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On January 31 2013 13:50 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 13:44 FallDownMarigold wrote:On January 31 2013 08:29 kmillz wrote:On January 31 2013 07:46 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 06:10 Millitron wrote:On January 31 2013 04:48 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 03:01 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 15:10 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 14:15 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 13:45 StayPhrosty wrote:
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1) Okay, so at least we agree on a small part. That being said, I have ran into more drunk guys yelling 'come at me bro' than I can count. As well, plenty of people get road rage already, so I really would feel unsafe if all of them were carrying a weapon.
As well, with more people 'packing', you also have an attitude that follows it. Right now, I feel safe, so I don't carry a gun. Others don't fear me because as one of many in a crowd I'm probably not carrying a gun. If I'm surrounded by people with guns then the atmosphere changes. When you feel as if you need a gun for protection at all times then you are assuming that you could be in danger at all times. Perhaps you're just playing it safe, but if everybody 'plays it safe', then everybody will have something to fear - everybody else. I'm not sure about you, but I really would rather trust to military and the police to protect me, rather than pray I have a better gun than the guy trying to kill me. You see, the only situation I can imagine where I'm just dead on sight without a gun is one where someone is hunting me down. In such a case, well, then I can train hard but the bottom 50% are just fucked. Now it's survival of the fittest and somebody's got to lose those gunfights. I'm getting off topic though. My main point is that when a society has decided that there is significant enough danger to warrant shooting people for defence, then the society is in deep, deep trouble. It would be better to work towards keeping EVERYONE safe, rather than just equipping every individual and saying 'i hope you get the best of him'.
2) okay, agreement here as well. But the thing I'm getting at is that we have no contemporary example of a western democratic government turning violent and killing it's people for some tyrannical reason. That type of situation would be near impossible to predict or prepare for by carrying a handgun right now.
3) Right, but I still can't see a situation where some evil dude takes over the US government and turns it's guns on the public. I mean, tell me what the most likely situation is here? Are they killing everybody? Because in that case the electricity/survival argument holds immense weight. Are they just targeting a select few? Who? Why? Why doesn't the public stand up for them? Why isn't the leader impeached? Why isn't a new congress elected? Why don't the soldiers refuse to fight?
I'm not saying there cannot possibly exist a situation where the people need to shoot back, I'm just saying that preparing for these kinds of things in the US is about as necessary as the public preparing for an alien invasion. Statistically it's possible, but in reality there are ways for people to flee or get protection illegally rather than relying on their 'government approved handgun' to help them fight off the special forces to save their family in the middle of the night.
Wouldn't you say it's more important for the laws created by the majority to be valued more than the ability of each individual to illegally resist those laws? Because what I see here is a problem with the public influence over the government, and that IS something I agree with. And it is something I fight for by getting involved in politics, not by carrying a glock around with me.
5) I guess the thing is that is our society, right now, I feel that the benefits of an armed public are vastly outweighed by the harm it would bring. Imagine of the occupy wallstreet guys started shooting at the cops when they maced them for no reason. Obviously the police violated a LOT of rights, but nobody died en-mass. Also, as I mentioned earlier, by having guns as a 'backup' you're harming everyday life for the public.
6) Okay, let's assume the mugger brings a knife and swings at me so I shoot him. Great. What have I accomplished? A guy is dead now. In my eyes, it was self defence, but if nobody had died at all would that not be a VASTLY better alternative? Pretend I don't bring the gun, then what? At best I talk the guy down or someone calls the police real quick and I keep my wallet and everything ends okay. Maybe it ends worse though, maybe he gets mad or even for no reason at all he kills me. How is this somehow worse from society's perspective? Either way somebody dies. Sure, as an individual I don't want it to happen to me, but there are many other factors that impact if you're going to get mugged. I can change all of these other things like where I live and what dark alleys I walk down alone at night, etc. I don't NEED a gun, and I think it's far too narrow-sighted to assume that just because I want one that everybody should have one. We cannot ALL be packing more heat than every criminal on the street.
7) from wikipedia, just one example of a densely populated city not far from Detroit...
"Crime in Toronto has been relatively low for a very long period of time; the low crime rate in Toronto has resulted in the city having a reputation as one of the safest large cities in North America. Recent data from Statistics Canada shows that crime has been falling steadily in Toronto's census metropolitan area since 1998, a total drop of 33% for all crimes reported between the period of 1998–2008.[1]
For comparisons to various cities in North America, in 2007 for example, the homicide rate for the city of Toronto was 3.3 per 100,000 people, yet for Detroit (33.8), Atlanta (19.7), Chicago (15.5), San Francisco (13.6), Boston (10.3) and New York City (6.3) it was higher, while it was only marginally lower in Vancouver (3.1), San Jose (2.9) and Montreal (2.6). Toronto's robbery rate also ranks low, with 207.1 robberies per 100,000 people, compared to Detroit (675.1), Chicago (588.6), Los Angeles (348.5), Vancouver (266.2), New York City (265.9), Montreal (235.3) and San Diego (158.8).[2][3][4][5][6][7]"
You quote socio-economic conditions as being the major factor. I would say the gun ownership is a major piece of those 'socio-economic factors'. I mean, the US has more guns than anyone else. "The Congressional Research Service in 2009 estimated there were 310 million firearms in the United States, not including weapons owned by the military. " I mean, when you feel more powerful than a criminal when you have a gun, you also feel more powerful than some random person you pass on the street when you have a gun, it's only natural. This power, though, comes with consequences.
My argument about AK's in walmart, while exaggerated, still stand I feel. People don;t walk around with machine guns to the grocery store, but if they did i think it would change the atmosphere of going shopping. That being said, I still don't see a mystical connection between more people carrying guns but fewer people using them... 1) That sucks. I would hope the background checks would weed out the people who will get drunk and still carry. I'm ok with CUI, Carrying Under the Influence being a crime. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't already actually. 2) I personally do not care about handguns, mostly because they're pretty much pointless for overthrowing a tyranny. I still support them, but I am willing to compromise here. Handguns can have stricter background checks for two reasons, in my opinion. First, like I said, can't overthrow the next Hitler with a glock. Second, they actually are used in a huge majority of gun-related crimes. 3) I don't know. The exact details don't really matter too much though. Democracies in developed have fallen to to tyrants as recently as the 30's (maybe more recently, but I can't think of any at the moment). The public doesn't stand up for the oppressed because A) its not happening to them, and B) the few who do "Disappear". It happened in Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and in China in the 50's. 5) How are you harming every day life by owning guns? Will my rifle shoot someone on its own? Is it going to break its way out of its gun-safe and start killing people? You can't blame the guns, you have to blame the person holding them, or there's no accountability. 6) It is worse for you to die because you are innocent. If you kill your attacker, that's sad, but he knew the risks. And you don't really need to pack more heat than everyone else. A common thug is going to want something concealable, which basically means small. At the distances you're likely to face, any hand-gun will do, they're all basically the same inside 20 yards. 7) How is the War on Drugs going in Canada? Did it make your urban centers hellish wastelands like it did here? I honestly don't know. If it didn't, then the socioeconomic conditions aren't similar enough for that comparison to be valid. Anyways, of those 310 million guns, a very small percentage are used in crimes, we're talking single digit percentages. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/guns.cfm5.1 million violent crimes involving guns. Even if every gun-crime was committed with a unique gun, i.e. 1 gun = 1 crime, that's only 1.6 percent of all guns in the country are used in crimes. Okay so you kind of ignored a huge chunk of my argument but I'll try to state it a little better this time. Guns change society. Guns change societal atmosphere and gun culture has a negative impact on the public. This is my main point. When I punch you, you punch back, when I pull a gun on you, you pull a gun on me. If we have fists then somebody gets beaten up, when we have guns then somebody gets shot. It's really as simple as that. You multiply that by millions of people and you have americans dying en-masse. If nobody has a gun then nobody gets shot. Okay, that was simplified, but the point still stands. Fewer guns mean fewer gun crimes, more guns mean more gun crimes. Sure you can kill people with knives but it's not as easy as pulling a trigger anymore. Then again, you seem to be against the masses carrying glocks. So please elaborate because at this point I don't know if you understand the negative impact that comes with this gun culture. Long rifles and semi-auto assault rifles though you seem to support. Well, like I said those would not be very pleasant to encounter on the street. One guy with a knife cuts a few people and gets stopped, another guy brings an AK and 100 rounds and slaughters a crowd before being stopped. Maybe you support keeping those guns out of the hands of the irresponsible though. Well, that's going to take A LOT of government oversight to make it safe enough for a lot more people to own them safely. And then what happens when this tyrranical government turns? Now they have a list of everybody who has trained at a gun range to fight them. Now they have controls and know exactly what areas and what cities have whichever guns. To me if you want better government control over weapons you start to lose some of this ability to 'fight back' against your own military. In my opinion though this is okay, because I really don't see how it would be beneficial to form a civilian militia to defeat the US military. You seem to have trouble describing exactly how or when or in what conditions you might need to fight the US government, well perhaps this is part of the irrationality if you 'needing protection' from them. the 30's elsewhere and the 50's in china seem far too disconnected from us today to be relevant in a discussion of the citizens overthrowing the government. Did they have the internet? Did they have a modern democratic government with a modern military? How successful were the citizens at overthrowing this tyranny again? Please, I would actually be interested in a case where such a contemporary violent revolution turned out great for the public. in reference to 6) - of course its too bad that the innocent person died, but someone still died. Having a gun or not having one didn't somehow prevent anyone from dying ever. I mean, tell me how the situation is going to end peacefully when we both pull out a gun? This guy who pulls a gun on me for money is somehow now less ballsy than me? Now he's likely to put his gun down? The situation just doesn't improve for me when I have a gun. Maybe I kill him, great now I'm a murderer. I don't approve of the death penalty because I believe people can still contribute to society and there is no purpose for revenge. So on the street I don't find it any more justified that I should be able to kill him. It would be better that neither of us died - that neither of us had the ability to end the other's life so easily. Pretend that we all start carrying bigger guns for proper self defence. Would some thug on the street really come at me with a pocket knife when he knows people generally have an assault rifle for defence? No, he's just going to bring an even bigger gun, or he'll bring friends and surround/surprise me. The criminals aren't going to obey any restrictions I have to adhere to, they're simply going to be better armed than I am. The solution is not to hope I have a bigger gun than them, the solution is to have fewer guns for fewer people causing fewer crimes. 7-right so you really don't know how socioeconomic conditions are outside of the US. Ok well here for example the war of drugs is bullshit and we have gang/crime problems in major cities just like the US, only our homicide rates are much lower. There are many things that contribute to this, and I don't see how gun ownership provides any benefits. just some statistics on gun ownership causing harm in the US- http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-gun-laws-2012-12wikipedia on gun violence "In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.[5]" States in the highest quartile for gun ownership had homicide rates 114% higher than states in the lowest quartile of gun ownership.[84] Among juveniles (minors under the age of 16, 17, or 18, depending on legal jurisdiction) serving in correctional facilities, 86% had owned a gun, with 66% acquiring their first gun by age 14.[2] There was also a tendency for juvenile offenders to have owned several firearms, with 65% owning three or more.[2] Juveniles most often acquired guns illegally from family, friends, drug dealers, and street contacts.[2] Inner-city youths cited "self-protection from enemies" as the top reason for carrying a gun.[2] In 2005, almost 18% of U.S. households possessed handguns, compared to almost 3% of households in Canada that possessed handguns.[9] In 2011, the number was increased to 34% of adults in the United States personally owned a gun; 46% of adult men, and 23% of adult women. "The United States has about five percent of the total world population but residents of the United States own about 42 percent of all the world's civilian-owned firearms." and crime in the US The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole, of which 2.2 million were incarcerated. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[33][dated info] The US homicide rate, which has declined substantially since 1991 from a rate per 100,000 persons of 9.8 to 4.8 in 2010, is still among the highest in the industrialized world. In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany (0.9). Your gun culture example doesn't work. Specifically because guns are more dangerous. The repercussions are much greater, so you don't just pull guns as freely as you start fist-fights. People carrying guns don't just draw for nothing. They don't get cut-off in a parking lot and start shooting people. The AR15 is the most commonly owned rifle in the US. It's an "Assault Weapon". In many jurisdictions, it is already legal to open carry it. But "Assault Weapons" are used in less than 1% of all fire-arm related crimes. Carrying a gun doesn't mean you WILL shoot someone. My point is, is that this gun culture idea, the idea that people will shoot each other over everything and nothing, has already been tested. People already carry guns, and it doesn't happen. It doesn't take too much government oversight. All you need is background checks. As long as there's no database of gun-owners, it doesn't really matter if they know you're allowed to own a gun. A tyrant would need to know whether you actually do or not. I'm not Nostradamus, I can't predict the future. But democracies can, and have become tyrannies, and that should be good enough. Sure, I can't say every little detail that would be necessary for armed rebellion, but neither did the founding fathers. 15 years before the revolution, no one had any desire for independence. 15 years isn't that long. Europe in the 30's DID have a modern democracy, and they had an almost-modern military. Sure, they didn't have the internet, and things may have turned out differently if they did, but they were never given the chance for open rebellion. Any people with opposition sympathies were at least disarmed, and they often just "Disappeared". I'll be honest, I don't know enough about China to say much there, besides the fact that before Mao, they were a functional democracy, and after he took power, they weren't. This arms race between civilians and criminals also doesn't happen. Plenty of civilians already have guns, and you don't see criminals getting bigger and better guns. Criminals need cheap, concealable guns. They need to be concealable so they can sneak up on you, and they need to be cheap so they can throw them away before the cops show up. Cheap, concealable guns are not very big or powerful. What is worse, a civilian who did nothing wrong getting killed, or a criminal who knew the risks getting killed? And please don't give me the whole "You don't know him, maybe he just wanted to feed his family." nonsense. Soup kitchens are a thing. Foodstamps exist. And besides, you have to admit that this would be a pretty rare occurrence. Most (I'd wager almost all) thefts aren't because the person will starve otherwise, they're because the thief wants to buy a new TV or more cocaine. Last, you do not know what he plans on doing to you. You have no idea if he's just going to take your wallet, or if he's going to kill you. Sure, it might be rare, but if you want to talk about the one-in-a-million dad's who steal to feed their family, I can talk about the one-in-a-million muggers who also kill. I didn't say I don't know socioeconomics anywhere outside the US, I said I don't know them in Canada. I'm happy for you that you seem to have solved all your problems. But look at the UK. They have almost no guns, and have one of the highest crime rates in Europe. Clearly guns are not the only factor, or even the main factor Suggesting that the US federal government is somehow going to devolve into a dictatorship/tyranny, and then using that as an argument for more guns is bullshit. I don't know how some people always bring it up and not be able to think to themselves how stupid the entire idea is. That's just a childish fantasy gun proponents secretly want to happen just so they can tell everyone else how wrong they were. So please...stop pulling the what-if-tyranny-1776-nazi-hitler-stalin-happens-in-america because you're just telling every sensible person how stupid your logic is. If you want to actually convince people that more guns/stronger gun rights is better for the country, use another argument that actually makes some sense. And yes, you are honest about not knowing a lot about china. They weren't a "functional democracy" before Mao (whatever that means). China never had the opportunity to become a real democracy early in the 20th century because of (1) WWII (2) their nationalism vs. communism civil war and (3) their decades-long war against Japan, which had occupied china. What part of it is bullshit? Is it that you think democracy is somehow perfect? Tell that to Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and France in the 1800's. Tell that to everyone who died at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Kent State. Is it that you feel guerrillas would be completely outmatched? They wouldn't. Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. And if it happened in the US, it'd be even more effective, because the Guerrillas would have far more targets and each one would be more strategically important. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country. Is it that you feel peaceful protest is a better option? Good, I do too. But it shouldn't be the only option. Skydivers wear two parachutes for a reason. The people in the US military are people just like you and me. The people that work in federal government are american citizens just like you and me. Intelligent people not only learn, but also carry with them the knowledge that the american government is made up of checks and balances. Have you? There's a reason why we've had a peaceful transfer of government for 250 years without any problems. And I thought pro-gun supporters were the ones who knew all about the constitution. The idea that someone in the federal government or a high ranking military general would decide that he wanted to become Supreme Dictator of Facist America is batshit crazy with a daily forecast chance of 0%. If we really wanted to be hypothetical, do you really think american soldiers would go shoot up an american neighborhood because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to so that he could start taking control of our country? Somebody down the line would say no. Somebody else in similar power in the government would say no. Someone might kill him first. Do you really think A-10s and F-16s from wright-patterson would start bombing chicago and cincinatti just because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to? Why does something like these even need an explanation? + Show Spoiler +Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country.
Jesus christ, you sound like a 14 year old. You act as if most of the people in the military wouldn't follow orders that would be bad for the American people. Sure you might have a few who refuse, but the majority of them would be more concerned about the consequences of disobeying a direct order for fear of their own life or their families life. Why do you live in this fantasy land where tyranny is impossible? Telling someone they sound like a 14 year old makes you look like the childish one. Being condescending doesn't help your argument. ... Really? It should be completely obvious that the *vast* majority in the military would simply put down their weapons and give the bird to the chain of command that said "bomb Chicago" (and this chain of orders wouldn't happen in the first place because it require every single person up the chain of command to be batshit insane). He's dead-on accurate when he says "sounds like a 14 year old". It's not an insult, it's an apt observation. Do you actually think the order would be "Bomb Chicago"? JDAM, Joint Direct Attack Munition. Precise. Take down a single warehouse or other building, minimal collateral damage. Do you really think internment to prevent guerilla warfare wouldn't happen? I remember when Abu Ghraib was a thing. Been there? I have. That fiasco happened because the wrong people were doing the wrong job and were way overstretched. And that job was detention of a large percentage of a civilian population for fitting the wrong demographics.
I'm utterly baffled by this response. Your first bone to pick with me was the fact that the order would not literally be: "bomb Chicago".... I just... I... whaa.. Hahahhhahahahahaahah.
And then your next comment is... something about Abu Ghraib, and how you were there... and this is supposed to, erm, stand as evidence for something totally unrelated..?
I just... wow. LOL
On January 31 2013 07:46 white_horse wrote:
Jesus christ, you sound like a 14 year old.
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A thought i had on gun control laws. So, the main reason behind gun control laws (or what we're told/most people believe) is to keep criminals from using guns in crimes. What makes people think they'll actually follow these laws? They're criminals, they don't follow the laws.
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On January 31 2013 18:10 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
A thought i had on gun control laws. So, the main reason behind gun control laws (or what we're told/most people believe) is to keep criminals from using guns in crimes. What makes people think they'll actually follow these laws? They're criminals, they don't follow the laws.
If guns are less readily available, criminals have a much harder time getting guns. In countries that have strict gun control laws in western Europe, only organized crime really has access to guns and they primarily use it to kill eachother. Your everyday burglar or small-time crook doesn't have the resources or the connections to obtain a firearm.
Of course, the issue is that if you transition from no (or little) gun control to strict gun control in a country where guns are readily available, such as the US, it will take a long time before gun possession among small-time criminals drops to the level of that in countries that have had gun control for a long time already. The millions of guns in circulation in the US aren't going to go away overnight once a gun control law is introduced.
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On January 16 2013 08:15 Nagano wrote:This woman explains how the 2A is not about hunting or sporting, and uses her african-american background to explain how it is one of the biggest symbols of freedom. + Show Spoiler +
On the subject of being allowed to own guns, I have to say this video that this other poster found really sums up why the right to bear arms is an important right.
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On January 31 2013 18:20 Rannasha wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 18:10 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
A thought i had on gun control laws. So, the main reason behind gun control laws (or what we're told/most people believe) is to keep criminals from using guns in crimes. What makes people think they'll actually follow these laws? They're criminals, they don't follow the laws. If guns are less readily available, criminals have a much harder time getting guns. In countries that have strict gun control laws in western Europe, only organized crime really has access to guns and they primarily use it to kill eachother. Your everyday burglar or small-time crook doesn't have the resources or the connections to obtain a firearm.Of course, the issue is that if you transition from no (or little) gun control to strict gun control in a country where guns are readily available, such as the US, it will take a long time before gun possession among small-time criminals drops to the level of that in countries that have had gun control for a long time already. The millions of guns in circulation in the US aren't going to go away overnight once a gun control law is introduced.
I almost agree with you. Although for instance in France where I'm from, it appears that a lot of these "everyday burglars" now have actually access to guns pretty easily, through a traffic coming mostly from the Balkans since the war has occured there in the 90s.
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On January 31 2013 18:39 NEOtheONE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 08:15 Nagano wrote:This woman explains how the 2A is not about hunting or sporting, and uses her african-american background to explain how it is one of the biggest symbols of freedom. + Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn7bkncf1_E On the subject of being allowed to own guns, I have to say this video that this other poster found really sums up why the right to bear arms is an important right.
But in practice gun regulation is quasi inexistent in the USA and it has by far the biggest firearm-related death rate among the most develop countries (along with Brazil if you include less developped countries, but firearms are legal there too).
EDIT: I don't understand why it doesn't look obvious to the USA. Just looking at other countries' laws and results should be convincing enough I mean... We don't really need to think so deeply about that while experience has always proven America wrong about it.
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On January 31 2013 13:44 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 08:29 kmillz wrote:On January 31 2013 07:46 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 06:10 Millitron wrote:On January 31 2013 04:48 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 03:01 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 15:10 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 14:15 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 13:45 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 12:54 Millitron wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 30 2013 12:04 StayPhrosty wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 11:30 sunprince wrote:On January 30 2013 11:29 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 11:23 sunprince wrote:On January 30 2013 11:15 white_horse wrote:
People who argue that guns should be completely unrestricted in order to prevent a dictatorship or tyrannical US government just seem like guns are personal extensions of their deep hatred and mistrust of the federal government and almost want an apocalyptic evil government attack its own citizens just so that they can prove themselves right. Few people argue that guns should be completely unrestricted. To use a parallel argument, even though most people believe that citizens should have the right to drive automobiles, that doesn't imply that those people believe that driving cars should be completely unrestricted. On January 30 2013 11:15 white_horse wrote:
How some people think that there is a chance that the US government is somehow going to devolve into some facist or dictatorship-type government doesn't make any logical sense. Your arguing against logic. The military is made up of citizens just like yourselves and they aren't going to start dropping bombs on US cities or go shoot up neighborhoods just because a government official tells them to. History as well as modern events suggest otherwise. Take a look at the Arab Spring for examples of governments using military force against citizens and armed populaces acting as the only possible defense against it. Right, because the Egyptian army is pretty much the same as the US army... oh wait... What exactly is your point? Please spell it out, since there are a number of flawed arguments and fallacies you could be referring to with your vague statement. Sorry, I just got sick of all the arguments with about 2 seconds of thought put into them and I stooped to their level. I suppose if you're willing to give me a serious discussion, I'll start with a few things that jump out at me. 1) Although anecdotal, I seem to see many gun advocates arguing for unrestricted access. Obviously I have the sense to understand this is not how most people feel, but the media is filled with people (e.g. the NRA) who scream and shout any time gun control is even mentioned. I would think most people would be behind 'sensible' gun control laws that are both effective at dealing with crime but do not infringe upon responsible gun owners' "rights." That being said, a lot of the arguments I see simply aim to defend the responsibility of every person to carry a gun. Perhaps you could present an argument against the common gun control position with a little more sense than I usually see and I'll try to respond as best as I can. 2) The US military is, by many standards, the most powerful military in the world. It would take a very contrived situation to try and see another military defeat them in conventional warfare. 3) Obviously guerrilla warfare would be much for effective for a US citizen militia to attempt, but this I think is quite ridiculous to speculate about. What tyrannical superpowers in the past have had is popular support, not a lack of an armed enemy. The US isn't exactly very close to civil war right now in my opinion, and so such a massive societal shift would mean a lot more people being concerned about being attacked by their government than we currently see in the US. Perhaps if this changed then there 'would' be popular support for gun ownership, but right now it simply doesn't make sense to me. 4) A civilian's ability to fight the US government would be shockingly limited if their electricity was cut off. Sure, there are many people who can survive just fine, but the vast majority, I would argue, would simply die because of lack of survival skills, not lack of a gun to shoot back with. 5) Arguing for the benefit of automatic or other weapons as integral for defeating a hypothetical US dictator and his crazy plot is tough enough, but that's far from the only flaw. There have been huge shifts in social values through movements that were pretty much non-violent. Of course there are examples like India's independence and the US civil rights movement, but there are other examples as well. People rarely smoke cigarettes anymore. The public has been educated better and there have been restrictions placed on the sale of them that don't prevent their use but do limit their negative impact. 6) Just to add more of the common arguments - carrying a gun around on the street for self defence from mugging or something is quite likely to escalate the situation. 7) Statistically the US owns more guns and has more gun crime than other so called 'developed' countries like the UK or Canada. Perhaps this is more than just a correlation... 1) I'm fine with background checks and keeping guns away from felons/psychos. Everyone else though should be allowed to have pretty much any gun they want. You can have the more powerful ones require more thorough checks, but there should be nothing outright forbidden. As for the NRA, of course they're filling the media, they're the loudest. Just like how Piers Morgan on your side is constantly yelling about guns. The media isn't about truth, it's about profit, and sensible discussion doesn't make money. 2) Totally. That's why the rebels would fight a guerrilla war. There are plenty of forests and swamps too dense for drones to find you, or you can hide in dense cities where collateral damage would be too great for them to bomb you. And you've got plenty of targets, i.e. every powerplant, factory, refinery, and bridge in the country. 3) Most dictatorships had popular indifference, with a fervently dedicated, vocal minority. The opposition was quite often disarmed before things got too out of hand. Mao did it, Stalin did it, Hitler did it. 4) Any citizen who would be deterred by simply losing electricity wouldn't have the stomach for rebellion in the first place. But I do not believe this is such a vast majority that a rebellion would be impossible. Besides, in an urban environment, they can't shut your electricity off if they don't know who or where you are. 5) I'm all for peaceful movements, when they work they're great. But why bet everything on peaceful protest? Why not at least keep the capability to fight back if push comes to shove? 6) Maybe the mugger should've thought of that. 7) First, Canada isn't as densely populated, the socioeconomic conditions don't foster crime as badly in Canada as in the US. A better comparison is between the US and the UK. Still, the US does have higher gun-crime. But the UK has much higher violent crime in general. Why is gun-crime somehow worse than regular crime? [quote] Having a gun slung over your shoulder doesn't hurt anyone. Plenty of people ALREADY carry guns, both openly and concealed, and this whole "Bump into them and they shoot you" thing doesn't happen. 1) Okay, so at least we agree on a small part. That being said, I have ran into more drunk guys yelling 'come at me bro' than I can count. As well, plenty of people get road rage already, so I really would feel unsafe if all of them were carrying a weapon. As well, with more people 'packing', you also have an attitude that follows it. Right now, I feel safe, so I don't carry a gun. Others don't fear me because as one of many in a crowd I'm probably not carrying a gun. If I'm surrounded by people with guns then the atmosphere changes. When you feel as if you need a gun for protection at all times then you are assuming that you could be in danger at all times. Perhaps you're just playing it safe, but if everybody 'plays it safe', then everybody will have something to fear - everybody else. I'm not sure about you, but I really would rather trust to military and the police to protect me, rather than pray I have a better gun than the guy trying to kill me. You see, the only situation I can imagine where I'm just dead on sight without a gun is one where someone is hunting me down. In such a case, well, then I can train hard but the bottom 50% are just fucked. Now it's survival of the fittest and somebody's got to lose those gunfights. I'm getting off topic though. My main point is that when a society has decided that there is significant enough danger to warrant shooting people for defence, then the society is in deep, deep trouble. It would be better to work towards keeping EVERYONE safe, rather than just equipping every individual and saying 'i hope you get the best of him'. 2) okay, agreement here as well. But the thing I'm getting at is that we have no contemporary example of a western democratic government turning violent and killing it's people for some tyrannical reason. That type of situation would be near impossible to predict or prepare for by carrying a handgun right now. 3) Right, but I still can't see a situation where some evil dude takes over the US government and turns it's guns on the public. I mean, tell me what the most likely situation is here? Are they killing everybody? Because in that case the electricity/survival argument holds immense weight. Are they just targeting a select few? Who? Why? Why doesn't the public stand up for them? Why isn't the leader impeached? Why isn't a new congress elected? Why don't the soldiers refuse to fight? I'm not saying there cannot possibly exist a situation where the people need to shoot back, I'm just saying that preparing for these kinds of things in the US is about as necessary as the public preparing for an alien invasion. Statistically it's possible, but in reality there are ways for people to flee or get protection illegally rather than relying on their 'government approved handgun' to help them fight off the special forces to save their family in the middle of the night. Wouldn't you say it's more important for the laws created by the majority to be valued more than the ability of each individual to illegally resist those laws? Because what I see here is a problem with the public influence over the government, and that IS something I agree with. And it is something I fight for by getting involved in politics, not by carrying a glock around with me. 5) I guess the thing is that is our society, right now, I feel that the benefits of an armed public are vastly outweighed by the harm it would bring. Imagine of the occupy wallstreet guys started shooting at the cops when they maced them for no reason. Obviously the police violated a LOT of rights, but nobody died en-mass. Also, as I mentioned earlier, by having guns as a 'backup' you're harming everyday life for the public. 6) Okay, let's assume the mugger brings a knife and swings at me so I shoot him. Great. What have I accomplished? A guy is dead now. In my eyes, it was self defence, but if nobody had died at all would that not be a VASTLY better alternative? Pretend I don't bring the gun, then what? At best I talk the guy down or someone calls the police real quick and I keep my wallet and everything ends okay. Maybe it ends worse though, maybe he gets mad or even for no reason at all he kills me. How is this somehow worse from society's perspective? Either way somebody dies. Sure, as an individual I don't want it to happen to me, but there are many other factors that impact if you're going to get mugged. I can change all of these other things like where I live and what dark alleys I walk down alone at night, etc. I don't NEED a gun, and I think it's far too narrow-sighted to assume that just because I want one that everybody should have one. We cannot ALL be packing more heat than every criminal on the street. 7) from wikipedia, just one example of a densely populated city not far from Detroit... "Crime in Toronto has been relatively low for a very long period of time; the low crime rate in Toronto has resulted in the city having a reputation as one of the safest large cities in North America. Recent data from Statistics Canada shows that crime has been falling steadily in Toronto's census metropolitan area since 1998, a total drop of 33% for all crimes reported between the period of 1998–2008.[1] For comparisons to various cities in North America, in 2007 for example, the homicide rate for the city of Toronto was 3.3 per 100,000 people, yet for Detroit (33.8), Atlanta (19.7), Chicago (15.5), San Francisco (13.6), Boston (10.3) and New York City (6.3) it was higher, while it was only marginally lower in Vancouver (3.1), San Jose (2.9) and Montreal (2.6). Toronto's robbery rate also ranks low, with 207.1 robberies per 100,000 people, compared to Detroit (675.1), Chicago (588.6), Los Angeles (348.5), Vancouver (266.2), New York City (265.9), Montreal (235.3) and San Diego (158.8).[2][3][4][5][6][7]" You quote socio-economic conditions as being the major factor. I would say the gun ownership is a major piece of those 'socio-economic factors'. I mean, the US has more guns than anyone else. "The Congressional Research Service in 2009 estimated there were 310 million firearms in the United States, not including weapons owned by the military. " I mean, when you feel more powerful than a criminal when you have a gun, you also feel more powerful than some random person you pass on the street when you have a gun, it's only natural. This power, though, comes with consequences. My argument about AK's in walmart, while exaggerated, still stand I feel. People don;t walk around with machine guns to the grocery store, but if they did i think it would change the atmosphere of going shopping. That being said, I still don't see a mystical connection between more people carrying guns but fewer people using them... 1) That sucks. I would hope the background checks would weed out the people who will get drunk and still carry. I'm ok with CUI, Carrying Under the Influence being a crime. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't already actually. 2) I personally do not care about handguns, mostly because they're pretty much pointless for overthrowing a tyranny. I still support them, but I am willing to compromise here. Handguns can have stricter background checks for two reasons, in my opinion. First, like I said, can't overthrow the next Hitler with a glock. Second, they actually are used in a huge majority of gun-related crimes. 3) I don't know. The exact details don't really matter too much though. Democracies in developed have fallen to to tyrants as recently as the 30's (maybe more recently, but I can't think of any at the moment). The public doesn't stand up for the oppressed because A) its not happening to them, and B) the few who do "Disappear". It happened in Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and in China in the 50's. 5) How are you harming every day life by owning guns? Will my rifle shoot someone on its own? Is it going to break its way out of its gun-safe and start killing people? You can't blame the guns, you have to blame the person holding them, or there's no accountability. 6) It is worse for you to die because you are innocent. If you kill your attacker, that's sad, but he knew the risks. And you don't really need to pack more heat than everyone else. A common thug is going to want something concealable, which basically means small. At the distances you're likely to face, any hand-gun will do, they're all basically the same inside 20 yards. 7) How is the War on Drugs going in Canada? Did it make your urban centers hellish wastelands like it did here? I honestly don't know. If it didn't, then the socioeconomic conditions aren't similar enough for that comparison to be valid. Anyways, of those 310 million guns, a very small percentage are used in crimes, we're talking single digit percentages. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/guns.cfm5.1 million violent crimes involving guns. Even if every gun-crime was committed with a unique gun, i.e. 1 gun = 1 crime, that's only 1.6 percent of all guns in the country are used in crimes. Okay so you kind of ignored a huge chunk of my argument but I'll try to state it a little better this time. Guns change society. Guns change societal atmosphere and gun culture has a negative impact on the public. This is my main point. When I punch you, you punch back, when I pull a gun on you, you pull a gun on me. If we have fists then somebody gets beaten up, when we have guns then somebody gets shot. It's really as simple as that. You multiply that by millions of people and you have americans dying en-masse. If nobody has a gun then nobody gets shot. Okay, that was simplified, but the point still stands. Fewer guns mean fewer gun crimes, more guns mean more gun crimes. Sure you can kill people with knives but it's not as easy as pulling a trigger anymore. Then again, you seem to be against the masses carrying glocks. So please elaborate because at this point I don't know if you understand the negative impact that comes with this gun culture. Long rifles and semi-auto assault rifles though you seem to support. Well, like I said those would not be very pleasant to encounter on the street. One guy with a knife cuts a few people and gets stopped, another guy brings an AK and 100 rounds and slaughters a crowd before being stopped. Maybe you support keeping those guns out of the hands of the irresponsible though. Well, that's going to take A LOT of government oversight to make it safe enough for a lot more people to own them safely. And then what happens when this tyrranical government turns? Now they have a list of everybody who has trained at a gun range to fight them. Now they have controls and know exactly what areas and what cities have whichever guns. To me if you want better government control over weapons you start to lose some of this ability to 'fight back' against your own military. In my opinion though this is okay, because I really don't see how it would be beneficial to form a civilian militia to defeat the US military. You seem to have trouble describing exactly how or when or in what conditions you might need to fight the US government, well perhaps this is part of the irrationality if you 'needing protection' from them. the 30's elsewhere and the 50's in china seem far too disconnected from us today to be relevant in a discussion of the citizens overthrowing the government. Did they have the internet? Did they have a modern democratic government with a modern military? How successful were the citizens at overthrowing this tyranny again? Please, I would actually be interested in a case where such a contemporary violent revolution turned out great for the public. in reference to 6) - of course its too bad that the innocent person died, but someone still died. Having a gun or not having one didn't somehow prevent anyone from dying ever. I mean, tell me how the situation is going to end peacefully when we both pull out a gun? This guy who pulls a gun on me for money is somehow now less ballsy than me? Now he's likely to put his gun down? The situation just doesn't improve for me when I have a gun. Maybe I kill him, great now I'm a murderer. I don't approve of the death penalty because I believe people can still contribute to society and there is no purpose for revenge. So on the street I don't find it any more justified that I should be able to kill him. It would be better that neither of us died - that neither of us had the ability to end the other's life so easily. Pretend that we all start carrying bigger guns for proper self defence. Would some thug on the street really come at me with a pocket knife when he knows people generally have an assault rifle for defence? No, he's just going to bring an even bigger gun, or he'll bring friends and surround/surprise me. The criminals aren't going to obey any restrictions I have to adhere to, they're simply going to be better armed than I am. The solution is not to hope I have a bigger gun than them, the solution is to have fewer guns for fewer people causing fewer crimes. 7-right so you really don't know how socioeconomic conditions are outside of the US. Ok well here for example the war of drugs is bullshit and we have gang/crime problems in major cities just like the US, only our homicide rates are much lower. There are many things that contribute to this, and I don't see how gun ownership provides any benefits. just some statistics on gun ownership causing harm in the US- http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-gun-laws-2012-12wikipedia on gun violence "In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.[5]" States in the highest quartile for gun ownership had homicide rates 114% higher than states in the lowest quartile of gun ownership.[84] Among juveniles (minors under the age of 16, 17, or 18, depending on legal jurisdiction) serving in correctional facilities, 86% had owned a gun, with 66% acquiring their first gun by age 14.[2] There was also a tendency for juvenile offenders to have owned several firearms, with 65% owning three or more.[2] Juveniles most often acquired guns illegally from family, friends, drug dealers, and street contacts.[2] Inner-city youths cited "self-protection from enemies" as the top reason for carrying a gun.[2] In 2005, almost 18% of U.S. households possessed handguns, compared to almost 3% of households in Canada that possessed handguns.[9] In 2011, the number was increased to 34% of adults in the United States personally owned a gun; 46% of adult men, and 23% of adult women. "The United States has about five percent of the total world population but residents of the United States own about 42 percent of all the world's civilian-owned firearms." and crime in the US The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole, of which 2.2 million were incarcerated. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[33][dated info] The US homicide rate, which has declined substantially since 1991 from a rate per 100,000 persons of 9.8 to 4.8 in 2010, is still among the highest in the industrialized world. In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany (0.9). Your gun culture example doesn't work. Specifically because guns are more dangerous. The repercussions are much greater, so you don't just pull guns as freely as you start fist-fights. People carrying guns don't just draw for nothing. They don't get cut-off in a parking lot and start shooting people. The AR15 is the most commonly owned rifle in the US. It's an "Assault Weapon". In many jurisdictions, it is already legal to open carry it. But "Assault Weapons" are used in less than 1% of all fire-arm related crimes. Carrying a gun doesn't mean you WILL shoot someone. My point is, is that this gun culture idea, the idea that people will shoot each other over everything and nothing, has already been tested. People already carry guns, and it doesn't happen. It doesn't take too much government oversight. All you need is background checks. As long as there's no database of gun-owners, it doesn't really matter if they know you're allowed to own a gun. A tyrant would need to know whether you actually do or not. I'm not Nostradamus, I can't predict the future. But democracies can, and have become tyrannies, and that should be good enough. Sure, I can't say every little detail that would be necessary for armed rebellion, but neither did the founding fathers. 15 years before the revolution, no one had any desire for independence. 15 years isn't that long. Europe in the 30's DID have a modern democracy, and they had an almost-modern military. Sure, they didn't have the internet, and things may have turned out differently if they did, but they were never given the chance for open rebellion. Any people with opposition sympathies were at least disarmed, and they often just "Disappeared". I'll be honest, I don't know enough about China to say much there, besides the fact that before Mao, they were a functional democracy, and after he took power, they weren't. This arms race between civilians and criminals also doesn't happen. Plenty of civilians already have guns, and you don't see criminals getting bigger and better guns. Criminals need cheap, concealable guns. They need to be concealable so they can sneak up on you, and they need to be cheap so they can throw them away before the cops show up. Cheap, concealable guns are not very big or powerful. What is worse, a civilian who did nothing wrong getting killed, or a criminal who knew the risks getting killed? And please don't give me the whole "You don't know him, maybe he just wanted to feed his family." nonsense. Soup kitchens are a thing. Foodstamps exist. And besides, you have to admit that this would be a pretty rare occurrence. Most (I'd wager almost all) thefts aren't because the person will starve otherwise, they're because the thief wants to buy a new TV or more cocaine. Last, you do not know what he plans on doing to you. You have no idea if he's just going to take your wallet, or if he's going to kill you. Sure, it might be rare, but if you want to talk about the one-in-a-million dad's who steal to feed their family, I can talk about the one-in-a-million muggers who also kill. I didn't say I don't know socioeconomics anywhere outside the US, I said I don't know them in Canada. I'm happy for you that you seem to have solved all your problems. But look at the UK. They have almost no guns, and have one of the highest crime rates in Europe. Clearly guns are not the only factor, or even the main factor Suggesting that the US federal government is somehow going to devolve into a dictatorship/tyranny, and then using that as an argument for more guns is bullshit. I don't know how some people always bring it up and not be able to think to themselves how stupid the entire idea is. That's just a childish fantasy gun proponents secretly want to happen just so they can tell everyone else how wrong they were. So please...stop pulling the what-if-tyranny-1776-nazi-hitler-stalin-happens-in-america because you're just telling every sensible person how stupid your logic is. If you want to actually convince people that more guns/stronger gun rights is better for the country, use another argument that actually makes some sense. And yes, you are honest about not knowing a lot about china. They weren't a "functional democracy" before Mao (whatever that means). China never had the opportunity to become a real democracy early in the 20th century because of (1) WWII (2) their nationalism vs. communism civil war and (3) their decades-long war against Japan, which had occupied china. What part of it is bullshit? Is it that you think democracy is somehow perfect? Tell that to Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and France in the 1800's. Tell that to everyone who died at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Kent State. Is it that you feel guerrillas would be completely outmatched? They wouldn't. Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. And if it happened in the US, it'd be even more effective, because the Guerrillas would have far more targets and each one would be more strategically important. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country. Is it that you feel peaceful protest is a better option? Good, I do too. But it shouldn't be the only option. Skydivers wear two parachutes for a reason. The people in the US military are people just like you and me. The people that work in federal government are american citizens just like you and me. Intelligent people not only learn, but also carry with them the knowledge that the american government is made up of checks and balances. Have you? There's a reason why we've had a peaceful transfer of government for 250 years without any problems. And I thought pro-gun supporters were the ones who knew all about the constitution. The idea that someone in the federal government or a high ranking military general would decide that he wanted to become Supreme Dictator of Facist America is batshit crazy with a daily forecast chance of 0%. If we really wanted to be hypothetical, do you really think american soldiers would go shoot up an american neighborhood because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to so that he could start taking control of our country? Somebody down the line would say no. Somebody else in similar power in the government would say no. Someone might kill him first. Do you really think A-10s and F-16s from wright-patterson would start bombing chicago and cincinatti just because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to? Why does something like these even need an explanation? + Show Spoiler +Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country.
Jesus christ, you sound like a 14 year old. You act as if most of the people in the military wouldn't follow orders that would be bad for the American people. Sure you might have a few who refuse, but the majority of them would be more concerned about the consequences of disobeying a direct order for fear of their own life or their families life. Why do you live in this fantasy land where tyranny is impossible? Telling someone they sound like a 14 year old makes you look like the childish one. Being condescending doesn't help your argument. ... Really? It should be completely obvious that the *vast* majority in the military would simply put down their weapons and give the bird to the chain of command that said "bomb Chicago" (and this chain of orders wouldn't happen in the first place because it require every single person up the chain of command to be batshit insane). He's dead-on accurate when he says "sounds like a 14 year old". It's not an insult, it's an apt observation.
Why is that so obvious to you? Do you think the people who died in Jonestown (918) thought that they would be forced to kill themselves? They had no weapons, only the people in weapons had control (Jim Jones' personal little army). Saying "sounds like ur 14" is immature, ad hominem, and pointless. Maybe using facts and logic would work for you, instead of making the incorrect assumption that its so obvious the *vast* majority in the military would put down their weapons, maybe you could consider that you don't know that for sure. This is a conclusion with nothing to back it up besides your feeling of it being "obvious". I was in the military, 4 years USMC, do you think you would know better than me what our military could do?
On January 31 2013 18:20 Rannasha wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 18:10 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
A thought i had on gun control laws. So, the main reason behind gun control laws (or what we're told/most people believe) is to keep criminals from using guns in crimes. What makes people think they'll actually follow these laws? They're criminals, they don't follow the laws. If guns are less readily available, criminals have a much harder time getting guns. In countries that have strict gun control laws in western Europe, only organized crime really has access to guns and they primarily use it to kill eachother. Your everyday burglar or small-time crook doesn't have the resources or the connections to obtain a firearm. Of course, the issue is that if you transition from no (or little) gun control to strict gun control in a country where guns are readily available, such as the US, it will take a long time before gun possession among small-time criminals drops to the level of that in countries that have had gun control for a long time already. The millions of guns in circulation in the US aren't going to go away overnight once a gun control law is introduced.
Of course they won't go away overnight...they won't go away period, are you serious? Where would they go?
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On January 31 2013 18:10 Ryuhou)aS( wrote:
A thought i had on gun control laws. So, the main reason behind gun control laws (or what we're told/most people believe) is to keep criminals from using guns in crimes. What makes people think they'll actually follow these laws? They're criminals, they don't follow the laws.
Part of the policy action on gun control involves preventing "straw purchases," in which a person legally purchases a gun for someone who is not allowed to own one. How they plan to do that, I have no idea. I suppose requiring a background check and registration of ALL firearm transfers would be a good start. That would also close the "gun show loophole," which is badly needed IMO.
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On January 31 2013 17:00 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 13:50 JingleHell wrote:On January 31 2013 13:44 FallDownMarigold wrote:On January 31 2013 08:29 kmillz wrote:On January 31 2013 07:46 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 06:10 Millitron wrote:On January 31 2013 04:48 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 03:01 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 15:10 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 14:15 Millitron wrote:[quote] 1) That sucks. I would hope the background checks would weed out the people who will get drunk and still carry. I'm ok with CUI, Carrying Under the Influence being a crime. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't already actually. 2) I personally do not care about handguns, mostly because they're pretty much pointless for overthrowing a tyranny. I still support them, but I am willing to compromise here. Handguns can have stricter background checks for two reasons, in my opinion. First, like I said, can't overthrow the next Hitler with a glock. Second, they actually are used in a huge majority of gun-related crimes. 3) I don't know. The exact details don't really matter too much though. Democracies in developed have fallen to to tyrants as recently as the 30's (maybe more recently, but I can't think of any at the moment). The public doesn't stand up for the oppressed because A) its not happening to them, and B) the few who do "Disappear". It happened in Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and in China in the 50's. 5) How are you harming every day life by owning guns? Will my rifle shoot someone on its own? Is it going to break its way out of its gun-safe and start killing people? You can't blame the guns, you have to blame the person holding them, or there's no accountability. 6) It is worse for you to die because you are innocent. If you kill your attacker, that's sad, but he knew the risks. And you don't really need to pack more heat than everyone else. A common thug is going to want something concealable, which basically means small. At the distances you're likely to face, any hand-gun will do, they're all basically the same inside 20 yards. 7) How is the War on Drugs going in Canada? Did it make your urban centers hellish wastelands like it did here? I honestly don't know. If it didn't, then the socioeconomic conditions aren't similar enough for that comparison to be valid. Anyways, of those 310 million guns, a very small percentage are used in crimes, we're talking single digit percentages. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/guns.cfm5.1 million violent crimes involving guns. Even if every gun-crime was committed with a unique gun, i.e. 1 gun = 1 crime, that's only 1.6 percent of all guns in the country are used in crimes. Okay so you kind of ignored a huge chunk of my argument but I'll try to state it a little better this time. Guns change society. Guns change societal atmosphere and gun culture has a negative impact on the public. This is my main point. When I punch you, you punch back, when I pull a gun on you, you pull a gun on me. If we have fists then somebody gets beaten up, when we have guns then somebody gets shot. It's really as simple as that. You multiply that by millions of people and you have americans dying en-masse. If nobody has a gun then nobody gets shot. Okay, that was simplified, but the point still stands. Fewer guns mean fewer gun crimes, more guns mean more gun crimes. Sure you can kill people with knives but it's not as easy as pulling a trigger anymore. Then again, you seem to be against the masses carrying glocks. So please elaborate because at this point I don't know if you understand the negative impact that comes with this gun culture. Long rifles and semi-auto assault rifles though you seem to support. Well, like I said those would not be very pleasant to encounter on the street. One guy with a knife cuts a few people and gets stopped, another guy brings an AK and 100 rounds and slaughters a crowd before being stopped. Maybe you support keeping those guns out of the hands of the irresponsible though. Well, that's going to take A LOT of government oversight to make it safe enough for a lot more people to own them safely. And then what happens when this tyrranical government turns? Now they have a list of everybody who has trained at a gun range to fight them. Now they have controls and know exactly what areas and what cities have whichever guns. To me if you want better government control over weapons you start to lose some of this ability to 'fight back' against your own military. In my opinion though this is okay, because I really don't see how it would be beneficial to form a civilian militia to defeat the US military. You seem to have trouble describing exactly how or when or in what conditions you might need to fight the US government, well perhaps this is part of the irrationality if you 'needing protection' from them. the 30's elsewhere and the 50's in china seem far too disconnected from us today to be relevant in a discussion of the citizens overthrowing the government. Did they have the internet? Did they have a modern democratic government with a modern military? How successful were the citizens at overthrowing this tyranny again? Please, I would actually be interested in a case where such a contemporary violent revolution turned out great for the public. in reference to 6) - of course its too bad that the innocent person died, but someone still died. Having a gun or not having one didn't somehow prevent anyone from dying ever. I mean, tell me how the situation is going to end peacefully when we both pull out a gun? This guy who pulls a gun on me for money is somehow now less ballsy than me? Now he's likely to put his gun down? The situation just doesn't improve for me when I have a gun. Maybe I kill him, great now I'm a murderer. I don't approve of the death penalty because I believe people can still contribute to society and there is no purpose for revenge. So on the street I don't find it any more justified that I should be able to kill him. It would be better that neither of us died - that neither of us had the ability to end the other's life so easily. Pretend that we all start carrying bigger guns for proper self defence. Would some thug on the street really come at me with a pocket knife when he knows people generally have an assault rifle for defence? No, he's just going to bring an even bigger gun, or he'll bring friends and surround/surprise me. The criminals aren't going to obey any restrictions I have to adhere to, they're simply going to be better armed than I am. The solution is not to hope I have a bigger gun than them, the solution is to have fewer guns for fewer people causing fewer crimes. 7-right so you really don't know how socioeconomic conditions are outside of the US. Ok well here for example the war of drugs is bullshit and we have gang/crime problems in major cities just like the US, only our homicide rates are much lower. There are many things that contribute to this, and I don't see how gun ownership provides any benefits. just some statistics on gun ownership causing harm in the US- http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-gun-laws-2012-12wikipedia on gun violence "In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.[5]" States in the highest quartile for gun ownership had homicide rates 114% higher than states in the lowest quartile of gun ownership.[84] Among juveniles (minors under the age of 16, 17, or 18, depending on legal jurisdiction) serving in correctional facilities, 86% had owned a gun, with 66% acquiring their first gun by age 14.[2] There was also a tendency for juvenile offenders to have owned several firearms, with 65% owning three or more.[2] Juveniles most often acquired guns illegally from family, friends, drug dealers, and street contacts.[2] Inner-city youths cited "self-protection from enemies" as the top reason for carrying a gun.[2] In 2005, almost 18% of U.S. households possessed handguns, compared to almost 3% of households in Canada that possessed handguns.[9] In 2011, the number was increased to 34% of adults in the United States personally owned a gun; 46% of adult men, and 23% of adult women. "The United States has about five percent of the total world population but residents of the United States own about 42 percent of all the world's civilian-owned firearms." and crime in the US The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole, of which 2.2 million were incarcerated. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[33][dated info] The US homicide rate, which has declined substantially since 1991 from a rate per 100,000 persons of 9.8 to 4.8 in 2010, is still among the highest in the industrialized world. In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany (0.9). Your gun culture example doesn't work. Specifically because guns are more dangerous. The repercussions are much greater, so you don't just pull guns as freely as you start fist-fights. People carrying guns don't just draw for nothing. They don't get cut-off in a parking lot and start shooting people. The AR15 is the most commonly owned rifle in the US. It's an "Assault Weapon". In many jurisdictions, it is already legal to open carry it. But "Assault Weapons" are used in less than 1% of all fire-arm related crimes. Carrying a gun doesn't mean you WILL shoot someone. My point is, is that this gun culture idea, the idea that people will shoot each other over everything and nothing, has already been tested. People already carry guns, and it doesn't happen. It doesn't take too much government oversight. All you need is background checks. As long as there's no database of gun-owners, it doesn't really matter if they know you're allowed to own a gun. A tyrant would need to know whether you actually do or not. I'm not Nostradamus, I can't predict the future. But democracies can, and have become tyrannies, and that should be good enough. Sure, I can't say every little detail that would be necessary for armed rebellion, but neither did the founding fathers. 15 years before the revolution, no one had any desire for independence. 15 years isn't that long. Europe in the 30's DID have a modern democracy, and they had an almost-modern military. Sure, they didn't have the internet, and things may have turned out differently if they did, but they were never given the chance for open rebellion. Any people with opposition sympathies were at least disarmed, and they often just "Disappeared". I'll be honest, I don't know enough about China to say much there, besides the fact that before Mao, they were a functional democracy, and after he took power, they weren't. This arms race between civilians and criminals also doesn't happen. Plenty of civilians already have guns, and you don't see criminals getting bigger and better guns. Criminals need cheap, concealable guns. They need to be concealable so they can sneak up on you, and they need to be cheap so they can throw them away before the cops show up. Cheap, concealable guns are not very big or powerful. What is worse, a civilian who did nothing wrong getting killed, or a criminal who knew the risks getting killed? And please don't give me the whole "You don't know him, maybe he just wanted to feed his family." nonsense. Soup kitchens are a thing. Foodstamps exist. And besides, you have to admit that this would be a pretty rare occurrence. Most (I'd wager almost all) thefts aren't because the person will starve otherwise, they're because the thief wants to buy a new TV or more cocaine. Last, you do not know what he plans on doing to you. You have no idea if he's just going to take your wallet, or if he's going to kill you. Sure, it might be rare, but if you want to talk about the one-in-a-million dad's who steal to feed their family, I can talk about the one-in-a-million muggers who also kill. I didn't say I don't know socioeconomics anywhere outside the US, I said I don't know them in Canada. I'm happy for you that you seem to have solved all your problems. But look at the UK. They have almost no guns, and have one of the highest crime rates in Europe. Clearly guns are not the only factor, or even the main factor Suggesting that the US federal government is somehow going to devolve into a dictatorship/tyranny, and then using that as an argument for more guns is bullshit. I don't know how some people always bring it up and not be able to think to themselves how stupid the entire idea is. That's just a childish fantasy gun proponents secretly want to happen just so they can tell everyone else how wrong they were. So please...stop pulling the what-if-tyranny-1776-nazi-hitler-stalin-happens-in-america because you're just telling every sensible person how stupid your logic is. If you want to actually convince people that more guns/stronger gun rights is better for the country, use another argument that actually makes some sense. And yes, you are honest about not knowing a lot about china. They weren't a "functional democracy" before Mao (whatever that means). China never had the opportunity to become a real democracy early in the 20th century because of (1) WWII (2) their nationalism vs. communism civil war and (3) their decades-long war against Japan, which had occupied china. What part of it is bullshit? Is it that you think democracy is somehow perfect? Tell that to Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and France in the 1800's. Tell that to everyone who died at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Kent State. Is it that you feel guerrillas would be completely outmatched? They wouldn't. Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. And if it happened in the US, it'd be even more effective, because the Guerrillas would have far more targets and each one would be more strategically important. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country. Is it that you feel peaceful protest is a better option? Good, I do too. But it shouldn't be the only option. Skydivers wear two parachutes for a reason. The people in the US military are people just like you and me. The people that work in federal government are american citizens just like you and me. Intelligent people not only learn, but also carry with them the knowledge that the american government is made up of checks and balances. Have you? There's a reason why we've had a peaceful transfer of government for 250 years without any problems. And I thought pro-gun supporters were the ones who knew all about the constitution. The idea that someone in the federal government or a high ranking military general would decide that he wanted to become Supreme Dictator of Facist America is batshit crazy with a daily forecast chance of 0%. If we really wanted to be hypothetical, do you really think american soldiers would go shoot up an american neighborhood because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to so that he could start taking control of our country? Somebody down the line would say no. Somebody else in similar power in the government would say no. Someone might kill him first. Do you really think A-10s and F-16s from wright-patterson would start bombing chicago and cincinatti just because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to? Why does something like these even need an explanation? + Show Spoiler +Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country.
Jesus christ, you sound like a 14 year old. You act as if most of the people in the military wouldn't follow orders that would be bad for the American people. Sure you might have a few who refuse, but the majority of them would be more concerned about the consequences of disobeying a direct order for fear of their own life or their families life. Why do you live in this fantasy land where tyranny is impossible? Telling someone they sound like a 14 year old makes you look like the childish one. Being condescending doesn't help your argument. ... Really? It should be completely obvious that the *vast* majority in the military would simply put down their weapons and give the bird to the chain of command that said "bomb Chicago" (and this chain of orders wouldn't happen in the first place because it require every single person up the chain of command to be batshit insane). He's dead-on accurate when he says "sounds like a 14 year old". It's not an insult, it's an apt observation. Do you actually think the order would be "Bomb Chicago"? JDAM, Joint Direct Attack Munition. Precise. Take down a single warehouse or other building, minimal collateral damage. Do you really think internment to prevent guerilla warfare wouldn't happen? I remember when Abu Ghraib was a thing. Been there? I have. That fiasco happened because the wrong people were doing the wrong job and were way overstretched. And that job was detention of a large percentage of a civilian population for fitting the wrong demographics. I'm utterly baffled by this response. Your first bone to pick with me was the fact that the order would not literally be: "bomb Chicago".... I just... I... whaa.. Hahahhhahahahahaahah. And then your next comment is... something about Abu Ghraib, and how you were there... and this is supposed to, erm, stand as evidence for something totally unrelated..? I just... wow. LOL Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 07:46 white_horse wrote:
Jesus christ, you sound like a 14 year old.
If you aren't following the discussion closely enough to figure out how any of that applied as responses, perhaps you should bow out until your borrowed ad homs cease to apply to yourself.
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On January 31 2013 13:44 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2013 08:29 kmillz wrote:On January 31 2013 07:46 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 06:10 Millitron wrote:On January 31 2013 04:48 white_horse wrote:On January 31 2013 03:01 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 15:10 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 14:15 Millitron wrote:On January 30 2013 13:45 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 12:54 Millitron wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 30 2013 12:04 StayPhrosty wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 11:30 sunprince wrote:On January 30 2013 11:29 StayPhrosty wrote:On January 30 2013 11:23 sunprince wrote:On January 30 2013 11:15 white_horse wrote:
People who argue that guns should be completely unrestricted in order to prevent a dictatorship or tyrannical US government just seem like guns are personal extensions of their deep hatred and mistrust of the federal government and almost want an apocalyptic evil government attack its own citizens just so that they can prove themselves right. Few people argue that guns should be completely unrestricted. To use a parallel argument, even though most people believe that citizens should have the right to drive automobiles, that doesn't imply that those people believe that driving cars should be completely unrestricted. On January 30 2013 11:15 white_horse wrote:
How some people think that there is a chance that the US government is somehow going to devolve into some facist or dictatorship-type government doesn't make any logical sense. Your arguing against logic. The military is made up of citizens just like yourselves and they aren't going to start dropping bombs on US cities or go shoot up neighborhoods just because a government official tells them to. History as well as modern events suggest otherwise. Take a look at the Arab Spring for examples of governments using military force against citizens and armed populaces acting as the only possible defense against it. Right, because the Egyptian army is pretty much the same as the US army... oh wait... What exactly is your point? Please spell it out, since there are a number of flawed arguments and fallacies you could be referring to with your vague statement. Sorry, I just got sick of all the arguments with about 2 seconds of thought put into them and I stooped to their level. I suppose if you're willing to give me a serious discussion, I'll start with a few things that jump out at me. 1) Although anecdotal, I seem to see many gun advocates arguing for unrestricted access. Obviously I have the sense to understand this is not how most people feel, but the media is filled with people (e.g. the NRA) who scream and shout any time gun control is even mentioned. I would think most people would be behind 'sensible' gun control laws that are both effective at dealing with crime but do not infringe upon responsible gun owners' "rights." That being said, a lot of the arguments I see simply aim to defend the responsibility of every person to carry a gun. Perhaps you could present an argument against the common gun control position with a little more sense than I usually see and I'll try to respond as best as I can. 2) The US military is, by many standards, the most powerful military in the world. It would take a very contrived situation to try and see another military defeat them in conventional warfare. 3) Obviously guerrilla warfare would be much for effective for a US citizen militia to attempt, but this I think is quite ridiculous to speculate about. What tyrannical superpowers in the past have had is popular support, not a lack of an armed enemy. The US isn't exactly very close to civil war right now in my opinion, and so such a massive societal shift would mean a lot more people being concerned about being attacked by their government than we currently see in the US. Perhaps if this changed then there 'would' be popular support for gun ownership, but right now it simply doesn't make sense to me. 4) A civilian's ability to fight the US government would be shockingly limited if their electricity was cut off. Sure, there are many people who can survive just fine, but the vast majority, I would argue, would simply die because of lack of survival skills, not lack of a gun to shoot back with. 5) Arguing for the benefit of automatic or other weapons as integral for defeating a hypothetical US dictator and his crazy plot is tough enough, but that's far from the only flaw. There have been huge shifts in social values through movements that were pretty much non-violent. Of course there are examples like India's independence and the US civil rights movement, but there are other examples as well. People rarely smoke cigarettes anymore. The public has been educated better and there have been restrictions placed on the sale of them that don't prevent their use but do limit their negative impact. 6) Just to add more of the common arguments - carrying a gun around on the street for self defence from mugging or something is quite likely to escalate the situation. 7) Statistically the US owns more guns and has more gun crime than other so called 'developed' countries like the UK or Canada. Perhaps this is more than just a correlation... 1) I'm fine with background checks and keeping guns away from felons/psychos. Everyone else though should be allowed to have pretty much any gun they want. You can have the more powerful ones require more thorough checks, but there should be nothing outright forbidden. As for the NRA, of course they're filling the media, they're the loudest. Just like how Piers Morgan on your side is constantly yelling about guns. The media isn't about truth, it's about profit, and sensible discussion doesn't make money. 2) Totally. That's why the rebels would fight a guerrilla war. There are plenty of forests and swamps too dense for drones to find you, or you can hide in dense cities where collateral damage would be too great for them to bomb you. And you've got plenty of targets, i.e. every powerplant, factory, refinery, and bridge in the country. 3) Most dictatorships had popular indifference, with a fervently dedicated, vocal minority. The opposition was quite often disarmed before things got too out of hand. Mao did it, Stalin did it, Hitler did it. 4) Any citizen who would be deterred by simply losing electricity wouldn't have the stomach for rebellion in the first place. But I do not believe this is such a vast majority that a rebellion would be impossible. Besides, in an urban environment, they can't shut your electricity off if they don't know who or where you are. 5) I'm all for peaceful movements, when they work they're great. But why bet everything on peaceful protest? Why not at least keep the capability to fight back if push comes to shove? 6) Maybe the mugger should've thought of that. 7) First, Canada isn't as densely populated, the socioeconomic conditions don't foster crime as badly in Canada as in the US. A better comparison is between the US and the UK. Still, the US does have higher gun-crime. But the UK has much higher violent crime in general. Why is gun-crime somehow worse than regular crime? [quote] Having a gun slung over your shoulder doesn't hurt anyone. Plenty of people ALREADY carry guns, both openly and concealed, and this whole "Bump into them and they shoot you" thing doesn't happen. 1) Okay, so at least we agree on a small part. That being said, I have ran into more drunk guys yelling 'come at me bro' than I can count. As well, plenty of people get road rage already, so I really would feel unsafe if all of them were carrying a weapon. As well, with more people 'packing', you also have an attitude that follows it. Right now, I feel safe, so I don't carry a gun. Others don't fear me because as one of many in a crowd I'm probably not carrying a gun. If I'm surrounded by people with guns then the atmosphere changes. When you feel as if you need a gun for protection at all times then you are assuming that you could be in danger at all times. Perhaps you're just playing it safe, but if everybody 'plays it safe', then everybody will have something to fear - everybody else. I'm not sure about you, but I really would rather trust to military and the police to protect me, rather than pray I have a better gun than the guy trying to kill me. You see, the only situation I can imagine where I'm just dead on sight without a gun is one where someone is hunting me down. In such a case, well, then I can train hard but the bottom 50% are just fucked. Now it's survival of the fittest and somebody's got to lose those gunfights. I'm getting off topic though. My main point is that when a society has decided that there is significant enough danger to warrant shooting people for defence, then the society is in deep, deep trouble. It would be better to work towards keeping EVERYONE safe, rather than just equipping every individual and saying 'i hope you get the best of him'. 2) okay, agreement here as well. But the thing I'm getting at is that we have no contemporary example of a western democratic government turning violent and killing it's people for some tyrannical reason. That type of situation would be near impossible to predict or prepare for by carrying a handgun right now. 3) Right, but I still can't see a situation where some evil dude takes over the US government and turns it's guns on the public. I mean, tell me what the most likely situation is here? Are they killing everybody? Because in that case the electricity/survival argument holds immense weight. Are they just targeting a select few? Who? Why? Why doesn't the public stand up for them? Why isn't the leader impeached? Why isn't a new congress elected? Why don't the soldiers refuse to fight? I'm not saying there cannot possibly exist a situation where the people need to shoot back, I'm just saying that preparing for these kinds of things in the US is about as necessary as the public preparing for an alien invasion. Statistically it's possible, but in reality there are ways for people to flee or get protection illegally rather than relying on their 'government approved handgun' to help them fight off the special forces to save their family in the middle of the night. Wouldn't you say it's more important for the laws created by the majority to be valued more than the ability of each individual to illegally resist those laws? Because what I see here is a problem with the public influence over the government, and that IS something I agree with. And it is something I fight for by getting involved in politics, not by carrying a glock around with me. 5) I guess the thing is that is our society, right now, I feel that the benefits of an armed public are vastly outweighed by the harm it would bring. Imagine of the occupy wallstreet guys started shooting at the cops when they maced them for no reason. Obviously the police violated a LOT of rights, but nobody died en-mass. Also, as I mentioned earlier, by having guns as a 'backup' you're harming everyday life for the public. 6) Okay, let's assume the mugger brings a knife and swings at me so I shoot him. Great. What have I accomplished? A guy is dead now. In my eyes, it was self defence, but if nobody had died at all would that not be a VASTLY better alternative? Pretend I don't bring the gun, then what? At best I talk the guy down or someone calls the police real quick and I keep my wallet and everything ends okay. Maybe it ends worse though, maybe he gets mad or even for no reason at all he kills me. How is this somehow worse from society's perspective? Either way somebody dies. Sure, as an individual I don't want it to happen to me, but there are many other factors that impact if you're going to get mugged. I can change all of these other things like where I live and what dark alleys I walk down alone at night, etc. I don't NEED a gun, and I think it's far too narrow-sighted to assume that just because I want one that everybody should have one. We cannot ALL be packing more heat than every criminal on the street. 7) from wikipedia, just one example of a densely populated city not far from Detroit... "Crime in Toronto has been relatively low for a very long period of time; the low crime rate in Toronto has resulted in the city having a reputation as one of the safest large cities in North America. Recent data from Statistics Canada shows that crime has been falling steadily in Toronto's census metropolitan area since 1998, a total drop of 33% for all crimes reported between the period of 1998–2008.[1] For comparisons to various cities in North America, in 2007 for example, the homicide rate for the city of Toronto was 3.3 per 100,000 people, yet for Detroit (33.8), Atlanta (19.7), Chicago (15.5), San Francisco (13.6), Boston (10.3) and New York City (6.3) it was higher, while it was only marginally lower in Vancouver (3.1), San Jose (2.9) and Montreal (2.6). Toronto's robbery rate also ranks low, with 207.1 robberies per 100,000 people, compared to Detroit (675.1), Chicago (588.6), Los Angeles (348.5), Vancouver (266.2), New York City (265.9), Montreal (235.3) and San Diego (158.8).[2][3][4][5][6][7]" You quote socio-economic conditions as being the major factor. I would say the gun ownership is a major piece of those 'socio-economic factors'. I mean, the US has more guns than anyone else. "The Congressional Research Service in 2009 estimated there were 310 million firearms in the United States, not including weapons owned by the military. " I mean, when you feel more powerful than a criminal when you have a gun, you also feel more powerful than some random person you pass on the street when you have a gun, it's only natural. This power, though, comes with consequences. My argument about AK's in walmart, while exaggerated, still stand I feel. People don;t walk around with machine guns to the grocery store, but if they did i think it would change the atmosphere of going shopping. That being said, I still don't see a mystical connection between more people carrying guns but fewer people using them... 1) That sucks. I would hope the background checks would weed out the people who will get drunk and still carry. I'm ok with CUI, Carrying Under the Influence being a crime. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't already actually. 2) I personally do not care about handguns, mostly because they're pretty much pointless for overthrowing a tyranny. I still support them, but I am willing to compromise here. Handguns can have stricter background checks for two reasons, in my opinion. First, like I said, can't overthrow the next Hitler with a glock. Second, they actually are used in a huge majority of gun-related crimes. 3) I don't know. The exact details don't really matter too much though. Democracies in developed have fallen to to tyrants as recently as the 30's (maybe more recently, but I can't think of any at the moment). The public doesn't stand up for the oppressed because A) its not happening to them, and B) the few who do "Disappear". It happened in Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and in China in the 50's. 5) How are you harming every day life by owning guns? Will my rifle shoot someone on its own? Is it going to break its way out of its gun-safe and start killing people? You can't blame the guns, you have to blame the person holding them, or there's no accountability. 6) It is worse for you to die because you are innocent. If you kill your attacker, that's sad, but he knew the risks. And you don't really need to pack more heat than everyone else. A common thug is going to want something concealable, which basically means small. At the distances you're likely to face, any hand-gun will do, they're all basically the same inside 20 yards. 7) How is the War on Drugs going in Canada? Did it make your urban centers hellish wastelands like it did here? I honestly don't know. If it didn't, then the socioeconomic conditions aren't similar enough for that comparison to be valid. Anyways, of those 310 million guns, a very small percentage are used in crimes, we're talking single digit percentages. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/guns.cfm5.1 million violent crimes involving guns. Even if every gun-crime was committed with a unique gun, i.e. 1 gun = 1 crime, that's only 1.6 percent of all guns in the country are used in crimes. Okay so you kind of ignored a huge chunk of my argument but I'll try to state it a little better this time. Guns change society. Guns change societal atmosphere and gun culture has a negative impact on the public. This is my main point. When I punch you, you punch back, when I pull a gun on you, you pull a gun on me. If we have fists then somebody gets beaten up, when we have guns then somebody gets shot. It's really as simple as that. You multiply that by millions of people and you have americans dying en-masse. If nobody has a gun then nobody gets shot. Okay, that was simplified, but the point still stands. Fewer guns mean fewer gun crimes, more guns mean more gun crimes. Sure you can kill people with knives but it's not as easy as pulling a trigger anymore. Then again, you seem to be against the masses carrying glocks. So please elaborate because at this point I don't know if you understand the negative impact that comes with this gun culture. Long rifles and semi-auto assault rifles though you seem to support. Well, like I said those would not be very pleasant to encounter on the street. One guy with a knife cuts a few people and gets stopped, another guy brings an AK and 100 rounds and slaughters a crowd before being stopped. Maybe you support keeping those guns out of the hands of the irresponsible though. Well, that's going to take A LOT of government oversight to make it safe enough for a lot more people to own them safely. And then what happens when this tyrranical government turns? Now they have a list of everybody who has trained at a gun range to fight them. Now they have controls and know exactly what areas and what cities have whichever guns. To me if you want better government control over weapons you start to lose some of this ability to 'fight back' against your own military. In my opinion though this is okay, because I really don't see how it would be beneficial to form a civilian militia to defeat the US military. You seem to have trouble describing exactly how or when or in what conditions you might need to fight the US government, well perhaps this is part of the irrationality if you 'needing protection' from them. the 30's elsewhere and the 50's in china seem far too disconnected from us today to be relevant in a discussion of the citizens overthrowing the government. Did they have the internet? Did they have a modern democratic government with a modern military? How successful were the citizens at overthrowing this tyranny again? Please, I would actually be interested in a case where such a contemporary violent revolution turned out great for the public. in reference to 6) - of course its too bad that the innocent person died, but someone still died. Having a gun or not having one didn't somehow prevent anyone from dying ever. I mean, tell me how the situation is going to end peacefully when we both pull out a gun? This guy who pulls a gun on me for money is somehow now less ballsy than me? Now he's likely to put his gun down? The situation just doesn't improve for me when I have a gun. Maybe I kill him, great now I'm a murderer. I don't approve of the death penalty because I believe people can still contribute to society and there is no purpose for revenge. So on the street I don't find it any more justified that I should be able to kill him. It would be better that neither of us died - that neither of us had the ability to end the other's life so easily. Pretend that we all start carrying bigger guns for proper self defence. Would some thug on the street really come at me with a pocket knife when he knows people generally have an assault rifle for defence? No, he's just going to bring an even bigger gun, or he'll bring friends and surround/surprise me. The criminals aren't going to obey any restrictions I have to adhere to, they're simply going to be better armed than I am. The solution is not to hope I have a bigger gun than them, the solution is to have fewer guns for fewer people causing fewer crimes. 7-right so you really don't know how socioeconomic conditions are outside of the US. Ok well here for example the war of drugs is bullshit and we have gang/crime problems in major cities just like the US, only our homicide rates are much lower. There are many things that contribute to this, and I don't see how gun ownership provides any benefits. just some statistics on gun ownership causing harm in the US- http://www.businessinsider.com/shooting-gun-laws-2012-12wikipedia on gun violence "In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm.[5]" States in the highest quartile for gun ownership had homicide rates 114% higher than states in the lowest quartile of gun ownership.[84] Among juveniles (minors under the age of 16, 17, or 18, depending on legal jurisdiction) serving in correctional facilities, 86% had owned a gun, with 66% acquiring their first gun by age 14.[2] There was also a tendency for juvenile offenders to have owned several firearms, with 65% owning three or more.[2] Juveniles most often acquired guns illegally from family, friends, drug dealers, and street contacts.[2] Inner-city youths cited "self-protection from enemies" as the top reason for carrying a gun.[2] In 2005, almost 18% of U.S. households possessed handguns, compared to almost 3% of households in Canada that possessed handguns.[9] In 2011, the number was increased to 34% of adults in the United States personally owned a gun; 46% of adult men, and 23% of adult women. "The United States has about five percent of the total world population but residents of the United States own about 42 percent of all the world's civilian-owned firearms." and crime in the US The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole, of which 2.2 million were incarcerated. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.[33][dated info] The US homicide rate, which has declined substantially since 1991 from a rate per 100,000 persons of 9.8 to 4.8 in 2010, is still among the highest in the industrialized world. In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany (0.9). Your gun culture example doesn't work. Specifically because guns are more dangerous. The repercussions are much greater, so you don't just pull guns as freely as you start fist-fights. People carrying guns don't just draw for nothing. They don't get cut-off in a parking lot and start shooting people. The AR15 is the most commonly owned rifle in the US. It's an "Assault Weapon". In many jurisdictions, it is already legal to open carry it. But "Assault Weapons" are used in less than 1% of all fire-arm related crimes. Carrying a gun doesn't mean you WILL shoot someone. My point is, is that this gun culture idea, the idea that people will shoot each other over everything and nothing, has already been tested. People already carry guns, and it doesn't happen. It doesn't take too much government oversight. All you need is background checks. As long as there's no database of gun-owners, it doesn't really matter if they know you're allowed to own a gun. A tyrant would need to know whether you actually do or not. I'm not Nostradamus, I can't predict the future. But democracies can, and have become tyrannies, and that should be good enough. Sure, I can't say every little detail that would be necessary for armed rebellion, but neither did the founding fathers. 15 years before the revolution, no one had any desire for independence. 15 years isn't that long. Europe in the 30's DID have a modern democracy, and they had an almost-modern military. Sure, they didn't have the internet, and things may have turned out differently if they did, but they were never given the chance for open rebellion. Any people with opposition sympathies were at least disarmed, and they often just "Disappeared". I'll be honest, I don't know enough about China to say much there, besides the fact that before Mao, they were a functional democracy, and after he took power, they weren't. This arms race between civilians and criminals also doesn't happen. Plenty of civilians already have guns, and you don't see criminals getting bigger and better guns. Criminals need cheap, concealable guns. They need to be concealable so they can sneak up on you, and they need to be cheap so they can throw them away before the cops show up. Cheap, concealable guns are not very big or powerful. What is worse, a civilian who did nothing wrong getting killed, or a criminal who knew the risks getting killed? And please don't give me the whole "You don't know him, maybe he just wanted to feed his family." nonsense. Soup kitchens are a thing. Foodstamps exist. And besides, you have to admit that this would be a pretty rare occurrence. Most (I'd wager almost all) thefts aren't because the person will starve otherwise, they're because the thief wants to buy a new TV or more cocaine. Last, you do not know what he plans on doing to you. You have no idea if he's just going to take your wallet, or if he's going to kill you. Sure, it might be rare, but if you want to talk about the one-in-a-million dad's who steal to feed their family, I can talk about the one-in-a-million muggers who also kill. I didn't say I don't know socioeconomics anywhere outside the US, I said I don't know them in Canada. I'm happy for you that you seem to have solved all your problems. But look at the UK. They have almost no guns, and have one of the highest crime rates in Europe. Clearly guns are not the only factor, or even the main factor Suggesting that the US federal government is somehow going to devolve into a dictatorship/tyranny, and then using that as an argument for more guns is bullshit. I don't know how some people always bring it up and not be able to think to themselves how stupid the entire idea is. That's just a childish fantasy gun proponents secretly want to happen just so they can tell everyone else how wrong they were. So please...stop pulling the what-if-tyranny-1776-nazi-hitler-stalin-happens-in-america because you're just telling every sensible person how stupid your logic is. If you want to actually convince people that more guns/stronger gun rights is better for the country, use another argument that actually makes some sense. And yes, you are honest about not knowing a lot about china. They weren't a "functional democracy" before Mao (whatever that means). China never had the opportunity to become a real democracy early in the 20th century because of (1) WWII (2) their nationalism vs. communism civil war and (3) their decades-long war against Japan, which had occupied china. What part of it is bullshit? Is it that you think democracy is somehow perfect? Tell that to Spain, Italy, and Germany in the 30's, and France in the 1800's. Tell that to everyone who died at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Kent State. Is it that you feel guerrillas would be completely outmatched? They wouldn't. Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. And if it happened in the US, it'd be even more effective, because the Guerrillas would have far more targets and each one would be more strategically important. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country. Is it that you feel peaceful protest is a better option? Good, I do too. But it shouldn't be the only option. Skydivers wear two parachutes for a reason. The people in the US military are people just like you and me. The people that work in federal government are american citizens just like you and me. Intelligent people not only learn, but also carry with them the knowledge that the american government is made up of checks and balances. Have you? There's a reason why we've had a peaceful transfer of government for 250 years without any problems. And I thought pro-gun supporters were the ones who knew all about the constitution. The idea that someone in the federal government or a high ranking military general would decide that he wanted to become Supreme Dictator of Facist America is batshit crazy with a daily forecast chance of 0%. If we really wanted to be hypothetical, do you really think american soldiers would go shoot up an american neighborhood because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to so that he could start taking control of our country? Somebody down the line would say no. Somebody else in similar power in the government would say no. Someone might kill him first. Do you really think A-10s and F-16s from wright-patterson would start bombing chicago and cincinatti just because the Supreme Dictator wanted them to? Why does something like these even need an explanation? + Show Spoiler +Sure, they'd get slaughtered in a conventional fight, but guerrilla warfare is amazingly effective. All the guerrillas in Vietnam and Iraq could do is ambush a patrol or two here and there. Homegrown guerrillas could target every factory, bridge, and powerplant in the country.
Jesus christ, you sound like a 14 year old. You act as if most of the people in the military wouldn't follow orders that would be bad for the American people. Sure you might have a few who refuse, but the majority of them would be more concerned about the consequences of disobeying a direct order for fear of their own life or their families life. Why do you live in this fantasy land where tyranny is impossible? Telling someone they sound like a 14 year old makes you look like the childish one. Being condescending doesn't help your argument. ... Really? It should be completely obvious that the *vast* majority in the military would simply put down their weapons and give the bird to the chain of command that said "bomb Chicago" (and this chain of orders wouldn't happen in the first place because it require every single person up the chain of command to be batshit insane). He's dead-on accurate when he says "sounds like a 14 year old". It's not an insult, it's an apt observation.
Did the "vast majority" of soldiers in Germany put down their weapons when they were ordered to round up the Jews?
Did the "vast majority" of soldiers in Russia put down their weapons when Stalin ordered one of his many purges?
Did the "vast majority" of officials at Waco, Ruby Ridge, or Kent State put down their weapons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Orders are pretty effective, regardless of how cruel they are.
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On February 01 2013 01:08 Millitron wrote:
Did the "vast majority" of soldiers in Germany put down their weapons when they were ordered to round up the Jews?
.[/QUOTE]
the "vast majority" of soldiers were not directly involved in the crimes against the jews. the "wehrmacht" always stated that they were just soldiers and did not participate in the holocaust.
this of course is not 100% true but most of the orders were carried out by a special force (Waffen-SS) that was not a regular part of the german military and was the militant arm of the NSDAP (the nazi party)
given the fact that jews were an integral part of the Reichswehr (military of the german reich from 1871-1918) this makes sense, as it is unlikely that the military will turn on itself.
i am pretty sure it was the same with stalinist russia.
maybe do your homework first?
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On February 01 2013 01:32 hfglgg wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2013 01:08 Millitron wrote:
Did the "vast majority" of soldiers in Germany put down their weapons when they were ordered to round up the Jews?
. the "vast majority" of soldiers were not directly involved in the crimes against the jews. the "wehrmacht" always stated that they were just soldiers and did not participate in the holocaust. this of course is not 100% true but most of the orders were carried out by a special force (Waffen-SS) that was not a regular part of the german military and was the militant arm of the NSDAP. given the fact that jews were an integral part of the Reichswehr (military of the german reich from 1871-1918) this makes sense, as it is unlikely that the military will turn on itself. i am pretty sure it was the same with stalinist russia. maybe do your homework first?
So the lesson is that where there's a will, there's a way, and you don't even need the vast majority of the military to do horrible things?
Doesn't that increase the risk of something happening, rather than reduce it?
I try to avoid conspiracy theorizing, but I don't think it's absolutely impossible for the government and people to end up at odds with each other. In fact, history strongly suggests that it's inevitably going to happen on occasion. Name a country that has never in it's history experienced a violent uprising, or excesses committed by the government.
Every country came into it's current incarnation through some form of disagreement between some sector of the population, and some sector of the government. Many of those current incarnations are equally unstable.
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the "vast majority" of soldiers were not directly involved in the crimes against the jews. the "wehrmacht" always stated that they were just soldiers and did not participate in the holocaust.
this of course is not 100% true but most of the orders were carried out by a special force (Waffen-SS) that was not a regular part of the german military and was the militant arm of the NSDAP (the nazi party)
given the fact that jews were an integral part of the Reichswehr (military of the german reich from 1871-1918) this makes sense, as it is unlikely that the military will turn on itself.
i am pretty sure it was the same with stalinist russia.
maybe do your homework first?
And you're totally wrong, of course. There have been very few anti-gun posters in this thread who actually know anything either about guns or about history. Most are just as ignorant and arrogant as this poster quoted here.
The Wehrmacht was heavily involved both in directly killing Jews and rounding them up for transportation to the ghettos and to the concentration / death camps. The myth that it was all the SS was shattered more than 40 years ago.
The Red Army was side by side with the NKVD and later the MVD in forcing peasants into collective farm communities, deporting entire peoples, putting down peasant rebellions and nationalist guerrillas (like in the Ukraine, where tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers fought an insurgency for 10 years after WW2), etc.
It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Suggesting that the US federal government is somehow going to devolve into a dictatorship/tyranny, and then using that as an argument for more guns is bullshit. I don't know how some people always bring it up and not be able to think to themselves how stupid the entire idea is. That's just a childish fantasy gun proponents secretly want to happen just so they can tell everyone else how wrong they were. So please...stop pulling the what-if-tyranny-1776-nazi-hitler-stalin-happens-in-america because you're just telling every sensible person how stupid your logic is. If you want to actually convince people that more guns/stronger gun rights is better for the country, use another argument that actually makes some sense.
And yes, you are honest about not knowing a lot about china. They weren't a "functional democracy" before Mao (whatever that means). China never had the opportunity to become a real democracy early in the 20th century because of (1) WWII (2) their nationalism vs. communism civil war and (3) their decades-long war against Japan, which had occupied china.
Do you have an argument about how government will never be a threat to the people other than "your idea is a stupid fantasy you stupid child." Because that's what's really stupid and childish here, you thinking that simply heaping scorn and insults on something means you're right.
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It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Might be because your country has 90% of all school shootings world wide and people like you keep telling yourself and us it's not because of the guns, while not giving another valid reason.
I myself would love to see Obama act and finally do something about this now. Majority won't vote for him anymore if he'd do that? Well, he cannot get another 4 years anyway so why not.
Gun owners feelings might be hurt, because they can't have their precious guns anymore.
But I take hurt feelings of gunowners over childrens lifes any day.
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On February 01 2013 01:37 JingleHell wrote:
So the lesson is that where there's a will, there's a way, and you don't even need the vast majority of the military to do horrible things?
Doesn't that increase the risk of something happening, rather than reduce it?
I try to avoid conspiracy theorizing, but I don't think it's absolutely impossible for the government and people to end up at odds with each other. In fact, history strongly suggests that it's inevitably going to happen on occasion. Name a country that has never in it's history experienced a violent uprising, or excesses committed by the government.
Every country came into it's current incarnation through some form of disagreement between some sector of the population, and some sector of the government. Many of those current incarnations are equally unstable.
the lesson is that you can not out of nowhere turn everything upside down and do the most horrible things. it needs the right circumstances and then years to unfold. it wasnt like one day there was hitler and suddenly auschwitz appeared. germany was in a turmoil. inflation and poverty rose, there was constant violence done by rightwing and leftwing extremists, the jurisdication was random at best. people could go to jail for 20 years for nothing or try to overthrow the government and be free after a couple of month (i.e. hitler) and on top of that the national pride was deeply hurt after losing world war 1. (to the french!)
and even then it took years to diabolize the jews.
in these years it would have been easy to disarm everyone they want to disarm.
tyrannies (or any drastic change in a country's structure) generally do not happen over night. its a slow process that takes for years and cast mile long shadows. armed citizen dont help to prevent these, because one cornerstone of every government -dictatorship or democracy- is to keep enough of the population in line. if this is done by propaganda, economic rise, a common enemy does not matter.
you can be sure that in the unlikely event of a tyranny in america, the majority of the population will either support it or be neutral towards it.
the only thing what a weapon does in the event of a revolution, is getting you killed if you happen to be on the wrong side. and if you are on the right side you dont need a weapon to survive.
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On February 01 2013 01:53 Zandar wrote:Show nested quote +
It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Might be because your country has 90% of all school shootings world wide and people like you keep telling yourself and us it's not because of the guns, while not giving another valid reason.
Oh, so the Netherlands never has gun related crime?
I suppose the UK has no murders since they have strict gun control?
How about Sweden?
Maybe Canada can disprove this.
Gun control, in and of itself, doesn't seem to prevent murders. Maybe there's some underlying issue that's worse than the length of kitchen knives?
No country is perfect, no system is perfect, but don't tell me your ways work perfectly just because everybody enjoys some good old USA bashing.
On February 01 2013 01:58 hfglgg wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2013 01:37 JingleHell wrote:
So the lesson is that where there's a will, there's a way, and you don't even need the vast majority of the military to do horrible things?
Doesn't that increase the risk of something happening, rather than reduce it?
I try to avoid conspiracy theorizing, but I don't think it's absolutely impossible for the government and people to end up at odds with each other. In fact, history strongly suggests that it's inevitably going to happen on occasion. Name a country that has never in it's history experienced a violent uprising, or excesses committed by the government.
Every country came into it's current incarnation through some form of disagreement between some sector of the population, and some sector of the government. Many of those current incarnations are equally unstable. the lesson is that you can not out of nowhere turn everything upside down and do the most horrible things. it needs the right circumstances and then years to unfold. it wasnt like one day there was hitler and suddenly auschwitz appeared. germany was in a turmoil. inflation and poverty rose, there was constant violence done by rightwing and leftwing extremists, the jurisdication was random at best. people could go to jail for 20 years for nothing or try to overthrow the government and be free after a couple of month (i.e. hitler) and on top of that the national pride was deeply hurt after losing world war 1. (to the french!) and even then it took years to diabolize the jews. in these years it would have been easy to disarm everyone they want to disarm. tyrannies (or any drastic change in a country's structure) generally do not happen over night. its a slow process that takes for years and cast mile long shadows. armed citizen dont help to prevent these, because one cornerstone of every government -dictatorship or democracy- is to keep enough of the population in line. if this is done by propaganda, economic rise, a common enemy does not matter. you can be sure that in the unlikely event of a tyranny in america, the majority of the population will either support it or be neutral towards it. the only thing what a weapon does in the event of a revolution, is getting you killed if you happen to be on the wrong side. and if you are on the right side you dont need a weapon to survive.
I think the only people saying a tyranny would happen overnight is the gun control side of things, using that strawman to say that since it can't happen overnight, it won't happen, ever. Or possibly the absurdly right-wing side of things, but they're just as nuts as their opposite number.
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On February 01 2013 01:53 Zandar wrote:Show nested quote +
It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Might be because your country has 90% of all school shootings world wide and people like you keep telling yourself and us it's not because of the guns, while not giving another valid reason. I myself would love to see Obama act and finally do something about this now. Majority won't vote for him anymore if he'd do that? Well, he cannot get another 4 years anyway so why not. Gun owners feelings might be hurt, because they can't have their precious guns anymore. But imagine that without your glorious guns all these children would still be living.
Oh really? I'll bet you anything you want there's another part of the world where there are far more attacks on schools than the US.
The schoolchildren of Bath are unavailable for comment as to the idea that they would be alive if guns were not around, as they were not killed by guns. As were not many student victims in this area of the world you have apparently never heard of. (The Bath place I referred to is in the US.)
We reach again the authoritarian force fantasies. You want to take our guns? To force us to submit? Then come and try. See what happens.
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On February 01 2013 02:02 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2013 01:53 Zandar wrote:
It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Might be because your country has 90% of all school shootings world wide and people like you keep telling yourself and us it's not because of the guns, while not giving another valid reason. Oh, so the Netherlands never has gun related crime? I suppose the UK has no murders since they have strict gun control? How about Sweden? Maybe Canada can disprove this. Gun control, in and of itself, doesn't seem to prevent murders. Maybe there's some underlying issue that's worse than the length of kitchen knives? No country is perfect, no system is perfect, but don't tell me your ways work perfectly just because everybody enjoys some good old USA bashing.
I never said Sweden or the Netherlands or whatever country never had gun related crime.
Not sure where you read that.
it's just that your country has way way waaaay more gun related deads per 1000 citizens.
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On February 01 2013 02:04 Zandar wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2013 02:02 JingleHell wrote:On February 01 2013 01:53 Zandar wrote:
It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Might be because your country has 90% of all school shootings world wide and people like you keep telling yourself and us it's not because of the guns, while not giving another valid reason. Oh, so the Netherlands never has gun related crime? I suppose the UK has no murders since they have strict gun control? How about Sweden? Maybe Canada can disprove this. Gun control, in and of itself, doesn't seem to prevent murders. Maybe there's some underlying issue that's worse than the length of kitchen knives? No country is perfect, no system is perfect, but don't tell me your ways work perfectly just because everybody enjoys some good old USA bashing. I never said Sweden or the Netherlands or whatever country ever had gun related crime. Not sure where you read that.
But you sure did say 90% of school shootings are in the US which is false.
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On February 01 2013 02:05 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2013 02:04 Zandar wrote:On February 01 2013 02:02 JingleHell wrote:On February 01 2013 01:53 Zandar wrote:
It's really amazing how anti-gun people know literally nothing about guns, almost nothing about history, and they're the ones repeatedly making insults about how pro-gun people are just oh-so ignorant and stupid.
Might be because your country has 90% of all school shootings world wide and people like you keep telling yourself and us it's not because of the guns, while not giving another valid reason. Oh, so the Netherlands never has gun related crime? I suppose the UK has no murders since they have strict gun control? How about Sweden? Maybe Canada can disprove this. Gun control, in and of itself, doesn't seem to prevent murders. Maybe there's some underlying issue that's worse than the length of kitchen knives? No country is perfect, no system is perfect, but don't tell me your ways work perfectly just because everybody enjoys some good old USA bashing. I never said Sweden or the Netherlands or whatever country ever had gun related crime. Not sure where you read that. But you sure did say 90% of school shootings are in the US which is false.
No that's not false. (edit, ok in all fairness, 90% was pulled out of my ass, but it's still way more than 50%, which is insane for 1 country compared to the whole world)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
(they even made a seperate wiki for it, since the USA has more school shootings than all other countries in the world combined)
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