Arr, we be preachin' to yonder scurvy spagnostics!
Arr, we be preachin' to yonder scurvy spagnostics!
For the benefit of Cue-Ball and any other americans who don't understand how we English deal with criminals without resorting to firearms, here are a few examples.
Get your science right! All that proves is that pirates are cool.
Correct - firearms are only used for dealing with innocents, preferably in subway stations.
It was a sarcastic remark trying to make the point that making something illegal won't necessarily make it vanish and if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have them. Meaning the people who you are trying to prevent from having guns are the criminals that will use them for illegal purposes, and if they were already going to commit a crime they likely aren't going to respect the law that says they shouldn't have a gun in the first place. So what does the law achieve? It removes the ability for law abiding citizens to own guns. Of course that largely ignores the difference between the types of guns(concealed hand guns vs shotguns) and what a person would actually need a gun for anyway. Is the public better served by taking away their ability to do something if it might increase their safety somewhat?
Rather than rehashing the same arguments, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics seems to have a good summary
ie what I just said above is summarized in the wikipedia article as:
that answer still has no relation whatsoever to his post
Really? Where? I'm sure that the Brady Campaign would love to get ahold of the scientific data that you've got, because they've been trying to convince the American public of the effectiveness of gun bans for about 30 years and have been unable to do so.
Guns are effectively banned for the general public. Obtaining a gun is very difficult and expensive, and only very few models are allowed. And the gun ban has not proven effective at all. Armed assault, rape, and burglary all went up after the ban. In Sydney, handgun crime went up over 400% between 1995 and 2001. Don Weatherburn, the head of the Bureau of Crime Statistics said that there is no convincing evidence that gun laws have had any positive effect on crime.
So your position is that murders are fine just as long as they are spread out instead of happening all at once? It must be, since the murder rate and violent crime rate are both up following the gun ban.
Interesting. How many guns did Timothy McVeigh use when he killed 168 people in Okahoma City? How many guns did the September 11th hijackers use when they killed over 3,000 people? How many people are murdered each year with everyday objects like knives, bats, golf clubs, etc? If someone wants to kill you (or a bunch of random people), they don't just give up because they don't have a pistol handy.
Yes, it would. Don't you think that people would be a lot less likely to pick a fight with someone they know can defend themselves? An armed society is a polite society.
I've already given statistics in this thread, as well as citing a book which references most all of them.
So, when something good happens it's because of the gun ban, but when something bad happens it's because of other factors? Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Perhaps the decrease in burglaries is because the pirates and ninjas are fighting it out on a remote island somewhere, leaving no ninjas to break and enter?
Look at the reference book that I cited. It accounts for many of these types of factors (though it concentrates on the crime rate in the U.S., and only touches briefly on other nations.
We have the same issue in the U.S., mostly caused from victimless drug crimes. I personally believe that everyone would be safer and happier if drugs were legalized.
You are much more likely to be killed by a swimming pool, a ladder, or your car than you are by a gun. Yet, when people see a those other items they think nothing of it. When people see a gun, even if it is sitting on a bench or safely holstered, they suddenly fear it. That is irrational. Being scared by a gun pointed at you is not. Just as being scared of a parked car would be irrational, but being fearful of a car barreling towards you is not.
I've heard it all now.An armed society is a scared society. I don't want to live in a world where the reason people respect each other is because they *might* be carrying a gun.
It's like you think that for society to work everybody has to be afraid of everybody else. You fear strangers so you carry a gun, they fear you so they have to carry one aswell, balance is restored. But it's pointless, and the results of something upsetting the balance become 10 times worse.
Nope. They'll just revise their tactics - as you said: if someone wants to do you harm he'll do it even with a spoon. So if you're packing a gun, then the person who wants to kill you will either:
a. make sure he is a quicker draw
b. has a bigger or more effective gun
c. won't come at you right away - he'll preplan a little more
d. all of above
So then an armed society is a society that:
a. is based on the principle that everyone wants to cause destruction (paranoia, or see b)
b. is bent on destruction, on matter what
c. lives in fear every day
Sounds like a great place to live in.
No. I stated that the most recent gun bans in the UK were a direct response to two particular atrocities, and so far they have proven 100% effective at preventing these kinds of atrocities happening again. I know you like your statistics and comparisons, so: Compared to the USA, where you have two or three nutjobs going crazy in public with firearms each year, that's a 0:infinity ratio in our favour.
You think a nightclub full of 2000 steaming-drunk shaved gorillas staggering around spoiling for a fight would be a safer place if you gave all of them guns? OK, you got me, I nearly swallowed it. Giving drunk blokes guns, hehe, good one.
I must've missed that. Is it called "Keeping Liberals, Blasphemers and Homosexuals Off My God Damned Lawn" by Orson Scott Card?
No. My first point was that there are considerably more gun deaths per capita in the USA than there are in the UK, homicide rates are much higher, and deaths from gunshot wounds are much higher. My next point was that the gun bans in the UK had served their purpose. My last point was that it's impossible to draw any conclusions about the value of a single piece of legislation from 1997 that only affected a tiny proportion of our population anyway by citing crime statistics from the last ten years unless you're going to consider all the other contributing factors from the last ten years too.
Do you have a problem with any of that?
I conceded several pages ago that the USA's gun problems seem to be more of a cultural problem than anything else, because there are European countries with more widespread gun ownership and much lower homicide rates and deaths from gunshots. But I still don't believe that banning firearms causes more violent crime, and I think citing statistics from individual gun-opposed cities within a country where guns are abundantly available doesn't prove anything.
You'd still have smackheads and crackheads - maybe more of them - and they'd still be breaking into your house for your TV. Meanwhile organised crime would most probably just find another racket. It sounds like a step forward but it's a complex issue.
It has nothing to do with fear. You think I carry a gun because I'm afraid of getting assaulted? Hardly. I'm not afraid of getting into a crash on the way to the grocery store, but I wear a seatbelt. I'm not afraid of my house blowing down, but I have home insurance. My gun is nothing more than insurance against something bad happening. Not only do I not live in fear, but I don't fear situations that others might. When my wife has to walk to her car in the dark after work she's not scared that someone may attack her because she knows she can defend herself. If a stranger (or entire group of them) walks up to me on the street I don't have to be fearful of them because I know that I can protect myself.
If someone only has a spoon and wants to hurt me, knowing that I have nothing, then he will do so. If someone has a gun and wants to hurt me, knowing that I have nothing, then he will do so. If someone has a gun and wants to hurt me, but he knows that I also have a gun, he will rethink his actions because the risks to him are higher.
Someone who is truly hell bent on killing you is probably going to accomplish it, regardless of what method of defense you have, and regardless of what method of attack they are limited to. There's nothing you can do to safeguard against that. However, firearms are an effective defense against the common criminal and they are the most basic assurance against government tyranny and opression.
I don't want to cause destruction. I am not bent on destruction. I do not live in fear. I'm a normal, white-collar guy leading a normal, productive, peaceful existence. I just happen to carry with me a tool that -while it will probably never be necessary- could just save my life one day.
Incidentally, CB, kudos for continuing to reply to so many different people for so long. I probably would've got tired and unsubscribed by now - it must be quite time-consuming.
We also had a few nutjobs run planes into some buildings, a nutjob blow up a building with a truck full of cow manure, a nutjob who tried to blow up a plane with his shoe, etc. I assume that since none of those things happened in Great Britain, that you must have bans on planes, trucks, cow manure, and shoes?
Just a few posts ago you complained when I compared crime rates in the U.S. and GB when it supported my point. But when it supports your point, you seem to be all for it. The question is whether or not gun bans had any effect on crime. It does no good to say "there have been no mass shootings!" if the people who would have shot 10 others instead blow up 20. Perhaps the 52 people that died in the 7/7 train bombings would have been only 10 people if the guy used a gun. Or perhaps nobody would have died if an upstanding citizen with a gun were around to stop the loonie that did it.
I think that perhaps those shaved gorillas would think twice before picking a fight with someone if they thought that they would get more than a black eye.
Frankly, I find your comment quite offensive and derogatory. Especially since I'm a pretty liberal atheist who has several homosexual friends.
There you go again, comparing the U.S. and UK after you chided me for it. And, there you go again singling out "gunshot wound" deaths. It does not matter how a person was killed, it only matters that they were killed. If 10 people die this month from guns, we outlaw guns, and 10 people die next month from knives...is that really progress?
It doesn't matter what you believe - it only matters what you can prove! The evidence is there, and it supports the fact that guns do not cause crime, and that outlawing them does not lower crime.
If England -an island nation- can't make a gun ban work, what chance does any other country have? Australia, also an island nation, can't get a gun ban to work. Do you think that such a ban has any chance in a nation that has porous borders? No way.
I don't think it really is all that complex. Crackheads might still commit crime to get money for their drugs, but it's possible that people wouldn't become crack heads if they had a legal substitute such as marijuana. Maybe the crackheads would have jobs working at the hemp shop or collecting taxes on the heroin sold by Wal-Mart.
Organized crime is basically involved in drugs, prostitution, and gambling...all things that are outlawed to one degree or another. When things are legal the mob loses their power. Why should anyone deal with the mob to place a bet when they can do it legally down the street? Why risk picking up a shady, diseased hooker when you can get a clean, legal girl down on Broadway? Drug laws, prostitution laws, and gambling laws don't work because they try to prevent people from doing things that most do not have a moral issue with, and when they punish victimless crimes. Laws are only effective when people believe in what they stand for, and most people don't believe that the government has any business meddling in their affairs when it hurts nobody else.
Thanks, but this will probably be my last reply to the thread for a while. I want to have some lunch, do some racing, and maybe play some Team Fortress.
seems to work fine in germany which has borders with a whole bunch of ex warsaw pact countries ... well 2 actually
I'm going to keep this brief because I haven't slept in about 30 hours and I probably aren't making much sense...
I get the point that you think a gun isn't a device created solely for the purpose of killing people. I think it is, and I'm right, but I do get your point.
Oh come on! A zero to infinity ratio? "Perfect" solution based on ten years without a shooting frenzy? It was a tongue-in-cheek response and I only intended to point out that statistics aren't the be-all and end-all.
Guns don't do explosions though. Explosions are spectacular, and spectacular is what gets terrorists up in the morning. I think there's a gulf of difference between the 7/7 bombers who believed in a cause, however corrupt, and the disaffected, lonely individual who decided to walk into a school in Dunblane one morning and start shooting.
People rarely make well-considered decisions when they're full of lager.
Sorry. It was intended more to poke fun at Orson Scott Card. I had a big argument about him on another forum recently.
True, but (and I hate resorting to statistics again) as we've already seen, three times more people are unlawfully killed in the USA as they are in the UK each year. And about a quarter of them are killed with guns. If you just removed the gun killings it'd be close to a 2:1 ratio.
I hold the opposite position (what a surprise); that the evidence is not there, or it is too obscured to support any argument. If there was clear evidence to prove it, the debate wouldn't go on this long.
The UK's gun ban does work. Around 100,000 people own shotguns legally, and according to estimates the number who possess firearms illegally is a tiny fraction of that. I can't speak for Australia, but they have a vast coastline and sparse population - it would be much harder for them to stop smugglers. As for the USA, perhaps you're right in that the cat is out of the bag and a gun ban now wouldn't work, or at least wouldn't begin to work for a good 20 years or so, but I still wouldn't (and didn't) want a gun if I lived there.
Marijuana is no substitute for crack. If it was, we wouldn't have any problem rehabilitating crack heads. Head shops already exists but they tend not to be staffed by crack heads. Crack heads aren't generally all that useful on a day-to-day basis, judging by our old trombonist anyway.
Honestly I'd like to agree with you on this, but I do wonder if the majority of people actually need to be nannied by the state. Maybe they do - there are a lot of surprisingly thick people out there.
So much for keeping it short. I'm going to bed.
Edit: Blergh... I wasn't calling you "surprisingly thick", FTR. I just read it back and it sounds like I was summing up with a kick in the nads. I wasn't.
I get the point that you think a gun isn't a device created solely for the purpose of killing people. I think it is, and I'm right, but I do get your point.
Oh come on! A zero to infinity ratio? "Perfect" solution based on ten years without a shooting frenzy? It was a tongue-in-cheek response and I only intended to point out that statistics aren't the be-all and end-all.
Guns don't do explosions though. Explosions are spectacular, and spectacular is what gets terrorists up in the morning. I think there's a gulf of difference between the 7/7 bombers who believed in a cause, however corrupt, and the disaffected, lonely individual who decided to walk into a school in Dunblane one morning and start shooting.
People rarely make well-considered decisions when they're full of lager.
Sorry. It was intended more to poke fun at Orson Scott Card. I had a big argument about him on another forum recently.
True, but (and I hate resorting to statistics again) as we've already seen, three times more people are unlawfully killed in the USA as they are in the UK each year. And about a quarter of them are killed with guns. If you just removed the gun killings it'd be close to a 2:1 ratio.
I hold the opposite position (what a surprise); that the evidence is not there, or it is too obscured to support any argument. If there was clear evidence to prove it, the debate wouldn't go on this long.
The UK's gun ban does work. Around 100,000 people own shotguns legally, and according to estimates the number who possess firearms illegally is a tiny fraction of that. I can't speak for Australia, but they have a vast coastline and sparse population - it would be much harder for them to stop smugglers. As for the USA, perhaps you're right in that the cat is out of the bag and a gun ban now wouldn't work, or at least wouldn't begin to work for a good 20 years or so, but I still wouldn't (and didn't) want a gun if I lived there.
Marijuana is no substitute for crack. If it was, we wouldn't have any problem rehabilitating crack heads. Head shops already exists but they tend not to be staffed by crack heads. Crack heads aren't generally all that useful on a day-to-day basis, judging by our old trombonist anyway.
Honestly I'd like to agree with you on this, but I do wonder if the majority of people actually need to be nannied by the state. Maybe they do - there are a lot of surprisingly thick people out there.
So much for keeping it short. I'm going to bed.
Edit: Blergh... I wasn't calling you "surprisingly thick", FTR. I just read it back and it sounds like I was summing up with a kick in the nads. I wasn't.
I am praying to God Clinton doesn't win. I really hate Obama too, but at least he will keep it together for more than a week. McCain is easily the most electable, so I want him to win.
OHNOES! The democrat mafia got him. Run! Save yourselves! :eek:
That must have been the revenge of his god for a missing capital letter. You know, statistically gods have been very picky about prayers.
It has worked here actually - it hasn't completely erased gun crimes (and you'd have to have been an idiot to think that would work) but it significantly reduced gun crimes involving automatic and semi-automatic weapons. It wasn't an all-encompassing ban on firearms, it was a specific ban on self-loading and assault weapons. The point wasn't to rid the country of all firearms (and therefore gun crimes) but to eliminate a particular kind of weapon that made it easier to kill lots of people quickly & efficiently. The government doesn't begrudge anyone the right to own target pistols, hunting rifles, shotguns etc, it simply drew the line at military or military-style weapons which are unquestionably designed to kill human beings. Our soldiers and cops aren't trained to frighten people by pointing guns at them, they're trained to kill them with weapons that are designed specifically for that purpose - weapons which are best kept out of the public sphere. I think the fact that we haven't experienced a crazed shooting spree since Port Arthur and since the subsequent gun ban is testament to its effectiveness. Of course that doesn't mean that there haven't been any gun deaths in the last decade. What it does mean, though, is that any potential nutters out there haven't been able to just grab an assault rifle or Tec-9 or a couple of Glocks and obey the voices whenever they get persistent.
Again, the point of Australia's assault weapon ban wasn't to remove every gun from every hand in some ridiculous utopian idea of a gun-free nation. It was to eliminate, as far as was practicable, military-style semi and fully automatic weapons from the marketplace and impose severe penalties on anyone who deals them on the black market in an effort to prevent large-scale firearm casualties, which it has done.
It's true that it seems that there are more nutheads shooting in schools and generaly more gun related victims and shootings in the US, but you gotta bear in mind that US is like what, 30, 40 times bigger than UK.. 
But yes, i would really be worried in the US cause all of that guns and general mentality which i don't know in person, but i get a pretty good picture out of it from various documentary movies and movies in general..
You seem to have the mentality that you are the best in the world, the coolest nation and you don't hide it.. "Team America" springs to mind as a good example and i think that that mentality is responsible for all those wierd things going on there..
But yes, i would really be worried in the US cause all of that guns and general mentality which i don't know in person, but i get a pretty good picture out of it from various documentary movies and movies in general..
You seem to have the mentality that you are the best in the world, the coolest nation and you don't hide it.. "Team America" springs to mind as a good example and i think that that mentality is responsible for all those wierd things going on there..
You realize Team America was a parody, right?
2008 candadints!
(273 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG