Glensather
Gothic Vampires
(Note that I'm neither pro nor anti-gun control; my guns aren't affected by bans unless they start going for pump shotguns or hunting rifles. Or revolvers.)
The United States has about 20,000 miles (or 32000 kilometers) in coastline and borders combined. We have the largest borders between countries (the boundary between the US and Canada is almost 5600 miles alone), and the eighth longest coastline in the world, below countries like Canada, Greenland, and Japan.
The US also has the most airports, at a whopping 15,000 (rounded down). Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta had 55 million passengers in the first half of 2012 alone, and Memphis International had almost 4 million metric tons (almost 4.5 million tons as the US knows it) of cargo pass through it in 2010.
Add all that up, and you have a situation where gun control is impossible. Simply put, there are too many ways to get into this country. Can you police every single mile of coastline? Every single inch of border? No, you can't. There are simply not enough people who are capable of doing that.
Air travel, too. Four and a half million tons is a lot of cargo, and 55 million people is a fuckload of people. Tell me, how easy do you think it is to sneak in a shipment of AK-47s through that? Hell, with that much going on (15,000 airports, remember), it's probably easy to ship in a nuke if you really wanted to.
Again, do you think it's at all possible to get all of that checked? Even if we had the manpower to ensure that each piece of freight was inspected thoroughly, or that each person was cleared of any wrongdoing, how easy do you think it is for someone to, say, slack off for just a second? Or, perhaps, for someone to give a cargo inspector an extra bit of cash on the side so he can look the other way.
I've said it before: Any of us, right now, can go to a website in Tor's undernet, or travel to South America, and buy an AK and all the rounds you'll ever need for less than a thousand bucks. And they'll get it to a dead drop of your choosing.
Geographically alone, it's impossible to keep weapons - automatics or else - out of this country. Someone will sneak it in. Even if we made like China and closed our borders in all but a few places, there still would be no way to do it.
So think about that for a second. Like I said, I'm not anti-gun control nor pro-gun control. I just don't think it's feasible to have gun control.
(Also, with a country like Japan, who has coastline larger than us, note that I didn't even go into cultural differences. A gun in Japan is rare; even the organized crime there still use melee weapons.)
SOURCES:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rs21729.pdf
List of countries by length of coastline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of countries and territories by land borders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Countries with the Most Airports
World's busiest airports by passenger traffic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World's busiest airports by cargo traffic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The United States has about 20,000 miles (or 32000 kilometers) in coastline and borders combined. We have the largest borders between countries (the boundary between the US and Canada is almost 5600 miles alone), and the eighth longest coastline in the world, below countries like Canada, Greenland, and Japan.
The US also has the most airports, at a whopping 15,000 (rounded down). Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta had 55 million passengers in the first half of 2012 alone, and Memphis International had almost 4 million metric tons (almost 4.5 million tons as the US knows it) of cargo pass through it in 2010.
Add all that up, and you have a situation where gun control is impossible. Simply put, there are too many ways to get into this country. Can you police every single mile of coastline? Every single inch of border? No, you can't. There are simply not enough people who are capable of doing that.
Air travel, too. Four and a half million tons is a lot of cargo, and 55 million people is a fuckload of people. Tell me, how easy do you think it is to sneak in a shipment of AK-47s through that? Hell, with that much going on (15,000 airports, remember), it's probably easy to ship in a nuke if you really wanted to.
Again, do you think it's at all possible to get all of that checked? Even if we had the manpower to ensure that each piece of freight was inspected thoroughly, or that each person was cleared of any wrongdoing, how easy do you think it is for someone to, say, slack off for just a second? Or, perhaps, for someone to give a cargo inspector an extra bit of cash on the side so he can look the other way.
I've said it before: Any of us, right now, can go to a website in Tor's undernet, or travel to South America, and buy an AK and all the rounds you'll ever need for less than a thousand bucks. And they'll get it to a dead drop of your choosing.
Geographically alone, it's impossible to keep weapons - automatics or else - out of this country. Someone will sneak it in. Even if we made like China and closed our borders in all but a few places, there still would be no way to do it.
So think about that for a second. Like I said, I'm not anti-gun control nor pro-gun control. I just don't think it's feasible to have gun control.
(Also, with a country like Japan, who has coastline larger than us, note that I didn't even go into cultural differences. A gun in Japan is rare; even the organized crime there still use melee weapons.)
SOURCES:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rs21729.pdf
List of countries by length of coastline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of countries and territories by land borders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Countries with the Most Airports
World's busiest airports by passenger traffic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World's busiest airports by cargo traffic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia