SteveS said:
Come on Newtosilver, you're hardly drawing breath between posts. Time to declare your interest in this matter. Bad experience?
I have seen a fair few people who have been shot, I have nearly been shot by someone by accident where they have made a mistake and it was in a really controlled setting with safety staff and the person who nearly shot me well guess what his job is? He does close protection so he job is basically to use firearms to protect people. People go through years of training and still make mistakes. All this self defence stuff is crap, look at all the links, so many kids are killed and people shoot "intruders" who turn out to be their kids, their spouse, a sibling, a grandparent, a paramedic who is there to help them.
I have fired tens of thousands of rounds maybe over a hundred thousand rounds I am not sure and have been around firearms most of my life from about the age of 5. I held a couple of QLD state chamionships (Actually thinking about it was 4 or 5) when I was a lot younger with the SSAA I am a qualified to use and instruct on pistols, rifles, a few different types of machineguns, anti armour weapons, qualifed to use explosives and instruct as well as to run courses etc. I have more range qualifications than I can list including C class ranges (basically 360 degree ranges so groups of people running around firing in all directions using not only rifles but machineguns, explosives etc. The highest level of firearm use)
I used to shoot hinges off doors with shotguns to make entry, smash windows etc I am qualified as a Close Quater Shooting instructer, Urban Operations Operator and an Instructor for teams of up to 4 people. Basically on a civilian level home defence times 1000 I suppose you could say.
Training people who have years of weapon handling I used to look at some people and think you should not be handling weapons. I used to date a female cop and had a lot of interaction with police, I can tell you there are a huge number of police who I would say I do not believe are competant with their service weapon.
I did three tours of Afghanistan from early 2006 to 2010 ( I am no longer in the military)
I suppose if you want to look at it on a basic level I look at a lot of people going "i should be able to carry a concealed firearm and use it to protect myself and my property" and I think to myself what a complete and utter retard there is a very high risk you are going to shoot yourself or someone else and the chances of you actually having to protect yourself in a life threatening situation is close to 0. What percentage of people would actually spend hundreds of hours, spend tens of thousands dollars recieving proper training? In reality and I am just plucking a figure.... maybe less than 0.1%.
Then you have to add what I call the retard factor and there are more of them out there than people realise, the peole who will shoot someone because they peed on their lawn or they will shoot their neighbour because they won't turn the stereo down.
Firearms ssould be hard to obtain and very easy to loose if people do the wrong thing. Fair enough people like farmers need them, someone wants to join a club like SSAA and shoot at a range on a weekend fair enough but they should have to go through a stringent process to get a license and it should be easy to loose.
Why don't i want relaxed gun laws? Because I do not see one of my kids killed or injured by some retard who thinks they are dirty Harry. If people could only injure or kill themselves and not others I would say go for it and I would not care. The thing is it affects other people as well.
To be completly honest I do not trust any of you one bit
I think 99% of people would not be competant to use a firearm to defend themselves.
: