adrian

heh, same thing here, but Jim said hire a gun not get a hired gun ;d

ill be a hired gun for you reverand goose.

sayign that. ive been asked to bouncer at a couple of places by my bro's girlfriend and my bro wants me to work the door at some of his gigs that don't provide doormen.

need to be getting myself a billy pole this week

having a gun is so stupid, I mean if someone breaks in he doesn`t wanna kill you but if you come with a gun he`s gonna shot you before you can use yours, glad my countries not on that list cause murderers are so seldom here, and hardly anyone has a gun except for hunting (still don't understand that killing animals is considerd a sport )

Portugal? RAKEL!

I was just planning a vacation to South Africa....oh well....

If someone breaks into MY house, without the intent to kill me, I should make no attempt to defend my property lest he decide to kill me. Well then, I should just hand over whatever it is in my house he wants! At least he's willing to commit his felony in a peaceful manner!

Seriously, how do I know he's not going to try and kill me anyway? And if criminals realize they can have their way with the populace, what's to prevent them from graduating to murder? If you're not going to get driven off when you rob someone, why expect resistance when you try and kill someone? I imagine you have some very successful, very rich criminals in Austria. Maybe I should move there....it sounds like there's a lot of money to be made at little risk....

Having a gun is not stupid. Having a gun and not knowing how to use it is stupid. Not having a gun when you need it is stupid and can be detrimental to your well-being and sometimes fatal. I'm sure you'd be shocked to hear that in the United States, 46 states have CCW laws, and all have had crime rate reductions. CCW means "carrying concealed weapons" laws. If you get a liscence and go through training (in some states you need only a liscense, and in some states you don't need any registration) you can carry concealed weapons, usually a gun, but occasionally people carry a non-switchblade knife or a club. Florida was one of the first states to pass a CCW law, despite harsh critisism by the press (every fenderbender will become a Vietcong-style shootout, the murder rate will rise, anarchy will reign, and the four horsemen of the apocolypse will ride through the sky, that kind of crap). Noting notable happened, except that in the first 5 years, Florida's murder rate dropped 23 percent. According to the FBI, states with CCW laws, have a 26% lower violent crime rate, 20% lower homicide rate, 39% lower robbery rate, and a 22% lower aggravated assault rate than states without CCW laws. You may have read this in another of my posts, but the rate of hot burglaries (burglaries committed while the occupant is still in the building) is 3 times higher in gun-free England than in the United States. Why? Convicted criminals were polled and said that they feared getting shot by a target.

Owning a gun is not stupid. The founding fathers wrote into our Bill Of Rights the basic human right that people should be allowed to own firearms in order to provide for a militia for defense of the country. This right of gun-ownership was considered so basic that it was nearly left out of the Bill Of Rights because it was considered self-evident. The militia was to be made up of ordinary citizens who were supposed to have weapons of military usefulness in case of invasion. We were never supposed to have a standing army or nationalized militia (National guard at all). Congress only has the power to raise an army for 2 years according to the Constitution. Not only were arms meant for self-defense and for defending one's country, but they also provided a rather unique deterrent to any potential tyrant who might choose to exert his will over the people. Its the same principle that kept the US and USSR from nuking each other during the cold war. Its deterent force, plain and simple. I WANT Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rummy, and Ridge to know when they start dreaming of National ID cards, spy plain flyovers, secret arrests, and citizen disarmament that there are thousands, perhaps millions of people armed with weapons of military usefulness who will not surrender their guns and will use them in defense of their lives and freedoms. Gun ownership is not stupid. The jews living in Germany learned this the hard way in the 30s and 40s when they willingly handed over their guns to show that they were law abiding citizens and were promptly marched towards the boxcars. The Chinese and Russian citizens learned this from their socialist governments and the civilian dead of both countries number in the millions. Saddam Huessein's citizens learned gun ownership was not stupid when he started torturing and imprisoning them with impunity. The American citizens are learning gun ownership is not stupid, even as they're being disarmed by their own stinkin' socialist government. Isn't the definition of a police state a state in which the police have all the guns?

Adrian

again hear hear adrian.

as you pointed out. with 2 very notable exceptions, countries gaining nuclear weapons hasnt resulted in everyone running around nuking each other, its acted as a detterent and thats what guns will do.

at the moment in the UK you own a gun cos A) you hunt or B) you intend to use it for no good.

now nothing is stopping category B here from doing whatever the **** they want. they want to break into your house, they want to take your car... they've got a free reign. at least with knive and blades u can still beat the shit out of them at close range.

now give your average man on the street a gun and they don't have free reign any more do they?

This is a reversed case of "that's why the world laughs at America". It's just that it simply isn't in some peoples' traditions to feel the need to deal with guns. You can't say it's stupid for a person to not own a gun when in the country where they live it's not thought of as a means to prevent crimes or to defend oneselves from who knows who. I don't have data on this but most probably the crime rate in gunless Austria is much lower than in gun-equipped Florida. It's very likely that enforcing the use of guns there would not produce any benefit.

To sum it up, the Chinese eat a lot of rice, Italians a lot of pasta. To each their own.