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That theory has been disproven. The only way to get a major cabin depressurization is through explosives. And as I mentioned before, even if people can't go to a gun store and buy the guns doesn't mean they can't get them anyway. The majority of people won't go out to buy a gun to intentionally kill someone anyway. Way to let the minority run the show.

The majority of people won't go out to buy a gun to intentionally kill someone anyway.
If you buy a firearm & you are not willing to use it to kill people (like your attacker) the firearm will not protect you in any way shape or form. If you are buying/carrying a firearm to ‘protect you’ you are INTENTIONALLY buying/carrying it to kill people.

Personal protection is the only reason to possess weaponry,
Personal protection is the main reason people buy ‘legitimate firearms’, but 9 time out of ten that firearm will not protect the person from harm because they have not got the firearm ready in time to use it, or they don’t have the will to use it to kill.

Shooting animals means you're too lazy to make adequate fencing,
I guessing you have never been on a farm before, most fences are 6 wire fences on some farm have a 10,000km+ perimeter mean that the fence is just a border & the cost would be prohibitive at best to make rabbit & other vermin proof.

You'd rather take lives, to kill, than expend a little energy to do something correctly.
I myself don’t need a gun to protect myself, I have myself to protect myself & the will to kill, that is all I need. A pen (& a list of other assorted good including my hands) in my pocket can be use to kill an attacker if I need it to. If someone attack me with a firearm & has not killed me with it before I could do anything, I have the knowledge that they do not have the will to kill to me.

Criminals will always have guns,
In Australia most crim outside a major crime network have a hard time getting their hand on firearm to the point where they just don’t use them for crime. This is also because the police have different response to armed-robbery vs robbery, they will hunt down a armed robber over normal robber.

I know people who have large collections of illegal weaponry. They will be more likely to attack when they know their victims will be unarmed and powerless.
So you know people who use illegal weaponry to attack powerless victims.

If a man is attempting to rape a woman at gunpoint, she should shoot his F***ing head off. Both of 'em.
The only reason she should not kill him is that she should be aloud to whip him to death in a public place for all to see.

Also in your first refutation, you're assuming that the intruder would make no noise, that no alarm would go off, no glass would break, not even the tiniest out-of-the-ordinary noise to alert her intution. Well, in that case she's screwed whether she's got a gun or not. More likely she'll hear something, maybe try to call the police (because they'll get there in under the 5 minutes or so it will take the intruder to kill and rob her.) without a gun she can only sit and await her fate, with one she can get him before he preforms the coup de gras on her.
I was assuming a mugging. I never have known of a robbery of a house while the house was occupied because most robbers strike house when they are unoccupied, this might be a bit different in the USA due to there lacks firearm laws. If I did have an intruder the combo of LED torch & bokken will work happily.

As for the terrorist theory, did the terrorists outnumber the other passengers? No? Well then why the hell wouldn't the other passengers shoot them before they could get away with anything?? Mythbusters scientifically disproved the gunshot-depressurization bit already.
They said it on Mythbuster therefor it must be true, it’s not like they got stuff wrong before. I haven’t seen that episode yet so I don’t know how they prove it but in both cases (able to or enable to depressurize) the terrorists is still dancing in the endzone if people aloud firearm on an airplane. Terrorists don’t need to outnumber the rest, just good planing. Like a set of sawn-off shotgun that would clean house, it just like shooting duck in a barrel. If I was on a plane with terrorist, the last thing I would need is some dumbass who think he the hot s**t firing away.

1. Who says you have to purchase a firearm for the express purpose of killing someone? It's only for killing a potential attacker, one that you don't know if they'll materialize or not. You need a license for a concealed firearm anyway. What about target shooting? The gun's main purpose would be for sport, the second for self-defense.

2. This is a fact that I'd like to see some proof of.

3. Vermin can include deer that can jump said fence.

4. Unless of course they have the advantage of surprise, then you're still kinda screwed.

5. Australia is a different country from the US. Drugs are illegal and people still get them. Where there's a demand there's a supply, no matter the law.

6. She wasn't saying that at all.

7. The Eigth Amendment of the US Constitution guards against cruel and unusual punishment, so that wouldn't happen anytime soon. Therefore blowing the would-be rapist away is a much easier thing to go with.

8. Most do, but there is always the possibility that you could come back to the house while they're robbing it. And a bokken doesn't seem like such a great weapon for use indoors, or at least confined spaces. A handgun still works better. mrgreen

9. In the US, those "dumbasses" are US Air Marshals who are trained for that sort of thing, and they're the only ones allowed to carry a weapon on the plane.

Even without guns, the fact remains that crime still exists in Australia as it does here, so getting rid of guns won't really reduce crime. I'll stick by this statement: guns cause crime like flies cause garbage.

I grew up around guns. My dad was a hunter and he always kept his rifles in a gun cabinet, and had the key with him at all times (he's a smart guy). The truth of the matter is that anything can be used as a weapon. Frames to curtain rods( have one right next to my bed). Everything can be used for protection or otherwise. Blunt force trauma is not hard to inflict (except for grannies, they should have a taser on their person at all times).

Hmm, we either move troops from Iraq or Afghanistan over to Sudan and Darfur, which Iraq and Afghanistan need troops more than any area of the world, or we can start up the draft!

What we'd have to do with Sudan is just that: full-blown war. It's the only way to take control of a situation like that. We tried it before in Somalia, and ended up getting soldiers killed for no good reason because we tried a much smaller-scale conflict. Sudan would probably end up looking a lot like Iraq looks now, with a lot of insurgents invading the country. And with the way people b***h and moan about how things are going in Iraq, would you be willing to commit knowing full well that American lives would still be at risk?

Why is it that when the US uses its superpower might for its own interests we're the bad guy? Apparently we're only supposed to use force when other countries want us to use it. Is that all we are, the world's guard dog for other countries to use at their discretion rather than doing things of our own accord? Really we shouldn't have had to get involved in either Bosnia or Kosovo because that was Europe's problem, not ours.

And it's not like European countries lack military power. They could easily do something about Sudan if they wanted to, it's just they don't want to risk their countrymen's lives for something that isn't their problem. So their solution is "Let's have those blood-thirsty, oil-hungry American pigs do it, 'cause they love to fight and kill!" Simply put, Sudan is not top priority on our to-do list because we've got other matters to fix before we can even think about Sudan. If anythng, other countries in Africa should do something about Sudan because it's their problem, not our problem, and not even Europe's problem. People wouldn't give a rat's a** about Sudan if it wasn't for the genocide, and because it's genocide then I guess it has to take center stage above everything else, current situation in Afghanistan and Iraq be damned.

And I think you should study Saddam Hussein more. He wasn't a nice guy, either. His people could be taken off the street for no apparent reason other than suspision and be interrogated, tortured or killed because of a false accusation. If that isn't a gross violation of basic human rights then I don't know what is. You might want to look up stuff on the first Gulf War as well, if you're wondering why Some Iraqis don't trust us.

Really, to hear such things from you people that you'd rather pull out because things aren't going as how you think they should, or because you, who haven't looked at everything as to why we're in this war, and that American troops are dying for a "lie", you make me sick. You'd rather just take the easy way out so you don't have to deal with it every day. You leave now and all those soldiers who gave their lives were lost in vain. You think you can get whatever you want without working for it. Well I'm sorry but that's not how the world works, and it has never, ever worked that way. As far as I'm concerned it's people like you who will be the downfall of the United States from its top spot.

Ah, another person who's simply given up. I don't care if you never supported the war in the first place, but that does not mean that you can't support the mission. You seem to think that it wasn't going to take too much effort to win this, but as you can see the partial effort that has been given is not enough, therefore we need to step it up.

Oh, the "We're no better than they are" argument. So because we have some problems, which aren't anywhere near as bad as the problems they have, we don't have the right to give them a better way to live. Really I think you're taking the plethora of rights that you have, many more than anyone around the world has, for granted. You think that after 9/11 we'd keep the same amount of freedoms that we had previously? Gimme a break. There will never be a day when you have total and complete freedom. There is always a balance between freedom and security, and when something like this happens, the balance will shift more towards freedom. Of course you probably view 9/11 as the government's excuse to take away freedoms. But can you point out one case, just one case in particular where someone's rights were violated? Bush found a loophole to get the USAPATRIOT Act through, so therefore it's still legal even without the consent of the Supreme Court. Really is it so bad to give up a little privacy for the sake of your security? I guess it must be. Though with as free as we are you make it sound like we're slaves anyway. Maybe you'd prefer a totalitarian police state?

After what we did at the end of the first Gulf War, we had to go back. Bush 41 stated that all we would do in the Gulf War was expel Hussein's army from Kuwait, which we did. We had the opportunity then to remove him from power, but we didn't. Instead we encouraged the Shi'ites and the Kurds to rise up, but without our support they were simply crushed by the Iraqi army, and hundreds of thousands of people were victims of terrible torture, while our troops had to sit on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border and watch these refugees come swarming in, mangled and beaten, and couldn't do a damn thing about it. I wonder why they don't trust us after we did that. This is our chance to make amends with them, to show them that we are with them this time, and all you want to do is get out because we don't have the right.

And whether you like it or not, this is a clash of civilizations with two separate and opposing views, and the only way to solve it is through bloodshed, to prove to one side that their ways are better than the other. Really with as bad as you say our qway of life is I'm sure the way of fundamental Islam is far worse, especially for you.