Guns, Guns, Guns...

[Darth Wong]

Hey look! Another knee-jerk dumb-fuck peddling black/white fallacies!

Congrats, I was hoping the sarcasm would bludgeon you over the head with your own hypocrisy... and it seems you obviously missed it entirely.

How is my branding your ideals a "socialist utopia" any different than you immediately branding our society "obsessed with violence?" Oh, that's right, you said so, so obviously it must be true.

Wow, not only are you a moron peddling black/white fallacies, but you're too fucking stupid and arrogant to admit it when caught! Do they teach that kind of stupidity somewhere, or did you ingest chemicals?

I gave figures and reasons to back up my claim that America is an unusually violent society, and it is self-evident that the values of a society will influence the behaviour of people who live in it. Your only response was a "socialist" strawman and then a wholly unexplained defense that it was completely equivalent to the statement that American society is violent. I have never before seen anyone (including Americans) so aggressively fight the simple statement that American society is violent.

Yes, of course, your society is NOT obsessed with violence. There must be some OTHER explanation for the fucking >10,000 gun homicides in your country every year. Mind you, if you won't blame society, and you won't blame guns, what the fuck DO you blame?

I blame the criminals, myself. For fuck's sake, our overall murder rate is little different than any other country's, including Canada. We have ~15,980 murders annually (committed by all weapons). On the other hand, we also have nearly 10 times the population of Canada. Gee, I wonder if *that* might be part of the reason there are such numbers...

I see you're just as moronic about real-life as you are about Star Trek. America had 16000 murders annually, while Canada has about 500. Guess what: ten times 500 is 5000, not 16000. You have three times our murder rate despite an almost identical rate of gun ownership! While this is better than it was in 1980 (where your per-capita rate was 10.5 per 100,000 people, or roughly six times our murder rate), it still obviously indicates that you have a violent society. All of your bullshit and defensive whining does not change that fact, and attempting to paint the criticism as "socialist" is just idiotic and will fool no one.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_01/01crime2.pdf

And while old, this is interesting as well: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/html/cjusew96/crvs.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/html/cjusew96/crpr.htm

Seems we've got a higher murder rate than the UK, but far less of just about everything else... and in recent years, that trend has only been growing. So unless you are prepared to dismiss the UK as having the same "violence obsessed" culture we apparently have...

Well, they are the only country in the world which goes along with yours in lock-step on every conceivable political issue, and "every crime but murder" hardly refutes a comparison of murder rates. Perhaps none of this occurred to you.

In fact, the UN Criminal Justice System Survey in 1999 reached the conclusion, based on their collected statistics, that firearm proliferation in any country could not be directly linked to an increase in crime, because some countries with lax gun laws have little crime, and some with strict gun laws have a lot of crime. The only conclusion they could find was that countries which had a large gun-owning population involved more murders via firearm (well duh), but not more overall.

Good, then you admit it's not firearms, so it's obviously your violent culture. I ask again: if it's not the guns, and it's not the culture, then what the fuck is it? Saying "I blame the criminals" is stupid; why did they become criminals? Alien mind-control rays? Criminals become criminals because they are raised in such a manner that they have no respect for others; do you believe culture has nothing to do with upbringing either? Just say "they're evil" and be done with it? You refuse to be any more introspective than that?

Oh, so you think money doesn't buy justice? Wow, I don't often run into people this painfully naive.

How cynical of you. Money definately helps, as evidenced by the fact that the walking freak show Michael Jackson is still on the loose. But will it buy justice? Not hardly. OJ walked through a combination of money, celebrity (most judges tone down under the hostile glare of media spotlights), and race. Bill Clinton walked for similar reasons - money, celebrity, and an attorney general who was foursquare behind him.

It's not right, but it's also not a lurking secret that the public is totally innocent of. We know it, and we'll try to fix it - our own way.

So you admit your system is fucked up, despite your earlier defensive rantings. Concession accepted.

And if you think *our* justice system is fucked, take a look at Germany, where they gave a guy 8 years in jail for 3,000 counts of intent to commit murder...

Link, please. I didn't give a link for OJ because it's common knowledge so I don't have to, but this is not common knowledge. If OJ were a POOR black man, do you think he still would have walked? Be honest.

If the violence in America is not caused by guns and is not caused by society, then what is your fucking explanation?

I place the blame where it belongs - on the heads fo the criminals. That's part of what having a brain means - the ability to tell right from wrong, completely regardless of influences like media, weapon availability, and cultural imperatives. If you commit crime, it's because you damn well wanted to, and if you get caught, I hope you get locked away in a cell with a big guy named Moe for a long time.

And what made them into criminals? Your society and culture have nothing whatsoever to do with the way people turn out?!?!?!? Did you use E1701 as a usernick because you're too stupid to spell your real name?

"Society" is an abstract, and laying blame there is rampant idiocy, akin to blaming the French for the horror of male fashion that is the necktie, because once upon a time, they invented the cravat. You can't blame society because someone is a fucknut, no more than you can blame a gun or knife for the moron wielding it in a crime.

Oh really? Why not? Why do you believe societal and cultural values have nothing whatsoever to do with the way people turn out?

Perhaps you shouldn't speak for the entire population of the country when you say you don't think you have it too bad.

In point of fact, my school did have rotten cielings... :p But that's beside the point - I'm hardly wealthy by any means, I live in a very racially mixed neighborhood, and I'm about 30 miles from one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, which also happens to be bastion of leftist ideology.

I didn't ask "are you wealthy". I asked if you were qualified to speak on behalf of impoverished inner-city black kids, who are the most likely to turn to crime. I suppose that in your mindlessly simplistic worldview, they turn to crime because they're just plain evil, and the various values and constructs of your society have nothing whatsoever to do with it

I may not be qualified to speak for all Americans, but I'm a damned sight more qualified than you. I live under our laws, in our society, and I've got enough guns and ammo to qualify as four legal New York state arsenals. I'd never use them in a crime, and none of the many legal gun owners I know would either.

Oh really! Why are you more qualified to speak on behalf of the impoverished black inner-city kid than I am?

I have found that people with shallow morality tend to view it as a simple matter of fairness, with little or no need for the human quality of sympathy. The idea of balancing the two goals does not seem to occur to them.

Sympathy is something that needs to be freely given, not government mandated. I have no problems donating to charity, or helping out the seniors in my neighborhood with raking, snow shovelling, etc. But the moment the government says, "You *must* give some of the money you earn to less fortunate," I say fuck off.

Please try to justify your statements rather than simply making them. You say that there is no place for sympathy in the law, and then act as though by saying it, you've also proven it. Why? If sympathy is a worthwhile moral concept, why should it not be included in the law?

And that's the real core of the issue. People who do bad things are responsible for their own damned actions. And people who do good are likewise responsible for their actions.

This is not about shirking personal responsibility; it is about trying to identify root cause. You can determine that someone became a criminal because of an abusive childhood without taking away his responsibility for his own crimes, so don't peddle this idiotic false dilemma fallacy here.

You want the real reason behind our high crime rates? Here's one for you: The Death of Personal Responsibility.

Which is one of many societal and cultural problems currently facing America, hence part of your society. Concession accepted.

Nowadays, it's fashionable to do what you're doing. Blame society. Blame weapons. Blame the media. Blame movies and video games. Blame the weapons. Blame everyone but the person who pulled the trigger.

I see you've got the idea in your empty little head that by saying a violence-obsessed society causes violence, I am somehow saying that criminals should not be held responsible for their crimes. That's an awful lot of straw.

Right, and indefinite detainment without formal charges is perfectly acceptable in your world?

Of course not. But it's nothing new. For the love of God man, our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, suspended the writ of habeus corpus, and imprisoned an estimated five thousand anti-war protesters. It was wrong, but it was necessary.

Are you seriously saying that the current situation is just as bad as the Civil War, which killed more Americans than any other conflict in history?!?!?!?

In war, all bets are off, and if you don't consider 9/11 an act of war, you've got your head wedged so far up your ass you don't remember what the light of day looks like.

I see you enjoy concocting strawmen and then heatedly attacking them in order to make yourself feel as if you've won some small victory. When did I say 9/11 was not an act of war? Oh yeah, I didn't. Chalk up one more piece of evidence that you learned your debate technique by studying 6 year olds.

All of that talk about rising up and fighting for rights and using the second amendment to guarantee all of the other rights through the threat of armed rebellion is a lot of hot air and macho posturing as far as I can tell.

Or maybe you're just more paranoid than those guys who sit in little tin-foil shacks deep in the woods making bombs and forming militias.

Ah, respond to an observation of NRA inaction in the face of eroding civil liberties by insulting the observer and refusing to address the point. Good show!

I was unaware that you were so totally ignorant of your own country's principles of government.

Wow, that was some explanation teach'.

Either you're referring to the seperation of powers, or the much misunderstood seperation of church and state.

If the latter, I suggest you give some examples. Because for all of his religious fervor, GWB has not in any way promoted the establishment of a state religion. No, giving government money to religious charities doesn't quite do that, now does it?

Justify that statement, since giving money to religious charities DOES violate separation of church and state. Please crack open a dictionary and look up the word "separation" sometime; you obviously don't know what it means.

I think the less religion and government mix, the better - but I'm always left wondering why proponents of extreme seperation don't have anything to say about the clear deism of the Founding Fathers, or that fact that all currency reads, "In God We Trust".

It didn't read that when they founded the country, you idiot. "In God We Trust" was added by fiercely evangelical politicians during the Civil War! Yes, I'm a Canadian lecturing you on your own history; too bad you actually need a foreigner to do this for you. As for deism, I hate to break it to you but deism is NOT theism, so don't equate the two.

Since the current administration is already shitting all over the First Amendment with nary a whimper from the right or left wing, I don't see why you think you can seriously claim that there isn't some uneven application of respect for "Founding Father Wisdom".

Ah, so we finally come to the root of your bitch-fest. You don't like Bush...

Are you assuming I would like Gore and Lieberman, who are just as bad? I don't like the way your government has behaved a long time now.

Well, that's hardly surprising, because he doesn't play by the rules, and it's about damed time. You guys got too used to Clinton smooching the ass of every foreign country on the planet, and you just don't want to deal with a little Texas-style beat-down. Frankly, I can live with that, because his job is to advance our interests, not toady up to the nearly-defunct UN. Hell, the only reason we're still talking with them right now is to help out Tony.

Not only have you tried to introduce the red-herring of the whole "people want to shirk personal responsibility" mantra, but now you're tried to introduce the war in Iraq too. You just love those red-herrings, don't you? What the fuck does the war in Iraq or your current political dealings have to do with the simple point that your society is violent?

So cut the self-righteous bullshit. Your way ain't the only way, pal.

Oooooh, such a devastating point from someone who has thus far exclusively employed red-herrings as a defense

So, does that mean you would have no problem with a mandatory licensing scheme?

Of course I do. The government does enough "manadatory" things as it is, without adding one more. Besides which, you already need permits out the wazzoo just to *hold* a pistol in a gun store. If nothing else, cars should prove how useless that kind of legislation is anyhow. I mean, there as as many guns as cars in the country, and yet we have around 12,000 gun homicides annually, and 50,000+ car deaths, a huge proportion of which are caused by drunks. And yet, if you have a gun in your car that isn't in a locked case, you can get prison time... get caught mindlessly drunk in you car, and you get a slap on the wrist.

Considering how often and how widely people use cars, the rate at which cars cause deaths in use, even if we include drunks, is insignificant next to the rate at which guns cause death. Does the average American use a car for only 4 times as much time daily as he or she uses a gun?

Like I said, I want intelligent legislation. On both fronts.

Like what, then? As far as I can tell, you are only capable of saying what you DON'T want.

I don't fully agree with Alyeska's scheme, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we've got now. But the basis of it should be simple, and already exists in Project Exile. Yet oddly, despite the major impact that made, few other states are even considering adopting it.

So how do we keep guns out of the hands of criminals without making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to get them as a side-effect? Life isn't perfect, you know. Alyeska describes the requirements which should be necessary for a gun license, which make sense to me and which are similar to some of our own rules in Canada. However, he does not explicitly state that this is a useless scheme unless the licensing is mandatory across the board and the retailing of guns is strictly regulated and policed. What's the use of licensing requirements if you don't need a license to get a gun?

Don't bullshit me. I lived within 500 goddamned yards of Michigan for 4 fucking years, and crossed that border more times than I can count. I get your TV, your radio, your newspapers. Inasmuch as you know anything about the country outside your own particular community, I know about your culture.

ROTFLMAO! *swallows down his coughed-up lungs*

Oh yes, that's right, you obviously know more about my culture than I do, because I live in one of the most economically, racially, culturally mixed parts of the entire country, and you've been to northern Michigan...

*starts giggling uncontrollably again*

Wow, nice smart-ass response! Tell me, is your part of the country the whole country? And when I said "inasmuch as you know anything about the country outside your own particular community", were you too stupid to realize that bragging about your familiarity with your own particular community as a retort would only make you look stupid?

the registration database that ended up costing taxpayers more than a billion dollars, probably because they're funneling money into corrupt suppliers; a BILLION dollars to set up a fucking database with a few million entries

Then we agree on that. Neither government knows what the fuck it's doing.

The point being that until that ridiculous corruption-fest, none of the gun owners I know had any problem with our gun laws. Bill 160 did not make our gun laws any more restrictive; it just added a lot of fees and bills. That's why most sensible people oppose it. But the pre-existing laws did already tightly restrict handgun ownership and use, for example, and none of the hunters and sportsmen I know had any problem with that whatsoever.

They're still trying that here, and after those "snipers", the media tried to push a database of all gun-barrel internal patterns... even though those patterns change with use.

And what does this have to do with a mandatory licensing scheme? Who mentioned anything about a ballistics database? Do you derive some kind of visceral pleasure from using as many red-herrings and strawmen as possible?

Perhaps I'm just more observant. Your current government has shit on fair-use laws, antitrust laws, and first-amendment guarantees against federal money being used to support church activities.

The "church activities" consist of charity organizations. And btw, I might point out that based on 9/11, they're clearly far more trustworthy as well. Bill O'Reilly among others utterly shredded the Red Cross and Salvation Army, because they were using those donations to fund their own expansion!

And church charities don't use any of their funds for expansion or recruitment, particularly proselytizing? Church charities do not distinguish between helping people and trying to convert them; the two activities are intermingled.

The anti-trust laws right now are a mishmosh, and need serious revising. And fair use laws? Sorry, but if I create something, then God dammit, it's gonna belong to me for as long as I want it to. If that means you can't use it without paying me 50 years down the road, tough shit.

So you believe libraries are evil, then? Do you recognize the intellectual justifications for fair-use laws, or is selfishness the only moral concept you recognize?

No, it ain't nice, but that is the way it is.

Surprise: the fact that you firmly believe in your own viewpoint does not actually justify it.

You were expecting something more, as a response to your semantic nitpicking over the placement of a fucking comma?

I'm a strict Constitutional constructionalist. Semantics are everything in that context.

Yes, that reminds me of another problem with American society today: legalism. Instead of asking whether something is right, you ask if you have the right to do it. Instead of asking whether something is moral, you ask if it's legal.

Edit: Perrinquus does bring up a very good point with Project Exile, and I do agree with him on that. It needs to be modified to be a state-level issue, rather than a Federal one.

You Americans have a real hard-on for this States' rights vs Federal rights thing. Frankly, I don't see what difference it makes, except that you once fought a war over it and have all kinds of lingering emotional baggage attached to the issue. The real balancing act is between the state's rights and the individual's rights, not between two levels of government.

PS. As long as you mentioned Perinquus, whose post I actually agreed with on some levels, you should note that he stayed on topic and did not resort to your dizzying array of red-herrings and strawman distortions. Unlike you, he made no attempt to introduce side-issues like the UN, George Bush's war on Iraq, the 9/11 bombings, or your strawman of shirking personal responsibility. While I often disagree with him on issues like this, you would do well to examine the way he debates.

[E1701]

Fine, you know what, I conceed.

Yep, I've got this little thing called a life that means I don't have time to post gigantic replies 24/7.

Suffice it to say, you're obviously right, because I'm headed upstate in a couple of hours to go shoot a few hundred rounds of trap, go paintballing, and in general, blow some shit up. Yep, guess you're right, our society is clearly more violent, insane, and demented than your own bastion of peace and brotherly love.

Obviously you know more about my own culture than I do, thanks to your dizzying array of experience in Michigan (snicker), and thus feel no need to address any of the other points I made in my first post that you utterly ignored.



I'll be sure to kill somethin' for ya. Cheers.

[DPDarkPrimus]

That last post of yours contains so many fallacys, E1701, that I'm drooling in anticipation as to how Wong rips it apart.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Fine, you know what, I conceed.

Translation: I am once again defeated and made to look like a jackass by Mike Wong. But I'll be sure to post a smarmy bullshit post about how I actually won, before washing my hands of the thread.

Hey, E1701, are you going to hit a deer at 100 yards on a snapshot from your pistol?

[RedImperator]

Why is it that the people on my side always seem to be the loonies who couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag?

[Perinquus]

Why is it that the people on my side always seem to be the loonies who couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag?

I should like to think I am bit more skilled a debater than that. No, nor a looney either.

[Utsanomiko]

Why is it that the people on my side always seem to be the loonies who couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag?

Same here. Any time I say I want to keep guns in the hands of people who know how to take care of them and use them responsibly, some wacko jumps in and starts balking about needing RPGs, miniguns, or that waiting periods should be abolished. It's bad enough when the people I'm debating don't know the difference between criminals and normal citizens (ala Rosie O'Donald), but when someone on my side of the fence does the same thing, I just try and slip out the backdoor.

[Darth Wong]

Fine, you know what, I conceed.

Yep, I've got this little thing called a life that means I don't have time to post gigantic replies 24/7.

Suffice it to say, you're obviously right, because I'm headed upstate in a couple of hours to go shoot a few hundred rounds of trap, go paintballing, and in general, blow some shit up. Yep, guess you're right, our society is clearly more violent, insane, and demented than your own bastion of peace and brotherly love.

I guess that's how you deal with having your points shredded, eh? Sarcasm and dismissal . I didn't know babies could type.

Obviously you know more about my own culture than I do, thanks to your dizzying array of experience in Michigan (snicker), and thus feel no need to address any of the other points I made in my first post that you utterly ignored.

"Ignored?" You're the one waltzing off and refusing to continue this any further, with nothing but cheesy dismissals and your idiotic assertion that knowing your particular community makes you an expert on all of America while knowing Michigan makes me i\gnorant of all of America.

I'll be sure to kill somethin' for ya. Cheers.

I'm sure you believe your sarcasm proves something. Unfortunately, it does not (unless your objective was to prove that you can't argue worth shit).

[salm]

Fine, you know what, I conceed.

Yep, I've got this little thing called a life that means I don't have time to post gigantic replies 24/7.

Suffice it to say, you're obviously right, because I'm headed upstate in a couple of hours to go shoot a few hundred rounds of trap, go paintballing, and in general, blow some shit up. Yep, guess you're right, our society is clearly more violent, insane, and demented than your own bastion of peace and brotherly love.

Obviously you know more about my own culture than I do, thanks to your dizzying array of experience in Michigan (snicker), and thus feel no need to address any of the other points I made in my first post that you utterly ignored.



I'll be sure to kill somethin' for ya. Cheers.

MAHOK! MAHOK!

[Coyote]

ok, why the hell are people here saying that cars are not necessary for transportation? ... public transprotation wont take me everywhere i need to go esspecially not in most cities in the us.

You do not have a right to a car. You have a right to go where you want, though. Take a train. Boat. Bus. Walk. If cars were rounded up and scrapped, then money could be devoted to Public Transi infrastructure that would see to it that they were never necessary. Want a weekend jaunt? Rent a car, then, but really, we could find ways without them. It would be harder, but not impossible.

... guns in the hands of idiots kill through uncontrolled release of energy or because of criminal energy.

No, that is the idiot, not the gun: the gun must be aimed (or randomly pointed) but the trigger must be squeezed, individually, per target. Theoretically, the shooter is responsible fo the placement of each bullet. But a person using explosives has no control over where the destructive power is focused.

Are you affraid of what I MIGHT do with the weapon?

yes!

Are we to start accusing, jailing, and punishing people simply because of what they might do? That is scary.

um... where did i accuse anybody?

You said you were afraid of what somebody might do as opposed to whether they have done anything or not. In other words, you are taking the stance that a person with a gun is "guilty until proven innocent". A tacit accusation that a gun owner, regardless of his actual conduct in society, is a threat.

so? how often do i have to repeat this?
cars = necessary

I tend to find cars helpful but I've also lived without them. And when some maniac breaks into my house and threatens to kill me or my family, I'll find a gun to be pretty darn necessary. It is relative. A lot of people find guns necessary for personal security.

True, we could ban guns. As surely as we've banned drugs.

nice for you but let me tell you that no post i made included evidence from statistics.

I know, I said if you want to, I can provide stats. But even though I know that statistic arguments are more credible, I also find them tedious.

btw, we´re not talking only about fully automatic guns. i don´t think that revolvers and normal pistols are fully automatic guns. aren´t normal pistols semi autmatics? and aren´t they more spread than any other gun?

This is why I have such a problem with ignorant people making "decisions" without doing an ounce of research. "Semi-automatic" does not, repeat, does not mean "rat-a-tat-tat" machinegun style fire. It shoots only as fast as you can squeeze the trigger and no faster. Semi-automatic means that the next round is loaded automatically after the previous round is fired. You must then squeeze the trigger again to make it fire.

and i have problems with people like you who apparently don´t follow the whole thread but step in somewhere in the middle forget whole passages.
alyeska argued that guns are not that evil because more people die by lighning than by FULLY automatic guns. i then said that we´re not only talking about FULLY automatics but about guns in general.
so what´s wrong with my above argument you attacked?

It seemed to me that you were making a very common mistake; that "semi-automatic" is the same thing as "fully-automatic" (zB: Machinegun-style firing). It is a favorite claim of the gun control political groups here, used ot confuse and frighten the general public which is ignorant of guns. They hear the word "automatic" and "guns" in the same sentence and they start shitting their pants.

i know that canada has just as much guns as the us. but the canadians apparantly can handle this amount of guns whereas the usa can not.

Then Canada is a perfect example that guns in society is not the problem-- you have to look somewhere else.

wrong! it´s a perfect example that guns are no problem in canadas society. it´s not an example of guns being no problem in the us.

Well, I see that Canda has just as many guns per capita yet not as much violence-- that leads me to believe that it is not the guns. It's the society. I don't know what-- the courts? The prisons? The government? The police? The media? All of the above?

Canada shows that having guns is not the problem. There's something else, a different angle, that needs to be explored. If just having guns automatically turned people into insane killers, then Canada would be having the same problem. But they're not-- so it's not the guns.

[Coyote]

Why is it that the people on my side always seem to be the loonies who couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag?

Hey!

[Shaka[Zulu]]

Ok, now I get to chime in with a different view.

Yes, of course, your society is NOT obsessed with violence. There must be some OTHER explanation for the fucking >10,000 gun homicides in your country every year. Mind you, if you won't blame society, and you won't blame guns, what the fuck DO you blame?
I blame the criminals, myself. For fuck's sake, our overall murder rate is little different than any other country's, including Canada. We have ~15,980 murders annually (committed by all weapons). On the other hand, we also have nearly 10 times the population of Canada. Gee, I wonder if *that* might be part of the reason there are such numbers...

I see you're just as moronic about real-life as you are about Star Trek. America had 16000 murders annually, while Canada has about 500. Guess what: ten times 500 is 5000, not 16000. You have three times our murder rate despite an almost identical rate of gun ownership! While this is better than it was in 1980 (where your per-capita rate was 10.5 per 100,000 people, or roughly six times our murder rate), it still obviously indicates that you have a violent society. All of your bullshit and defensive whining does not change that fact, and attempting to paint the criticism as "socialist" is just idiotic and will fool no one

ok, point one... while Mike does have a point here given the higher per cap rate even after considering the difference in total population, what has been ignored is the effect of population density on these rates. The USA has a far greater number of people concentrated in a far greater number of HiPop cities than does canada (including suburbs), and it is in these HiPop zones where the largest number of gun-related (and car related for that matter) deaths occur. I beleive you will find that the per capita rate increases quite proportionately with population density for a given area -- in both population density in major cities and number of such HiPop cities, the USA beats out most other first world nations hands down.

now on to my second point.

guns are actually quite simple to make (even military grade samples... it's all a matter of time and skill). considering that they have been around in some form or other for the better part of the last millenia, it is fairly easy to make them. hell, in india/pakistan/afghanistan it is a common village industry to make high-grade copies of a given firearm after getting access to either blueprints or a working sample that can be dissassembled and blueprinted... where do you really think terrorists get their guns??? answer: they buy or otherwise acquire (steal) a single legit weapon and make copies! (doing so is childs play, and dirt cheap as well).

come to think of it, I am quite surprised that terrorist orgs havent developed their own military grade guns -- and other weapons -- yet. they certainly arent lacking for money or talent (especially in the better funded groups like Al-Quaeda)

[Darth Wong]

ok, point one... while Mike does have a point here given the higher per cap rate even after considering the difference in total population, what has been ignored is the effect of population density on these rates. The USA has a far greater number of people concentrated in a far greater number of HiPop cities than does canada (including suburbs), and it is in these HiPop zones where the largest number of gun-related (and car related for that matter) deaths occur. I beleive you will find that the per capita rate increases quite proportionately with population density for a given area -- in both population density in major cities and number of such HiPop cities, the USA beats out most other first world nations hands down.

Sorry, but your facts are in error. Toronto contains roughly 5 million people out of 27 million total Canadian population, thus making it ENORMOUS relative to Canada and the fifth largest metropolis in all of North America. Scaled to America, it would be equivalent to a city with a population of fifty million people. And its murder rate is not significantly different than the rest of the country's murder rate (last year, it was 2.3 homicides per 100,000 population). The sky-high murder rate in American cities is not caused by population density, but by very serious social problems in those cities. The population density only contributes in the sense that it provides a target-rich environment for crime; it does not necessarily produce crime. Frankly, I'm rather shocked that people will seriously try to debate that America has a violent culture.

now on to my second point.

guns are actually quite simple to make (even military grade samples... it's all a matter of time and skill). considering that they have been around in some form or other for the better part of the last millenia, it is fairly easy to make them. hell, in india/pakistan/afghanistan it is a common village industry to make high-grade copies of a given firearm after getting access to either blueprints or a working sample that can be dissassembled and blueprinted... where do you really think terrorists get their guns??? answer: they buy or otherwise acquire (steal) a single legit weapon and make copies! (doing so is childs play, and dirt cheap as well).

come to think of it, I am quite surprised that terrorist orgs havent developed their own military grade guns -- and other weapons -- yet. they certainly arent lacking for money or talent (especially in the better funded groups like Al-Quaeda)

The kind of person who commits most murders is not intelligent enough to fabricate his own gun, never mind bullets and explosives. At least, not without killing or injuring himself in the process. And what does this have to do with the question of whether guns should be more tightly regulated? Are you suggesting that people all over the country will start fabricating their own guns and bullets in machine shops? Let's be fucking realistic; most people don't even change their own fucking oil nowadays.

[UltraViolence83]

Canada only contains 27 million people!? Daaaaammn!

[MKSheppard]

You know, you've just made Sheppard's day. Abandon all hope, the moment he sees this.

Meh? I just saw this....I have more things to do, like smack down the proto-fascist known as Duchess of Zeon.

[MKSheppard]

I should like to think I am bit more skilled a debater than that. No, nor a looney either.

E1701 on SB has a Core Commander Avatar...so you expected intelligent
debate from a MECHA FANWHORE??!?!?

Hang your head in shame...

[salm]

ok, why the hell are people here saying that cars are not necessary for transportation? ... public transprotation wont take me everywhere i need to go esspecially not in most cities in the us.

You do not have a right to a car.

if you mean i have not right to a car as in "the government has to provide me with one" you´re right, but i have the right to get a licence and the right to buy a car.
i can´t see what this has got to do with the argument though.

You have a right to go where you want, though. Take a train. Boat. Bus. Walk. If cars were rounded up and scrapped, then money could be devoted to Public Transi infrastructure that would see to it that they were never necessary. Want a weekend jaunt? Rent a car, then, but really, we could find ways without them. It would be harder, but not impossible.

i see that you agree with me. i advocated the exact same thing just with guns.

... guns in the hands of idiots kill through uncontrolled release of energy or because of criminal energy.

No, that is the idiot, not the gun: the gun must be aimed (or randomly pointed) but the trigger must be squeezed, individually, per target. Theoretically, the shooter is responsible fo the placement of each bullet. But a person using explosives has no control over where the destructive power is focused.

i still can´t see the basic difference. explosives when in hand of law abiding people will only be used in areas where they don´t harm anybody such as designated areas. the aquivalent to a shooting range. if they come into hands of criminals or the law abiding people turn into criminals they´re going to be use for criminal things. what´s the big difference?

Are you affraid of what I MIGHT do with the weapon?

yes!

Are we to start accusing, jailing, and punishing people simply because of what they might do? That is scary.

um... where did i accuse anybody?

You said you were afraid of what somebody might do as opposed to whether they have done anything or not. In other words, you are taking the stance that a person with a gun is "guilty until proven innocent". A tacit accusation that a gun owner, regardless of his actual conduct in society, is a threat.

you see, we have different stances on guns. i accuse the guns themselves which you think is impossible. they create a unecessary danger (if they´re stolen from law abiding people, if the normally law abiding persons forgets to lock his gun, if the law abiding people decides to start a criminal career, for example)

I tend to find cars helpful but I've also lived without them.

i don´t have a car either. the fact that cars are not necessary for individuals such as you and me does not mean that they´re irrelevant for society. our society needs cars.

And when some maniac breaks into my house and threatens to kill me or my family, I'll find a gun to be pretty darn necessary. It is relative. A lot of people find guns necessary for personal security.

yes, that´s why i´m saying that guns are necessary NOW. if you get rid of the flood it will be very hard even for criminals to get a gun. examples are european countries. people who break into houses usually do it without guns since they know that the owner of the house doesn´t have a gun and he´d get way longer jail time if cought and carrying a gun.

True, we could ban guns. As surely as we've banned drugs.

umm....

nice for you but let me tell you that no post i made included evidence from statistics.

btw, we´re not talking only about fully automatic guns. i don´t think that revolvers and normal pistols are fully automatic guns. aren´t normal pistols semi autmatics? and aren´t they more spread than any other gun?

It seemed to me that you were making a very common mistake; that "semi-automatic" is the same thing as "fully-automatic" (zB: Machinegun-style firing). It is a favorite claim of the gun control political groups here, used ot confuse and frighten the general public which is ignorant of guns. They hear the word "automatic" and "guns" in the same sentence and they start shitting their pants.

i´m surely no guns expert but i know the difference between "semi" and "fully"

wrong! it´s a perfect example that guns are no problem in canadas society. it´s not an example of guns being no problem in the us.

Well, I see that Canda has just as many guns per capita yet not as much violence-- that leads me to believe that it is not the guns. It's the society. I don't know what-- the courts? The prisons? The government? The police? The media? All of the above?

Canada shows that having guns is not the problem. There's something else, a different angle, that needs to be explored. If just having guns automatically turned people into insane killers, then Canada would be having the same problem. But they're not-- so it's not the guns.

i agree partially with you. it is possible to have a society with guns with little gun crime.
buuuut: the guns are risponsible too. it´s the mixture that creates the problem. canada´s society + guns seems to work. same with switzerland. the us society + guns does not work that well. so you can either improve the us society or you can get rid of the guns to solve the problem. improving society sounds like the more elegant solution but i´m not convinced that it´s possible. wheras getting rid of the flood of guns seems more likely to me to be possible.

[Alyeska]

Sorry, but your facts are in error. Toronto contains roughly 5 million people out of 27 million total Canadian population, thus making it ENORMOUS relative to Canada and the fifth largest metropolis in all of North America. Scaled to America, it would be equivalent to a city with a population of fifty million people. And its murder rate is not significantly different than the rest of the country's murder rate (last year, it was 2.3 homicides per 100,000 population). The sky-high murder rate in American cities is not caused by population density, but by very serious social problems in those cities. The population density only contributes in the sense that it provides a target-rich environment for crime; it does not necessarily produce crime. Frankly, I'm rather shocked that people will seriously try to debate that America has a violent culture.

Fully 75% of the US population lives in an urban setting (in or very near cities). Fully 40% of the US population lives from Norfolk to Boston. The US has a significantly larger Urban population then Canada. Toronto has 5 million people, thats 18% of the US population. Almost half of the US population lives in one massive urban setting on the east coast. Three quarters of the US population lives in urban settings. Geography has just as much to do with the murder rates as does society.

Also Mike, you really should start taking laws into consideration. You say the US has a violent culture but at the same time we have some idiotic laws in place that most people would be disgusted about if they knew of. We also have very good gun intiatives like the Project Exile in Virginia. Contrary to some peoples beliefs it is not a states right issue because Virginia invited the Federal government into the program.

[Alyeska]

i agree partially with you. it is possible to have a society with guns with little gun crime.
buuuut: the guns are risponsible too. it´s the mixture that creates the problem. canada´s society + guns seems to work. same with switzerland. the us society + guns does not work that well. so you can either improve the us society or you can get rid of the guns to solve the problem. improving society sounds like the more elegant solution but i´m not convinced that it´s possible. wheras getting rid of the flood of guns seems more likely to me to be possible.

There is already proof that there are laws on the books that can be used to curb gun violence. If you try to ban guns its going to be just as sucessful as the "war on drugs". Not only that but your going to piss off 90 million law abiding citizens by suddenly turning them into criminals when they have done nothing wrong. Your solution takes away freedoms and hurts law abiding citizens. My solution makes things safer while not taking away freedoms.

[Darth Wong]

Sorry, but your facts are in error. Toronto contains roughly 5 million people out of 27 million total Canadian population, thus making it ENORMOUS relative to Canada and the fifth largest metropolis in all of North America. Scaled to America, it would be equivalent to a city with a population of fifty million people. And its murder rate is not significantly different than the rest of the country's murder rate (last year, it was 2.3 homicides per 100,000 population). The sky-high murder rate in American cities is not caused by population density, but by very serious social problems in those cities. The population density only contributes in the sense that it provides a target-rich environment for crime; it does not necessarily produce crime. Frankly, I'm rather shocked that people will seriously try to debate that America has a violent culture.

Fully 75% of the US population lives in an urban setting (in or very near cities). Fully 40% of the US population lives from Norfolk to Boston. The US has a significantly larger Urban population then Canada. Toronto has 5 million people, thats 18% of the US population. Almost half of the US population lives in one massive urban setting on the east coast. Three quarters of the US population lives in urban settings. Geography has just as much to do with the murder rates as does society.

Read my paragraph again. I pointed out that A) Toronto is a very large city, even by American standards and B) its murder rate is still just 2.3 per 100,000. So the argument that urbanization explains the murder rate is bunk, because urban environments do NOT necessarily produce high levels of violent crime. Even if we extrapolated Toronto's murder rate to the entire population, it would still be just a bit over a third of your murder rate for the entire country, including the rural areas! Urbanization is the scapegoat of people who subscribe to the myth that the city is an inherently bad place, and ignore examples which disprove their simplistic rule. It is your dog-eat-dog society which is to blame.

Also Mike, you really should start taking laws into consideration. You say the US has a violent culture but at the same time we have some idiotic laws in place that most people would be disgusted about if they knew of. We also have very good gun intiatives like the Project Exile in Virginia. Contrary to some peoples beliefs it is not a states right issue because Virginia invited the Federal government into the program.

Ha! Our laws are just as much of a joke as yours (except in the lawsuit arena, where American legal stupidity and corruption are truly a wonder to behold), but you still have THREE TIMES our murder rate. It's a culture problem.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

Criminals don't commit crimes because they have guns, they have guns because they want to commit a crime, so I'd expect not a decline of crimes,
but a shift to other potentially dangerous household implements-related crimes

Aye, thats true, without guns you would expect there to be an increase in stabbings & beatings. But you do have a decrease in people 'planning' a crime because they fear that without a gun they wouldn't be able to pull it off.

However you have to wonder whether the level of violent crime is because of access to guns or because of some other societal factor.

Actually, my impression is exactly the opposite -- most gun-related crimes, from what I understand, are crimes of passion. Spur-of-the-moment, uncontrollable rage type crimes, the same type of things that lead to stabbings in the home or beatings on the street. The difference is the lethality of the weapon at hand. A baseball bat or a knife doesn't kill on the first strike as often as a gun does, so far fewer beatings and stabbings in a crime of passion lead to fatalities. Except, of course, for those 70-stab-wound type cases.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

Personally, I blame gun violence on society. But not probably not for the same reasons anyone here will find popular. American society has become more and more irresponsible. The word "accountability" is almost taboo, and the word consequences is practically a capital offense. The whole "play now, pay... whenever" mentality has been steadily fucking this society for decades, and the result is that what might've been fistfights 50 years ago are now drive-by shootings and high-school massacres.

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I blame gun violence on society. But not probably not for the same reasons anyone here will find popular. American society has become more and more irresponsible. The word "accountability" is almost taboo, and the word consequences is practically a capital offense. The whole "play now, pay... whenever" mentality has been steadily fucking this society for decades, and the result is that what might've been fistfights 50 years ago are now drive-by shootings and high-school massacres.

We have the same social problem in Canada, so why do you have three times more murders than us? Americans have a violence problem in their culture.

Of course, the other explanation is that Americans are too aggressively anti-socialist, the gap between rich and poor is too large, and the idea of equal opportunity is widely regarded among the underclass as a myth, hence they turn to crime out of frustration and anger, but frankly, that's bound to be an even more unpopular explanation than simply saying American society is obsessed with violence.

[Darth Wong]

Actually, my impression is exactly the opposite -- most gun-related crimes, from what I understand, are crimes of passion. Spur-of-the-moment, uncontrollable rage type crimes, the same type of things that lead to stabbings in the home or beatings on the street. The difference is the lethality of the weapon at hand. A baseball bat or a knife doesn't kill on the first strike as often as a gun does, so far fewer beatings and stabbings in a crime of passion lead to fatalities. Except, of course, for those 70-stab-wound type cases.

True.

[Perinquus]

Actually, while guns do feature in some crimes of passion, such crimes by no means constitute "most gun crimes".

Are most murders, particularly of friends and relatives, committed by otherwise peaceful citizens who happen to have loaded guns available in a moment of anger, and who make one slip? Rarely. Domestic homicide usually is a terminal episode in a syndrome of violence rather than an isolated event. When a husband kills a wife, it usually is with his fists or a bludgeon, and he has beaten her many times before. Significantly, if a firearm is used when one spouse kills another, it more often is the wife who uses it in defense against her larger, more aggressive male partner (Source: Cynthia K. Gillespie, in Justifiable Homicide: Battered Women, Self-Defense and the Law (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989)). Most of these wives are never indicted because they are legally defending themselves or their children.

About 40 percent of defensive gun uses are connected with assaults in the home, and most presumably are cases of family violence. But the notion that much serious violence is accounted for by previously nonviolent people in "crime-of-passion" domestic homicides is wrong. For example, in a Kansas City study, in nine out of ten domestic "crime-of-passion" homicides, police had responded to disturbance calls at the same address within the preceding two years an average of five times (This tallies with my experience as a police officer; we have "regular customers"). Moreover, it's not clear what difference gun control laws would make. A large number of men who kill in these circumstances have a previous history of convictions and, as felons, are forbidden by current law to have a gun.