Aram

Also, anyone who tells me forks are meant to do anything other than hurt people will have to sit through being stabbed in the face.

Actually bullets are the only part of the system that I'll admit can be designed specifically to kill things. Bullets can be shaped and built to cause maximum damage to a living thing, and the increased price clearly shows that they're meant for little else. Most of them are desgined specifically for hunting, but I will give it to you that there is handgun ammunition on the market designed specifically for self defensive against human beings. The vast majority of ammunition produced and expended in the United States, however, is target ammunition, very simple bullets made to be cheap and to punch clean holes in paper, or bullets that are significantly more complex but still only designed to be more accurate, not more lethal. Most shotgun shells are loaded with shot designed for shooting clay disks and small birds and pretty much useless for anything else. All of these would be highly inferior for any sort of violent purpose, and yet they make up probably 99% of the ammunition produced and used in this country.

Firearms are not "meant" to do anything but fire projectiles in the direction that they're pointed. What they're pointed at is totally up to the wielder. I would go as far as to say that the vast majority of the firearms manufacturered in the US are built with their designers and makers firmly believing, and rightfully so, that they will never be used to harm anything but paper or varmints. They aren't designed for anything but making shooting more comfortable, easy, and accurate. In fact, many sporting weapons are built specifically for benchrest and target shooting and would be incredibly awkward to try to use for anything else. To say that they serve no purpose except for violence is simply being ignorant of the vast number of useful and recreational types of shooting that gun owners practice every day.

I could probably post something equally or more scary and get as many useless comments for my trouble, but how about something a little prettier and taken by a much more competant photographer than myself. Nobody blues quite like Colt.

KHUKRI

Perkele! That's the only Finnish I know, because this old Finnish guy I once knew used to shout it a lot.

There are parts of America safer than whichever countries you're thinking of as a whole, I'm sure, where people would be no quicker to give up their right to bear arms than someone who lived in a place with a higher rate of crime. It is about much more than safety.

These are also mines!

If it is, it's not mines.

Eh. I'm optimistic about every brand, in a lot of ways. They're out there...somwhere.

We also only prosecute people after they do these things. We don't remove their tongues or make them keep them in a safe at the designated talking zone.

Not the point I was making. Forcing people to store their firearms in a way that prevents them from accessing them inside of five mintues will not prevent them from doing something unlawful with them if they set their mind oj it. It is a measure specifically desgined to prevent them from being used against intruders. And any firearm, any firearm, from a colonial musket to an elephant gun to an Uzi, can be used as a weapon, for offensive or defensive purposes. Some are better for different purposes than others, but any can be used to protect your life or take someone elses, just as easily as it could not. Never said that. If anyone even heard me, thay'd probably just look at me funny. You're just as free to not own a gun in America as you are to own a gun, and you can feel about it however you damn well please. Depending on where you live in America, you'll probably be just as safe as you'd be in Sweden. I imagine that there are parts of your country even less safe than parts of ours. Nobody said Americans are less safe or feel less safe than you do. That doesn't change the fact that we do own firearms and many of us do keep them for defense, just as many of us keep smoke alarms and fire extinguishers should the need for them ever arise. If our government outlawed fire extinguishers, claiming that grease fires and such should just be given what they want until the firefighters arrive, that would make about as much sense to us as leaving us at the mercy of home intruders.

See, this is an example of gun laws that exist specifically to discourage gun ownership. They make acquiring a firearm a horrendous process people would sooner just not go through, make you lock them up in ways that you could still murder someone if you planned to but could never defend yourself with one, and most of them you don't really own anyway--you sink your money into them but the government keeps them and does with them as they please. It's a clever way of not outright banning gun ownership, but simply stamping out every aspect of it that makes it important. I guarentee you that in any nation where gun control is at this level, it started the same way. It began with licensing and registration. The government turned it into a priveledge instead of a right, and that opened the door. 50 years later, gun ownership is all but crushed. It probably won't even stop there; it certainly didn't for the UK. All those pistols they got to have at the gun range were confiscated and permanently destroyed. Give it a few years and I bet the long arms will go as well. Do I believe that if America began making stripping gun rights the norm, and had them all but outright removed from the world, that gun crime would decrease after about 50 years of doing this? (50 years is about how long it took every European nation, after all.) Actually, I do. I believe a half a century of tyranical government restrictions would reduce gun fatalities in the US, allowing that society and the economy remains the same. The fact is, however, that things don't work in America the way they do in Europe. European nations have existed for thousands of years under kings, emperors, serfs, lords, whatever, and are used to giving up freedom because someone says so. They've existed since before firearms were invented and most have already seen them come and go. America, however, is still a young nation and we grew up with firearms as a necessary part of our survival and independance. We made firearm ownership one of our most basic and vital civil rights as a result. We like having firearms. We consider it an important part of our lives. This is why we will oppose removal of our firearms by our government, and this is why people who pay attention will oppose even the most harmless looking of proposals--as Europe has clearly shown, they will lead to far worse.

Well said. I mean, everyone knows that seatbelts are utterly useless. Statistics about them saving lives are made up by a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters in a basement in some govt building. It's all rumours, myths, and innuendo. Fortunately some people know better. So, because I wear a seatbelt, I should also be afraid that my wife will murder me because I own a gun, because this tiny article in a medical journal found a vague percentage increase in some statstics?

They're probably no more common than they are where you live. If you want to live your life based on statistics. written by people you don't know, based on people you don't know, instead of looking at your own life and situation and doing what you believe is right, that's your deal. I personally don't think having a firearm is going to make my family want to kill me with it, regardless of what the New England Journal of Medicine says.

I'd like to respond to this but I honestly have no idea what you just said. If you're facing an intruder who means you harm, I don't think you're going to dissuade him simply by shining a light at him. The flashlight and shotgun work best as a team, in my opinion.

They don't really care, but it's different here than it is there, so it's obviously inferior and therefore worth their time to say so on internet forums. The arguments don't serve any real purpose, but that doesn't mean we can't have them.

Yeah Eddo's bravado doesn't even compare to mine.

It's extremely cultural. America is a very, shall we say, diverse country. Parts of it probably have as many guns and are just as peaceful as Switzerland, if not more, while parts of the same states or even the same cities can be worse off than nations in the third world in regards to crime. By and large, America is just as peaceful as any other country, with these tiny dots of cultural cesspools scattered about it that make it seem so much worse than the rest. This is largely the reason most Americans don't want more gun control, because they live in the larger part of America that is peaceful and has nothing to fear. Taking steps to improve conditions in the bad areas is really the only way to reduce crime, I believe. More gun control will accomplish little to nothing at all, and at the cost of a freedom that most Americans take very seriously.

Restricted, and to the point that almost nobody can afford one, but not illegal. See my earlier on thread on my BAR. Full metal jacket hardly makes a bullet armor piercing, and it's probably the most sold type of ammunition in the United States at the moment. There is, however, a ban on rounds specifically devised to penetrate armor. When the silly rumor of "cop-killer" ammunition was splashed around the media, it was proposed that all ammunition capable of piercing the lowest level police vest should be banned, which basically would have illegalized everything bigger or smaller than a .38. This obviously, was protested and the bill was shortened to only restrict rounds specifically designed for the job. Any bullet thin and fast enough can still easily pierce most lightweight vests. Tracer rounds and even explosive ammo is legal in most states. It's more of a novelty item anyway. Very few states limit magazine capacity. For a while we couldn't make new ones, but the standard capacity magazines already in circulation were plenty, and that ban sunsetted a while back. Most states do not restrict magazine capacity. For some reason, this is true. Smoothbore guns and muzzleloaders are excepted, but anything over .50-caliber is considered a destructive device. There's a lot of talk at the moment about making .50-caliber rifles illegal as well, which makes very little sense as all anyone would have to do is make an equally powerful .499 caliber cartridge to get around such a ban. There are no limits on the amount of gunpowder you can put in a cartridge. As long as it doesn't make the cartridge dangerous to the shooter, that would just be silly. Bullets made entirely of brass and steel are banned however, as part of the armor piercing ban.

For someone with any experience with firearms, sight aquisition isn't something that requires "mental fortitude." It's a natural part of shooting, as natural as shifting a manual transmission or hitting the quicksave button before a boss fight. The fact is that in any situation, proper aquisition of the sight picture is a very, very necessary part of accurate shooting. If you can't see your sights, you're going to miss, simple as that. Maybe if you kept spraying bullets like an idiot you'll hit something, but in a life-threatening situation you probably won't have the leisure to keep trying over and over to hit your target, nevermind the danger all those stray rounds will pose to persons other than your target. I'm not saying you can't live without night sights. I'm just saying that in low light conditions, they're an incredible help. If you're curious about the mechanics or guns and shooting, anything I tell you is going to be of very little use. I really recommend that you buy yourself a .22 pistol or rifle and try it yourself. Nothing is going to teach you more than that. You live in Canada, so I don't think it would be impossible to acquire one. Follow the four rules of safety, use your head, and it won't pose any danger to you, and it shouldn't be too expensive either depending on the model. Who knows? You may even like it. This is about basic self defense, not a Tom Clancy novel. I doubt three tiny glowing dots are going to expose any invisible ninjas lurking in the shadows. My home defense weapon is a 12-gauge shotgun with a flashlight mounted under the barrel more powerful than your car's headlights. It wouldn't just reveal and intruder, it'd probably blind him for close to a minute.

So how does that make night sights a bad thing? Plain sights are cheaper, for the most part. I had a smith put Novak tritium sights on my .45. It cost about $250. Granted, they're a bit more complicated than the ones on Eddo's M&P.

Yes. Any sort of self defense training course would teach you to always be looking at your assailant through your sight picture, and to aquire it immediately as you draw. Another reason you'd have the glowing sights is that it makes it infinitely faster to aline them with your target. There are only pros to clearly visible, brightly highlighted sights and zero cons and if you insist on saying there's something wrong about having them I'm going to assume you're a nutcase and move on.

According to the FBI, the vast majority of self defense shootings happen in low-light conditions and at a distance of less than ten feet. Anyone who thinks there's something sinister about glowing gunsights need to just go ahead and slap themselves across the face.