Old Europe:
I was hoping that u wud acknowledge
my advocacy of returning to the earlier
l'aissez faire free market
in defensive personal weapons,
as distinct from government arming any group.
David
old europe wrote:gungasnake wrote:old europe wrote:
The problem is that you want potential genocide victims being able to shoot back. You want them to be armed before an actual genocide occurs.
Little bit hard to shoot back AFTER you done been genocided, dontcha think??
As to suspicion vs trust, I suspect ALL demoKKKrats, but I'm perfectly happy to watch them buying guns; doing any sort of a thing like buying a gun which mitigates towards self reliance is a first step towards ceasing to be a demoKKKrat....
I don't really know why you brought up Jews and the Holocaust, but I was assuming there was some relation to why people in the US should arm themselves. You must be thinking of a group that would most likely become the victim of a genocide in case the government turned tyrannical. I'm wondering what particular group you had in mind....
Funny how short our memories are, particularly after the American government has been back under adult supervision for the last six years, but seven or eight years ago, the group I had in mind would have been Christians.
Other than that, as I've noted elsewhere, the one man who has done the most for the sale and marketing of firearms in the United States in the last two decades is SlicKKK KKKlintler. Most Americans just began to realize how truly f***ed-up SlicKKK was around 96 or 97 and, accordingly, American gunshows and their attendance prior to about 96 and afterwards are two different worlds.
old europe wrote:oralloy wrote:old europe wrote:The problem is that you want potential genocide victims being able to shoot back. You want them to be armed before an actual genocide occurs.
How is that a problem?
(We're still extrapolating from gunga's statement that arming all Jews would have prevented the Holocaust, right? So we are talking about a group of people who had absolutely no standing in society, right?)
It might not be a case of "preventing the Holocaust" as much as "not going down without a fight, and taking as many Nazis with them as they can".
Something like the thought behind this image:
old europe wrote:Well then, I would say that you have to be aware of the fact that you are going to lobby for the right-to-bear-arms of exactly those groups you (yes, you personally) loathe most.
Let me quote H. L. Mencken here, because I think it's so fitting:
H. L. Mencken wrote:The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
If you have no problem with that, that's fine with me.
The only problem with that is I don't think there are any groups that I loathe -- unless perhaps it is possible to lump "people who talk about the genitals of gun owners" into such a group.
In general, I favor arming almost everyone in the world, the only exception being those convicted of violent crimes, or those the courts have ruled criminally insane.
oralloy quote:
In general, I favor arming almost everyone in the world, the only exception being
those convicted of violent crimes,
or those the courts have ruled criminally insane.
One problem with your world. Other than being a nasty, violent place to live in -
The people you name here as being exceptions have already done the deed with a gun.
It's after the fact. People with guns invariably will hurt or kill someone with it, either intentionally or unintentionally. Kids get killed playing with weapons they think are not loaded.
Some 90,000 kids have been killed in the US since the 1980's by GUNS. You want to add your kid to the list?
A society that has supposedly risen above its Neanderthal beginnings, where club or rock was always necessary to protect one's self or possessions, should not need weapons to defend itself. Is society in the US in devolution, rather than evolution? It's the 21st C, yet some people still think they have to protect themselves like it's the Wild West and Bill Hickok is still alive and well.
Guns, simply put, should not be so readily available in the US. Americans kill more Americans than your new fear/enemy/bogeyman: The Muslims.
Remember it wasn't too long ago, it was the Russians?
You can be armed to the teeth, but if someone really wants to get you, they will. The paranoia that Americans feel is partly due to the fear inspired media, partly due to the fact that Americans know that they have terrorized a lot of people around the world, and someone, somewhere, just might be out to get them. Fear instills fear, and that's all it does.
Try being less of a bully on the planet and more of a human being. Instead of thinking of ways to kill a fellow human, try and be imaginative and think of ways to get along with people who's views you don't agree with.
It's a lot harder to reason with someone, but smart people can talk their way out of a fight. Stupid people always end up either killing or getting killed.
<yawn> Off to bed, where I don't sleep with a gun under my pillow. Yup, the world needs more Canada (Bono).
OmSigDAVID wrote:
Kids get killed playing with weapons they think are not loaded.
I knew for a FACT
that mine were loaded,
since I loaded them, personally.
IMO, all this shows is your irresponsible gun ownership. The only time it should be loaded is when you intend to use it. Then again, you have not shown any responsible behaviour so far.
pachelbel wrote:One problem with your world. Other than being a nasty, violent place to live in -
The real world, in other words.
pachelbel wrote:The people you name here as being exceptions have already done the deed with a gun.
Not necessarily.
pachelbel wrote:People with guns invariably will hurt or kill someone with it, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Balderdash!
pachelbel wrote:Some 90,000 kids have been killed in the US since the 1980's by GUNS.
So? Would it be better if they were all killed with knives and bombs instead?
pachelbel wrote: A society that has supposedly risen above its Neanderthal beginnings, where club or rock was always necessary to protect one's self or possessions, should not need weapons to defend itself. Is society in the US in devolution, rather than evolution?
Need is irrelevant. Americans, as citizens of the world's only free society, have the right to have guns regardless of need.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that we are not descended from Neanderthals, human evolutionary progress is toward using tools, not towards abandoning tools.
People who reject the use of tools are evolutionary throwbacks to australopithecines.
pachelbel wrote:Guns, simply put, should not be so readily available in the US.
That is incorrect. Freedom belongs in the US.
pachelbel wrote:You can be armed to the teeth, but if someone really wants to get you, they will.
Not if I get them first.
Intrepid wrote:IMO, all this shows is your irresponsible gun ownership. The only time it should be loaded is when you intend to use it.
All guns are always loaded. Didn't your parents teach you that Intrepid?
Besides, if you're keeping a gun for personal protection, it doesn't do much good to keep the bullets in the refrigerator, now does it?
cjhsa wrote:Intrepid wrote:IMO, all this shows is your irresponsible gun ownership. The only time it should be loaded is when you intend to use it.
All guns are always loaded. Didn't your parents teach you that Intrepid?
Besides, if you're keeping a gun for personal protection, it doesn't do much good to keep the bullets in the refrigerator, now does it?
You can leave my parents out of this, thank you. Evidently, you guys don't have a safe storage law down there. Don't you think that it is rather stupid to keep loaded guns where children could have access to them.
Then, of course, your right to keep and bear arms surpasses any logic or safety considerations.
Intrepid wrote:
Then, of course, your right to keep and bear arms surpasses any logic or safety considerations.
When you get straight down to it, we view the handful of gun murders committed by deranged people to be an acceptable price for avoiding things like the holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda, which are brought about by gun control laws and other forms of civilian disarmament.
Likewise, the 50K deaths per year due to highway accidents do not cause us to abandon cars or outlaw the internal combustion engine as Algor would have it.
Animals became prey with the invention of team hunting and the atlatl. Massive gun deaths are a fairly recent phenom,
Quote:People who reject the use of tools are evolutionary throwbacks to australopithecines.
First tools were to smash bone to extract the marrow. Guns are "evolutionary overkill" like Megatherians. They went extinct because they couldnt adapt with their extreme size.
Intrepid wrote:Evidently, you guys don't have a safe storage law down there. Don't you think that it is rather stupid to keep loaded guns where children could have access to them.
No, not if they know how to handle them properly and treat them with respect. Gun safes are to keep guns from getting stolen or for when you have the Canadian kids over for dinner.
Not everyone takes the time to educate their children. Not every child is listening. Not every child cares about the rules. Not every child is a well-adjusted individual.
There are no accidents.
So, that seagull must have been aiming, huh Mame?
That black ice on the road was the fault of the roadbuilders, right?
Gawd I hate it when people want to play the blame game.
gungasnake wrote:Intrepid wrote:
Then, of course, your right to keep and bear arms surpasses any logic or safety considerations.
When you get straight down to it, we view the handful of gun murders committed by deranged people to be an acceptable price for avoiding things like the holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda, which are brought about by gun control laws and other forms of civilian disarmament.
Likewise, the 50K deaths per year due to highway accidents do not cause us to abandon cars or outlaw the internal combustion engine as Algor would have it.
So, I take it that YOU speak for the American people whom you refer to as WE. Why do you only include the deranged? Are you most familiar with that group?
What do you consider a handful?
U.S. Leads Richest Nations In Gun Deaths
BY CHELSEA J. CARTER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA -- The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found.
The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000.
Mame wrote:Not everyone takes the time to educate their children. Not every child is listening. Not every child cares about the rules. Not every child is a well-adjusted individual.
There are no accidents.
Not everyone is a reponsible gun owner. Not everyone is a good parent. Not every household has a gun. Not everyone is a good driver.
There are accidents a plenty and they happen everyday.
I certainly can't speak for Mame. But, I will offer that my take on what she was saying was that accidents can't happen if you don't leave the possibility open.
i.e. - You can't be in a car accident if you don't get into a car.
Hahaha! That's sort of like why asians eat with chopsticks.
Intrepid wrote:ATLANTA -- The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found.
The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000. [/i]
Gun death rates are only significant for those who think it is somehow worse to be killed with a gun than it is to be killed with a knife or a bomb.
Personally, I think people are just as dead if they are killed with a knife or a bomb.
