I was reading some old Q&A's

over at Jeffs Gunblast site, looking for something that caught my eye about rifles in .357 where I came across some questions from Oz about guns in America.
It's a long search down, so I'm grabbing the whole thing:

Hi Jeff I'm a gun owner and live in Australia. We hear all to often about these shootings in schools in the US, innocents killed many injured both physically and emotionally, good folk scared for life. You know more people are killed with firearms in the US each year than are killed on our roads in Aus plus firearms incidents! What is being done about this appalling loss of life Jeff? I'll tell you...... nothing because the average American ego is so large the average American cant pull their head out of their ass to see the light of day. Kids can buy firearms and ammo! What sort of appalling lack of CIVIL RESPONSIBILITY is this. Is the average American proud of this ability to arm themselves? And for what ? To people outside the US looking in, it seems that Americans are paranoid ! Seriously this is how it appears, so much for "living in the land of the free" I love your web site, but heads need to put together, laws changed and the penalties need to fit the crime, here's a thought Jeff. If the ruling was that if a felon commits a crime and has in their possession a firearm, weather it has been produced or not during the robbery/assault a mandatory 20 years jail sentence with NO CHANCE of parole is imposed PLUS time for the offence, I would think twice! Something has to be done Jeff, its all fun and games playing with "big boys toys" but passing the responsibility of owning firearms off to your Constitution is not any kind of responsibility at all!

Regards,

Mike Hodgson

March 7, 2008

and Jeffs reasonable response (that would probably surprise Libs who think all gun owners are savages)
Firearms have been available here for over 200 years, yet it wasn't until our government created "gun free zones" that these tragedies started taking place. These low-life shooters are going to schools to do their shootings, where they know that no armed citizens will be present. When I was in school, many of us has guns in our pickup truck gun racks on school property, yet we never even thought about opening fire on our classmates. The availability of guns is not the problem, it is the evil that is in the hearts of some people. What you do not hear on the news is how many times lives are saved because someone was armed, and stopped a shooter from doing violence. We arm our police, as you do yours, yet in doing so we are just hiring others to do that which we should be willing to do ourselves. It is every citizen's responsibility to protect our own families, friends, and neighbors from those deranged, evil people who choose to do us harm. Adding a mandatory twenty years to the sentence of someone who has just murdered six people is not a deterrent, and most of these scum take their own lives anyway, after their deeds are done. The police cannot be everywhere at once, and usually they can only show up in time to write a report. If someone tries to do me harm, it is my responsibility, not that of the government, to protect myself. Our society today devalues human life, with the gruesome violence in movies, television, and video games. As a nation, we no longer teach our children the ways and teachings of Jesus, but allow them to do everything that they like, get everything that they want, and suffer no consequences for their actions. That some grow up to be selfish, disrespectful, hate-filled brats should not come as a surprise to any of us.

Then an apology like an adult-
Jeff,

I guess I may have overstepped the mark with a couple of comments I made, I'm sorry. What you have written does make sense to me. I guess we are from two very different worlds when it comes to survival and thinking about it, if lived in the States I would probably carry one myself.

I guess I went off half cocked so to speak!

Keep up that great web site.

Regards,

Mike H :}


And a reasonable response-
No problem at all. I welcome differing views on any subject. I would prefer than people were nice to each other. It is shameful what some do to their fellow man. I do not think that gun control can ever stop violence. A case in point is our prison system. Access in and out is strictly controlled, and there are more police per capita in a prison than anywhere in the world. Guns are strictly forbidden. There are no guns inside the prison buildings, yet murders, rapes, beatings, and robberies still take place in that controlled environment, everyday. Without an armed populace, gangs rule. Evil people will always do evil things. Your comments are always welcome. It is good to hear other opinions on the topic.

Jeff

So, all this brings up the fact that within half a century, no one can remember how their country was (U.K. or Australia) before their gun bans took affect.
Their laws were probably as loose, or looser than we have in America today, but even then there was no blood in the streets and disagreements met with gunfire.

Someone might remind them of what their country was like before those gun bans and the PC army turned the people into mindless emoting mouth breathers.