"Offtopic-posts-topic" NSFW

[MrCrowley]

You're trying to make something very simple complicated. Reason this has not be solved in the United States simple, you cannot have a true belief in something until you seen it for yourself. And 50% of the United States does whatever the media tells it too.

That's naive and you should know it. You've said it's so simple yet haven't clearly demonstrated what your argument is or what you're arguing for.

The reason I made my initial comment was hoping I could spark some interest in someone to go look for themselves. I did not come here to argue over politics and I simply don't have the time to give you a complete history lesson of the world. Because that's what this comes down to.

Fair enough. I just wanted to demonstrate that this issue you think is simple is not so simple and that the 'undeniable proof' you have in favour of your arguments aren't really undeniable or proofs. I never asked for a complete history of anything, just reasonable replies to my criticisms of your arguments.

In all of history every unarmed society has ended up being slaves to their own government.

This is a major problem with all your arguments. You are incredibly reductionists when you have even said yourself that you don't have time to discuss the history of the world. In all of history, has every unarmed society really been slaves to their government? Is this a fact you know of? Have you studied every civilisation and society? How do you know they're unarmed? What is the definition of a government pre-dating the Greeks? What's an 'unarmed' society? Has there even been an 'unarmed society'?

You create these problems yourself. Tighten up your arguments, drop the sweeping conclusions that you know you can't back up with evidence. You don't need to argue that there are fundamental laws of human society that mean an unarmed populace will die at the hands of their government. That's too hard to prove and isn't necessary for your argument. Argue from what you know and what is relevant. The rest of the world isn't very relevant to the gun debate in the US. I acknowledge that myself. NZ can get away with firearm restriction because we don't have many small arms floating around on the streets as Fnord mentioned. You guys have bigger domestic issues to deal with. It'd help if you keep your arguments focussed on the United States, little else is relevant at the end of the day.

The fact is that nearly every country in the world has indoctrinated their citizens to have irrational fear of firearms and the FBI statistics do speak for themselves as long as you look at them with an open mind.

Really, every country? You know of this, do you? You can recite these countries yourself? Again, what I said above. Don't make sweeping statements you can't back up. They're easy to rebut, waste time, and are irrelevant to the discussion.

NZ has a great relationship with firearms. No one is really afraid of firing a rifle or shotgun, many people just don't want to. I'd buy a rifle but it's not practical for me because I live in a city. Most people I know, girls and boys, given the chance have fired a firearm. There's no indoctrination. Firearm regulation rarely ever comes up in conversation here, it's not a political issue by any means.

The FBI statistics don't speak for themselves and I've demonstrated that already. I've said several times now that statistics are interpreted in any number of ways. The only statistics that are facts are descriptive statistics, not inferential statistics.

If you want to be blind to the truth that's up to you. If you wanted to know the truth you would go look for yourself, I most certainly not going to do it for you. Again the whole point of my comment was to get people to think for themselves.

This isn't about the 'truth'. I haven't been arguing that there should be more gun regulation. I've only argued that your arguments are weak. This has nothing to do with being 'blind to the truth', I'm not looking for the 'truth'. I'm rebutting your version of the truth

The whole point of my comments are to get you to think more critically about what you're saying. It doesn't do anyone any good if people are wasting time discussing futile points. There's nothing wrong with having an opinion that you can't substantiate at a reasonable level, it just means you can't throw around words like 'undeniable proof' or 'the truth'. We all have opinions that we can't substantiate beyond some level because we're not all professionals or educated in the relevant disciplines. Who has the time to know everything? The trade-off is that we are limited in what we can say and that we acknowledge our limitations.

The simple fact is that firearms are used by far more for good, than for evil.

You say this is a 'simple fact' yet you can't demonstrate it. You've given me the FBI stats but I can interpret them in a completely different way or reject them all together. Statistics are not facts, they don't describe inherent truths. Again, you should reduce the size of the claim you are making. Don't say it as if its an inherent truth all across the world. Don't say 'good' and 'evil'; those are vague and meaningless in a practical sense. Why not say "In contemporary society in the US, the benefits of firearms outweigh their cost". That's a testable hypothesis. The statistics you use to reinforce that claim are immediately more useful, the number of interpretations is reduced. That being said, that specific argument is probably attacking straw men since I don't think most anti-gun people want to eradicate guns from society.

In the United States we have this thing called the Constitution and there are two primary reasons that guarantees are right to keep and bear arms and neither of those two reasons have anything to do with crimes.

Fair enough. I know there is debate surrounding this very argument so it is not a 'simple' issue either. The 2nd amendment was adopted in a very different time and place so one would naturally question its relevancy in today's society. That doesn't mean you don't have the right to bear arms, it just means that the issue is not clear-cut, it's not simple. The 2nd amendment isn't interpreted in only one, simple, manner. Even if it were, one could argue that it's no longer applicable or relevant and required updating. My point: this is not a simple issue. You have to be naive and closed-minded to think so. You have to reject all arguments from the other view point to believe it is a simple issue. I may not agree with everything about the pro-gun stance, but that doesn't mean I think the issue is simple or clear-cut. Many people do, but they're naive.

If there's a single shred of evidence that disproves my believes I would love to see it, believe me I have looked

Well I've pointed out on numerous occasions where your arguments are incorrect or vague. I still don't know what your main argument really is, you keep shifting and saying things like "it is a fundamental law of the universe that people without guns die". OK, so I exaggerated, but that's about as useful as some of the claims you've made.

That aside, you shouldn't be looking for one piece of evidence to refute or support your claim. There isn't going to be one piece of evidence that can do either. The whole reason this issue is complex is because the evidence can be interpreted in many different ways. Someone can say 'this proves that XXXX' and someone else can say 'but they didn't account for this/it was a poorly designed study/it only applies to this situation/it is irrelevant to the issue today/but what about this statistic that says the opposite' etc. Firearm regulation is a social issue. Social issues aren't simple. The social sciences are a perfect example of how social issues are not simple. This isn't physics or maths. We're not dealing with laws of the universe or mathematical proofs. They simply do not exist for this issue. We're dealing with correlations and causations.

I fully believe that every individual has the right to think and feel whatever they want. I did not mean to cause an uproar and I hope I haven't stepped on anybody's toes. I hold no hard feelings against anyone from this discussion. I only hold grudges if they're really good ones.

I completely agree and I don't take these discussions as personal either (we have them fairly often here). I'm only trying to show that this issue is not simple, it's not something that can be resolved on a forum. Hell, it's too complex for politicians and the like to fully comprehend or understand. Just like any other social issue. The best we can hope for is informed debate where irrelevant arguments and rhetoric are absent. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world and any reform or regulation that makes it way through your judicial system is either going to be watered-down (doesn't really change anything) or misguided (changes a lot of things, but none of them matter or solve any issues).

We've seen both sorts of changes happen recently in the US, and I don't like the 'watered-down' laws anymore than I like the 'misguided' laws. But we can at least stop pretending here that the issue is simple and easily resolvable.

[velocity3x]

Britain: From Bad to Worse

Not surprisingly to many observers, the violent crime rate has risen dramatically and steadily since gun bans have been instituted. That's a trend seen wherever strict gun control laws have been implemented. And that's the part of the story British officials have tried to keep under wraps.

http://web.archive.org/web/201102141734 ... 5139.shtml

[MrCrowley]

It's not exactly research or a statistical report though is it?

The three authors belong to the 'Independence Institute' thinktank (hardly ever a positive thing) who have a clear stance on the 2nd Amendment. So not exactly a partial opinion either.

Not surprisingly to many observers

Also, 'to many observers' implies people are seeing an apparent rise in crime. As in, let's ask a bunch of people on the street about whether crime and risen or not and if the majority say it has we can say "to many observers, the violent crime rate has risen dramatically and steadily since gun bans have been instituted".

[Boomer58cal]

No I cannot name the top of my head all the countries who is crime rates increased after their people were disarmed. What I can do is give you the three countries that didn't. Israel, Switzerland and the United States. Every single other country had a significant increase in crime rate. This is also true throughout history. By disarmed, I mean that they took the weapon of the day. It used to be Spears, then it was the bow and arrow, and today it is guns.

In the United States our Constitution particularly the 2nd amendment to the Constitution makes this a very simple argument.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

The militia is any able bodied adult between the ages of 18 and 45. Infringed in this context means that the federal government cannot strict its peoples right and ability to keep and bear on their person a firearm in any way whatsoever.
Now you ask the media or any of the anti gun crowd and they blatantly deny this.
The term "arms" in this context does not mean guns. This is a misconception spread by the left. That is what I meant by Google "The Federalist letters", they are letters written back and forth between those who wrote our Constitution. They explained specifically that arms means weapons of war. The Founders believed that the citizens should be able to have any weapon our military could have. They believe the best for two reasons. The first reason was that if our country was ever invaded and our military falled to stop the invasion, the citizenry to do so themselves. The second reason is that the Founding Fathers knew the greatest threat to freedom was a tyrannical government. They fully believe that are people should be armed to the teeth in case our government never got out of control.

In the United States it is that simple. They can argue all they want, our guns are the teeth of our constitutional rights. The only reason our government has not confiscated are weapons already is because we are armed to the teeth. The only reason the Japanese did not invade the mainland of the United States in World War 2, is the fact that the armed people of the United States constitute the single largest armed force in the history of mankind. They are greater in number than all the worlds militaries combined.

That is my belief and that is my argument.

[Ragnarok]

Britain: From Bad to Worsel

And it's bollocks. The crime rate is 40% of what it was twenty years ago, even in spite of a recession.

Yes, we could look at graphs and say the crime rate is astronomically high as compared to what it was sixty years ago - but that's a certain amount of bollocks too.

The crime rate is reported crimes.
In 1950, there were just 5 million telephones in the UK, there was minimal witness anonymity (the idea of a "one way glass" line-up was decades away, VIPER was even further off), there was never any CCTV footage and it was considered almost acceptable for the police force to be bent (even if it was simply on the level of "I'm not writing this up, it means overtime").

Sixty years ago, reporting a crime meant heaps of work, was to an extent dangerous and had a crappy chance of actually meaning anything. Today, just about everything is insured (which usually requires a crime number to make a claim, and hence that it's reported to the police) and nearly everyone is connected by internet and mobile phone.

There's no mysterious "peak" in the statistics that even loosely correlates with any of the meaningful changes in firearms ownership in the UK, and anyone claiming there's been a rampant crime rate increase related to the banning of pistols in 1997 wants their head tied.

[MrCrowley]

The second reason is that the Founding Fathers knew the greatest threat to freedom was a tyrannical government. They fully believe that are people should be armed to the teeth in case our government never got out of control.

Can you really picture modern day Americans uniting in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the government?

I think you guys would be more likely to end up like the German citizens of Nazi Germany than the Russian proletariat.

[Fnord]

Can you really picture modern day Americans uniting in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the government?

I can picture maybe five percent of the population doing so. Should be enough. The rest will only help out if fb/twitter goes down.
Edit: also I have a minimum amount of faith that most of the u.s. military will give their govt. the finger in such a scenario. It's local law enforcement I'd be worried about.

On a lighter note, found a small wikipedia gem in a revolver article

I had to zoom in and examine this side by side to be sure, and I must say I am impressed that someone chose to etch the barrel of a $600 gun with COMIC SANS.

[Boomer58cal]

The second reason is that the Founding Fathers knew the greatest threat to freedom was a tyrannical government. They fully believe that are people should be armed to the teeth in case our government never got out of control.

Can you really picture modern day Americans uniting in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the government?

I think you guys would be more likely to end up like the German citizens of Nazi Germany than the Russian proletariat.

I guess you didn't hear about the 30+ state capitale buildings the were surrounded by 10-30,000 ARMED people a year and a half ago. Or maybe the several thousand people that surrounded my local state governors home, ARMED, when the governor said he supported gun legislation.

You must have been watching the other 50% of America.

[Ragnarok]

That's not exactly the "well regulated militia" the 2nd Amendment talks about, on the simple basis that "well regulated" implies some level of organisation and frankly, one man usually can't agree with his neighbour.

To my understanding of the history of the 2nd Amendment, the wording was an attempt to allow states to maintain state militia separate from the federal militia over which Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution granted Congress legislative power.

And it has to be pointed out that at the time, seventy years prior to the start of the US Civil War, state militias were often not at all nice things. Their primary task was frequently and explicitly the maintenance of the police states that permitted slavery to exist.

Perhaps the 2nd Amendment avoided a fractiousness that could have split the Union apart quite so early on and delayed the Civil War by a few decades (allowing "free states" to proliferate from the very low numbers there were in 1791), but a history lesson is needed for anyone who believes its introduction was a victory over tyranny.

[Boomer58cal]

That's not exactly the "well regulated militia" the 2nd Amendment talks about, on the simple basis that "well regulated" implies some level of organisation and frankly, one man usually can't agree with his neighbour.

By well regulated they ment well supplied and prepared. The Federalist letters http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm here's one of the thousand sites on the subject.

And it has to be pointed out that at the time, seventy years prior to the start of the US Civil War, state militias were often not at all nice things. Their primary task was frequently and explicitly the maintenance of the police states that permitted slavery to exist.

Tyranny exists in every organization, no matter how well regulated. Look at all the corruption in the Union of the world. Hence our vigilance must be unwavering.

I'm pretty sure slavery was permitted to exist a little bit before the United States was around.
People also forget that the southern slave owners we're mostly Democrats. The Klu Klux Klan... you got it Democrats. Nazis... again Democrats. They just happened to be a more aggressive form of Democrat.

6 things you should know about the 2nd amendment. http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/six-about-2nd.htm

[Ragnarok]

By well regulated they ment well supplied and prepared.

Which still implies a high level of organisation; you're not "well prepared" if your commitment to being in a militia is merely hypothetical.

Tyranny exists in every organization, no matter how well regulated. Look at all the corruption in the Union of the world. Hence our vigilance must be unwavering.

In any case, you're confusing corruption and tyranny. Yes, they're related, but no, they're not the same.

I'm pretty sure slavery was permitted to exist a little bit before the United States was around.

That's irrelevant. No, the important thing is when it was not permitted to exist, and it had been outlawed in five of the northern states by 1791.

That is to say, that when the Amendment was written, some of the authors were writing laws they knew would support a practice they had previously deemed tyrannical in their own states.

They just happened to be a more aggressive form of Democrat.

Only if you believe that the simple "left wing, right wing" scale isn't a horrendous over-simplification of the political spectrum.

I personally prefer to place politics on minimum of two scales - an economic left-right and a social left-right, because otherwise people like Hitler (seeing as you referenced him) can be portrayed as left-wing for his economics (at least by an American standard of what left-wing economics is, he was actually pretty central) when he was as socially right as anyone can imagine.

6 things you should know about the 2nd amendment. http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/six-about-2nd.htm

Anything that starts with a list of religious quotes to justify something immediately loses my respect.

See Numbers 15:15, Deuteronomy 4:2 and Deuteronomy 29:19-20 (which apply in Christianity or Judaism).
Between them, these utterly forbid humans to alter, change or create their own law.

Yet many people happily ignore Exodus 22:25 (You cannot charge interest on a loan to any of God's people), Leviticus 15:19-30 (you cannot interact with women on their period, and a priest must sacrifice two doves for her a week afterwards), Deuteronomy 20:12-13 (any men taken prisoner in war must be killed), Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (stone rebellious teenagers to death), Deuteronomy 22:28-30 (any un-engaged woman must marry her rapist), etc, etc, etc.

Have your religions if you want them, but don't pretend the laws of holy books are inalienable when we've already alienated a massive fraction of them already.

[MrCrowley]

I guess you didn't hear about the 30+ state capitale buildings the were surrounded by 10-30,000 ARMED people a year and a half ago. Or maybe the several thousand people that surrounded my local state governors home, ARMED, when the governor said he supported gun legislation.

You must have been watching the other 50% of America.

I don't recall either event. Is the first event related to Occupy Wall Street? I did a quick Google search but the keywords didn't return anything. I sort of find it hard to believe that 10-30,000 armed people turned out yet no one got shot or killed.
But you raise a good point about the other 50% of America...

I think the problem is that your country is very diverse and very expansive. 30,000 may well turn out in some states, but what about the others? Would they even support the same cause? If they do, there's bound to be more than one revolutionary force; can they work together?

Some of the policies of past and current governments sit very well with many people but not so well with others. It could be argued that post 9/11 measures are very totalitarian yet many people either don't mind or aren't able to do anything about it. That's why I think it would be possible that the populace ends up oppressed like citizens of Nazi Germany. Many laws that were enacted early on in Nazi Germany sat pretty well with many people, those that it didn't figured it wouldn't get much worse and there wasn't much they could do. Before you know it, enough time has passed by, the wheels are in motion, and unified resistance is now a distant hope.

You have to wonder, in this day and age, whether it is more difficult to have a revolution because utilities (cell network, internet, power, phone line, water, gas) and the media can be shut down or controlled at will. This will be the time for ham radio enthusiasts to shine

[Boomer58cal]

Anything that starts with a list of religious quotes to justify something immediately loses my respect.

the U.S. Was founded on Christian values by Christian people so it's very appropriate.

In any case, you're confusing corruption and tyranny. Yes, they're related, but no, they're not the same.

haha nope we have both in spades.

I guess you didn't hear about the 30+ state capitale buildings the were surrounded by 10-30,000 ARMED people a year and a half ago. Or maybe the several thousand people that surrounded my local state governors home, ARMED, when the governor said he supported gun legislation.

You must have been watching the other 50% of America.

I don't recall either event. Is the first event related to Occupy Wall Street? I did a quick Google search but the keywords didn't return anything. I sort of find it hard to believe that 10-30,000 armed people turned out yet no one got shot or killed.

Occupy Wall Street! NO!

Search "Armed citizens march on state capitals". I attended the ones in Portland Oregon in March and May of 2013. I have several friends that went to marches in Texas, Utah and Navada. The marches were very calm and respectful for the most part.

Also checkout YouTube for videos. I watched several last year.

But you raise a good point about the other 50% of America...

I think the problem is that your country is very diverse and very expansive. 30,000 may well turn out in some states, but what about the others? Would they even support the same cause? If they do, there's bound to be more than one revolutionary force; can they work together?

From what I've seen most every state had some form of protest, but around 30 had marches in mass. As in numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands. Your other questions are very insightful, I don't think myself or anyone else could claim to know those answers. I wish I did.

Some of the policies of past and current governments sit very well with many people but not so well with others. It could be argued that post 9/11 measures are very totalitarian yet many people either don't mind or aren't able to do anything about it. That's why I think it would be possible that the populace ends up oppressed like citizens of Nazi Germany. Many laws that were enacted early on in Nazi Germany sat pretty well with many people, those that it didn't figured it wouldn't get much worse and there wasn't much they could do. Before you know it, enough time has passed by, the wheels are in motion, and unified resistance is now a distant hope.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

You have to wonder, in this day and age, whether it is more difficult to have a revolution because utilities (cell network, internet, power, phone line, water, gas) and the media can be shut down or controlled at will. This will be the time for ham radio enthusiasts to shine

Just look a the many revaluations( or whatever you like to call them ) around the world to day, turning off the utilities just makes people join together for communal support. Now they may banned together into small factions or into one unified force, you just never know. History shows us only about 20-30% of a countries people will join a revolution in it's early days, but if the war progresses to the point where the people are winning, as much as 60% of the people will fight. In both the American Revolutionary War and our Civil War only about 30 to 40% of the people took up arms. In the Civil war an astonishing 615,000 people died. In the Revolutionary War a rag tag band of colonels defeated the armies of the mightiest nation on earth at the time. Never underestimate a people united in a single cause. You add a 100,000,000 plus guns to the mix and thing can get interesting very quickly.

HAM...I live in the B.F.E. ( Bum F?!&$ Egypt ) everyone out here has CB radios. I have a Aluminum ( know fiberglass here )5/8's wave "Super Trumpet" and a pair of "Stack fives" on 40' foot towers, for those old schoolers who know what those are. There's not to many in my generation that kick it that old school( I'm 33 ). My Dad was a communication officer in project "Mercury", so it's in the blood I guess.

[Ragnarok]

the U.S. Was founded on Christian values by Christian people so it's very appropriate.

No. The United States was intended as a free nation, and only one of the seven key founding fathers (generally considered to be John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington) was orthodox Christian - John Jay. The others were deist, Unitarian or potentially even agnostic.

Those were the true principles upon which the documents of the United States constitution were written, and they are principles upon which those founding fathers who were Christian signed off upon.

See: a) The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".
and: b) Article 11 of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".

It is people since who have tried to revise the United States into a Christian nation.

[Boomer58cal]

No. The United States was intended as a free nation, and only one of the seven key founding fathers (generally considered to be John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington) was orthodox Christian - John Jay. The others were deist, Unitarian or potentially even agnostic.

I did not mean to say they were all Christians, but if you read their books, there Diaries and their letters to each other, you'll see they all held decidedly Christian values. Much of their thinking was based on the ten commandments.

You do not have to believe in God to hold Christian values. In fact many religions hold the same basic values.

And I never said religion was part of the government and would prefer to avoid a religious debate. The only thing worse than discussing politics is discussing religion.