Summations Only

China has begun to let people start to form businesses and keep part of their money instead of it all going to the state. It has not always been such and you know this very well I'm sure. Still, the state considers such practices a privilege, and assumes the right to remove such privileges at will depending on circumstance. Such practices are not a constitutional right.

Unless the nascent police state has more and bigger guns ... and tanks ... and better supplies for a siege, 'cos of being outside the log cabin.I have noticed that when people who think the government is already a tyranny try to stand it off (or people who are just plain crooks without any particular ideology try to do the same thing) the government usually wins. I can't think of a single case where the government has instead said: "Oh, you've got a 45 caliber gun? We're sorry, we didn't know. In that case, we're not going to try to enforce our laws." What actually happens is that in the end the government wins, but with more dead people at the end of it than if the guy had been armed with a wet towel and a potato-peeler.

I apologize, should have labled them better. Thanks.

Correct, I cannot provide causation but can make a strong claim that as the per capita rate of gun ownership increases so does the homicide rate . Developed countries with low gun ownership generally have lower homicide rates and vice versa. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

You said in the other thread: Says who? Why not rifles, shotguns and assault rifles?Why specifically handguns?- Oni

Well here is the data from wikipedia for what it is worth.Not seeing an immediate correlation. Here is some incomplete data that could lead to a correlation coefficient relating gun ownership rates to homicides.Still not seeing an R value approaching 1 jumping out of the data.Maybe there is something more to homicide rates than just gun ownership.Edited by anglagard, : Using wrong data set to compute an R-value

Hi Voltaire30, It's even funnier that you buy the faux news spin on it rather than actually look at the live video feeds from the sites. Populations ranged from kids to grandparents, many working jobs and doing the protests in shifts, some thinking it was important enough to quit their jobs and go full time. Many unemployed workers were also involved.Of course direct experience is always better than news feeds, especially now in the conservative owned informercial news age.You also buy the "take away money from productive individuals" bs of the conservative spin. Hilarious. What they were protesting for was fair and just taxation, so that the rich give as much as they do. They were also protesting for getting the criminals that caused the economic crunch to be prosecuted and have their day in court.Perhaps you think white collar criminals should be exempt from the rules that apply to the rest of us because they are "productive" even though all they produce is sheets of paper with paperhouse money.Productive is when you make a product not a house of cards. No the protest worked because the British government could not ignore the protest in the international awareness - they did not like being shown as the oppressors. You think they were not oppressive? I suggest you do some research. Which was not done by, but deplored by, those involved in the non-violent movement, the one that succeeded. Which is why Ghandi also worked, just back then there were real news reporters reporting real news to the world that was not filtered by boss editors to the whim of conservative owners.It just happened faster with the public media. Really? Seems you don't know much real history. Every see how the Native people were treated as they were forced into tiny reservations with barely marginal living conditions?Did you watch the PBS special on the freedom rides and the bus burning and beatings at the start of the civil rights movement?Are you aware of the numbers of people that were killed ?Are you aware that it took news of these burnings beatings killings before the US government got off their butts and enforced things in a just way? Try the states of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. We have this curious system here where states have the first crack at maintaining peace and order their way.Also look at Arizona and their "concentration camps" of immigrants today. Police states can exist in pockets as well as nations. What is moot about having governments use guns to attack unarmed citizens in suppressing a peaceful protest being seen world wide as unnecessarily oppressive and wrong compared to justified reply to armed rebellion? You don't seem to get the point. Which is why government change by evolution rather than revolution, through non-violent peaceful protest rather than armed conflict, to build on what is good in current government and altering what is bad, ends up with better results.The changes in governments that have been achieved through non-violent protest are massive, and always trend to better civil rights, just look at the improved government in the US where the baby was not thrown out.Armed insurrections just do not have that history. They are much more likely to end in another round of despotic government just with different people at the top. South America, Cuba, just some examples. We'll just have to disagree on that. You seem to have a fundamentally entrenched belief that things are better with guns. This prevents you from seeing the possibilities of non-violent protest, even when presented with evidence of their productiveness. You didn't finish.Unarmed non-violent protest creates change by evolution of government rather than by revolution, building on what you have to improve it. This can occur in any form of government, even oppressive police states. It may not happen in a lifetime, but a trend is established that grows roots and branches. It does not try to accomplish everything at once, just relieve the most egregious conditions first.Added by edit: BTW -- can you tell me how the "former soviet union" was transformed into the current political states and whether that involve an armed citizenry? Was it by war?Or did it occur peacefully, non-violently ...Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : ..Edited by RAZD, : added by edit at the end

What oppressive tyranny are you talking about? It is the 21 century with nuclear weapons and chemical/biological weapons not 18th century with a muskets and cannon balls. The USA is not Syria. Our military would never go to war against its own citizens, in the way you speak of. But if you think that you need an assault rifle so you can shoot your own soldiers, go right ahead. Again, apples to oranges. Our government is not the 18th century British government. If you want to fight our own military and government, you are going to need more than assault rifles and handguns, i.e. IEDs, RPGs, tanks, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft armed with gattling guns and hellfire rockets, landmines, maybe a couple of dirty bombs, etc. Than the ammendment is non-existent, because if the US military wanted to wipe out its population, it would do a pretty good job by nuking all of its major cities and then wiping up with all its other assets. You are really not thinking this thing through. If there were no holds barred the government and the military would have the upper hand, unless you plan to stock up on military grade weaponry that I described above. This will never happen, because 99.9% people who are sane like myself exist in the US military and will not allow this to happen. This may have been true in the 18th and even the 19th centuries. I do not believe the weapons that we have a right to under the 2nd Ammendment would even slow down a tyannical government who is intent on wiping out its own citizens. It would become a moot point anyways since at that point all 'rights' would be void including the right to live once the government and citizens went to war with each other.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

Here is one study. Not saying it is conclusive but all evidence must be weighed. But thought I would add some fuel to the fire. However also balance that out with this graph of homicide rate (per 100,000) vs household gun ownership (from the University of California at Berkley): Source: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~leehk/stat/From this graph, it appears there is no direct correlation between gun ownership and the overall homicide rate (not just gun related) on an individual state to state basis. However, there is a link between an increase in gun ownership and gun deaths (murder and suicide).
But is not as simple as that as you must weigh in other factors as well i.e. unemployment, inequality, etc.Below is a graph of homicide vs gun ownership by country (in this case developed countries). Source: http://www.ryerson.ca/...Net/issues/globalfirearmdeaths.htmlI suggest you read the whole analysis on the above graphs and the article below for it to make sense. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...ns-violence-and-gun-controlSome interesting points brought up by the Washington Post Article above: Again, I am just showing the stastics and will let you decide what that tells you.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

Well if we're talking about an overthrowing an established police state - I'd expect many of the salesman would stay on the outside. But black markets do exist in police states. Do you have any support for this? The black market and bribery did exist in the USSR. Are you saying that the USSR, with all of its multiple failings, managed to somehow defeat smuggling?And if we're talking about a state that is so absolutely powerful that bribery, persuasion and coercion could not work - how on earth is a frontal assault on the border police or customs officials going to work? You can't do it on your own - and organising a sufficiently strong force of armed fighters will be 'snuffed out before it got started'. and 'millions will get executed' (your hyperbole, not mine).And what the heck are you going to do next? In an absolute police state, you can't keep an organised militia hidden for too long - there is always the strong risk that someone is going to betray you.But such absolute police states simply don't exist. See: The French Resistance, the Forest Brothers, the Lithuanian partisans, the Cursed soldiers, the armed Jewish Resistance...Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi DevilsAdvocate, It seems to me that there is a fundamentally firmly held belief in many that guns make you independently free compared to non-gun owners, that you are able to enforce your freedom personally without regard to others or any need for others. Frontier Cowboys on the plains pseudo-nostalgia.This is, of course a dissonant belief, at odds with the reality of modern life and the overwhelming development of arms in the militaries around the world.Canada, with essentially the same colonial history (other than evolving their independence from Britain peacefully ... ) does not share this Frontier Cowboy to the same degree (it exists a bit in Alberta I believe), but they have gun controls without much complaint and they have much lower deaths by guns.Yet we also have Switzerland with fewer gun related deaths and a high degree of gun ownership of military caliber (albeit with training and controls on ammo).The real difference has to be in the psychology of the gun crowd here, it seems to me, and that's where I come to see this idee fixe about gun ownership → freedom rather than gun ownership → responsibility: you can be irresponsible with your gun but they can't take it away from you?Enjoy

Looking at the second graph, there appears to be a near straight-line relationship between deaths by guns and the percentage of population that owns them. Which seems to make sense.But there are two obvious outliers
1. USA - which looks to have almost twice as many deaths as it should and
2. New Zealand - which looks to have half as many as it should.(Switzerland too is interesting as it's only just off the curve too)Without looking any further, it seems clear that when people have guns, they kill more than when they don't - which would be no great surprise to most people.But it also seems that for the USA there's more going on. It's hard to avoid concluding that Americans are more violent* than the average guy - at least than the average guy with a gun.(*violent isn't the word I'm looking for - something more like punative, vengeful etc.)

Then I would suggest that you look further, because this is a chart of gun homicides per 100,000 people - not all homicides per 100,000 people.If gun control simply shifts the weapons used in murders from guns to knives or clubs, it's hard to see how that's any better. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything but homemade Excel charts from unspecified data, and at any rate it was all US-specific. But I don't see that your contention that "when people have guns, they kill more than when they don't" can be supported by this data. They may very well kill more with guns when guns are available than when they're not, but that seems like a tautology. The question is whether the availability of guns causes people to commit more murders, and at least in the US - where the Brady Score (an index of a state's level of gun control) has no statistical association with the overall homicide rate whatsoever - that doesn't seem to be the case. Proponents of that idea would have to demonstrate both a statistical relationship and a putative mechanism by which guns make people murderous.

Hi Tangle, The US has some psychological factors IMHYSAO that lead to unreasonable needs to have and use guns: the image of the frontier\cowboy living large and free, regardless of their ability or sense of responsibility ... too many cowboy movies\tv?There is also likely a correlation to population density\concentrations.Enjoy

America has some big wealth disparity issues, as well as some pretty entrenched and lethally violent gang cultures. According to this

quote:

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Between 1990 and 1994, 75% of all homicide victims age 21 and younger in the city of Boston had a prior criminal record.[35] In Philadelphia, the percentage of those killed in gun homicides that had prior criminal records increased from 73% in 1985 to 93% in 1996.[12][36] In Richmond, Virginia, the risk of gunshot injury is 22 times higher for those males involved with crime

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Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.