Quote:Original post by Alpha_ProgDes

Quote:Original post by LessBread

Quote:Original post by slayemin
Whats sad to note is that when more than three dozen people die in Iraq it barely registers on the richter scale of tragedy in America, but when three dozen American university students die, it is enough fuel to make headline news and provoke heated debate. Is there really such a difference in the value of human life?

I say this not to condone it but yes there really is such a difference in the value of human life.

My eyes must deceive me. You, LessBread, actually said that. This explanation I've got to hear. Please pray tell, do tell...

Go look at wrongful death lawsuits. Corporations spend millions of dollars on experts each year to calculate the value of a person's life when they kill them with their products, and to try to minimize that value to avoid paying out any money.

The government spends millions of dollars protecting people like George W. Bush and John McCain when they visit Iraq for a few days, but can't be assed to spend a few hundred dollars each on properly equipping our soldiers.

Like it or not, the value of peoples lives are very much variable.

I know I probably should stay out of this overheated discussion, moreso since I'm an outsider living on the other side of the big pond. Still, I can't help but wonder at the arguments brought in in favor of people's rights to carry arms. Over here in Holland (and in fact most of Europe), practically nobody owns a gun and I think we're getting along just fine. Yet it seems like some of you think giving up your right to own a gun would be tantamount to inviting anarchy or slavery, because you wouldn't be able to defend yourselves from criminals or your own government.

Coming from a country where guns are a curiosity and gun violence is quite incidental, I just can't wrap my head around this argument.

Quote:... Few people today have the courage to accept a weapon and turn it towards another living being, even if their own lives and liberties depend on it...

Though I might have taken it out of context, I find this line of thought particularly scary. Would you really consider such a disposition to be courage? I would personally consider threathening another human being with lethal force to safeguard my own life and liberties in particular a selfish act, rather than an act of courage. And if so few people have the courage to perform this arguably justifiable act, why then do you advocate access to guns for everyone?

Please realize I'm not trying to be smart here. I'm genuinly trying (and unfortunately failing) to understand why you think the right to own guns, or more generally the right to exercise force, is that indispensable.

Also I love the whole "we need guns so that the government doesn't take away our rights!"

A) first of all, you already let them do that by supporting your favourite monkey and his PATRIOT Act, illegal wiretaps, etc, etc.
B) Yeah, have fun trying to stand up against an M1A1 Abrams tank with that 9mm.
C) Or an A-10, F-22, B-2, etc. Fuck we probably couldn't even stand up against a B-52. I'd love to see you try to get your hands on an SAM and claim it's an essential liberty granted under the 2nd ammendment.

Quote:Original post by Nemesis2k2
Ok, so ideologically, you primarily approve of general availability of weaponry to support self-reliance and personal responsibility for one's safety. Let me ask you a hypothetical question:

If it was an absolute certanty that bringing in gun control would result in a significant reduction in murder rates per year in the US, would you still oppose this legislation?

I've already stated that this isn't just about murder rates. The need for a gun is proportional to the danger or death from guns. If ever the citizens decided to organize an armed uprising, the death-rate from guns would sky-rocket.

Your question implies that you think the majority of deaths from guns are murders committed with legally owned weapons. This brings up an important point, finding the motive behind gun violence. What about murders that take place over drug-gang turf-wars? If we did a better job in enforcing our current drug laws, then there would be a significant effect on the gun violence rate in America today.

This guy isn't the perpetrator of gun violence in America.


These people are


My point is not to point out the obvious racial differences between these two pictures, my point is to draw attention to their modes of employ. One is a "redneck gun nut" and the others are presumably drug dealers. I assume they are drug dealers because they wear the colors of the Crips, and you wouldn't so obviously try to emulate that look unless you wanted people to believe you were a Crip. There is a possibility that this picture is just a Halloween gag -- it still serves illustrative purposes if the people in it are not specifically involved in the drug trade.

While I can't stand rednecks any more than the rest of you, this attitude that "redneck gun nuts" are the problem is completely at odds with reallity. The vast majority of gun violence crime in our country is directly related to organized crime gangs, the Crips, the Bloods, the Sicilian Mafia, the Hells Angels, etc.

Quote:Original post by capn_midnight

Quote:Original post by LessBread
Gun Politics, Gun Politics in the United States.

I don't think ordinary citizens should be allowed unrestricted access to assault weapons, sub-machine guns or machine guns. Whether access to hand guns, shot guns and rifles should be restricted is not so clear cut. I think for the most part the 2nd amendment is outdated. It seems to read that a person that wants to own a gun should be required to join the National Guard, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing so long as the guard stays home and is never sent overseas to fight in bogus wars.

I don't think the Government, and more specifically the Police, should be given a monopoly on the exercise of force. How many articles in the recent past have you posted on police brutallity? The police forces of our country only seem to encourage this sort of behaviour, in their hiring practices, in their handling of the situations, and in their lack of reforms in the aftermath, and you want to give them the means to gain 100% control over us? This isn't Wikipedia, do NOT assume good faith!

You do realise that your words are insulting to the majority of police and other civil service personnel, including those in the military, right? You seem to consider the police as a breed apart. Something less than human.

I've got news for you: policemen are people too.

How often must the police be tarred with the brush of a few bad apples, while the general public get away with murder? Armies don't have any say in where they get sent; that's your job. Governments are the 'brain' of the nation; armies merely the hands.

Similarly, the police are there to protect you. Much of their training is in how to make damned certain that innocent bystanders don't get hurt. That is their #2 priority. (#1 is, in common with all the emergency services, is to not place themselves in unnecessary danger; they cannot protect you if they're dead.)

How stressed and angry would you have to be to willingly take on a day-job where even the background noise level of crime could involve guns? Damned near any incident they get called out on could involve people getting shot. Naturally, this will have a strong bearing on the personalities that form the police forces. In quiet, rural country villages where nothing much happens, you'll get a very different kind of officer to those whose day-job involves patrolling the seedier districts of New York, Detroit or Chicago.

*

Gun control isn't about removing guns from circulation entirely. That would be gun removal. NOBODY is expecting that, nor would it be desirable. (The US has a larger rural population and you still have bears and other dangerous animals for which a gun is indeed a useful defence. In the EU, even wolves are considered an endangered species.)

Gun control is about raising barriers -- deliberately placing obstacles in the way -- to make it harder to get hold of a gun and keep it. The idea is to place just enough obstacles to ensure that 'casual' gun ownership and use is effectively eliminated. In the US, I suspect this would likely take at least a generation, but most probably two, before the full benefits of such a policy are realised.

(And I have to agree that quoting the 2nd Amendment is unhelpful. Not only was the US a primarily agricultural nation, but it was also a political nonentity on the world stage. On top of this, 200 years ago, guns cost a lot of money to buy and maintain. Nor were they particularly accurate -- that's why they relied on sheer numbers -- or cheap to run. This was the age before mass production. Guns were effectively hand-made.

G. Washington was referring to people like himself: the powerful, the landowners and the employers. Not the oiks and general riff-raff. (The same is also true of the infamous "Magna Carta", which was a charter for barons and landowners, not the workers.)

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Let me posit a counter question for you: "How many more bogus wars must be fought before the American people wake up and elect competent officials?"

That depends. The US was not alone in this stupidity. The UK's leaders also complied. I could look fellow Brits in the eye after the million-man anti-war march in protest against the war, but this does not excuse Blair's subsequent re-election. If the US was at fault for letting Bush take power, the UK was at least as guilty for not doing something about it. Blair is not an imbecile. He only plays one on TV.

The real problem is the need for reform. People simply don't believe any of their politicians any more. No matter who is elected the sleaze, scandals and cronyism continue. Something needs to change. The present systems we have in place are no longer, IMHO, fit for purpose.

I'm not talking about minor tweaks either. I'm talking about a complete system redesign from the ground up.

But that, I suspect, is another thread entirely.

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I'll even provide my own version of the answer: "As the people have been de facto (and in a startling number of cases de jure) stripped of their most basic right of self governance, the answer is Never." If I wanted to be facetious, I would have asked "How many more people must die in auto accidents before we outlaw cars."

So you're willing to believe that "guns do not kill people", but you're also willing to believe "cars DO kill people"? I'm sensing a blatant conflict here.

Cars kill people because they are driven by people. People are not machines. They are fallible. Any system which fails to take this into account will suffer.

To make matters worse, cars are expected to share the same medium as pedestrians and other, equally incompatible, modes of transport. The automobile was always an accident waiting to happen. (This situation occurred because the first automobiles could barely do 10-15 mph. Horses could gallop faster than that and horses were already sharing the roads with other modes. By the time cars were hitting 50 mph, pragmatism and two World Wars made it extremely difficult to justify constructing a complete, parallel infrastructure financially.)

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The fundamental disagreement here is not about guns, it is about the right to the exercise of force. Are citizens wards of the state, at its mercy for protection (or rather, janitorial duties), and in fear of its corruption?

Yes. That's why you (allegedly) have a democracy. The idea is to elect people who aren't arseholes. When you drop the ball and expect others to do your voting for you, then you have problems. You can't have it both ways: either your government speaks for you and represents you, or it is a tyranny and needs to be brought down. Which is it?

If you (and so many others) really hate your government so much, and you insist on retaining guns in the name of the 2nd Amendment, then WHY AREN'T YOU OVERTHROWING YOUR GOVERNMENT WITH YOUR GUNS?

If the war in Iraq was so wrong -- and you certainly don't deny this -- why aren't you DOING something about it? What the hell are you wasting your time here on GDNet when you could be out there in Washington D.C. with your gun, taking out Bush and his warmongering friends?

Quote: Or are the citizens their own masters, responsible for their own safety, and able to protect themselves effectively when the police say they can't arrive for another half hour?

That would be "anarchy". It's possible to run very small communities in this way, but it falls down when you realise that you'd end up with a billion separate, often incompatible, interfaces between your own community and those surrounding you. You can certainly kiss goodbye to large-scale projects or public works. Oh: and say "Hi!" to lots and lots of unnecessary, inefficient duplication. (A large national government has exactly the same advantages as any large-scale organisation: economies of scale. No national government? No national law! No Supreme Court! You'd have to duplicate all that stuff for each and every community. And you thought your taxes were high now!)

The US' federal nature is probably no longer fit for purpose in its present form, but this is not an excuse to just blow it all up and leave it as a smoking ruin. Before you remove something, you have to know what you're going to replace it with. (Something that, famously, Bush and Co. failed to work out before entering Iraq.)

If you don't want to handle all the micro-level details of running your community -- schools, town planning, road networks, supplying power, water, processing waste, managing parks, and on and endlessly on -- then you must hand that responsibility to others.

The onus is on YOU to ensure that those who are given responsibility are using it properly.

Quote:Original post by remigius
I know I probably should stay out of this overheated discussion, moreso since I'm an outsider living on the other side of the big pond. Still, I can't help but wonder at the arguments brought in in favor of people's rights to carry arms. Over here in Holland (and in fact most of Europe), practically nobody owns a gun and I think we're getting along just fine. Yet it seems like some of you think giving up your right to own a gun would be tantamount to inviting anarchy or slavery, because you wouldn't be able to defend yourselves from criminals or your own government.

With your income tax rates, I would start to consider you enslaved. I put more importance into securing my own future than giving someone else a college education. A college education is only necessary today because we have made it so easy to obtain one, increasing the supply of college graduates and decreasing their value. As little as 20 years ago you could get by reasonably well on just a highschool education. My parents struggled a little when I was a kid, but nobody said life was easy. Now, I have friends making $150,000 a year and they are living paycheck to paycheck trying to make their payments on their house in North Virginia (high cost of living) and 2 SUVs and 1 sports car (none of which make better than 20mpg in fuel mileage on the highway). They couldn't control their spending, and now Hillary Clinton is talking about legislation to provide debt forgiveness to people who accepted crazy mortgage rates because they didn't read the fine print. I don't believe that a welfare state is a responsible use for tax dollars, and regardless of that fact, I don't believe an efficient, uncorrupt welfare state could ever be created in America.

Quote:

Quote:... Few people today have the courage to accept a weapon and turn it towards another living being, even if their own lives and liberties depend on it...

Though I might have taken it out of context, I find this line of thought particularly scary. Would you really consider such a disposition to be courage? I would personally consider threathening another human being with lethal force to safeguard my own life and liberties in particular a selfish act, rather than an act of courage. And if so few people have the courage to perform this arguably justifiable act, why then do you advocate access to guns for everyone?

Please realize I'm not trying to be smart here. I'm genuinly trying (and unfortunately failing) to understand why you think the right to own guns, or more generally the right to exercise force, is that indispensable.

Thank you for asking pointed questions. When you say this, the first thing I hear in my head is a little scenario, maybe acted out by the Monty Python gang. I'm not saying this to mock you, this is really how my brain works sometimes,

"Hi, I'm going to murder you and rape your wife unless you shoot me instead."
"No, I can't, asserting my own right to live would be selfish."

This is what I'm talking about. If you can't agree that self defense in this situation is right, then I guess we won't agree at all.

Seriously, what the fuck is it about Americans and their need for firearms?

Sure, you may be a sane and sensible person, whose rifle is only used for hunting bears/small game/whatever every year. But, you realise you're equipping the crazies (of which there are always some) of America with a more deadly weapon than they would have if gun control laws were in place? And for those of you who say "oh, it's so easy to get guns illegally", you're appling today-environments to the future. In a country where gun-control laws are applied, getting guns on the black market are much trickier than they are today. You can't just say "oh, getting guns illegally today is so easy, so gun control laws won't do anything", you're not thinking about the repercussions of what a gun-control law would do.

Furthermore, what the hell is wrong with your country? Even other countries with similar numbers of gun-ownership have significantly lower homicides than the USA. Is it your media? Is it the way you're brought up? Is it just the easiest way to vent your frustration, with the most lethal thing at hand? Seriously, when are you going to realise that everybody having guns doesn't reduce the homicide rate, but actually increases it. You don't need them for "safety", you need them to feel safe, even though they make you less so.

This slightly drunk post made to you by Jonathan.

Quote:Original post by stimarco

Quote:Original post by capn_midnight
I don't think the Government, and more specifically the Police, should be given a monopoly on the exercise of force. How many articles in the recent past have you posted on police brutallity? The police forces of our country only seem to encourage this sort of behaviour, in their hiring practices, in their handling of the situations, and in their lack of reforms in the aftermath, and you want to give them the means to gain 100% control over us? This isn't Wikipedia, do NOT assume good faith!

You do realise that your words are insulting to the majority of police and other civil service personnel, including those in the military, right? You seem to consider the police as a breed apart. Something less than human.

I've got news for you: policemen are people too.

I would say that you seem to insinuate that the police are a breed apart, something MORE than human. The police are people too, and we must assume they are fallable. We need protection from the police just as much as we need protection from the criminals. Your cops don't carry guns, our's do.

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Gun control isn't about removing guns from circulation entirely... Gun control is about raising barriers -- deliberately placing obstacles in the way -- to make it harder to get hold of a gun and keep it.

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The real problem is the need for reform [of the government]

I'm sorry to quote you out of sequence, but I wanted to juxtapose your two statements here. You don't trust the government to conduct legal, popular wars, yet you trust them enough to enact gun laws that are just restricting enough to keep guns out of the hands of those that would use them for wrong? Are we talking about the same governments? "Give them an inch and they will take a mile," certainly applies here.

Quote:The idea is to place just enough obstacles to ensure that 'casual' gun ownership and use is effectively eliminated.

What do you define as a casual gun owner? Someone like me, with a .22 caliber pistol that I use for target shooting, or someone like JayZ, who is rumored to have killed men over drug deals before he hit it big as a rapper? The crimes committed by casual gun owners are MARGINAL in comparison to the real, violent criminals. With bringing up these "reformed" rappers, I'm trying to make a point that, while you're right that it's going to take major reform, it's gotta go further than just the government. You and I may deplore these "hard" rappers who brag about the number of people they killed while they were "on the street," but there is a good portion of today's youth that I'm afraid take those messages to heart. Okay, there I can agree, keeping guns out of those kids' hands is a good idea.

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Let me posit a counter question for you: "How many more bogus wars must be fought before the American people wake up and elect competent officials?"

That depends. The US was not alone in this stupidity. The UK's leaders also complied. I could look fellow Brits in the eye after the million-man anti-war march in protest against the war, but this does not excuse Blair's subsequent re-election. If the US was at fault for letting Bush take power, the UK was at least as guilty for not doing something about it. Blair is not an imbecile. He only plays one on TV.

The real problem is the need for reform. People simply don't believe any of their politicians any more. No matter who is elected the sleaze, scandals and cronyism continue. Something needs to change. The present systems we have in place are no longer, IMHO, fit for purpose.

I'm not talking about minor tweaks either. I'm talking about a complete system redesign from the ground up.

But that, I suspect, is another thread entirely.

I agree whole heartedly that our systems in their current state are broken. But you are proposing a nonviolent revolution against a group of people with control over essentially everything. If I knew more people agreed with us, or even if more people cared, maybe it could happen. I'm afraid, based on my experiences with college kids ignoring the injustices of their own universities, that people today are more interested in posting on FaceBook than making change. We already know from the Ruby Ridge incident that the US Government will hunt you down and kill your family. While the situation surrounding Ruby Ridge was complicated by some dealing with the Aryan Nation, a lot of people believe that the people involved were just a seperatist group, who would have left everyone alone if the government weren't out to pick a fight.

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I'll even provide my own version of the answer: "As the people have been de facto (and in a startling number of cases de jure) stripped of their most basic right of self governance, the answer is Never." If I wanted to be facetious, I would have asked "How many more people must die in auto accidents before we outlaw cars."

So you're willing to believe that "guns do not kill people", but you're also willing to believe "cars DO kill people"? I'm sensing a blatant conflict here.

No, that was the point of saying it would be a facetious reply if I were to say that. I should have left it out completely, as I've been trying to leave out my usual passive-aggressive comments.

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The fundamental disagreement here is not about guns, it is about the right to the exercise of force. Are citizens wards of the state, at its mercy for protection (or rather, janitorial duties), and in fear of its corruption?

Yes. That's why you (allegedly) have a democracy. The idea is to elect people who aren't arseholes. When you drop the ball and expect others to do your voting for you, then you have problems. You can't have it both ways: either your government speaks for you and represents you, or it is a tyranny and needs to be brought down. Which is it?

that's what I'm saying, the current state is... the government doesn't do much "representing" anymore. I vote, and I don't vote "Democrat or Republican, because noone else can reasonably win." I didn't vote for Bush's reellection (wasn't old enough for the first election), and I didn't vote John Kerry as "not Bush." I've even helped with election campaigns before, so I personally really do try to do things. The problem is a cultural one, people are too busy to inform themselves and make excuses after the fact. Actually, I can't believe they are too busy, because I'm in the same rat-race myself, and I can find the time to inform myself on candidates, political parties, and political platforms.

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If you (and so many others) really hate your government so much, and you insist on retaining guns in the name of the 2nd Amendment, then WHY AREN'T YOU OVERTHROWING YOUR GOVERNMENT WITH YOUR GUNS?

If the war in Iraq was so wrong -- and you certainly don't deny this -- why aren't you DOING something about it? What the hell are you wasting your time here on GDNet when you could be out there in Washington D.C. with your gun, taking out Bush and his warmongering friends?

Please oh please oh please oh please, don't say stuff like that on public forums, even jokingly. <looks around> Hehe, Mr. FBI agent, I'm sure he didn't mean it, really. <sweats>

To tell you the truth, I really do have hope that nonviolent change is possible within my lifetime, and I expect to live until I'm 80, so another 56 years. But... "don't put all of your eggs in one basket."

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Quote: Or are the citizens their own masters, responsible for their own safety, and able to protect themselves effectively when the police say they can't arrive for another half hour?

That would be "anarchy". It's possible to run very small communities in this way, but it falls down when you realise that you'd end up with a billion separate, often incompatible, interfaces between your own community and those surrounding you. You can certainly kiss goodbye to large-scale projects or public works. Oh: and say "Hi!" to lots and lots of unnecessary, inefficient duplication. (A large national government has exactly the same advantages as any large-scale organisation: economies of scale. No national government? No national law! No Supreme Court! You'd have to duplicate all that stuff for each and every community. And you thought your taxes were high now!)

The US' federal nature is probably no longer fit for purpose in its present form, but this is not an excuse to just blow it all up and leave it as a smoking ruin. Before you remove something, you have to know what you're going to replace it with. (Something that, famously, Bush and Co. failed to work out before entering Iraq.)

If you don't want to handle all the micro-level details of running your community -- schools, town planning, road networks, supplying power, water, processing waste, managing parks, and on and endlessly on -- then you must hand that responsibility to others.

The onus is on YOU to ensure that those who are given responsibility are using it properly.

No one entity can control all of that. That's the point I'm trying to make, that our government is far too centralized, that a little more delegation is necessary. As it is right now, the individual state governments are jokes, they're either more corrupt than the federal government or they are bullied and strong-armed by the government with threats of reduced budgets. While the federal government may not have a lot of explicit power over the states and state policies, they have a lot of implicit power by threatening the states with tax dollar cuts if the states don't fall into line with federal policy. "If you don't pass a law requiring XYZ, then we'll cut your Highway Improvement Funds by 50%"

Imagine the governing body of the EU taking over and trying to run the daily governments, down to the smallest towns, of every member country. I think it would be more of a recipe for disaster than having a large number of more autonomous states. I mean, our federal government has/is considering an Ammendment to our Constitution, our most basic set of laws governing how the Government may govern, to define marriage! I'm not trying to advocate complete anarchy here, I'm trying to point out that the Federal government has too much control.

You mentioned that the US is more rural than Europe. On average, that is true. In pockets, that can be REALLY true, or it can be completely false. Federal gun control laws would apply to everyone, in a country with far too much diversity for one law to be appropriate for everyone. I don't think people in Alaska are going to appreciate laws designed for people in Miami, FL.