"Scout"  wrote:
>> Luckily, it's pretty hard to kill someone with sticks and rocks and
>> knives when compared to guns and explosives.
>
>Then your ignorance is showing.

I hoped this was a reasonable discussion, but I see that it has
nothing to do with reason.
Recently, a guy in Israel blew people up with explosive. It took him
just one push of the button. Tell me, how long do you think it would
take him to do the same with a knife or a stick? Would he manage that
at all, or would ten people shove his baseball bat up his ass if he
tried it? However, with some explosive he made a slaughter within a
single second.

We're not talking about massive warfare, where powerful weapons can
actually reduce the number of casualties by serving as a deterrent. We
are talking about the proliferation of firearms among the general
population. Firearms have no place in the general population, they
should be restricted to military, police and the professional guards.
I'm from Croatia, and I know a thing or two about the proliferation of
weapons; before the war, there were practically no weapons on the
streets; now, the mafia clans are actually shooting it out on the
streets, sometimes not even with guns, but with "Wasps"[1]. "Wasp" is
not a slingshot, or a stick or a rock. This thing can turn a bus full
of children into a smoldering can of cooked human flesh, within a
second. Just like that. After this war, some people keep those at
home. And do you know how they justify it? Self-defense. They need a
"Wasp" (or an automatic assault rifle, or a spray fire gun, or a .357
magnum, add at will) at home in order to feel safe.
Lunatics like that are a danger to society, starting with themselves
and their children, because guess whose kid is most likely to blow his
brains out by accident, playing with his dad's gun? I would bet that
the number of accidental injuries is far greater than the number of
cases where a weapon was effectively used for self-defense. It is here
in Croatia, I don't know about USA. So, the firearms should be
completely removed from the general population, acknowledging the
exceptions in which a gun could be necessary.

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[1] "Zolja", a disposable anti-tank rocket launcher, widely used in
the recent Serbia-Croatia war.

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