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Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Guns | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
If you aren't going to institute a mandatory program of marksmanship and gun safety for everyone, then having a local stockpile of weapons for the citizenry to use should some foreign or domestic military threat emerge sounds like a waste of money at best and a disaster waiting to happen at worst.
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macaroniandcheese ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
you made the post. you clear things up. you are consistently creating strawmen in this thread. all americans with guns are insecure hillbillies; all people with guns are homocidal maniacs incapable of self-control; all people who oppose gun control want every person to own and use immense, outdated WWI equipment; the constitution only protects single shot arms; and instead of stabbing a person in the arm, a drunken fool's only action with a gun would be to shoot the victim between the eyes.
your arguments are against an enemy you have constructed inside your own brain. try joining us here in this debate.
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macaroniandcheese ![]() Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
anyone with ordinary access to the facility should definitely be required to participate. however there are those who would never join the fight anyways. they should not be required to participate. if you're willing to entertain mandatory training, i'm more than willing to support it.
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
one in six is close enough to every woman ever Hate to have to repeat myself but it's really not. It's in fact, 1 in 6. Here's a hint, it says "one in six" that's how I can tell.
you seem to think that there's no real threat of rape. do you know six women? Once again, you are combining two stats to come out with a different conclusion. The statistic is NOT 1 in 6 women will be raped. The statistic is 1 in 6 women will be "sexually assaulted" which you yourself has defined to include "* Someone forcing you to look at sexually explicit material " You do NOT need a hand gun on the off chance that someone is going to show you a playboy. When you start to equate showing someone pornography with the very physical act of rape you undercut the seriousness of rape. You are saying that rape is on par with looking at dirty pictures. I disagree, I think rape is far more serious than looking at dirty pictures. But, if it's your belief that "almost every woman" in the world lives in fear of seeing dirty pictures - you go right ahead and keep on believing that.
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Its so easy to blame it on the gun itself rather than where the blame really lies-- the person wielding it incorrectly. Once again, the issue is that we have, readily available, guns which are capable of doling out WAY more firepower than is justified. Certainly more firepower than the founding fathers could have anticipated. You can't stop one person from attacking another person. You can stop one person from attacking 50 other people by taking away his means to do so.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Cho's manifesto clearly indicates someone who was profoundly disturbed and incoherent.
He had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. He had been referred to mental health services several times. I think in light of these facts, chances are very, very good that he was not playing with a full deck.
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Why on earth should we depend upon the person wanting to buy the gun to be truthful? I don't know if this is still true, but back in the day, when you filed to a permit to carry a handgun in Conn. there was a question on the form to the effect of "Do you intend to use this weapon to commit a crime" with a yes/no box. I always felt that they weren't looking for the person the checked yes, but we instead looking for the person who checked yes, then erased it and checked no.
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
especially because of the (still unnumbered, thanks to nuggin) incidence of "accidental" killings. Holy crap are you ever paranoid! You think it's my fault that there are unreported accidental gun deaths. Wow! Here's a news flash - I'm at a computer typing, not out causing accidents. I'm super, not supernatural
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Please just go away. You aren't helping yourself, nor are you participating in this debate.
You just completely made up a bunch of statements and attributed them to me. Thanks, but no thanks. No where did I say that "ALL" Americans with guns are hillbillies.No where did I say that "ALL" people with guns are homocidal maniacs. No where did I say that "ALL" people opposed to gun control are gun collectors (in fact, I believe that's Jon's point) No where did I say that in OneWing's account of "this thing that happened at a party once" the "ONLY" recourse was that the drunken yahoo shoot the guy. your arguments are against an enemy you have constructed inside your own brain. try joining us here in this debate. Frankly, I think you need to take your own advice, and perhaps another time out.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Just a moment...
Statistically, the United States is not a particularly violent society. Although gun proponents like to compare this country with hot spots like Colombia, Mexico, and Estonia (making America appear a truly peaceable kingdom), a more relevant comparison is against other high-income, industrialized nations. The percentage of the U.S. population victimized in 2000 by crimes like assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and sexual incidents is about average for 17 industrialized countries, and lower on many indices than Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.
"The only thing that jumps out is lethal violence," Hemenway says. Violence, pace H. Rap Brown, is not "as American as cherry pie," but American violence does tend to end in death. The reason, plain and simple, is guns. We own more guns per capita than any other high-income country”maybe even more than one gun for every man, woman, and child in the country. A 1994 survey numbered the U.S. gun supply at more than 200 million in a population then numbered at 262 million, and currently about 35 percent of American households have guns. (These figures count only civilian guns; Switzerland, for example, has plenty of military weapons per capita.) "It's not as if a 19-year-old in the United States is more evil than a 19-year-old in Australia”there's no evidence for that," Hemenway explains. "But a 19-year-old in America can very easily get a pistol. That's very hard to do in Australia. So when there's a bar fight in Australia, somebody gets punched out or hit with a beer bottle. Here, they get shot." In general, guns don't induce people to commit crimes. "What guns do is make crimes lethal," says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there's a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent." Gun deaths fall into three categories: homicides, suicides, and accidental killings. In 2001, about 30,000 people died from gunfire in the United States. Set this against the 43,000 annual deaths from motor-vehicle accidents to recognize what startling carnage comes out of a barrel. The comparison is especially telling because cars "are a way of life," as Hemenway explains. "People use cars all day, every day”and 'motor vehicles' include trucks. How many of us use guns?" Suicides accounted for about 58 percent of gun fatalities, or 17,000 to 18,000 deaths, in 2001; another 11,000 deaths, or 37 percent, were homicides, and the remaining 800 to 900 gun deaths were accidental. For rural areas, the big problem is suicide; in cities, it's homicide. ("In Wyoming it's hard to have big gang fights," Hemenway observes dryly. "Do you call up the other gang and drive 30 miles to meet up?") Homicides follow a curve similar to that of motor-vehicle fatalities: rising steeply between ages 15 and 21, staying fairly level from there until age 65, then rising again with advanced age. Men between 25 and 55 commit the bulk of suicides, and younger males account for an inflated share of both homicides and unintentional shootings. (Males suffer all injuries, including gunshots, at much higher rates than females.)
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2521 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
Thanks Nat, I've been so busy replying to three different people, I haven't had time to go digging.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
The ways in which people die by guns would not make a good television cop show. Rarely does a suburban homeowner beat a burglar to the draw in his living room at 3 a.m. Few urban pedestrians thwart a mugger by brandishing a pistol. "We have done four surveys on self-defense gun use," Hemenway says. "And one thing we know for sure is that there's a lot more criminal gun use than self-defense gun use. And even when people say they pulled their gun in 'self-defense,' it usually turns out that there was just an escalating argument”at some point, people feel afraid and draw guns." Hemenway has collected stories of self-defense gun use by simply asking those who pulled guns what happened. A typical story might be: "We were in the park drinking. Drinking led to arguing. We ran to our cars and got our guns." Or: "I was sitting on my porch. A neighbor came up and we got into a fight. He threw a beer at me. I went inside and got my gun." Hemenway has sent verbatim accounts of such incidents to criminal-court judges, asking if the "self-defense" gun use described was legal. "Most of the time," he says, "the answer was no." Most murderers are not hired killers. Instead, killings happen during fights between rival gangs or angry spouses, or even from road rage, and leave deep regret in their wake. "How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense?" Hemenway asks rhetorically. "Answer: zero to once in a lifetime. How about inappropriately”because you were tired, afraid, or drunk in a confrontational situation? There are lots and lots of chances. When your anger takes over, it's nice not to have guns lying around." Many suicides, similarly, are impulsive acts. Follow-up interviews with people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge reveal that few of them tried suicide again. One survivor volunteered this epiphany after jumping: "I realized that all the problems I had in life were solvable”except one: I'm in midair." In the United States, suicide rates are high in states with an abundance of guns”southern and western mountain states, for example”and lower in places like New Jersey, New England, or Hawaii, where guns are relatively scarce. Nine case-control studies have shown that guns in the house are a risk factor for suicide. Firearms turn the agonizing into the irreversible. Virtually all industrialized nations have stronger firearms laws than the United States. We have no national law, for example, requiring a license to own a gun (though some states require one). Almost all other countries have licensure laws, and many demand that gun owners undergo training, also not required here. Hemenway scoffs at the rote objection, "A determined criminal will always get a gun," responding, "Yes, but a lot of people aren't that determined. I'm sure there are some determined yacht buyers out there, but when you raise the price high enough, a lot of them stop buying yachts."
In most of these United States, many types of gun sale trigger neither a background check nor a paper trail. "You can go to a gun show, flea market, the Internet, or classified ads and buy a gun”no questions asked," Hemenway says. It is illegal to sell a firearm to a convicted felon or for criminal purposes, although sting operations have proved that some licensed vendors flout even this proscription. "In 1998, police officers from Chicago (where possessing a new handgun is illegal) posed as local gang members and went firearms shopping in the suburbs," Hemenway writes. "In store after store, clerks willingly sold powerful handguns to these agents, who made it clear that they intended to use these guns to 'take care of business' on the streets of Chicago."
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Jon Inactive Member |
First, let me just say that my last post was more or less a joke/exaggeration. I'd only go after someone like that if they were really trying to get me bad
![]() Now, why can other gun-toting nations have lower crime rate than the U.S.? Don't you think you ant-gun folks need to address that before you can claim guns are responsible for all the U.S.'s mayhem? It seems to me like you folks are all lazy/ignorant; and I am not trying to say that in a bad way. Why get rid of the weapon when it's the person”and ultimately society as a whole”that is the problem? Why do you think that in one of the most racist and minority-oppressed nations we also have an insanely high crime rate? Why is it that a person of African descent is 7 more likely to commit a murder than one of European descent? Is it the guns? Perhaps the problems lies much deeper... Do you think that it would help if, in the near future, you stopped worrying about such petty crap as how/where to get the gun(s) and started trying to fix the real problem? Once again, I do not mean this as any offence, but people like you”who are ignorant of what's going on”are the real cause behind these social problems that lead to increased Let me simplify that: How can you make the issue solely about gun control/ownership when there are so many other obvious differences between nations with legalized guns and low crime? You can take away the guns... but the minorities will still be oppressed. You can send all the poor children to good schools... but the minorities will still be oppressed. You can pass”and have passed”laws declaring equality... but the minorities will still be oppressed. Will you deal with the real issues: minority oppression, institutionalized inequality, racism, negative stereotypes; or will you try to fix it on a superficial gun control/ownership level simply to remain ignorant of the real problems you refuse to address? The choice is yours to have. The future depends on your decision. ![]() Jon.
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Hyroglyphx Inactive Member |
It is the ease of killing from a distance that is the issue with guns, juggs. It is quite difficult, more intimate, and far more risky to the attacker to stab or bludgeon a victim to death. I agree that murder from a distance is far more impersonal, but it doesn't it make it any more legal to unjustifiably take someone's life. But really, this doesn't mean much of anything. The point is, as my esteemed colleague, Jon, has already pointed out: Take away guns, criminals will get 'em anyway. Criminalize guns, criminals will get them anyway. Melt all the guns for some recycled, benign use, murder will still happen. The battle is fought in our hearts. If you really want to stop murder-by-handgun, you have to train people how to live in a society conducive to peace. But until Jesus comes and beats our weapons into fishing hooks, I'm gonna be strapped.... 'cause Joe Gangbanger certainly will be. But having said that, of course I am also sympathetic to the anti-gun argument. Its unfortunate that some of our greatest ingenuity has been geared toward destruction and death. Its sad really. But that only reinforces my sentiments that its really about the renewal of our minds rather than simply eradicating guns altogether. The eradication of guns should be representative of our disposition, not the other way around.
Cho was insane. He had severe mental problems, no doubt. But do insane people methodically chain doors, carry 15 clips, buy a tactical vest, stop in the middle of the siege to film themselves if they are crazy? It seems that he knew exactly what he was doing to me. Therefore, lets place the blame on Cho rather on sweeping indictments against guns, which, ironically enough, was the tool used to stop him from continuing the carnage.
He lied on his application to buy the guns, saying that he was never involuntarily committed to a mental instution. Then maybe more emphasis should be placed on the people who released him than on the owner of the gun store. Afterall, we can just turn the argument around on the anti-gun lobby. They say that Cho had access to guns, therefore guns are bad. But if we were to go tit for tat, I could just say Cho shouldn't have had access to the outside world, or at the very least, he should have been flagged in a Federal system that would have prevented him from purchasing the gun in the first place.
Why on earth should we depend upon the person wanting to buy the gun to be truthful? I agree. So what is your suggestion in ameliorating or amending that? I say that people deemed with serious mental problems should be flagged... Stigma be damned/Political Correctness be damned.
Cars are not manufactured for the sole purpose of killing other people. Guns are manufactured for the sole purpose of murdering any one. In fact, they are designed as protection from it. But then again, swords have only one function too. Should we outlaw them as well? Or is that a bit extreme?
Can you show statistics that support the contention that many crimes are prevented with guns used in self-defense? Quite frankly I'm not willing to put that much effort into the debate to go searching for stale statistics when the obvious is as plain as could be. I just don't see why I need to penalized because some gun owners are either stupid or malicious. Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : typo "God is like the sun. You can't look at it. But without it you can't look at anything else." -G.K. Chesterton
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
Read the article I most recently posted.
The US crime rate is roughly the same as 17 other comparable industrialized nations. The difference is that lethal violence is much higher here. The difference is handguns.
quote: It's better to be "oppressed" than dead. Besides, your error is in assuming that we can only ever work on one societal problem at a time.
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