What's Your Opinion? Firearms or Not?

[sv_makai]

I don't think this topic will ever die. Not sure I want it to go, discussions keep it in the forefront rather than becoming compalcent like many areas in the US. I had made a post once a upon a time stating we saw more crime in DC than the entire time we had been out cruising and people jumped down my throat telling me I was wrong. When you live in a crime area like DC it is just part of the back ground noise of daily life, but it is still there.

I beleive the Media helps to keep it in the fore front. Pirates are just crimanal scumbags on the water, but it makes for better news than the guy who had his home broken into. Makes for better news.

Crime is all around, even in the US where they call people who steal boats and from boats crimanals not pirates. Crime didn't stop us from living in the DC area and it won't stop us from cruising, but knowing the dangers helps plan and avoid most of them.

Still since we have been cruising the most common topic is the head and why is it broken again and the cheapest place to get food and rum.

[reeframmer]

As a new member i was drawn to the postings re firearms and am horrified by the Mercators posting
.
I wonder how many inocent fishermen and other friendies his mate has blown away in the last 2 years.

Please if he is cruising se asia then be advised that 99.999% of local boats that may approach are trying to sell you fish so they can feed thier families.

Is this guy relsted to Bush I wonder.

[BC Mike]

This topic will never die and Peter Blake is still dead.

Michael

[Boracay]

I have alway sthought that the trouble with a gun is that you have to be prepared to use it if nesessary and I would find it very hard to do that.
Has anyone given any thought to some of the more exotic scare type ammunition? If one was just paranoid, and it was a fisherman then one might just get away with an apology.
I'm thinking of something like the Dragons Breath Flare available from Atlas Ammo at https://ssl.perfora.net/www.atlasamm...dex.shopscript
One can also buy flares that can be fired fom a shotgun.
Is this type of thing practicable?

BANG! It can die now

[Sonosailor]

Anybody see this documentary? The filmmaker attempted to investigate why US has so much violence, and so many gun-related deaths: over 11000 per year. Other countries with same or bloodier pasts, similar ethnic variations, similar violence on tv and video, and even more guns had fewer killings. Canada has <300 gun-related deaths per year (according to the documentary).

He (Michael Moore, the film-maker) tentatively suggested that the gun-focused and black-focused media was driving a lot of fear, and creating a situation where tense people had loaded guns at the ready. He also showed that gun purchases were climbing fast even though crime was dropping rapidly - noting that you couldn't see the trends on the news.

Any comments?

[Alan Wheeler]

Hmmmm, OK this is where I am treading on dangerouse ground. I am going to kinda poke this out there with a stick so I don't get m,y hand bitten off. I think this comment of Sonosailor and my reply kinda orbits the heart of how the outside world view the US.
It's an attitude of paranoid dillusion. And I honestly don't know why the attitude is like this. Maybe no one does, maybe it's just too varying and complex. But we all sat here in NZ scratching our heads with disbelief, when we saw on TV new's, the rescuers going in to New Orleans and getting shot at. People seem to think there is a world out there that wants to take everything they have and they would rather die defending it than to lose it. Mix with that an attitude of- the world revolves around the US and the US is the Moral right for the rest of the world and we get a a nasty mix. Possibly because the US being such a huge country, many citizens know very little about the rest of the world. Even then, I think that is scratching the surface of issues.
Now before I get attacked here, please please, I don't mean this personaly, it is just something we percieve, rightly or wrongly.

[Jentine]

Sonosailor,
Are you telling us that 10% or Canada's population is killed by guns each year? Wow, that must be why the population is so low.
Gun related gun deaths have been steadily decreasing for the past 10 years. Imagine what it was before the decline.

[GordMay]

Jentine: Better check your calculator(300 ÷ 32,233,955 is NOT 10%).

Statistics Canada says that 816 people (not <300, Sonosailor) 767 males and 49 females — died of firearms-related injuries in Canada in 2002, the most recent year examined in the study. This represented 2.6 deaths per 100,000 population , down from 5.9 per 100,000 in 1979, it said.

Among males, the 2002 rate was 4.9 deaths per 100,000, down from 10.6 in 1979. Among females, it was 0.3, down from 1.2.

In a cross-border comparison for the year 2000, Statistics Canada says the risk of firearms death was more than three times as great for American males as for Canadian males and seven times as great for American females as for Canadian females.

Because more of the U.S. deaths were homicides (as opposed to suicides or accidental deaths), the U.S. rate of gun homicide was nearly eight times Canada's, the agency says. Homicides accounted for 38 per cent of deaths involving guns in the United States and 18 per cent in Canada. (*1)

But even as Canada's rate of gun homicide shrank (to 0.4 per 100,000 population in 2002 from 0.8 in 1979), handguns moved into a dominant role. Handguns accounted for two-thirds of gun homicides in 2002, up from about half in the 1990s, the agency says.

Consistently through the period, about four-fifths of Canadian firearms deaths were suicides, it says.

(*1) Given these statististics, we Canadians probably aren't competent to own firearms.

See also: “More guns = More gun death and injury”, & "International Copmparisons" at:
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/The...trol.html#intl

[Jentine]

You have that many people in Canada! Did you get a recent influx from somewhere? Perhaps refugees from Louisana since they already speak the language.
Jim

[Drewbert]

Jentine once whispered in the wind:
You have that many people in Canada! Did you get a recent influx from somewhere? Perhaps refugees from Louisana since they already speak the language.
Jim

Haha wow, do you know anything about Louisiana? Or perhaps that was a joke?

[Jentine]

........and now I am going to have to wait several years until the devistation is repaired. That was my vacation destination for October....Cajun cooking, the French Quarter.......a great place to enjoy a different culture within the borders of the United States.

[sneuman]

I work in media, and long before Bowling for Columbine I was preaching the mantra that the news business - local TV in particular - was doing a lot of damage with the "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy. It simply warps the public's perception of the real crime picture.

The rest of the world has picked up on this, and I see crime stories leading the news more often than when I first came to Asia a decade ago. Not surprisingly, the PERCEPTION of violent crime here in Thailand (where it's so low as to be almost statistically insignificant) is on the increase. People are now locking their doors. If it were legal to own guns, people would have them and probably start using them on one another.

Crime is a localized event. It used to be you'd buy a gun if it happened to your neighbor - but now the global village has made everyone a neighbor. As a consequence, if someone is shot (most probably by a jealous lover or something UNrandom, btw) in Bum Fart Egypt, we think it's happening two doors down.

Michael Moore had a few things wrong in Bowling for Columbine (such as shamelessly using the young victims to stage a protest), but the idea that the media is feeding this whole thing I think was spot on.

[Sonosailor]

Thanks for the better statistics, Gord. I suggest Moore was providing statistics for just the homicides, and that I was not sharp enough to catch that. It would better suit his arguments, and his numbers.

I stop short of providing my own opinion, being mostly curious about others' opinions on this issue.

Wrt guns on boats, I appreciate having potential "thieves and home-invaders" expect that at least some of the boats at anchor might have guns on board, even if I do not.

I'll stick to alarms and pepper spray, and limit my cruising area.

At te risk of expressing views already beat to death on this post, it baffles me that people carry guns on their vessels out of a fear of attack or piracy, without giving a thought to the real threats created by carrying a gun on board. The threat that you will be shot while reaching for the gun, the concern that you will shoot someone that was not a threat. The real danger that even if you shoot a "bad guy", if he is in his own country, YOU will still be guilty. And what if your gun is stolen? You well may end up in prison on charges of importing fire arms. If your gun is then used in a crime, in many places, you will share the guilt of that crime as if you pulled the trigger yourself. Not too many cowboys on this forum, so I do not expect much of a "couldn't happen to me" attitude, but for me, these fears far outweigh the fear of piracy. One last point, IF you shoot someone on board your boat, and miss, or shoot through and through, you will be left with a hole in your boat. Not my idea of a victory.