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On July 09 2008 02:12 Kwark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2008 02:10 HeadBangaa wrote:On July 09 2008 01:54 Kwark wrote:
The problem here is a conflict of cultures. In America gun ownership is seen as natural in order to defend oneself. In the UK it is not. I'd argue that the contexts are very different because of that and therefore the arguments of the other seem completely alien. I'll stop debating gun ownership in the US if you guys stop debating it in the UK. Hmm, I can't agree to these terms. Everything I've said with respect to state and people is totally in line with Lockean social contract. Well you're refusing to accept my arguments regarding why the gun is a rather arbitary point on a scale between a penknife and a nuke and not some sacred guardian of personal liberty and I'm refusing to accept your arguments on how crime rates are unrelated to gun ownership and how the gun equalises things by removing the strength factor. We could either keep repeating our points and dismissing the others because we are both fully indoctrinated in our own culture or we could just give up and play some bw.
Its not an arbitrary point. Anything explosive is fundamentally different. How can you consider that there would be so many people willing to blow themselves up? No one would use an explosive in self defense. Thats ludicrous.
There are two issues: the right to defend yourself from robbers and the right to defend yourself against the government. Guns help defend against both.
With explosive devices you cannot defend yourself against a robber though. If you didn't think it was ludicrous you wouldn't have added it and yet you say its rather arbitrary? Really? Explosive devices versus precise devices? Theres no fundamental difference there?
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On July 09 2008 02:21 Kwark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2008 02:16 evandi wrote:On July 09 2008 02:05 Kwark wrote:On July 09 2008 02:00 evandi wrote:On July 09 2008 01:55 Kwark wrote:On July 09 2008 01:54 evandi wrote:On July 09 2008 01:51 Kwark wrote:On July 09 2008 01:45 evandi wrote:On July 09 2008 01:25 Kwark wrote:
And tanks have been deployed by air for years.
Not in parachutes, lol. On long runways. Light tanks are actually deployable by parachute although I didn't say they had so you're not even making a point here. You're not only attempting to be pedantic and failing but you're also wrong. I pointed to dropping things in paratroops, and you responded with saying that tanks have been deployed by air for years. I didn't say they had not been deployed by air for years, I just said they aren't deployed by parachute. And even if they would be you would have like one per transport vs 100 infantry. I was in an airborne division and there were no tanks. Check the tank division. I hear that's where they keep them. Check the history of airborne warfare. And no, infantry is the most important fighting force. And no, they do not drop Abrams from parachutes. If I understand it correctly the Abrams is a MBT and therefore not a light tank and therefore not what I said. But we don't use Abrams, we use Challenger 2s (which for the record are much more awesome). However I believe our Scimitars are parachutable. Well, regardless, each tank weighs about as much as 100 infantry so take your pick. There is also a lack of a sense of scale. They are very expensive and few in number. It isn't too hard to remove their tracks. And the ease of disabling them makes their expense negated cheaply in areas where there are cover. Tanks are not good in various terrain. One such terrain would be the city. If tanks were as numerous as needed to take over a country that is not smaller than the country that produced them, you would think there would be far fewer casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do you mean well regardless? I said tanks could be deployed by air. You said they couldn't be parachuted and acted like you'd made a great point. I pointed out I didn't specifically say parachuted but actually some can be parachuted. You claimed they can't and pointed out the biggest tank you could think of. I demonstrated that actually Sheridans can and therefore you have no idea what you are talking about. And then you say "well regardless"? You lost the argument. You claim to have actually been in the army and yet somehow I know more about your armys capability than you do. You stood your ground over a rather stupid point and it turns out you were completely wrong. You have been fully discredited and you can't just say "well...." and move on as if it didn't happen and you might still have some credibility.
You said tanks could be deployed by air after I said they couldn't be parachuted. How does it add to the discussion to claim you weren't disagreeing with me?
EDIT: My point there was that there are fundamentally things that tanks either can't do are not cost effective to use. And I was right in that argument while your previous statements implied something that was not true.
I guess you are right about tanks being parachuted, but you are wrong about the scale. You have been wrong about the scale since the beginning of the argument. Now we can be equally non-credible. Or perhaps you using fallacies such as implying that firearms are only used for murder, and that arguing against the trustworthy-ness of the government means a lack of faith in democracy tip the credibility scales in my direction a bit?
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United States43799 Posts
You're not getting it. When in a debate you use the specialist knowledge card (for example you claiming to be in the army in this debate) you stake your reputation on it. If therefore I was in any doubt on an issue army related I would defer to your experience. For example when Moltke posts on a historical subject everybody assumes he is right, simply because of his reputation and experience. The flip side of that is that when you are unequivocably wrong you lose all respect. After all if you don't know what you're talking about in the field of your experience then how can you be trusted to talk about anything. That is what has happened here. You are apparently a member of the American Armed Forces who knows less about the American Armed Forces than an average British civilian. Therefore the result of engaging in any debate with you will be knowing less than I did at the start. This is why I am not going to bother with you.
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On July 09 2008 02:49 Kwark wrote:
You're not getting it. When in a debate you use the specialist knowledge card (for example you claiming to be in the army in this debate) you stake your reputation on it. If therefore I was in any doubt on an issue army related I would defer to your experience. For example when Moltke posts on a historical subject everybody assumes he is right, simply because of his reputation and experience. The flip side of that is that when you are unequivocably wrong you lose all respect. After all if you don't know what you're talking about in the field of your experience then how can you be trusted to talk about anything. That is what has happened here. You are apparently a member of the American Armed Forces who knows less about the American Armed Forces than an average British civilian. Therefore the result of engaging in any debate with you will be knowing less than I did at the start. This is why I am not going to bother with you.
You took one thing out of the entire argument and then ran away. I told the truth, there were no tanks. That was my experience. I was in the infantry. We were told of the value of infantry quite a bit, and it was surprising to me. No, infantrymen don't know everything about the army, how could they? Infantrymen have one job to do and it isn't overall tactics, and strategy. I was relating what I saw, not as a specialist. I am not even currently in the army, I said I WAS.
I guess the fact that you are saying that I am currently in the army would call into question your ability to read and comprehend, but I would regard that as what some would refer to as a "mistake".
Logic doesn't care about the fact that humans aren't perfect. Science thrives in spite of the fact that humans aren't perfect. The point with both is that arguments about truth don't depend at all on the credibility of the participants.
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On July 09 2008 02:49 Kwark wrote:
You're not getting it. When in a debate you use the specialist knowledge card (for example you claiming to be in the army in this debate) you stake your reputation on it. If therefore I was in any doubt on an issue army related I would defer to your experience. For example when Moltke posts on a historical subject everybody assumes he is right, simply because of his reputation and experience. The flip side of that is that when you are unequivocably wrong you lose all respect. After all if you don't know what you're talking about in the field of your experience then how can you be trusted to talk about anything. That is what has happened here. You are apparently a member of the American Armed Forces who knows less about the American Armed Forces than an average British civilian. Therefore the result of engaging in any debate with you will be knowing less than I did at the start. This is why I am not going to bother with you.
From now on every time I'm right about a single side issue in an argument I'll run away and hide from any aspects of the argument I might have been wrong about.
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If everyone had portable suitcase nukes, i'm sure we'd all act rather civil most of the time.
Discuss.
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On July 09 2008 03:21 L wrote:
If everyone had portable suitcase nukes, i'm sure we'd all act rather civil most of the time.
Discuss.
Is it not fundamentally different to deter people with a weapon that would not kill you as well?
If for some reason everyone had a nuke and there was no desire to change the laws legalizing personal nukes, I don't think that would change the civility of the population at all. No one would set one off next to them because they would gain nothing, and hence no one around them would need to be civil.
For guns its obviously fundamentally different in that the person who fires the weapon isn't held back by an instinctual urge to...not blow oneself up.
This is quite ridiculous as an argument against firearms. Its obvious that there is a fundamental difference between the two which is present in every argument supporting them. It is almost as if this example is brought forth to make gun-control look more ludicrous.
The only type of gun that would fit fine in that argument is a double-barrelled gun with one of the barrels pointed back at the operator.
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Is it not fundamentally different to deter people with a weapon that would not kill you as well? Is it not the ultimate form of deterrance to assure the death of an assailant regardless of circumstances?
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On July 09 2008 04:12 L wrote:Show nested quote +Is it not fundamentally different to deter people with a weapon that would not kill you as well? Is it not the ultimate form of deterrance to assure the death of an assailant regardless of circumstances?
No, because you're not going to use it. Why would you want to deter them from killing, or robbing from you by killing yourself? What do you gain?
Thats why in the movies they always say they are crazy when they pretend to carry explosives. Its generally regarded as ludicrous to believe that sane people would act that way.
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On July 09 2008 02:16 evandi wrote:
each tank weighs about as much as 100 infantry
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On July 08 2008 06:31 Thrill wrote:
In all seriousness though, it's all down to education.
ya i'm inclined to agree.
but by education, i mean, family education, not school education.
it happens a lot in the US that parents are retarded, and the children end up getting "raised" by their peer groups.
i like the idea of separating the smart kids from the dumbasses though. when you put them together, the dumbasses are picking on the smart kids. when you separate them, the dumbasses are stabbing other dumbasses. so why would you put them back together so the smart kids can take the hits instead? i hate dumbasses. they picked on my so much 
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A guy in my physics AS class died yesterday, his life support was shut down. He was beaten by a group of guys in town for no apparent reason and had to be put into a medically induced coma which he never came out of. There will always been violence, knives or not, knives are an everyday thing and you can't stop people carrying them and as in this example people still kill without them, if anything it's more brutal than a stabbing, much, much more. The problem lies in social attitudes in Britain and the maniac depression culture we have, we and our media view the world as a crap hole, we look so sceptically, negatively and badly on anything. We see innocence as pathetic and a weakness. This "values" that have become british are the thing that fuels these attitudes of depression and aggressiveness. The people who don’t have money, education or supportive parents/friends to cling to, tend to think its ok to be an ass, because everyone in Britain thinks that the world is crap right, so why not be an ass, why not beat up who the hell you like, because nothing matters, no-one cares, life is shit, deal with it. This is the problem with Britain today, no-one criticises people with bad intentions they see it as fair play or a suitable reaction to the awfulness of the world, that’s the problem. The guy who stands up for the little guy is laughed at, seen as a "do-gooder" or "old-fashioned" or even an idiot. The guy I knew was in fact at that very time breaking up a fight between his friends at the time, trying to do the right thing, then people he didn’t even know, doing the complete opposite philosophy, came and ended his life for no reason. The sad thing is that society is on the offender’s side, sure they'll say "how tragic it is" and hell they'll lock them up. But they wouldn't dare criticise their anti-social behaviour before that, they would agree life is bad, if they were in the bad luck these people were in to end up in a gang or in that state they would act in the same way and they know it. They would of laughed at my friend for standing up for interfering with two people’s dispute for he died, but I bet no-one would laugh at the thugs for going out and being anti-social until they actually kill someone. The only thing that separates these "thugs" from everyone else is circumstances, this is the friggin problem and people know it. Ok maybe that’s quite drastic, not everyone in Britain is a killer inside I know but I’m still saying the attitude is still on the side of the thugs only changes because someone dies. Until these attitudes change, which they never will through government policy, but through tragic trail an error over 10's of years. This is the sad thing.
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That's pretty goddamn outrageous redmourn, where do you live?
I think a lack of police powers plays a big part in all of this. I've seen programs with cops patrolling council estates and all the "chavs" throw rocks at them and all they can do is tell them not to or run away. If that happened in the US they'd probably get shot. Also the way under 16's are handled by the law pretty much gives them freedom to do what they want. If "convicted" of most serious crimes pretty much all they have to do is write a letter of apology.
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Enforcing police action isn't the problem, sure we could live in a padded room our whole lives and then no-one murders. We shouldn't have to enforce harsh laws, the law in palce now should be enough for people not to go out and kill. People who have the mentailty and the socail attitude to kill shouldn't be just "oppressed" they shoudln't exist to such an extent in the first palce. There have been times in history when society has held up the law and the police didn't need to anywhere near interfer to the extent they do now. There are times when you could walk the streets of Britain without being attacked, not because of the police but because people were taught that you should respect eachother and other people looked down on people that hated others. The people who did this were not under the age of 16, they were 17 and 18 years old by the way.
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I walk down the street everyday without being attacked and so do millions of others. This isn't a new problem, it's just a problem that has become larger and is a lot more widely reported than in the past. There are a lot of reasons why some young people act this way but the situation could definitely be improved if some changes were made to the law and in the way that police deal with these offenders.
(For example ASBOs are pretty much a joke and are seen by teens as a "badge of honour")
Edit:also im not talking specifically about just knife murders but anti-social behaviour as a whole
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Since in switzerland the army is mandatory and you keep your rifle at home inbetween service there are lots and lots of rifles around. But murder with firearms is very rare. It's just not cultural interlinced with society. Just shows you how quality of life and economic status play a huge role when it comes to gun crime.
Yeah...switzerland owns your country. So don't come here you filthy foreigners.
If you have to come at least open a bankaccount.
And have some chocolate on your way out.
Course we take euro. Everything for the cow..eh customer.
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On July 10 2008 02:36 redmourn wrote:
A guy in my physics AS class died yesterday, his life support was shut down. He was beaten by a group of guys in town for no apparent reason and had to be put into a medically induced coma which he never came out of. There will always been violence, knives or not, knives are an everyday thing and you can't stop people carrying them and as in this example people still kill without them, if anything it's more brutal than a stabbing, much, much more. The problem lies in social attitudes in Britain and the maniac depression culture we have, we and our media view the world as a crap hole, we look so sceptically, negatively and badly on anything. We see innocence as pathetic and a weakness. This "values" that have become british are the thing that fuels these attitudes of depression and aggressiveness. The people who don’t have money, education or supportive parents/friends to cling to, tend to think its ok to be an ass, because everyone in Britain thinks that the world is crap right, so why not be an ass, why not beat up who the hell you like, because nothing matters, no-one cares, life is shit, deal with it. This is the problem with Britain today, no-one criticises people with bad intentions they see it as fair play or a suitable reaction to the awfulness of the world, that’s the problem. The guy who stands up for the little guy is laughed at, seen as a "do-gooder" or "old-fashioned" or even an idiot. The guy I knew was in fact at that very time breaking up a fight between his friends at the time, trying to do the right thing, then people he didn’t even know, doing the complete opposite philosophy, came and ended his life for no reason. The sad thing is that society is on the offender’s side, sure they'll say "how tragic it is" and hell they'll lock them up. But they wouldn't dare criticise their anti-social behaviour before that, they would agree life is bad, if they were in the bad luck these people were in to end up in a gang or in that state they would act in the same way and they know it. They would of laughed at my friend for standing up for interfering with two people’s dispute for he died, but I bet no-one would laugh at the thugs for going out and being anti-social until they actually kill someone. The only thing that separates these "thugs" from everyone else is circumstances, this is the friggin problem and people know it. Ok maybe that’s quite drastic, not everyone in Britain is a killer inside I know but I’m still saying the attitude is still on the side of the thugs only changes because someone dies. Until these attitudes change, which they never will through government policy, but through tragic trail an error over 10's of years. This is the sad thing.
this is exactly what I think too. It's fashionable to be rude, cynical, derogatory, aggressive, stupid in society. I can't count the amount of fucking comedians i see coming up with one liners like 'why don't you take your "art" and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ARSE'. It is a cultural problem. But what's important is how can England solve this problem?
Ps jayson x you aren't from italy then?
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On July 09 2008 01:03 Funchucks wrote:I'm just going to link two articles: ...one to point out that the UK has always had a lower homicide rate than the USA, and UK crime rates rose as tighter gun-control and disarmament laws were put into place: http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html...and one to point out the regional variations in violence are much larger than the country-to-country variations, and the gun control efforts in those regions do not appear to reduce violence: http://porcupinenine.blogspot.com/2005/10/comparing-us-and-uk-murder-rates.htmlThere is no point in arguing with someone who is incapable of understanding your arguments, or unwilling to apply honest logic to their own justifications of their positions. I don't remind myself of that enough.
funchucks, I would seriously question whether stricter gun controls actually directly caused more crime.
And secondly, I don't think anyone argues that gun control reduces violence. It reduces deaths, almost certainly, because, the facts are there for everyone to see; gunshots kill more often than knifewounds.
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"gunshots kill more often than knifewounds." Actually thats incorrect, a bullet makes a very small hole and if shot in limbs or un-impiortant torso areas many people live, while many people die from stabs to the leg for example as a knife is huge and often bursts an atery because of its size.
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On July 10 2008 07:18 HamerD wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2008 02:36 redmourn wrote:
A guy in my physics AS class died yesterday, his life support was shut down. He was beaten by a group of guys in town for no apparent reason and had to be put into a medically induced coma which he never came out of. There will always been violence, knives or not, knives are an everyday thing and you can't stop people carrying them and as in this example people still kill without them, if anything it's more brutal than a stabbing, much, much more. The problem lies in social attitudes in Britain and the maniac depression culture we have, we and our media view the world as a crap hole, we look so sceptically, negatively and badly on anything. We see innocence as pathetic and a weakness. This "values" that have become british are the thing that fuels these attitudes of depression and aggressiveness. The people who don’t have money, education or supportive parents/friends to cling to, tend to think its ok to be an ass, because everyone in Britain thinks that the world is crap right, so why not be an ass, why not beat up who the hell you like, because nothing matters, no-one cares, life is shit, deal with it. This is the problem with Britain today, no-one criticises people with bad intentions they see it as fair play or a suitable reaction to the awfulness of the world, that’s the problem. The guy who stands up for the little guy is laughed at, seen as a "do-gooder" or "old-fashioned" or even an idiot. The guy I knew was in fact at that very time breaking up a fight between his friends at the time, trying to do the right thing, then people he didn’t even know, doing the complete opposite philosophy, came and ended his life for no reason. The sad thing is that society is on the offender’s side, sure they'll say "how tragic it is" and hell they'll lock them up. But they wouldn't dare criticise their anti-social behaviour before that, they would agree life is bad, if they were in the bad luck these people were in to end up in a gang or in that state they would act in the same way and they know it. They would of laughed at my friend for standing up for interfering with two people’s dispute for he died, but I bet no-one would laugh at the thugs for going out and being anti-social until they actually kill someone. The only thing that separates these "thugs" from everyone else is circumstances, this is the friggin problem and people know it. Ok maybe that’s quite drastic, not everyone in Britain is a killer inside I know but I’m still saying the attitude is still on the side of the thugs only changes because someone dies. Until these attitudes change, which they never will through government policy, but through tragic trail an error over 10's of years. This is the sad thing. this is exactly what I think too. It's fashionable to be rude, cynical, derogatory, aggressive, stupid in society. I can't count the amount of fucking comedians i see coming up with one liners like 'why don't you take your "art" and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ARSE'. It is a cultural problem. But what's important is how can England solve this problem? Ps jayson x you aren't from italy then?
Unfortunatly i dont think there is a direct solution, eventually people will realsie 20 years on as the crime gets worse and worse, and how britain's society gets more depressed that maybe theres a problem, and if we look to other countries they seem to have a happy society in the modern world, and maybe the world is not quite as bad as the British like to think it is.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://cheeju.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/fattest-man3.jpg)
