second ammendment

dave · Post by **dave** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:30 pm

The second ammendment:

'A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.'

As most are aware this ammendment in the American constitution gives citizens the right to be armed in order to protect themselves

In Australia we are not allowed to protect ourselves by the means of being armed.

What do you think......should we be allowed to be armed like america or do you think that allowing people to be armed will cause gun violence to increase(which is obviously bad)

Also, in the UK general duty police are not armed(special officers are) do you think that general duty police should be armed, like Australia

the reason I bring this up is that on another forum I have read, there has been quite an interestin debate on both topics, so I thought why not open up our minds and express what we think

let us know.........

cheers, dave

kellie · Post by **kellie** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:33 pm

Post by **Zebedee** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:35 pm

You only have to see the statistics for gun crime in the USA vs Australia... For me, I don't believe that the general citizenry have a need to carry firearms. Sporting shooters, yes. Farmers, yes. Plus a few others here and there.

As for our police - I believe they need to be equipped with the right tools to do the job, whatever they may be. I think that includes both lethal and non-lethal methods of protection of themselves and the innocent public.

dave · Post by **dave** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:44 pm

I agree with you Zebedee, as much as the americans deny this, there statistics of gun related violence compared to places like Australia shows how much difference it can be made.

I also do agree farmers, police, anyone with a good need for a gun is alright, we are lucky in Australia that there are strict requirements before you can obtain a gun, and that there are restrictions on guns

Obviously non-lethal protection is a preferred means of protection by myself for the police, but unfortunately they need a hand gun for a last resort, they will always need a gun

Ludacris · Post by **Ludacris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:21 pm

My opinion is it should remain as is...... Its bad enough the amount of people that are allowed guns at the moment(thats the licensed ones)..

Maybe this should be moved to the general section

Post by **yorky** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:34 pm

I also say load up on non-lethal gear. Some cop shows I've seen they carry 2 tazers each. Give them more training in hand to hand as well, may help if the offender isn't that well armed.

For armed offenders thats the difficult bit, with a short range tazer and pepper spray, you won't be able to get close enough to dis-arm without being in harms way, where a gun is obviously needed.

WPXZBP · Post by **WPXZBP** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:51 pm

Surely this thread belongs in the "General" forum?

madmikey · Post by **madmikey** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 7:25 am

WPXZBP wrote:Surely this thread belongs in the "General" forum?

my thoughts too...

But on the topic,
The yanks arn't to bright are they...
I used to carry a firearm for work (cash and valuable transit), but I never had the firearm at home... The worst thing is other that open hand tactics we had no other method of protection. We had to go through training every 3 months and have a 100% hit rate to keep our licences...
I think there is talk at the moment about having pepper spray as an alternative method.
So we have strict measures to carry firearms but as someone else said if everyone was alowed to carry a firearm it would be chaos and how many kid would get hold of them... not to mention the gang violence... (it was the company I am a head doorman for that had the 3 doormen stabbed on the weekend) so I would hate to imagine what would have happened if a gun was involved.

ryno · Post by **ryno** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 11:53 am

.............

BLiNG · Post by **BLiNG** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:03 pm

madmikey wrote:So we have strict measures to carry firearms but as someone else said if everyone was alowed to carry a firearm it would be chaos and how many kid would get hold of them... not to mention the gang violence... (it was the company I am a head doorman for that had the 3 doormen stabbed on the weekend) so I would hate to imagine what would have happened if a gun was involved.

Who runs Harbourside?

Post by **Zebedee** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:54 pm

ryno wrote:They claim it's ok for young children to be trained and use guns.

I remember when I was in Scouts a long, long time ago ... we went to an Army open day in Fremantle and got to fire some guns (blank rounds only). It was a cool thing to do in that controlled environment, but I wouldn't like to see it become the norm.