Texas and an odd gun law

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Didn't realise this until i read it today

The official minimum age to buy a handgun in Texas is 21,
but you can buy a rifle (like the AR-15 used in the Uvalde school shooting) at 18.
 
I'm just confused with the pistol vs rifle thing more than anything , i would have thought the pistol less lethal than an AR?
oh yeah the Americs are just way down the rabbitt hole for sure
 
I'm just confused with the pistol vs rifle thing more than anything , i would have thought the pistol less lethal than an AR?
oh yeah the Americs are just way down the rabbitt hole for sure

I guess one is more easily concealed so more likely to be taken out and possibly used?
 
Texas allows "concealed carry", it's harder to conceal a rifle and of course those 3 years make all the difference. You cannot buy alcohol in Texas until you are 21 but you can buy a rifle, fnucking nuts
 
Texas allows "concealed carry", it's harder to conceal a rifle and of course those 3 years make all the difference. You cannot buy alcohol in Texas until you are 21 but you can buy a rifle, fnucking nuts

even better at 21 you can buy a handgun hide it in your pocket and get hammered on drink !
 
even better at 21 you can buy a handgun hide it in your pocket and get hammered on drink !
Yes but by then you are a responsible adult so you wouldn't do that. You can of course join the US army at 18 and die in a foreign dessert if you really want a handgun
 
Didn't realise this until i read it today

The official minimum age to buy a handgun in Texas is 21,
but you can buy a rifle (like the AR-15 used in the Uvalde school shooting) at 18.
Screenshot 2022-05-25 at 13.29.18.png
 
400 million guns in the US (source BBC).
More than people!
 
Plenty of shootings in the UK where hand guns are used. Hand guns in the traditional sense being highly illegal but I guess if you going to kill someone your not worried about the illegal gun charge ! The UK's murder weapon of choice seems to be the Knife yet you can still buy knives that have no other purpose but killing.
 
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Plenty of shootings in the UK where hand guns are used. Hand guns in the traditional sense being highly illegal but I guess if you going to kill someone your not worried about the illegal gun charge ! The UK's murder weapon of choice seems to be the Knife yet you can still buy knives that have no other purpose but killing.
Excluding the very occasional shootings carried out by police officers, can you link to any at all in the last year?
 
! The UK's murder weapon of choice seems to be the Knife yet you can still buy knives that have no other purpose but killing.

I think there must be very few knives whose only use could be killing.

Most woundings/killings seem to be dome by rather ordinary kitchen knives for fairly obvious reasons.
 
I think there must be very few knives whose only use could be killing.

Most woundings/killings seem to be dome by rather ordinary kitchen knives for fairly obvious reasons.
Yes, the vast majority of knife crime involves kitchen knives. The 14 year old boy who was convicted of murdering a 12 year old girl yesterday used a "hunting knife" though, and although these things can no longer be bought by mail order there must be a vast number still in circulation, and they can still be bought face-to-face by adults.

I think that the UK laws on knives are just crazy. On the farm, I always have a knife in my pocket, it's essential. It's a locking knife, which is the only type of folding knife that's safe to use, and on my own land it's perfectly legal, but if I walk into our farmyard, which is a public place, it's illegal :mad:

One thing that concerns me is the large number of imitation firearms that are used in crime. Most of these are very realistic and completely terrifying. Personally I can't tell the difference between most of them and the real thing unless I actually pick them up and feel the weight - some are much lighter than the real thing, most are a lot heavier. Some are air pistols, some are blank firers, some are just replicas, all are much more expensive than real guns and I just don't believe that they have a legitimate purpose and I don't understand why nothing has been done to ban their sale and possession.
 
I think there must be very few knives whose only use could be killing.

Most woundings/killings seem to be dome by rather ordinary kitchen knives for fairly obvious reasons.

Sadly not always true. This animal will be out in a couple of years time, free to do it again.




 
Sadly not always true. This animal will be out in a couple of years time, free to do it again.




Agree not always true. But nothing wrong with machetes, very useful for gardening etc and safer to use than an axe in some situations.
 
Sadly not always true. This animal will be out in a couple of years time, free to do it again.





The media & police tend to highlight unusual weapons. I’ve just this moment heard on TV some police force announcing that among weapons handed in were machetes and razor blades fixed in toothbrushes — I wonder how many of the latter there were?
 
Excluding the very occasional shootings carried out by police officers, can you link to any at all in the last year?
Just in Dudley a relatively quiet place compared to the near by Birmingham.

shooting

another shooting


drive by

teen shot

Any other drug related death was when a guy accidentally shot his brother in the head with a Crossbow whilst trying to fight off a rival drug gang, plus multiple stabbings resulting in both death and injury + a few deliberate car related deaths and injuries and people beaten to death.
 
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I'm just confused with the pistol vs rifle thing more than anything , i would have thought the pistol less lethal than an AR?
oh yeah the Americs are just way down the rabbitt hole for sure
No cause for confusion. The explanation is straightforward ........... the country is infested by gun nuts (plenty of them here, too). Gun nuts make the laws and gun nuts buy the guns.
 
No cause for confusion. The explanation is straightforward ........... the country is infested by gun nuts (plenty of them here, too). Gun nuts make the laws and gun nuts buy the guns.
As camera nuts buy cameras?
 
Just in Dudley a relatively quiet place compared to the near by Birmingham.

shooting

another shooting


drive by

teen shot

Any other drug related death was when a guy accidentally shot his brother in the head with a Crossbow whilst trying to fight off a rival drug gang, plus multiple stabbings resulting in both death and injury + a few deliberate car related deaths and injuries and people beaten to death.
As I said
Excluding the very occasional shootings carried out by police officers, can you link to any at all in the last year?
So, you've provided us with 4 links.

Link 1. No mention of a handgun
Link 2. No mention of a handgun
Link 3. Not a gun at all
Link 4. No mention of a handgun
 
Getting back on topic . . .

In the USA, about 40% of American adults own a gun or someone in their house has one https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
In Canada, it's about 26% https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/wd98_4-dt98_4/p2.html

Neither country has strict gun laws but that's a bit of a vague statement because Canada is one country and the USA is an amalgamation of 50 separate states with a wide range of different state laws.

In the USA, gun crime is outrageously high, in Canada it's still high but only 1/3rd of the USA rate per 100 people.

But it isn't just guns, all violent crime figures in the USA are between 3 and 147 times higher than in Canada. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime/Violent-crime

So, perhaps the real question is this: What is it about Americans that makes them much more prone to violence than other people?
 
Getting back on topic . . .

In the USA, about 40% of American adults own a gun or someone in their house has one https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/13/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
In Canada, it's about 26% https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/wd98_4-dt98_4/p2.html

Neither country has strict gun laws but that's a bit of a vague statement because Canada is one country and the USA is an amalgamation of 50 separate states with a wide range of different state laws.

In the USA, gun crime is outrageously high, in Canada it's still high but only 1/3rd of the USA rate per 100 people.

But it isn't just guns, all violent crime figures in the USA are between 3 and 147 times higher than in Canada. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime/Violent-crime

So, perhaps the real question is this: What is it about Americans that makes them much more prone to violence than other people?

Apart from just custom/habit and probably a large number of people who “hunt” (as they call it), often for food (deer) or use for pest control, they all live in fear; firstly of their government (the ‘militia’ types) and secondly of all those citizens (like them) who have guns!

It won’t change!

One other thing is that a high proportion (around 50% I think) of gun deaths are suicides -- and to those you could probably add all of these mass killings which really “suicide by cop” :(.
 
Does it really matter what you get shot by ?
Not really, but you did specify handguns ;). I expect most of the ones you cite were probably handguns (I haven’t checked them, relying on @Garry Edwards who’s usually correct*) but since that wasn’t specified they don’t really support your case.


*except when disagreeing with me of course :LOL:
 
Not really, but you did specify handguns
Fair enough !

I suspect some of the problems with regard legally held guns in the US is down to their background checks. In the UK to hold a gun license you have back ground checks into your criminal history and heath issues ( mental heath being the big one) I'm only guessing here but in the US as you have to pay for heath care a lot of people especially from poorer back grounds will not have had medical care for mental heath issues having no money to pay for it. So as long as they come up clear criminal wise their good to go ! Their classification of what is a gun is also very strange . In some parts even if you have serious criminal convictions you can still carry a Black powder six shooter because this is not classed as a firearm, some of their other rules are very confusing as well.

On the other side of this their are plenty of incidents where an active killer/person intent on doing harm to others is stopped by legal gun owners.
 
Fair enough !

I suspect some of the problems with regard legally held guns in the US is down to their background checks. In the UK to hold a gun license you have back ground checks into your criminal history and heath issues ( mental heath being the big one) I'm only guessing here but in the US as you have to pay for heath care a lot of people especially from poorer back grounds will not have had medical care for mental heath issues having no money to pay for it. So as long as they come up clear criminal wise their good to go ! Their classification of what is a gun is also very strange . In some parts even if you have serious criminal convictions you can still carry a Black powder six shooter because this is not classed as a firearm, some of their other rules are very confusing as well.

On the other side of this their are plenty of incidents where an active killer/person intent on doing harm to others is stopped by legal gun owners.
Mostly they don’t have background checks — maybe in NYC or California etc. Elsewhere you can buy guns at fairs and so on. The registration and record keeping is all on paper as Congress has mandated that to prevent any cross checking etc. It’s a morass.
 
Does it really matter what you get shot by ? In fairness I entered the third one incorrectly and it should have been this one https://www.dudleynews.co.uk/news/18204300.shots-fired-house-gornal/ there are far more than just these.
And again, that link doesn't say that it was a handgun . . .

Obviously, even if the police want to release details of the type of weapon used they can't do so unless they have recovered the weapon and they have to rely on the information provided to them by any witnesses, which is often unreliable. As a result, crime statistics report all cases where the weapon wasn't recovered as involving firearms even though, in the vast majority of threats and robberies where no shots were actually fired, they are believed to be fakes, toys, replicas or airguns.

I agree with you that, if it was a real gun, it doesn't really matter whether it was a handgun, a rifle or a shotgun but you did specifically say handguns . . . There are well over 1 million legally-owned rifles and shotguns in the UK but very few handguns.

Fair enough !

I suspect some of the problems with regard legally held guns in the US is down to their background checks. In the UK to hold a gun license you have back ground checks into your criminal history and heath issues ( mental heath being the big one) I'm only guessing here but in the US as you have to pay for heath care a lot of people especially from poorer back grounds will not have had medical care for mental heath issues having no money to pay for it. So as long as they come up clear criminal wise their good to go ! Their classification of what is a gun is also very strange . In some parts even if you have serious criminal convictions you can still carry a Black powder six shooter because this is not classed as a firearm, some of their other rules are very confusing as well.

On the other side of this their are plenty of incidents where an active killer/person intent on doing harm to others is stopped by legal gun owners.
Fair points. But there are a lot of other differences between here and the USA. Here, we have guns for all sorts of legitimate reasons (self defence isn't an acceptable reason except, in very limited circumstances, in Northern Ireland) but we keep them safely locked up at home. Because of this we can't get into an argument in the pub and shoot someone. And if a criminal breaks into our home it takes time (and noise) to get at the gun, which is likely to stop stupid decisions being made. And another big difference is that here in the UK (with the exception of S.2 shotguns only) we have to have a good reason to own a gun or too buy extras, and there are also strict limits on the amount of ammunition we can have, unlike in the USA, where nutters can buy whatever they want just because they live in "The land of the free" :(
 
Plenty of shootings in the UK where hand guns are used. Hand guns in the traditional sense being highly illegal but I guess if you going to kill someone your not worried about the illegal gun charge ! The UK's murder weapon of choice seems to be the Knife yet you can still buy knives that have no other purpose but killing.

UK shootings are not even a patch on one US City and its mostly criminal VS criminal over drugs turf.

Could you get hold of an illegal gun if you wanted, very likely no because you need connections in the UK underworld to get one.

You cant just walk up to some lads on a corner and ask to buy a gun.

As for knives its considerably harder to kill multiple people with a knife, when was the last time there was a mass murder in a UK school where 19 kids were stabbed to death. Never in history is when.
 
Yes, the vast majority of knife crime involves kitchen knives. The 14 year old boy who was convicted of murdering a 12 year old girl yesterday used a "hunting knife" though, and although these things can no longer be bought by mail order there must be a vast number still in circulation, and they can still be bought face-to-face by adults.

I think that the UK laws on knives are just crazy. On the farm, I always have a knife in my pocket, it's essential. It's a locking knife, which is the only type of folding knife that's safe to use, and on my own land it's perfectly legal, but if I walk into our farmyard, which is a public place, it's illegal :mad:

One thing that concerns me is the large number of imitation firearms that are used in crime. Most of these are very realistic and completely terrifying. Personally I can't tell the difference between most of them and the real thing unless I actually pick them up and feel the weight - some are much lighter than the real thing, most are a lot heavier. Some are air pistols, some are blank firers, some are just replicas, all are much more expensive than real guns and I just don't believe that they have a legitimate purpose and I don't understand why nothing has been done to ban their sale and possession.
Rules about folding/locking knives, rules about firearms and, pretty soon, a shift to non-lead bullets. I just know that criminals are going to be mighty troubled by that. Law-abiding citizens once again get dumped on, crims carry on regardless.
 
The NRA is holding its two-day annual conference at Houston tomorrow and it's just a 4 hour drive from the Ulvada school shooting which over there is 'just down the road' .Trump will be attending. Mayor Turner says that it will go ahead. Of course it will. It's America.



"The banners hanging down the front of the George R Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, Texas, promise 14 acres of guns and gear"

When incidents like this occur gun sales soar.


"Gun sales increased by three million in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in 2012. On Tuesday, 19 pupils and two teachers were killed at a primary school in Uvalde, Texas"
 
International numbers re gun ownership. There's a list of 'worst US mass shootings' included 2/3 the way down.


27 school shooting incidents have occurred this year . Republicans will say that the answer isn't gun control and history checks but put armed guards in the schools and even arm the teachers. Something might be done if they were as quick to look at the gun laws as they are to offer 'thoughts and prayers'

[/URL]

The U.S. has surpassed 200 mass shootings this year:

The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, has counted 212 mass shootings that have occurred so far this year, as of Tuesday. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter.
 
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Such shootings feed into the 'gun lobby narrative' that the way to beat such attacks is more guns in the hands of those there to defend the innocents. But sadly the same lobby take no action to act to reduce or prevent the guns being bought by those who are not suitable people to own them.

There is a dicotomy that seems to be beyond the wit of those involved :(
 
This is a clip of Democrat Beto O'Rourke, challenger to Texas Governor, Greg Abbot having a go at Abbot & co.. at a meeting yesterday

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E6UQ8nP15U


O'Rourke speaks to reporters after leaving the hall
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VheQL9te6Sg


This is Rep Senator Ted Cruz..NRA supporter, challenged by a Sky reporter after he left a vigil for those killed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atrMAK7TjKM

I couldn't hear what the Democrat was saying in the first video, but I read the comments and I have to say, nothing will change when we have morons saying stuff like this.

"In every conflict since the founding of our beautiful Country, Boys much younger than 18 fought for the self determination of everyone. To have Kens and Karens chip away our Second Amendment, when they themselves will NEVER sacrifice for the country is the real problem here."

The US has been built on exterminating the indigenous people, invading other countries, slaughtering millions of people, then allowing people to slaughter each other in their own country.
What a messed up situation, which is never going to change.
 
The US has been built on exterminating the indigenous people, invading other countries, slaughtering millions of people
A chip off the old block ! Britain is just as guilty off this, a hell of a lot of them were British or British descendants. I think the main problem is humans ! Were killing each other and all the earths other residents quite well.
 
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I couldn't hear what the Democrat was saying in the first video, but I read the comments and I have to say, nothing will change when we have morons saying stuff like this.

"In every conflict since the founding of our beautiful Country, Boys much younger than 18 fought for the self determination of everyone. To have Kens and Karens chip away our Second Amendment, when they themselves will NEVER sacrifice for the country is the real problem here."

The US has been built on exterminating the indigenous people, invading other countries, slaughtering millions of people, then allowing people to slaughter each other in their own country.
What a messed up situation, which is never going to change.

I agree. It just defies all common-sense . Ted Cruz made me angry with his comments. He actually blamed the media for hyping up the prospect of tighter gun laws. Sadly, I just can't see how any proposed meaningful legislation will make it through to law and it's just a matter of time before the next tragedy. Infact, tragedy isn't the appropriate term and I hear it time and again from the American public and newscasters following these mass shootings .Tragedies , generally, occur by accident and beyond any control. In these cases neither is applicable.

As you'll know,I'm sure..it's only these mass shootings that get the headlines. A few people shot..injured or dead..just don't make the news simply because it's the 'norm'.
 
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