BS: Anyone defend US gun law?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 08:54 PM

In this context, the violent nature of the group is reasonably indicated by the actual incidence of violent crime, not by the power of the weapons (or fists) that are used.

Group X (say 5000 people) has 500 violent crimes. Since they can't use guns, they use things like knives, fists, rocks, etc.

Group Y (say 5000 people) has 400 violent crimes, 50 of them involving guns.

Of the two groups, which contains the higher proportion of violent individuals?

The British claim was that Americans, by nature or nurture, are *as a group* far more violent than the British. There's no way even to guess whether one group or the other, with equal access to guns, would be more likely to use them.

For all we know, if Group X had had guns, they'd have used them far more often than did Group Y. But we don't know and can't speculate. All we *do* know is that Group X has a higher *rate* of violent crime, and by that measure is the more violent group.

Whether the "average" member of Group X is more or less violent than the "average" member of Group Y (i.e., more likely to use a gun if one is available) can't be determined from the evidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:18 PM

Dan, me luv, using a broken beer bottle to kill is violent, and it is effective. However, using that same bottle or even a series of broken beer bottles violent as it is, is not as effective in killing 25 people. I think that is what we are saying: Gun prevalence equates to mass killings.

We know that a gun is not as effective in killing masses as a bomb is but most people don't know how to build a bomb. Most people can figure out how to shoot a gun.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:20 PM

Lighter, I once worked for a boss who used your tactic, abstract to a n (in)effable degree of abstraction and then redefine in his terms. It's dishonest, discreditable and disrespectful. The theme of the meme is GUN abuse, so stop trying to prove a case you've fairly conclusively lost by changing the subject.

And if you must go back to that text, there is nothing in common in terms of proclivity to violence when you have to include combing one's hair in an aggressive manner as reportable violence (UK) to achieve your case.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:45 PM

Ebbi . I know hon just playing devil's advocate

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:50 PM

My point is that humans can take anything and make a weapon out of it. How many were slaughtered by smallpox-infected blankets distributed to the the Iroquois by the British? How many killed to open the opium trade to China? Range of a weapon is irrelevant to how many it can kill -- ask the victims of Jenghis Khan or Tamerlane or Eichmann, or those dead by gas in WWI.

I can kill more by derailing a tanker car of chlorine than I could with machine gun -- or by flying passenger airlines into buildings.

It is the intent, not the weapon itself, that kills. A 'dud' bomb dropped on London will quietly rust away until it is excavated...humanity itself bears the fault of turning innocent things into weapons.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:57 PM

You are right rap and if I can still put my hand through a cinder block at my age, and I can then why use any weapon. I know you can also. Your point is well taken it does go back to people kill not weapons

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 11:16 PM

It's that last phrase that won't do, ya-no, Dan -- all this sniggeringly disingenuous "Guns are not the problem. People are the problem" -- that sticks in my craw and so saddens me & robs me of my SOH and makes me abusive of dear old windup devil's advocates like that charming old Mr O'C. The problem is ···the people + the guns··· ~~ If the problematic people can't get the equally problematic guns: why, then, game over!...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 12:42 AM

But what changed then Mike, it was far easier to get firearms back in the 50 early 60s. You could order war surplus from any catalog no kidding there was never anything like today drive by or school shooting. I can only assume that the people changed and not for the good. I can honestly say I never heard of a violence with a gun growing up in my whole county but Iccan't say that now

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 12:59 AM

For some reason in society and not just in America, people have become violent. Guys like solders or X national security had to learn the tools of violence for profession. Civilian hunted and would target shoot. Today they blow up innocent people or shoot them for no reason at all. People changed Mike I think not weapons

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:06 AM

I guess I really don't know the answer. Rap and I probably are not the best to ask, we both would be most likely not here without the ability to defend ourself but again that was military or government related. Probably why I taught my kids martial arts, sharp edged weapons and to shoot hoping they never needed any of it ever.
The world is too violent and good people need to realize that I think

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:15 AM

I honestly don't think that removing all guns in today's world would change much unless people changed. We would just see more pipe bombs and blades. I hope I am wrong and I am being serious. People would find a way to kill. I am probably being a pessimistic person but it is what it is

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:25 AM

Doubt the pipe bombs. Blades can't cause as much continuous damage in one incident -- see correspondence above. Really see no sort of advantage in guns being freely available, & an ∞ of disadvantages. The "ways to kill" people would find would just not be so destructive within each instance of their setting out to do so. It isn't the people - it's the guns.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:39 AM

Well I agree on real gun laws that make sense and I agree that a gun makes it one hell of a lot easier so we need laws but we are missing something. The human aspect of modern violence and I don't have the answer to that.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:47 AM

Mike, the rednecks KNOW the truth. They bring up the 'pipe-bombs' and 'blades' argument to avoid having to admit it. Changing the subject - the last refuge of a man who is absolutely beaten and he knows it.

Only a complete fool defends the indefensible.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:53 AM

Something changed from the end of wwii until now society wise for people to do things to others like today's world is. Sad, we can debate the tools of violence but some smart psychological study needs done to explain what happened to the people

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Musket
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 03:06 AM

Let's stick to the absurd " it's people not guns" crap and see what that actually tells us;

It tells me that those who glorify them are the least suitable to owning them.

An inadequate redneck without a gun is less of a danger to society than an inadequate redneck with one.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 07:47 AM

Really?

That would negate all the training the military of every country gives in killing. It would make the work to overcome the natural aversion to killing others ("You shall not kill") irrelevant -- give someone a firearms and they'll kill with it, even if they've never held one before.

I strongly urge you to read titles like Keegan's "The Face of Battle", Grossman's "On Killing" and "On Combat", and S.L.A. Marshall's critique of US marksmanship training before saying more. Make a real study of violence and stop spewing out pre-digested pap.

Then go visit a veteran's hospital and talk with some of the people there. Tell them that the mortar round that took their legs off or the sniper shot that spattered their buddy's brains all over them weren't done by people who intended to kill.

Two things are necessary NOW, in the US and elsewhere:

1. Good, solid mental health programs without the stigma of "crazy" or "weak"
2. and sensible, logical, and consistent firearms laws.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Greg F.
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 08:20 AM

I agree with 1 & 2 100%, Rap.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 09:07 AM

> How many were slaughtered by smallpox-infected blankets distributed to the the Iroquois by the British?

Possibly a few, possibly none:

https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/download/25644/25413

Not that the idea wasn't considered.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: olddude
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 12:24 PM

I don't know about any other, but I cherish my redneckness. Hell I am a blue blood redneck. I suspect my family invented duct tape they are so redneck. I need a flag

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 09:11 PM

Part of what changed is the male population hasn't seen the bloody side of war. When you're sitting in a comfortable chair outside Lake Tahoe bombing the shit out of the Taliban and anyone else who just happens to be inside the blast range as "collateral damage" it stops being real and becomes another computer game, the kind of Hollywood movie where nobody is ever premanently injured or actually gruesomely painfully dead.
The WW I and II infantry saw that, it was their immediate neighbour. They never talked about the nightmares, but made certain it could never come visiting. It started to wander in Vietnam, Rambo's criticism of the Soldier of Fortune mentality is only too real, it's morlocks like that who pulled the prisoner abuses in the Gulf. Too macho, too gangsta, too computer game, where the dead aren't bleeding on your floor. How many points for hitting a politician in your getaway?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 09:57 PM

And there are those of us to whom such is all too real.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 04:23 AM

In which case they should understand the stupidity and futility of civilians being at liberty to own firearms without careful and strict controls being placed on them by their government, and should hang their heads in shame for some of the idiotic, testosterone-fuelled horse-shit they've posted on this thread in support of universal gun-ownership and, by virtue of that support, acceeded to the demands of the NRA dumbfucks.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Musket
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 04:56 AM

Wow. Fascinating to get inside the mindset of people who think guns are cute.

A bit like the Jesus freaks on certain other threads.

I suppose there's nothing threatening about a billiard ball in a sock either..


This just in. Eight dead in Florida. A man shot his daughter and his six grandchildren dead before turning the gun on himself.

Still, he had the right to bear arms so freedom is safe. God bless America.*




*somebody has to.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 05:49 AM

35000 a year is close enough 100 a day, grosso-modo. That's just one hour's tragedies, move on, nothing to bother you...unless you're a real human being. Next...
In any one month, 3000 Americans die from guns. You get all hot under the collar about Al Qaida attacking the WTC, once, fourteen years back, killing fewer. One might ask who are the greater terrorists then, Al Qaida or the NRA? Because on a simple statistical basis, the latter are your own worst enemy. You're actually more likely to die from a gun than in a road traffic accident (2012:33561), there. You need cars (although a better bus network would help), you don't need so many weapons, except in a few areas.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 06:05 AM

An article once again underlining the US mindset where it comes to militarisation and the use of force:

School districts given free machine guns and grenade launchers

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 09:03 AM

Let me know if they start using them on truants.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 09:19 AM

When I posted my last comment I didn't think y'all would understand it. Having been in war does not mean that someone is opposed to ALL war or to all violence. Only to violence for violence's sake, only to the lawless sort. There are times when only violence will serve -- witness the ISIS or ISIL or whatever they are calling themselves. There can be no rational discussion with fanatics -- NRA, Nazi, anarchist, pacifist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Shintoist, Amish, socialist, or whatever. When true fanaticism takes over only the death of the fanatics will stop it. Why? Because true fanaticism means that the fanatic is willing, even eager, to die for The True Cause.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Greg F.
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 09:26 AM

Oh its even bettet than that, Musket: The Florida idiot had a prior conviction for - you guessed it - shooting his son to death. Good old Florida...

---

BELL, Fla., Friday, September 19, 2014 (AP) — A man who spent time in prison a decade ago for the shooting death of his young son killed six of his grandchildren, including an infant, his adult daughter and himself in a rampage at a home where authorities in the small Florida town say they had been called to in the past. When a deputy arrived, the shooter, 51-year-old Don Spirit, committed suicide and authorities then found the seven gunshot victims "all over on the property."

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 09:42 AM

You're correct Rap. And that's the job of the Armed Forces, not a bunch of small-dicks with hunting-rifles that may or may not be stored in locked gun-safes, handguns they keep on the bedside stand, or automatics they picked up with no checks at the County Fair.

I was born in 1947, grew up surrounded by veterans from both World-Wars - they saw plenty of death, and I never heard one of them support the notion of civilians being permitted to own guns. None ever wanted to see a gun again, they were sickened by guns and what can be done to a human being with a gun.

No-one, except the police, the armed forces, farmers and boba-fide sport-shooters needs a gun in a civilised country. Australia and the United Kingdom prove that.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 09:58 AM

Might be a thought to require anyone wanting a gun licence to do a month in an Emergency Room first, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 02:04 PM

HOW MANY MORE?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 02:09 PM

"The parents are coming in with tears in their eyes," said Wendy Pineda, who brought her two sons to the school Friday morning."

Mmmmmm, words like 'crocodile' spring to mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 04:58 PM

Nothing like learning from a mistake, is there? Better not to have to learn the hard way.

The death of his son, for example, is yet again the result of no training and indiscipline. What was a round doing up the spout when it wasn't about to be fired, when he was cleaning the weapon? How come it had got rusty? So having killed one of his children, he'd already crossed that limit, the rest wasn't as hard - on him, the swine.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 08:26 PM

" A man shot his daughter and.." etc.... but he wasn't allowed to have a gun! Why, he just broke the law! Naughty, naughty!

All we have have to do is carefully monitor all felons and keep track of all current & developing psychos... and have everyone register all their guns.... and explain to all the sane people how careful they have to be, lest some felon or psycho steal or buy their guns.

There... problem solved!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Musket
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 03:34 AM

Or don't have guns around for them to steal in the first place.

Problem solved as per how we do it in the first world.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 08:14 AM

The longer this thread goes on, the lower my opinion of British acuity becomes.

I have to keep telling myself it's just a few nuts, just a few nuts, just a few nuts....

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 11:29 AM

There there, Lighter. All go on playing with your nice toys, and never mind what the grown-ups think.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 11:54 AM

Lighter gets the point.... and if King George had treated the colonists better and this big, wild country had remained part of the Empire, I'd bet the opinion & understanding of how 'gun culture' developed naturally would have many Brits analyzing the situation a bit differently.

The 'first world' (is that in the Magna Carta?) is not somehow naturally more intelligent and reasonable. Being smug & condescending about differences in history is not becoming.... no matter from whose perspective.

Those of us who despise and regret the situation regarding guns are also frustrated that the path to controlling it is such a Moebius strip.... and when we are told "just introduce new, sane laws & pass them", the discussion has nowhere to go.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 11:59 AM

this big, wild country had remained part of the Empire, I'd bet the opinion & understanding of how 'gun culture' developed naturally would have many Brits analyzing the situation a bit differently.

Or vice versa.

And how do you see how U.S. 'gun culture' DID develope?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 12:09 PM

I'm sorry, Bill. But putting men on the Moon but being unable to control the use of your firearms because you can't enforce laws even if you pass them, is just pathetic in anybody's language.

If you think that smug & condescending -- well I shall just have to live with it, shant I?

Regards

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 01:48 PM

Michael... putting men on the moon and having a legal & cultural problem with firearms is a 'false equivalency'. I could make assertions about some awkward issue in the UK that seems foolish, but I'm sure I'd be shot down over 'not understanding the history'.

Now if you have a serious idea on how to get out of that firearms situation, I am all ears...

---------------

and Greg, I have spelled out the history of the gun culture several times.

Big, wild country... Indians... defending against bears... war of independence ... ranchers controlling predators...etc. etc... it goes for several paragraphs. Look it up.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 01:58 PM

I'll say it once more: "I hate the gun culture!"

But we HAVE many millions of guns of various types distributed in godawful ways. You can go *tsk-tsk* all day about the stupidity of it, but that says NOTHING about a pragmatic solution. Read again my sarcastic remark above about 'how to solve it'. *I* know the problem... how am I supposed to reply to nothing but continual jeering and finger pointing?

I respect you, Michael, and 99% of your observations on most issues.... but I can't understand this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 02:14 PM

I answered that one earlier, Bill. Stop selling ammunition and the fixings to roll your own. No rounds, no bang: you can keep your psychosis on the risk of invasion, issuing ammunition from State arsenals if and when it ever becomes necessary, but until then, leave the ars'ole boys with what they have and once that's gone, no more.

Ammunition doesn't have an infinite shelf life, it's quite short (usually less than ten years), and if you don't use it in time it becomes more than somewhat problematic, sometimes not going off at all, sometimes becoming dangerous to handle. If you want, ban holdings as well, with a short amnesty to use it or hand it in.

Allow exemptions in particular areas where wildlife is a danger, but make the penalty for abuse in storage and use much tougher, and backed by police audit to double-check it. You had 20 rounds, you now have 10, where are the shell cases?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 03:11 PM

Fine, Rahere.. I agree those are good ideas.

And you say" Stop selling ammunition and the fixings to roll your own." and " If you want, ban holdings as well,"

It's that "stop" and "if you want" that are the sticking points. I can assert that many Brits drink too much beer.. and you might even agree... but it is so embedded in the culture that just the idea of limiting it is laughable. Would YOU like to design a law seriously limiting ale, and the campaign to get it passed?

Banning ammunition requires... how shall I say it?... BANNING it. It means passing a law almost as complex as banning guns themselves. It would almost certainly be resisted on 2nd Amendment grounds..('the people's right to keep & bear arms' implicitly includes bullets they would say). And there we are again, back at a Constitutional amendment, and good luck getting that introduced, passed and ratified by enough states!

The damned argument is circular... it is a legal version of M.C. Escher! "For want of a horseshoe nail ...the country is lost".

I can design a revision of the entire educational system to include teaching logic and pragmatism from the beginning which, if implemented, would have most everyone agreeing to limit guns... in, oh... 2-3 generations. HA!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 03:22 PM

"if you have a serious idea on how to get out of that firearms situation"
.,,.

Stop this pusillanimous can't-be-done handwringing for a start.

Declare gun possession illegal except in the sort of highly restricted circumstances that we permit here. Set a deadline date by which all weapons must be surrendered, after which possession will become a serious offence. Enact searches and checks for any unauthorised weapons after that date. Further enact the severest penalties, both custodial & financial [hit the buggers in the pocket] for being found in unauthorised possession.

Seems the sort of thing that any sort of organised modern nation with the law-abiding majority on which all successful law and its enforcement depends, ought to be able to undertake & achieve.

BUT THE WILL MUST BE THERE. ½·❤·ed despairing handwringing would kill such a project from the off.

Go on, the World's Leading Nation.

Give it a go. You can do it if the will is there!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 03:25 PM

Re your beer argument, Bill

WE'VE DONE IT WITH TOBACCO, IN A REMARKABLY SHORT TIME, WHICH WAS FAR MORE EMBEDDED IN OUR CULTURE...

I assert confidently that if we wanted to discourage beer-drinking to the same sort of extent, we'd do it...

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 03:45 PM

But you couldn't figure out how to treat the Irish fairly in nine hundred years of trying, could you?

Quite pathetic, old boy. Wot? Wot? Did someone say "Injia"? And that messy affair of those other colonies. Disagreeable quite.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 04:00 PM

Facetious rather than constructive, Lighter. You ought to do better than that.

When war was declared in 1941, your great nation responded magnificently -- because you had got the nation onside. Men & women responded to the call-up; obeyed their orders; fought the foe; & won... At home, Rosie riveted... Irving Berlin wrote that great revue...

Declare War on the bloody gun culture. Get the nation on your side. Treat the NRA & the gun lobby as the enemy they are.

YOU CAN DO IT.

Lighter thinks you can't, becoz HE DOESN'T WANT TO. I BET HE LOVES HIS GUNS so he turns defensive-destructive. It's people like him who are part of the problem Maybe not the actual enemy, but their 'useful idiot' 5th Column. Ignore him.

But don't ignore Bill. He's on your side. CONVINCE HIM!

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Sep 14 - 04:58 PM

Big, wild country... Indians... defending against bears... war of independence ... ranchers controlling predators...etc. etc... it goes for several paragraphs. Look it up.

'Cept for the Indians, Bill (and there were the Picts, after all) you could be describing Britain, tho several centuries prior to the U.S. experience. Or any number of countries on the Continent.

Try again.