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On November 17 2010 21:34 esperanto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 21:29 xylos wrote:
There is no reason why a responsible citizen should not be allowed to own guns.
You better turn it this way: There is absolutly no reason why a responsible citizen would need a gun.
To protect your self. I have no doubt that a gun increases your chance of surviving if a potential murderer gets into your house. Hence gun is not that bad an investment. At least we should not tell people what is a bad investment or a good investment and make "bad" investments illegal. Give people the oppurtunity to create their own life.
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On November 18 2010 03:44 domovoi wrote: (Shooting a gun is pretty fun, btw!)
Shooting an automatic grenadelauncher is pretty fun too..
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Netherlands45349 Posts
Don't forget that there are places in America which are too far away for police to reach, a person living in the middle of nowhere will therefore feel safer if he has a gun.
On the other hand the gunlaw in America is solidified by the dreaded lobbying power of the NRA
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It's nothing short of disgusting when people support gun ownership. They commit one quick logical fallacy and ka-ching, they think their bullshit was legit. Furthermore, almost all (all as far as I know but I doubt I know of all of them so..) school shootings in Germany were committed by kids whose parents were - have a guess. Gun owners. There is absolutely no reason to own a gun and a million reasons to not be allowed to own a gun.
ParasitJonte wrote: If there's no reason to own a gun, then the probability of gun related accidents/crimes etc. is probably very low. So then, there should be no reason for banning them either.
Nonsense. Let's do a thought experiment. There are two cities, each has got 10000 people living there. These villages are remote, and separated from each other. You distribute 10000 guns with ammo among the people in village A, no guns among the people in village B. Which village will be more likely to have the higher number of people who were shot to death? Since Rflcrx already provided statistics, I will provide anecdotal evidence. Because sometimes, even if you have no intention to harm anyone, the mere presence of a gun threatens everyone in that area. When my father was in the military, he witnessed when at some point, after practice with live ammunition, one of his comrades removed the cartridge from his handgun and fooled around with the gun, pointing it to the head of another and pulling the trigger. Sadly, the guy had forgotten about removing the one bullet that was still in the 'barrel' (not sure if it's the right term).
My last point in this post is applicable here as well.
And you still try to say shooting is not part of our culture? (xylos, who else)
- Bullshit. Even if it was "part of your culture": see, it was part of the glorious Aztec and Mayan culture to offer humans as sacrifice to "the gods". Are you trying to say human sacrifice was not part of Mesoamerican culture? Why should they have abandoned it? On the contrary, it seems the poor Mayans and Aztecs didn't sacrifice enough humans...
And like I said, criminals will always get guns, no matter if they are banned or not. (guess who)
- I also support every state who wants to get hold of weapons of mass destruction - A-bombs, H-bombs, biological, chemical, you name it, I think everyone should have some. There is NO reason for anyone to try to prevent the reasonable dictators from getting their hands on those items because in the end, they will get them anyway. So why not make them readily available for everyone to even out the playing field?
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It's nothing short of disgusting when people support gun ownership. They commit one quick logical fallacy and ka-ching, they think their bullshit was legit. Furthermore, almost all (all as far as I know but I doubt I know of all of them so..) school shootings in Germany were committed by kids whose parents were - have a guess. Gun owners.
Which village will be more likely to have the higher number of people who were shot to death?
it was part of the glorious Aztec and Mayan culture to offer humans as sacrifice to "the gods". Are you trying to say human sacrifice was not part of Mesoamerican culture? Why should they have abandoned it?
There is NO reason for anyone to try to prevent the reasonable dictators from getting their hands on those items because in the end, they will get them anyway. So why not make them readily available for everyone to even out the playing field?
Oh the irony.
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On November 18 2010 05:39 Rflcrx wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 03:44 domovoi wrote: (Shooting a gun is pretty fun, btw!) Shooting an automatic grenadelauncher is pretty fun too..
And baseball bats are similarly both fun and dangerous.
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Guns are inherently neither bad nor good. Its the person behind the trigger who is a menace to society, not guns. It seems irrational and illogical to waste resources going after the tool, and subsequently punishing otherwise good people, when they could be spent going after the bad person.
too many people here operate under the assumption that people are inherently good, and guns turn people bad. that is simply not a case. An armed robber is inherently a criminal, and therefore disregards gun possession laws, by definition. Whereas, a responsible citizen gives up their gun when possession of it becomes illegal, lest they become an irresponsible citizen as defined by law. It seems to be another logical assumption that those who own guns support gun ownership.
Therefore, we have people who do not support gun ownership, for whatever reason, trying to change a law to make people who do not support their point of view illegal. Sounds eerily manipulative and Machiavellian. On the other hand, responsible gun owners simply want to support there right to continue doing what they are doing when it causes no harm to the public or peace.
Sounds pretty clear who's the bad guy in this situation.
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On November 18 2010 09:23 domovoi wrote:Show nested quote +It's nothing short of disgusting when people support gun ownership. They commit one quick logical fallacy and ka-ching, they think their bullshit was legit. Furthermore, almost all (all as far as I know but I doubt I know of all of them so..) school shootings in Germany were committed by kids whose parents were - have a guess. Gun owners. Show nested quote +Which village will be more likely to have the higher number of people who were shot to death? Show nested quote + it was part of the glorious Aztec and Mayan culture to offer humans as sacrifice to "the gods". Are you trying to say human sacrifice was not part of Mesoamerican culture? Why should they have abandoned it? Show nested quote +There is NO reason for anyone to try to prevent the reasonable dictators from getting their hands on those items because in the end, they will get them anyway. So why not make them readily available for everyone to even out the playing field? Oh the irony.
where?
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On November 16 2010 07:27 kzn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 09:31 Biff The Understudy wrote:
You must be fucking kidding me.
ANPE (national agency for employement) in France is besieged since years by hordes of people who would give their right hand to get any job they can basically do (yeah, some people just can't be a construction worker). As a musician I know countless people who are trying to find a job and struggle like hell. As I do by the way. Do you think the 30-40% youth unemployement in Europe is because young people don't want to work? lol.
It always strikes me this kind of obscene right wing arguments about how homeless people "don't want to work" or unemployed people are "lazy". Nobody wants to live in the street, nobody wants to live with the 500€ a month that you get in "socialist" France. Unemployement is almost a structural necessity in our countries, what on earth does it have to do with lazyness?
Gosh. This is because France is fucking retarded about labor. Oh, hey, we're going to mandate that nobody works more than 35 hours a week unless they get paid exorbitant overtime rates, unionize everything (which runs counter to literally all of accepted economic theory), and have a minimum wage of twelve dollars an hour! UNEMPLOYMENT HAS BEEN SOLVED. If labor markets were allowed to operate, instead of being subject to thousands of retarded regulations that are essentially bribes to certain sections of the electorate, almost all unemployment would be voluntary (basically, unless you're disabled, it would be voluntary). But when you artificially restrict your economy so that every single job has to produce more than $12/hour in value added, you're lopping off a huge segment of entry-level jobs that companies flat out cannot afford to hire for anymore. When you throw unions at everything, you make it impossible for companies to fire workers, to hire better workers, or really to do anything that will help them with regards to labor. If you want to work so badly, why in gods name are your people unwilling to accept less than $12/hour? Your entire argument is a contradiction
Unemployement rate:
USA: 9,6
France 10,1
considering that we don't have working poors, and that unemployed people don't just die and get helped by the state. Now you should maybe consider the fact that your national debt is bigger than French national debt.
You don't know about France. Our system works very well, and our economic situation is now way better than, for example, the British one which is inspired by the same ultraliberal bs than the US one. Maybe you should reconsider making an opinion of France through biaised media owned by Murdoch or Bronson who have every interest in the world to say that the more big companies do, the better for your country.
It's clearly not the case.
Now to answer your precise question: paying your Mc Donald employee 2$ an hour has a name, it's called exploitation. Unemployement is a structural necessity of today's economies. If you don't put rules, you just lower artificially smaller salaries since lot of people are desperate to get any job at all. People need to get protected today if not they get continually fucked in the ass.
Economy, like politics needs rules. Ultraliberalism is the stone age of political economy.
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On November 18 2010 09:09 Dagobert wrote:It's nothing short of disgusting when people support gun ownership. They commit one quick logical fallacy and ka-ching, they think their bullshit was legit. Furthermore, almost all (all as far as I know but I doubt I know of all of them so..) school shootings in Germany were committed by kids whose parents were - have a guess. Gun owners. There is absolutely no reason to own a gun and a million reasons to not be allowed to own a gun. Show nested quote +ParasitJonte wrote: If there's no reason to own a gun, then the probability of gun related accidents/crimes etc. is probably very low. So then, there should be no reason for banning them either. Nonsense. Let's do a thought experiment. There are two cities, each has got 10000 people living there. These villages are remote, and separated from each other. You distribute 10000 guns with ammo among the people in village A, no guns among the people in village B. Which village will be more likely to have the higher number of people who were shot to death? Since Rflcrx already provided statistics, I will provide anecdotal evidence. Because sometimes, even if you have no intention to harm anyone, the mere presence of a gun threatens everyone in that area. When my father was in the military, he witnessed when at some point, after practice with live ammunition, one of his comrades removed the cartridge from his handgun and fooled around with the gun, pointing it to the head of another and pulling the trigger. Sadly, the guy had forgotten about removing the one bullet that was still in the 'barrel' (not sure if it's the right term). My last point in this post is applicable here as well. (xylos, who else) - Bullshit. Even if it was "part of your culture": see, it was part of the glorious Aztec and Mayan culture to offer humans as sacrifice to "the gods". Are you trying to say human sacrifice was not part of Mesoamerican culture? Why should they have abandoned it? On the contrary, it seems the poor Mayans and Aztecs didn't sacrifice enough humans... Show nested quote +And like I said, criminals will always get guns, no matter if they are banned or not. (guess who) - I also support every state who wants to get hold of weapons of mass destruction - A-bombs, H-bombs, biological, chemical, you name it, I think everyone should have some. There is NO reason for anyone to try to prevent the reasonable dictators from getting their hands on those items because in the end, they will get them anyway. So why not make them readily available for everyone to even out the playing field?
I agree with your last afirmation, its pointless to create wars to prevent wars, just fight the mothafucking big war when it comes.
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On November 18 2010 09:09 Dagobert wrote:It's nothing short of disgusting when people support gun ownership. They commit one quick logical fallacy and ka-ching, they think their bullshit was legit. Furthermore, almost all (all as far as I know but I doubt I know of all of them so..) school shootings in Germany were committed by kids whose parents were - have a guess. Gun owners. There is absolutely no reason to own a gun and a million reasons to not be allowed to own a gun. Show nested quote +ParasitJonte wrote: If there's no reason to own a gun, then the probability of gun related accidents/crimes etc. is probably very low. So then, there should be no reason for banning them either. Nonsense. Let's do a thought experiment. There are two cities, each has got 10000 people living there. These villages are remote, and separated from each other. You distribute 10000 guns with ammo among the people in village A, no guns among the people in village B. Which village will be more likely to have the higher number of people who were shot to death? Since Rflcrx already provided statistics, I will provide anecdotal evidence. Because sometimes, even if you have no intention to harm anyone, the mere presence of a gun threatens everyone in that area. When my father was in the military, he witnessed when at some point, after practice with live ammunition, one of his comrades removed the cartridge from his handgun and fooled around with the gun, pointing it to the head of another and pulling the trigger. Sadly, the guy had forgotten about removing the one bullet that was still in the 'barrel' (not sure if it's the right term). My last point in this post is applicable here as well. (xylos, who else) - Bullshit. Even if it was "part of your culture": see, it was part of the glorious Aztec and Mayan culture to offer humans as sacrifice to "the gods". Are you trying to say human sacrifice was not part of Mesoamerican culture? Why should they have abandoned it? On the contrary, it seems the poor Mayans and Aztecs didn't sacrifice enough humans... Show nested quote +And like I said, criminals will always get guns, no matter if they are banned or not. (guess who) - I also support every state who wants to get hold of weapons of mass destruction - A-bombs, H-bombs, biological, chemical, you name it, I think everyone should have some. There is NO reason for anyone to try to prevent the reasonable dictators from getting their hands on those items because in the end, they will get them anyway. So why not make them readily available for everyone to even out the playing field?
Ok let's take your example of the two cities. They are remote and separated, got it. A key point is whether they know about each other. One city is distributed guns, the other isn't. One person is city B decides he wants a gun, but has no other way to obtain one except city A. He decides he wants to buy one illegally. He buys one gun from city A, and can then do whatever the fuck he wants to all of the law abiding citizens of city B. This gives an idea to others in city B who decide they want guns too, as they do not care about the laws. This compounds until any criminal can obtain a gun, but no law-abiding citizen does. Look at Washington D.C. when they outlawed hand guns, and then look at how many gun crimes were committed. As long as someone is able to obtain a gun illegally, there should be a way to obtain a gun legally. Otherwise you are only punishing the citizens who obey the law.
Do you believe in cultural relativism? are you ok with the way woman are treated in some cultures, like having their clit cut off in some african tribes when they have their first period? I can tell you straight up i completely disagree with cultural relativism, i don't believe in it in the slightest. You condemn the aztecs for their practices, yet I guarantee you are one of those who thinks the spanish were wrong in how they treated the tribes/cultures/whatever. The double talk of "tolerant" people always confounds me, how can you sit there and say the aztecs should not have been allowed to commit human sacrifices but we should continue to allow women to be stoned to death?
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How I view US politics?
Just one word: Hyperbole.
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On November 18 2010 09:25 domovoi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 05:39 Rflcrx wrote:On November 18 2010 03:44 domovoi wrote: (Shooting a gun is pretty fun, btw!) Shooting an automatic grenadelauncher is pretty fun too.. And baseball bats are similarly both fun and dangerous.
Sounds like you are challanging me to a fight were I bring an automatic grenadelauncher and you wield a baseball.
Aight, lets do this.
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Zurich15358 Posts
Hello foreigners, I am considering closing this, but I haven't read the entire thing and I am not going to.
However.
Can you please from here on discuss how foreigner view US politics and not the politics themselves? Thanks.
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On November 18 2010 20:48 zatic wrote:
Hello foreigners, I am considering closing this, but I haven't read the entire thing and I am not going to.
However.
Can you please from here on discuss how foreigner view US politics and not the politics themselves? Thanks.
Good point. Back on topic. US politics is so surreal that satire is no longer able to keep up with it.
How do I view democrats? - Good intentions but ridiculously incompetent and not able to stand together when i counts (they even fail to legislate with a super-majority).
How do I view republicans? - A mix of rwhite supremacy , low-education eligious zealots who believe everything on FOX and highly-educated, machiavellian demagogues who kow how to intrsumenatlize the former for their own benefeit. Also, nuts (http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/888472--god-will-save-us-from-climate-change-u-s-representative).
Seriously, where is the socieltal discourse about actual topics instead of ideologies and where is your political center (insetad of right-lwft-extremes)? I get the impression that partisanship overrides common sense and the american people pay that price for that.
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On November 18 2010 19:30 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 16 2010 07:27 kzn wrote:On November 12 2010 09:31 Biff The Understudy wrote:
You must be fucking kidding me.
ANPE (national agency for employement) in France is besieged since years by hordes of people who would give their right hand to get any job they can basically do (yeah, some people just can't be a construction worker). As a musician I know countless people who are trying to find a job and struggle like hell. As I do by the way. Do you think the 30-40% youth unemployement in Europe is because young people don't want to work? lol.
It always strikes me this kind of obscene right wing arguments about how homeless people "don't want to work" or unemployed people are "lazy". Nobody wants to live in the street, nobody wants to live with the 500€ a month that you get in "socialist" France. Unemployement is almost a structural necessity in our countries, what on earth does it have to do with lazyness?
Gosh. This is because France is fucking retarded about labor. Oh, hey, we're going to mandate that nobody works more than 35 hours a week unless they get paid exorbitant overtime rates, unionize everything (which runs counter to literally all of accepted economic theory), and have a minimum wage of twelve dollars an hour! UNEMPLOYMENT HAS BEEN SOLVED. If labor markets were allowed to operate, instead of being subject to thousands of retarded regulations that are essentially bribes to certain sections of the electorate, almost all unemployment would be voluntary (basically, unless you're disabled, it would be voluntary). But when you artificially restrict your economy so that every single job has to produce more than $12/hour in value added, you're lopping off a huge segment of entry-level jobs that companies flat out cannot afford to hire for anymore. When you throw unions at everything, you make it impossible for companies to fire workers, to hire better workers, or really to do anything that will help them with regards to labor. If you want to work so badly, why in gods name are your people unwilling to accept less than $12/hour? Your entire argument is a contradiction You don't know about France. Our system works very well, and our economic situation is now way better than, for example, the British one which is inspired by the same ultraliberal bs than the US one.
Funny that you call the US "ultraliberal"...
Oh well. Not even going to argue 
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The word Liberal does not mean the same to europeans as it does to americans. Actually it's pretty much the opposite.
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On November 19 2010 01:24 Velr wrote:
The word Liberal does not mean the same to europeans as it does to americans. Actually it's pretty much the opposite.
I see, so approaching 50% state spenditure of GDP constitutes ultra-liberalism in europe?
I apologize.
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No, it just means you faild hard.
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EPT
