Guns kill people!

Of course I didn't go into the Rosie O'Donnell thing. It's irrelevant and as it was I was only 89 characters below the website's character limit. But if you really want me to address that point, here goes: Just because you have to make a conscious decision to use a gun doesn't make having them okay. In simplest terms, they're far too dangerous for the average citizen. No one should have the power to kill someone from a distance. Other potential murder weapons are illegal, guns are even worse than those because they allow the shooter to totally dehumanize the victim. Again, there are no second thoughts with guns. It's both physically and emotionally harder to kill people in other ways and therefore it is a lot harder to commit those sorts of crimes as a result. Making it harder to commit crimes is certainly a valid reason to ban things. And I didn't have the space for your formula, but I addressed it at the beginning of my argument. Apparently I have to address everything in the correct order for it to count. Since your formula is just an inane restatement of the Rosie O'Donnell argument, just read and understand the above. Shrapnel is fragments created by any explosion, not just bullets. So, newsflash, I wasn't referring to bullet shrapnel, I was referring to the barrel of the gun exploding. So, yes, shrapnel is in fact from the gun itself. And no. Bullets will not explode when thrown off a tall enough building. Don't ever try to tell a physics nerd how gravity works. Since you didn't seem to get ‘terminal velocity' the first time, I'll explain: You stand on your tall building. You throw your bullet. Theoretically, it would accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s until it hits the ground. At which point it would explode. But funny thing about Earth, it has an atmosphere. Which creates friction. And pretty quickly, the friction equals the speed at which the bullet accelerates and it stops accelerating. Therefore, as long as there's enough distance between the building and the ground for the bullet to reach its terminal velocity, the height of the building doesn't matter. The bullet will always fall at the same, nonlethal speed. "A PERSON has to make a CHOISE to pick it up and beat someone to death, which means the PERSON BEAT SOMEONE TO DEATH NOT THE GUN!" Same logic I used in round two. We've already set a legal precedent. Brass knuckles are illegal, because they are used as weapons. Knives are also illegal. Guns are even more dangerous than brass knuckles or knives, and used for the same purposes, and therefore also legally need to be outlawed. "There are hundreds of people who have one arm and hunt with a hand gun." If there were really hundreds you would have been able to bother yourself with finding a verifiable case where someone has. Since you didn't, I can surmise you can't find a source and you're trying to hide the fact that you made a mistake. Again, hundreds of thousands of criminals are traced by identifying qualities of their guns. (serial numbers, ballistic fingerprints, etc.) If it was so easy to make your own guns there would be a booming black market for untraceable firearms. Obviously, there isn't. Because it's just short of impossible to make your own guns. And the marijuana example is totally moot. Y'know what you need to grow marijuana? Light and water. Making guns involves years of practice and a full metals shop. And that shop has to be either owned by a legitimate company and used illegally, would be next to impossible, or it has to be run by a private individual. In the metalshop I use for robotics, of the machines weigh a little more than the average car. It would take a crane just to move them, which would look more than a little suspicious. Not to mention the fact that everything there costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. If your criminal could afford that, he wouldn't be robbing people. Regardless of what's it's made of, a gun will show up on a luggage x-ray. Metal guns will look bright white, which is a bit easier to see, but a plastic gun will be just as easy to find with a trained eye. "‘And we already ‘ban' crime.' Funny this is true yet crime still happens! What makes you think a ban on guns will work any better?" Total fallacy. By your logic, we should remove all laws against crime, because, hey, it'll just happen anyway. You can't ignore a problem just because the solution actually takes some enforcement. "What kind of sheltered life do you live? Have you ever watched the news?…If we are all kind, sane people or at least the most of us are as you suggest we wouldn't need them." Wow. I mean… wow. You just suggested that the news accurately reports gun deaths and implied that the majority of the population are not kind, sane, people in one fell swoop. I mean, you just proved my point. You're totally paranoid if you think the majority of the population is made up of criminals who are all out to rob you at gunpoint. And as for the news, at the end of the day, news just needs to keep its ratings up. Keeping people scared keeps people watching. In reality, armed robberies are way down. They've been going down for the last five years. Here, I'll prove it. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov... By the way, only roughly 43% of those robberies were at gunpoint. That's what you're focusing on, after all, you're afraid of being robbed by criminals at gunpoint. You're pretty darn safe, actually. In fact, your chances of being robbed at gunpoint in 2005 were about 0.001118%. Scary. And your statistics are actually pretty easy to refute. Let's start with Washington. All I have to do is go further into the future. Let's see where things stand now, shall we? http://upload.wikimedia.org... As you can see, homicides are way down. They peaked after the gun ban, as expected because there's going to be a period of adjustment, but now they're lower than they've ever been. Thanks for bringing that up, by the way, I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. And crime rates in California went up, because, in short, there were more people there. Total crimes may be up, but crime rates per capita are way down. Saying crime rates have gone up is like saying that crime among ten people is less than among a thousand. Crime rates per capita are down by about half since 1990. http://www.disastercenter.com... Here are Maryland's crime rates: http://dls.state.md.us... Admittedly, Britain and Australia's crime rates are up, but that has nothing to do with gun laws, it's their lack of enforcement. Look at their conviction rates, they're very low. People there just plain aren't afraid of the consequences of their crimes. In a situation where many people can literally get away with murder, they will. Not to mention the fact that the enforcing gun bans are probably pretty low on Britain and Australia's respective lists of priorities because of this. A ban that isn't enforced is comparable to not having one at all. And in Australia guns are only used in 23% of armed robberies, as opposed to 43% in the US, so guns aren't exactly the problem there anyway. Your ‘personal responsibility' already exists. Why else do you go to prison for killing someone? The real problem is the wide availability of guns. And in response to your calling my claims lies, yours are dead wrong. And uh, here's another fun fact. Canada's crime rates are lower than ours per capita. As in, if you scale crime rates to population, Canada's are far lower than ours. Here's a lovely little comparison. http://www.statcan.ca... The second amendment of our constitution was added so that, if necessary, citizens could form an army. We obviously already have one. The amendment is moot at this point anyway. Nice debating with you.