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Shooting Lawsuit Against id Software Dismissed
greg writes: "I saw on Bluesnews that the lawsuit against id Software over the Paducah County school shootings has been dismissed.
Here is a link to id CEO Todd Holleshead's .plan file." Sounds like a sigh of relief from id -- just think of the implications if the judge had gone the other way. (Remember the PMRC?)
Let me begin by saying i'm not American - i'm an Australian. If this makes me unqualified to comment on American gun laws, please ignore the rest of my post.
I think changing your country's gun laws would do some good - but not for a long period of time. Part of the reason gun related crimes exist is because a proliferation of weapons in the society - it also has a large part to do with how children are brought up, which relates back to point one - if daddy does hunting then the child will learn how to shoot too.
Of course, anyone who looks upon a video game (or movie or..) and decides to pick up a gun and shoot someone has mental problems. They need help.
What bothers me is a story I heard a while back, of a couple of six year olds who got into an argument. The child whose house they were playing at went inside, got a gun, figured out how to load it, went back outside and fired the gun into the ground to scare his "friend". Nobody was hurt - but that's not the truly disturbing factor. The disturbing thing is that it OCCURED to the child as an option.. at his age, i'm sure most of us would agree that going inside to get a gun and fire it *just* to scare your friend is not something that would even occur to you, let alone be contemplated seriously.
So yeah, to get back to my original point.. laws won't change much. Its a behavioural thing which has to do with gun proliferation and the way the children are brought up. You can take guns away (and hurt alot of people who will never use them illegally) for a small positive gain; or you can educate parents and children for a lot of hassle and wait for children's minds to change..
IMHO you must do both.. slowly reduce the proliferation of guns.. and slowly go about changing people's minds. Instigating any sort of quick fix wont work, because anything that is brought about quickly tends to be forgotten quickly, especially when the "old guard" are still around to remind you day in and day out. This has to be slow progression and must "bleed" into the minds of the NEXT generation of people.. by my reckoning we'll need at least one solid generation of PARENTS who have grown up without mental line that "shooting them is a solution to my problem". Once parents are in place with the right attitude, "safer" kids can be brought up..
I wish people would realise the quick and easy solution just doesn't work - that includes blaming companies or indiscriminately banning every gun on the face of the earth. Its a band aid - nothing has changed in the mind, and about all you've done is prevent the homicidal MORON from getting a weapon.. the smart maniacs still get what they need.
Change your minds first, and be prepared to wait a while for it to happen.
Cheers.
"I wish that politics weren't so much about getting elected and more about doing something important once in office."
... regular people, serving their country, and returning to their lives a few years later!
The easiest way to fix this is to set a reasonable term length for every office, say 4-6 years, and (here's the important part) LIMIT PEOPLE TO ONE TERM!
Think about it. They don't have to raise money while in office. They don't have to worry about osing voters for the next term. They can do what they feel is right, without worrying about pissing off the people with money.
The next important thing is to get rid of that legalized bribery known as "lobbying." Do we want Microsoft whispering in the ear of the Republicans at every turn?
Then what you do is limit campaign contributions to anonymous parties only. If Bob and Jane want to fund Al Gore, more power to them -- give them your money anonymously, or head to campaign headquarters and help out by volunteering if you want recognition.
In short -- get rid of all outside influences on these people, and don't let them turn into career politicians. Let's get things back to what the founding fathers intended
-thomas
P.S. This will never happen, until we get Star Trek technology and money is no longer important.
Cynical, but true...
One of the shooting victims was my cousin. While I greeve her loss, I think her families decision to blindly follow the lawyers was totally stupid. Think goodness justice pervailed.
I'll give you a hint. A large number of us are not US citizens. Many of us live in countries with strict gun control laws.
This does not mean that the socities that we live in are crime free. In many ( actually the majority ) cases however, we have a far lower number of deaths per capita of population than the USA.
Because of this we take it for granted that there is a definate link between gun ownership in the USA and the high mortality rate, not only from violent crime but also from accidents.
If you don't like this, then tough. Currently, US citizens make up about 50% of all people on the internet and by 2005 the relative proportion ( on current trends ) will have dropped to about 25%.
A lot of the anti-gun sentiment that you find so suprising is essentially our irritation with the fact that many ( apparently most ) Americans seem to be incapable of understanding that the internet is a global medium. In short, don't try to judge issues by your own local standards. If you do, don't be suprised if you get flamed.
The same is also true of a large number of other issues. You might be sitting in your home in America, but on the net your connected to the entire world. The bottom line is simple - if you can't handle critisism, then don't air your dirty laundry in public.
find me a study that actually shows a cause-effect rather than a simple link. I firmly believe (as I suspect many people on this forum do) that a person with agressive behavior finds more interest in Violent entertainment.
More passive personalities aren't drawn to quake/FPS type games!
So maybe you should use an interest in shoot-em-up movies as an indicator someone may go wacko later on. Don't think that someone before they went in and saw (for instance) Robocop were innocent pacifists though - they knew what they were walking in to and were interested in. If they didn't know this, you can probably tell by the look on their face when they leave the theatre that they didn't enjoy themselves.
And which european country's exactly allows selling heroin over the counter?
The answer ofcourse is none. Switzerland has been doing some trials of giving heroin to addicts, and the Netherlands allow marijuana to be sold in certain bars, to be consumed there.
Sure.. you'll get rid of "rage" killings.. which are VERY rare. And replace them with higher counts of Armed robbery, burglary, and drug related killings.
Ask any criminal with a violent past and THEY will tell you outright that they avoid people/houses that they think may have a weapon inside. Wonder y?
All this BS about banning guns is driven by paranoia instiled by the media. If anyone would actually take the time to look at the REAL statsitics instead of what the media want's you to believe you would see that the child on child crime rate has actually declined in the last 5 years.
Bah.
-Seb
I find it telling that the only members of the music community that bothered to voice their dissent with the PMRC was Frank Zappa and John Denver. I'm an avid fan of the former, and never cared for the latter, but after that incident, I had a far greater respect for John Denver.
RFC2119
For this reason, I think it is necessary to defend the right to bear arms at all costs.
Now my friend what is your position on a scenario where a group believes itself to have run out of peaceful possibilities and uses their weapons to overthrow an oppressive regime. But in fact the oppressive regime isn't all that oppressive at all, and is actually democractically elected and unrepressive, and its the people doing the overthrowing that are the insane nutcases that need to be kept away from sharpened pencils, let along serious military hardware. See numerous countries which have had guerilla led coups, or long running guerilla campaigns for examples. All of which leading to long running misery and suffering for the ordinary person
I suspect that already know your answer, "if the ordinary person had guns then they would be safe from the maniacs with guns". Rubbish. I find it fascinating that denisons of the US blithly talk about requiring guns for the eventuality of having to overthrow their own government, why not just vote them out! You'd swear that the US was perpetually on the edge of having some sort of jackbooted repressive regime springing unannounced on their citizens, it doesn't work that way.
I suspect that if the "bad government" comes along then it'll almost certainly be because the majority of Americans think its a great idea and vote them in. (how else, someone is going to invade and dominate 200million people!, what kind of size of army would you need to achieve that goal) So your little uprising will be resisted by the majority of americans. So what you are preparing for is the possibility of a civil war, one where the group that will get the benefit of free guns for all during this preapocalyptic timeperiod by being armed and able to overthrow the perceived baddies will be outnumbered by their equally well armed but more numerous fellow citizens who supported the "evil government" in the first place by instating them there!.
C.
I sometimes write stuff
To clarify, here in Australia (as an example) it is in fact incorrect to say that voting is compulsory. The requirement is only to appear at a polling booth and have your name checked off against a list.
After that you are free to do whatever you like to the forms, even writing obscenities, as long as you deposit them in the polling box on the way out. In fact you are entitled to walk in, register, and walk out without writing a thing on the voting form.
The system mitigates against intimidation such as that experienced by blacks and other groups in the US throughout history.
I concur. Just lookit the upcoming Presidential election. Would that I could check off "Send Bush and Gore both on a one-way trip to Hell"
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
search in /. comments. seriously. you would not believe how often people cite this, and are then corrected as to the details.
having read up on it, i too am in support of the woman that sued McDonalds. there was nothing bogus about the suit.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Is there an intermittent Slashdot bug that directs the occasional post to the wrong story, or have these guys just got a lot of posting windows open simultaneously and aren't clever enough to check the top of the screen to see which story they're responding to?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Although I don't recall having mentioned anywhere except U.S. and Switzerland, Britain is probably an example (though an imperfect one) of what the American propensity for violence would achieve in a largely gunless society. Crimes and murders and suicides would still occur, but without the ease which firearms provide. Iran and China I don't know that much about. Don't like what I hear on the news about their governments, though.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"Drinking vodka helps you speak Russian, obviously!!!" :-)
Well, a lot of vodka always makes my speech sound a lot more like Russian than English
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
About 20 years ago I read where someone said that the future military of the U.S. were training themselves, one quarter at a time.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've seen Grossman on 60 minutes or Nightline or somesuch, and he talks about some kid who, having never previously used real guns, nevertheless was able to go on a rampage killing several people with head shots, apparently due to the "training" the kid received from some video game he practically lived in.
Real cops are trained in the use of real guns and are taught to go for the body shot as much more reliable than the head shot, but those cops in New York who emptied their clips at the guy reaching for his wallet hit their target with about only 25% of their shots, yet this kid was doing more like "one bullet,one corpse" with the much more difficult head shot.
I'm not saying the video game made him a killer or caused him to go out on a killing spree, but apparently they made him frighteningly efficient at it, and I find that more than a little scary, especially as these kids don't seem to have any real difficulty getting their hands on "bullet hoses".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Think about this. The late 50's, 60's and early 70's were some of the most "revolutionary" period in the U.S. and elsewhere. This was a time of major social change. There is a good chance that your parents experienced this amazing time period (or was an active participant). Of course, if your parents were products of the disco generation (e.g., do you have any polyester clothing in your house), then forget what I said.:-)
BTW, if Signail1 doesn't look out, he/she will soon be called a karma whore.:) All Signa's must die.
BTW, in this PBS series that appeared about 25 years ago, Bronowski used the pulpit to show the falacy of humanity seeking absolute (true versus false) knowledge. Hiltler sought absolute truth. In the final film sequence, Bronoswki was at a certain "camp" in Poland.
Did you even bother to read the next sentence?
Lookup the stats on the number of times a gun is turned on the owner, and then tell me if you still want to have one in your house...
Yeah! And then we need to make it legal to not break the law!
Sorry, obviously that was some sort of typo or something, but it struck me as a really funny line.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Yes, I'm bitter... :)
written by a gun-owner and a safe, but fast, driver
There are currently no European countries in which Heroin or Marijuana are legal. The Netherlands do not prosecute possessors of a small dosage of Marijuana, but that's about all.
Regards
tom
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
The solution of removing guns is all well and good. How do you propose to do it universally? Disarming just part of the populace doesn't solve anything. Arms races happen for a reason: once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in.
The nuclear arms race has made this a more dangerous world. Just think how dangerous it would be if only one country had nukes.
Do you want only the government and criminals to have guns? What does that solve? Yes, fewer accidental shootings. So the kids at columbine would have taken everyone out with pipe bombs (as I recall the ones that they used miraculously didn't go off, so in the future people will know to check out a few bombs before using them). Wow. huge improvement.
You can't disarm a populace. Technology is too good nowadays. So you want a government which has absolute power over its populace and a criminal class hugely better armed than its victims. What exactly does this achieve?
Oh, and the constitution does guarantee the right of people to bear arms. It sites specifically that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. Basically it is obvious to any thinking person that in order for a group of people to be free they must be able to maintain their freedom against those who would take it away from them. Consequently, they must be able to weild an equal amount of violent force to those who would threaten them.
So how do you propose to disarm the law-abiding populace of America and yet allow them to maintain their freedom against those who would take it away from them? I mean over time. Not just today but tomorrow, especially realizing that time changes and noone can forsee the future.
Especially considering that history is replete with instances of a military taking over a government and instituting rule by the head of the military. Why is it that most gun-elimination proponents seem to think that Stalinist Russia, Hitler Germany, Poll Pot Cambodia(?), etc. happened hundreds of years ago? Unjust governments are neither rarities nor are they strictly limited to nations which have always had unjust governments.
Oh, and what about if I die because you drive drunk, tired, with screaming kids in your car who distract you, etc? Should you have a car? I have a strong suspicion that many more people die in car accidents than in gun accidents. If safety is your main concern, don't you have much more important cases to pursue?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Are pipe bombs and the at least dozen or so other explosives makeable with easily accessible materials really that much safer than guns? Remember that these school killings were premeditated. The kids weren't carrying guns and got pissed off. They got pissed off, then went and got guns. So without guns they'll get pipe bombs. Or poison gas. Or acid. Or kerosene (throw a cup of kerosene in someone's face and hit them with a lighter and see how well they do). Or steal a car and drive it into the kids waiting at the bus stop. Or illegal guns.
Wow. What a tremendously improved situation. Taking away guns misses the point. Especially whe some movies come out about using pipe bombs instead of guns to take out your high school. Then all the uncreative psychopaths will know how to do it without guns. maybe people will be crying to make the ingrediants to pipe bombs illegal.
The world is dangerous. You'll never be able to get rid of weapons.
It's funny, too. I remember when a guy got on a LIRR train and started shooting people. All that the unarmed people on the train could do was get shot until he ran out of bullets. He was definitely and adult. Just think of what he could have done with some pipe bombs or poison gas mixtures. Actually, it's probably a good think that he used a gun rather than opening the door and throwing some pipe bombs in. Just think of how many people would have died then (consider than an LIRR train usually holds around 100 people and only a dozen or so were killed in this maniac's run).
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
As well as criminal, since when guns are banned you can just arrest any potentiel serial killer for owning a gun. Right now you have to wait for the killing spree to arrest him - but too late
Serial killers don't use guns (as a rule, there are exceptions). They use knives and hands and other instruments that let them get up close and personal to their victims. Gun control would do nothing to impact serial killings in the slightest...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
You prepare fo a revolution if you want, but before you start, think about how much good it did in russia.
...and France, and America, and England...
</devil's advocate>
(Okay, so the French Revolution was pretty bad news for all the aristocrats, but IIRC the people were "just" giving as good as they had been getting...)
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
And I can statistically prove that smoking is good for you - after all, the vast majority of dead people did not smoke. Think about it .
BUT, I've never hurt anyone or committed a crime with a gun. If you want to take away a gun from me, you are a control freak who cannot let anyone else exhibit individuality. My 30+ years of not intentionally harming anyone contrasts sharply with the gun control maniacs who want to seize or destroy the property of people (e.g. me) who have never done them any harm. From where I'm sitting, it's that simple. Anyone who wishes to steal or destroy the property of other people who HAVE DONE NO HARM in the name of PREVENTING HARM is a thief at heart.
Let's all fight a war for peace!
--Charlie
Love Me, I'm a Liberal
By Phil Ochs
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I vote for the democtratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
This is definitely a step in the right direction. It seems that things have moved a bit in the right direction this week, with this, source code ruled as protected free speech, verant's backdown on drive scanning, and the Microsoft ruling. There were some negative things this week, but maybe we're seeing the beginning of a positive trend in these issues. (keep your fingers crossed, and maybe the librarian of congress will do something about DMCA, too!)
This is an intresting point.
In this one case I don't think guns have anything to do with it or video games or anything that can be easly blammed.
But for many others the fact that kids do not learn a healthy respect for guns is part of the issue.
How do we keep kids off drugs? We teach them about drugs. How do we deal with teen pregnency? We teach our kids.
How do we deal with teen violence? We blame it on video games, rock and roll, TV, Movies.
Hay lets blame world hunger on politics. Let's blame the mars lander on Microsoft. Let's blame the lack of bandwith on Radio Shack.
Why? Becouse someone will believe it. To spite the fact that it has no connection at all whatsoever.
But who cares. We don't want you to teach your kids about guns....
A gun is after all a tool. An evil tool true but still a tool.
Before it can kill (as per it's design) a person must use it.
It is up to parents to give kids the morals needed to not pick up a gun to start with. To know what it means.
"Live by the sword die by the sword"
Guns are a tool and ends to a means.
Let is presume the imposable. Assume all guns have vanished from the face of the earth....
It changes nothing....
The gun was the tool. The desire for this kind of evil tool is uneffected by access to guns.
Knifes are also populare.....
First go after Smith & Weson then go after Ginsu.
For many box cutters or other knifes are the wepons of choice. Not guns.
Ohh but we can not ever admit that parents must teach kids a sense of right and wrong.
I don't actually exist.
One game that was populare in the 1980s was Assasin.
One person would be the GM and assigne "targets" to other players.
There were rules set by the GM as to when you could attack your target.
Using water guns or some other wepon (water guns usually simply becouse it makes it easyer.. other wepons would have to be bought by the GM to insure the players had the correct brand name toy).
As players became adults problems came up. Adult players had problems seperating reality from fantacy. Refused to folow the rules and took the game personally.
SCA had similer problems. Some of the people didn't know how to behave. The people in charg were careful enough to be sure whomever joinned could tell fantacy from reality. They make mistakes but was usually handled.
It's not the kids that worry me. The kids can seperate reality from fantacy. It's the adults who can not make the same seperation.
The real scarry part is it dosn't take Quake, movies or TV to trigger thies people. A good political debate can get such a person going the wrong way. A killing spree can manifest itself from an adults own imagination.
In the mean time people write books about kids going psycho. More kids are going to driven over the edge by paranoid parents imagining things than by any videogame.
To be honnest I suspect the talk of how violent video games are trainning kids to go on killing sprees had a great deal more impact than anything else.
They had Doom becouse someone told them it would teach them to be killers. If someone said McDonalds had the same effect you'd find McDonalds food wrappers. If Microsoft were blamed for violence they would be MSCE.
I don't actually exist.
Think about what you're saying. Read a little history, and grow up.
I'm from the UK, and since you are not I hope you'll take my word on this:
The vast majority of police officers in the UK do not routinely carry guns. (I _believe_ that most cops are not even allowed to carry guns, as they haven't been trained for this). There are some circumstances where guns are carried, e.g. Heathrow Airport police always carry some form of firearm.
If I get time later, I'll see what figures I can dig up about crimerates.
Finally! Someone's talking sense. Magic is where it's at, folks. So, head off to your local gaming store, pick up a copy of Shadowrun 3rd ed. and start working on that armor spell (target number 6, drain +2(m)) so the people who head off to their local gaming store and pick up a copy of quake to learn how to load, aim, and fire automatic weapons can't hurt you. Cripes. If you get really good at it, the bullet will bounce back and they'll end up killing themselves.
Damn! Now, if only I could figure out how to go from 'walk over the weapon and press control when things wander into the yellow crosshairs' to 'find, purchase, load, aim (without yellow crosshairs, mind), and fire' the damn thing, I'll be set to go.
Race ya! I've never touched a firearm in my life, but I'll bet after an hour of quake I can figure it out, right?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Explain to me how taking away your ability to kill with a casual flick of your finger somehow infringes on your personal liberty
I am reluctant to respond because I think you are becoming just a troll. However, here goes...
OK, lets start by clarifying the issues. You are blurring far too many concepts in your reply.
There is a difference between taking away my ability to kill with a flick fo my finger, and taking away my right to own a gun. Killing and gun ownership are two different issues. I do not and should not have the right to kill. That would be infringing on someone elses rights. My point is that you cannot legitimately take away my right to posess property that has legal uses. If that property has the ability to kill someone, then it is my responsibility to treat it with respect and apply appropriate safeguards.
Consider the automobile. I can kill someone with just a little pressure from my right foot. It also gets me to work. I understand the dangers inherent in driving and do so responsibly. Do you dare suggest taking away my rights to own a car, simply because is too can be an effective weapon? Where does it end?
Are telling me that you believe it's your right to be able to kill anyone you want as easily as possible and then face a court while your victim is dead
Of course not. As I have said, I have the right to own the gun, but not to use it in a way that harms others.
-BW
This is a completely different issue. I take bong hits before class. I smoke a joint on the way to school. And this is not detrimental to me or others around me. I am still a contributing member of society. I work, I pay taxes, I go to school, I release free software. How does my drug use affect you or anybody else?
Easy. Unless you are only toking on what you and your buddies grow, you are supporting a violent and malicious drug trade. Your dollars go into their pockets. Your money is fought over with gang violence. By purchasing from them your are perpetuating their violent activities. Like telemarketers, if everyone stopped buying from them, they would go away. Granted, the drug dealers only have their monopoly because it is enforced by the US govt.
Aside from that, your drug use does not bother me at all. If you are only smoking the homegrown or stuff that your Uncles friend grows in the hills around Santa Cruz, I cant even think of anything to object to. I shouldnt even have the right to tell you to what to spend your money on, but you asked...
However this wasnt my point, and I probably picked the worst example by mentioning pot. The disease of addiction is the problem. If I had mentioned a kid who needed some heroin just to feel good enough to go to school, it would have been more clear.
I also feel kinda bad that I triggered the rant, especially since I favor the decriminalization of all drugs. Hell, I think your last big paragraph is spot on. Let Merck sell the stuff. They fight for consumer dollars with ad campaigns not Uzis. However, the disease of addiction does have negative consequensces that can lead to violence. People who have a problem need treatment, its as simple as that.
I still stand by my original premise that more violence can be attrubuted to abuse, addiction, and poverty than any policy on gun control. Violent video games wouldnt even make my top 50 list of factors that contribute to violence. At least the judge had some widsom in this case. Back on topic again...
-BW
The root of the problem is really not in video games -- I think the real problem is parents and the lack of discipline towards their children. You don't let a 10-year-old play Q3, it's just not right for him to "have fun blowing people up". The game is rated 17+, so if kiddies are playing Q3, it really cannot be ID's fault.
If kids start having sex at 8, are we to sue pr0n movie makers, although they do state that the movies are for adults???
Voting tests would be a Bad Thing. Back in the bad ol' days of Jim Crow, the Southern States would require people (typically black) to take "literacy tests" in order to vote. They also had the original Grandfather Clause - if your grandfather could vote, you could vote, convienient because most white folks' grandfathers were slave owners or free men, most blacks' grandfathers were slaves. In a nutshell, voting tests are easily abusable.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
"Studies have shown that gun owners who are properly trained are likely to be less violent than non gun owners. "
But is it the classes that make them less violent?
I think it's probably that less violent people are more likely to take classes.
By the way, that study link is a 404.
IANASK (I am not a serial killer ;)) but it seems to me that there is quite a difference between a gun and a kitchen knife. A gun is a very 'point and click' kind of device, whereas to kill someone with a kitchen knife you really need to want to have to do it. (Those rib cages don't puncture themselves, people!)
What i'm trying to say is that with easy access to guns you're more likely to have 'rage' type killings. Obviously a pre-meditated killer will just use something else if they can't get a gun.
It's my understanding that one country (the UK?) legalized heroin and quickly reversed it after the number of addicts quadrupled in a short time.
I'm all for letting people do to themselves what they want, but what happens when someone screws up and overdoses? The government or insurance companies (depending on your country of origin) pays to rescue you, and of course those costs are passed on to you and me.
This is something that all the drug legalizers neglect to consider. I don't want my health insurance rates to go up because of treatment for overdoses of legal drugs (and don't tell me there wouldn't be more once the drug is legalized!).
Here's the way I see the legalizing drugs issue:
Enjoy doing what you want to your body, but when you do something stupid or dangerous, don't come crying to me to fix it.
It's simple. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful. The problem is, that it's almost impossible to "do what you want with your own body" without affecting someone else.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Of course people have succesfully defended themselves by using guns after they've been shot. And I really believe that you could present me with well-documented cases where this has actually happened.
But on the other hand, I could probably also show you well-documented proof that there was over ten thousand people winning large lotteries in the US last year, or such. Those "statistics" tell you nothing about the opposite scenario, which most probably is much more likely.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
The thing is that the Swiss don't simply mandate that you own a gun. You are taught how to fire, clean, be safe with, take cover, ad nausea. Here in America, we tell kids that guns are taboo (kids love anything that's taboo), keep them from learning how to be safe with them, and then at 18 say, "Okay, you can go buy one now." Expected outcome? However, a good look at car accident statistics vs. gun deaths and you'll wonder why so much fuss is put onto guns. Guns are designed to kill people, yet far more people die in car accidents each year. Why do we put up with that? Why aren't our driving tests difficult to pass? Ah, but that's another story... - PatientZero
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I only wish. Occasionally Katz has wrtten an intelligetnt picece, but I fear that this decision is only going to bolster his inane writings even more. Look, it's justification that he's right! I suspect we'll see a trifecta of his garbage next week. His interview with Pinkerton (provided they don't string up his sanctimonious hide), the 'I was right about games!' article, and completed with a 'Hi, I'm a dope, but I have this cool job working for Slashdot and you don't' article.
Better go change my settings quick. Next week is gonna hurt if you don't like Katz.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I do from time to time. IDKFAIDDQDIDBEHOLDLIDBEHOLDA bitch!
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder
FC Closer
This reminds me of a quote from a police officer..
"I have never had arrested an indvidual with a legal gun and permit."
Of course I could go off and start spewing statsistics and such but there is little point in that. What really shows is that making it harder for the average law abiding citizen to obtain a gun is doing little if anything to curb violent crime. Criminals will get guns no matter what you do. Criminals will commit crimes. Personally I would like the chance to even the score if someone were breaking into my house. It has also been said no matter what language the thief speaks he will understand a shotgun being cocked.
Ah.. so if I legally own a gun, some smuck steals it your saying I'm responsible for that? No I don't think so. Thats about as bad as trying to make the manufacturer of the gun responsible.
You what?
/. seems to boil down to a gun control one? )
If you live in a society where guns are easily available an attacker just isn't going to come at you with a knife, is he? He's going to have a gun too! Same scenario then, but the stakes are so much higher.
(why is it every discussion on
Do you think you would survive if someone fired 27 rounds of 9mm slugs into your body?
Depends on where you get shot doesn't it? I'd be willing to trade 27 9mm shots to the foot for 27 stab wounds to the throat. Anecdotal stories are fun to read but don't really prove anything. Twenty-seven stab wounds to the chest that don't penetrate the rib cage are not that fatal. Twenty-seven stab wounds in the gut, groin, throat, or arm pits, will pretty much kill everyone unless you are very lucky.
I think everybody in this thread who talks gun control needs to go read the Times article referenced in post 171. It looks like there might be something other than a lack gun control laws behind the world's ills. There are obviously other issues to look at and unfortunately a lot of people just see the idea "gun" and immediately stop looking for the source of a problem.
This isn't aimed at you, but on the same subject it would be interesting to see how many people would object to being required to pass a minimum clue test in order to be allowed to speak to the public. A lot of damage is done by the words of people with an agenda and I'm not just talking about gun control here.
Sure is nice of you to propagate the media myth of the "Trenchcoat Mafia." The two killers at Columbine were not members of the so-called Trenchcoat Mafia at all. Just think how wonderful you are making all those kids' lives with your cluelessness.
As far as outrunning a bullet, have you ever tried to shoot a moving target with a handgun? It's not easy and it's not going to be any easier if you are in some kind of rage or emotional high.
You're kidding right? Your average gun weilding lunatic isn't a crack marksman. They have to be pretty close in order to hit a target. And it's as trivial to be detached from what's right in front of you as it is to be detached from what's 20 feet away. Especially if you've made up your mind to kill somebody. That alone takes a certain mindset that makes a lot of the other issues moot.
They should add a short quiz to each issue that is being voted on. Don't count the vote if the person doesn't pass the quiz. Voting without a foundation in knowledge is more harmful than not voting.
People didn't avoid dying because the bombs were small, they avoided dying because the bombs were flawed. If you think pipe bombs are so tiny, why don't you come on over to my house and hold this thing while I like the fuse and run. Then I'll help them find all the pieces and we'll see if we can put humpty dumpty back together again.
As much as I hate to disagree with a well written posting, video games do not teach one to make headshots, clear a room, keep a low profile. They teach you to play the video game. I'm good at Quake. I'm a horrible shot. I doubt I could hit someone in the head at ten feet with a hand gun. However I knew that shooting a person in the head was the way to kill them long before games like Doom ever existed. I learned that in junior high. In biology class I learned that without the brain the body can't exist. In history class I saw classic pictures of the horrors of war (anybody else remember the picture of the Chinese|Vietnamese officer holding the gun to the head of the civilian/guerilla?) In English I read classic books (Conrad, Doyle, etc.) All of these "taught" me how to kill in one way or another. Saying that video games teach these skills is silly and assumes that people who play video games are dumber than average. Which oddly enough is typically not the case.
Kinda like how the nuclear arms race has made the world a safer place? Especially now that the soviet union has disintegrated and the world's well funded terrorist groups now have The Bomb?
Basically yes. Would you rather only the Soviet Union ever had the bomb? Would you prefer that armies only existed "across the border?"
Knowing that a nuclear bomb is possible means that any suitably well funded terrorist group can make them. It's not just a matter of buying them from bankrupt superpowers.
When people want to tear down a country it seems that they like to take aggregate statistics and then compare those with disimilar nations. That just doesn't work. When you have a nation like the US where you have numerous poor and uneducated people who can't compete in the job market to provide for their families they turn to crime. Then you have a segment of the population that is reasonably educated and can support their family and they don't turn to crime. I'd love to see statistics that compared crime rates as a percentage of a economic demographic in various countries. Let's compare the violent crime rate among, say, upper middle class in the US with the upper middle class in Australia. I'm betting that the statistics compare equally across the globe.
In a free society you are perfectly within your rights to infringe on other people. Just as they are in their right to infringe back if you know what I mean.
In a civilized and just society you have the right to do anything that doesn't infringe on other people.
I saw a report that related information that gun crimes in the midwest portions of both Canada and the US (ie. same area north and south of the border) were running similar rates. Maybe it's not the guns then.
Pretty sure it was a chinese officer. It was the same picture used in the Billy Joel video "We Didn't Start The Fire." But I may be mistaken, it's been a while...
Sort of right on the McDonalds thing, but a lot wrong. McDonalds corp. has a policy that coffee should be kept at 130 degrees F. It turns out that you can keep coffee fresher longer if you keep it hotter. So this particular McDonalds was keeping their coffee at 180 degrees F. The lady in question was the passengar in the car, not the driver and the coffee was spilled over her genitals. And she was something like 80 years old. She originally approached McDs for help paying the medical bills, something on the order of $50,000. McD's said no (not sure if it was the franchise holder here or the corp.) Then the lawsuit escalated from that.
As always the best programmers are the "hackers" and the ones coming out of schools that accept large sums of money from MS are worse than useless.
And yet the ones working at microsoft consistently put out more featureful, userfriendly software. I'm not MS lover, but I am realistic enough to recognize the nature of software. You add more features you get more bugs. I'd love to see any Unix distro that had the feature set of MS's products with less bugs. Unfortunately what I see is the groups that are trying to emulate MS and include the feature set are continually not able to release a stable, bug free product.
...check out the Amazon customer reviews on Lt. Col. David Grossman's Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill.
You see anything funny about those reviews? Many of them are popping within just a few days (the first few days of this month actually.) And they each have one or two "votes" saying how wonderful they were. And then disagreeing reviews all have many negative votes against them. I wonder why. It's so sad when a feature that should help provide the word from other readers is being abused this way. Somebody ought to go smack Grossman and his publisher with a limp fish.
Aaah... Another one who demands 'give me my rights, but hold the responsibilities'.
Why have the right to vote, if you don't actually exercise it? Yes, it is your right not to vote, but if the process is such that you feel that your vote is worthless, what does your abstaining from the process achieve? It is the responsibility of everyone in a democratic society to participate in the democratic process. Non participation is a cop out. By not participating, it is *you* who have given up your rights. How does that make you feel???
BTW, I think the word you are after is 'compelled', not 'compulsed'.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
"Iran and China I don't know that much about. Don't like what I hear on the news about their governments, though."
This is the most important aspect of the argument to me, unitron. People disarmed by law don't have much say against their government. China makes a good example of this -- until Chinese people can freely speak your mind, publish a newspaper, criticize the government, not to mention live freely in other ways, at least.
More people have been killed by their own governments in this century than have been killed by gun accidents or criminal attacks. Saying that someone else said it doesn't make it true, but I agree with the reasoning in this quote I found on Eric Raymond's gun page:
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
Thoughts,
timothy
p.s. For now, plenty of gun-bearing Americans continue to hold the government of
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
This makes me glad I live in Aus... Company's don't sue they buy the other out.
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
Laptop006
Melbourne, Australia
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
Is that supposed to be sarcasm? Al Gore DID invent the internet. He also invented happiness, the internal combustion engine and Star Trek. Come to think of it, Gore invented most of the things I use...washing machines, carpet, brain fluid. I also heard a rumor that he invented silicone using Pi, which, incidentally, he has solved. These are the things they don't tell you in school, you just have to find out on your own.
Odd; I'd always assumed that post hoc, ergo propter hoc was universally recognized to be a fallacy, and now you tell me that this is a uniquely American understanding. Perhaps out government should slap export controls on logic textbooks before the damfurriners find out.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Assuming what I read was correct (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), Kinkel (sp?) had easy access to a few dozen people who were all bunched together in a fairly large mass. (Group prayer, perhaps?) I don't recall the exact details of the case, but assuming the kid were close enough, head shots would probably not be too hard to achieve.
As I said above, anyone who's familiar with the details may feel free to back me up or...ummm, shoot me down.
You should read the information on the site - then tell me that when you travel in your automobile (vs. a motor vehicle), which you own - whether you are traveling or driving - and which makes more sense? Perhaps you are driving a motor vehicle, and thus should have a license as a privelege (maybe you are truck driver or something, and the vehicle you drive is a part of your work). More likely though, you travel in an automobile.
I implore you to take a look at the site, and really read the information - think about it, and study it. It is a little scary how we forget about things - and even more scary is your seeming attitude of not even trying to remember, or learn about precedents.
One interesting thing about the right to travel, which most people give up (due to the cost of a vehicle), is that you must own the vehicle outright, and have secured the MSO (manufacturer's statement of origin) from the manufacturer (it and the bill of sale PROVES you are the owner). Most of the time, you get a loan for the vehicle, and the MSO gets signed over to the state and to the lender. When the loan is paid in full, do you get that MSO back? No... So who owns the vehicle? You - or the state? Or the lender? You have the bill of sale, but not the whole thing... Unless you paid cash - and asked for the MSO at the beginning (provided the dealer would give it to you)...
The whole situation is bizarre - but it is only that way because we let it become that way...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I agree with your point of games vs reality (man, it's been a loooong time since I've heard the phrase "Smear the Queer"!), but I want to correct one thing...
Please don't make the assumption, as so many people often due, that the Occult or interest in the Occult==extreme satanism (and I say extreme here, meaning deep black magick satanism, when it involves worshiping satan, which I get the feeling you mean the Christian idea of satan, or biting the heads off of chickens).
"Satanism" is known (to anyone who has studied the Occult) to encompass many particular religions or religious activities (and has no ties to Wicca, BTW). "Satanism" is like "Christianity", in that just as Christianity has many different belief systems it encompasses, so does Satanism. In fact, if you studied Satanism at all, you would find that many sects are non-violent.
Occultism is the study of the unknown and/or the paranormal. Remember, many of the things Gallileo (sp?) did in his time were viewed as Occult proceedings, and he was viewed with suspicion (and jailed). In the end, his ideas and theories were seen as correct.
The Occult is still studied, and some things which science has said couldn't be possible, that was the realm of the occult, have been proven or unearthed in some manner (such as the "extinct" coelacanth fish, for instance). So please don't continue the confusion that Occult research, information, and teaching equates to an evil practice.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
These were 20 lb tanks of propane (you know, the size of tanks that you use on a gas barbecue), with pipe bombs strapped to them, set up in the cafeteria (why they set them there, I don't know - the library would have been better, since that is where they WENT). I don't think they had a timer or anything on them - it was "light it and run" (though, once again, since they were committing suicide, why did they just leave them, unlit - and not kill themselves with the bombs?).
If anybody knows different, please reply to this. I think they figured they would come back and light the bombs, but never did (it makes me wonder why any of the kids didn't LOOK at the bombs after they left the area - if they were light and run devices, it would be easy to tell, if not, and they were on a timer, well - you and the neighborhood's ass is grass anyhow). They ended up in the library instead - and stayed there (for what reason - why there? - could they have gotten back to the bombs? Did they fear _living_ through a propane bomb explosion? I don't even think that is possible - the bombs would have leveled the building).
I tend to wonder about this scene - whether it occurs with school kids or a madman doesn't matter, but let's do a post-Columbine alternate history:
Two kids walk into school, each carrying two 20lb propane tanks strapped with multiple steel pipe bombs (to ensure penetration of the propane tanks - plastic pipe bombs might not have enough force). This gives four bombs. They each also have some small arms gun (9mm or something, with extra clips). They take the bombs to the most densely populated area of the school (or maybe they wait for a rally or something in an auditorium or something), set them down, stand back to back, telling anyone who comes near to back off or they will shoot them. They calmly light the fuses, then wait for the end.
This amount of explosive force would kill WAY more people than what Eric and Dylan were able to. I am sure that the killing of all the people were secondary to them killing themselves, because they had the means to kill MANY more people (and probably would've destroyed the school as well).
My point is I wonder when the object will become to kill as many people as possible, using easily built bombs made with common materials (similarly, I wonder why more OK City sized bombs haven't been done yet - they are easy and cheap to build from common materials, yet we have had only one bomb that size occur (excepting the accident in Texas City) so far. Why haven't more occurred since? Why haven't homemade fuel/air explosives been built and used?
I just find it amazing that we haven't had MORE large scale domestic bombings...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
That is, that one needs a license in order to drive a car.
/. many times, one more time can't hurt:
Though it has been stated before on
Check out the following on "Driver Licensing vs. the Right to Travel "
This right does not preclude knowing how to drive a car before driving it - but it does show how somehow we have (and still are) legislating our rights away, rather than being responsible for our own actions (I am certain that "licenses" were created in response to increasing number of accidents and fatalities occurring with the new-fangled car - we should not make the same mistake with guns).
It all boils down to responsibility and respect, folks - respect for the tool, and respect for people - and the responsibility to them as well.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
-----]]]]]]] Please note that the following information is for educational purposes only - standard disclaimers apply! [[[[[[[-----
Ingredients:
1 foot long piece of 2 inch PVC pipe
2 endcaps to fit PVC pipe
PVC pipe cement
Gunpowder (*)
Fuse (*)
* = These two items may be hard to get. For the gunpowder, any place that stocks guns should also sell it (for reloads). However, it is possible to make your own - the key ingredients being potassium nitrate (saltpeter), which can sometimes be found at drugstores in small quantities, and charcoal (which can also be found in drugstores). Sugar is sometimes also used. The making of gunpowder, however, is beyond the posting of this comment. Fuses are more difficult to obtain - but not too much. Think gopher repellant...
How to build:
Anyhow, take one endcap and glue it to one end of the pipe. Drill a hole into the middle of the pipe, and insert the fuse - leave about 4-6 inches protruding. Fill the pipe with gunpowder, then glue the other endcap on.
You have now made your first pipebomb. Modifications which may help include: sealing the fuse hole with putty around the fuse to keep the fuse from falling out, using metal pipe, using model rocket igniters to detonate gunpowder.
-----]]]]]]] Please note that the above information is for educational purposes only - standard disclaimers apply! [[[[[[[-----
The truth of the matter is, pipe bombs are easy, cheap, and quick to build. Strapping them on to the side of a propane tank takes only a bit of duct tape.
------
Watch this space - next time I will show how to build tennis ball bombs, a homemade rocket launcher, and the famous pool acid bomb!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Its my personal belief that gun control really shouldn't be considered one issue. It isn't, really. I've heard two distinct 'subissues' running through it -> 'keeping guns from criminals' and 'reducing accidental shootings'.
The first issue is one that I don't think banning guns is going to fix. Its too simple for a criminal to bypass those. Granted, there would be a percentage of criminal who *wouldn't* be comitting their crimes with armed weapons anymore however I think that they would switch to other weapons(knives come directly to mind). Either way, I haven't thought too much on this so I'm not going to even pretend to be an expert.
It is the second issue that I feel more strongly about. My personal belief is that firearms ought to be handled in the same category as automobiles - to get a gun you must get a license which involves *mandatory* training and a test(granted, I'd like the training and test to be a tad bit more involved than that involved with getting a driving license). Gun locks should be mandatory, and if a child shoots someone with a gun that he got because you were careless and left a loaded weapon around you should be liable(are you as it is?).
There are a few problems with this, of course. Foremost is the Second Amendment. Even beyond that come the question of whether this should be a national government or a state government issue. Even beyond *that* is the question of whether or not government should have the jurisdiction to carry out these regulations at all.
In all, this is an insanely complex issue and I strongly feel that simple slogans like 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people' or 'Guns are evil!' are going to encompass a full solution.
I'm not sure I understand your definition of a 'human right', since you define the right to bear arms as one but the right to a substance required for human existance as not one. Please clarify?
So it sounds to me as if your opinion is that governments exist to protect these human rights as you define them. Or would it be more? In your opinion, what is the social contract that binds people to governments?
NATURAL BORN KILLERS (and BADLANDS) are loosely based on the 1959 murder spree of Charles Starkweather and Carrie Ann Fugate. So your argument that the culture has to be "right" for muder sprees to occur is wrong. Nuts like Starkweather and Richard Speck don't need external conditions to be right for them to go off.
Sounds nice. Unfortunately, the retoric doesn't match the reality. The guns used in the Columbine shootings were illegal. Quite a few existing gun laws were broken when they acquired those guns.
The gun lobby was correct on that one. It wasn't the lack of gun laws that made Columbine possible.
And, of course, let's not forget that damn inconvient Second Amendment. You know the one that says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
If someone is gonna snap, there is not much you can do until we get a functioning mind reader (and submit of course). I had a guy drive into my lane a few years back at hit me head on (like a test crash, headlight to headlight - he aimed). The police called it drunk driving, but basically the guy tried to kill himself using my mv**2. There is no protection against that now or ever. You just hope you survive and put the blame where it belongs - on the individual.
And no, nobody sued Need For Speed.
Why don't we take China for instance. VERY strict gun laws. But THOUSANDS are killed yearly. OH I guess its not REALLY murder though if the government is doing it.
Indeed, legal execution isn't considered as murder. I object as much as anyone to it, but that doesn't have anything to do with the subject here. Because there's a dictatorship in a country were guns are banned doesn't means "gun=democracy" (at least take the many democratic countries were there's a general gun ban as a counter example).
How about Cuba. Very stict gun laws, but again not murder as its the government doing to shooting.
Same thing : so ? What's your point ?
Oh and for your record, lets add this one in. In Sweden or is it Switzerland, can't remeber
Of course, you are a NRA zealots, so facts don't matter as much as the bullshit they try to spread around. But since you talk about it, it's Switzerland no Sweden that the NRA loves so much.
which, every house hold has a gun and their murder rate is less then it is here.
But the gun dead/habitants is 10x higher than, say, in UK (total ban on guns). So you see, the rate being lower doesn't prove anything at all.
Wonder why that is? Again gun control that the government is currently propossing does nothing but take guns out of the hands of LEGAL, LAW ABIDING Citizens.
As well as criminal, since when guns are banned you can just arrest any potentiel serial killer for owning a gun. Right now you have to wait for the killing spree to arrest him - but too late.
But you could be right, I think that person who is going to hold up the liquor store will almost surely take off the gun lock before he shoots the guy at the counter. But maybe he won't use one? Enforce the current gun laws against Criminals. Don't make Criminals out of Law Abiding Citizens.
The problem is, a killer is a criminal but a future killer is a good citizen (TM). You are the victim of the "John Wayne" syndrom : there are good and bad peoples, and it is easy to find who is who. Well, I'm affraid reality is not that way...
I am somewhat surprised at the high level of anti-gun sentiment on slashdot. You would think that in a group with a large percentage of self-described nerds with a penchant for anti-government, libertarian thinking, there would be more people into firearms. Or at least that the detractors would be better informed.
Being libertarian doesn't mean being a paranoid guy stockpiling guns. You can pretty much fight a governement you don't like with your brain in the Internet age. And you know, there's something really cool to complain about a governement. That's called "election". Stop ready the NRA newspapers and try reading about politics sometimes.
the Bill of Rights
Well the Bill of Right was version 0.9 beta. Like every human work in its first version, it needs a little debugging. Is all the software you use the first public release only ? Still using the original Linux piece of code that went out years ago ? Why would a set of laws be totally perfect in their first version (that is centuries old with that ?)
Oh well, the NRA guys are not well known for their open-minded, forward thinking ideas. Neither are they known for being great travelers and being educated either. There are more rednecks at the NRA than astrophysicians :)
Are you assuming that people who study rocket trajectories are inherently more "open-minded" than someone who works at wal-mart?
inherently no - statistically yes. Anyone saying education doesn't improve open-mindness and curiosity is either a liar or going to school in Kansas.
Pro-gun nuts are usually scared people : scared of the governement, scared of people different than they are (foreigners/blacks/gays/etc.), scared of "criminal" (a broad name they use to describe anybody who doesn't go to church on sunday). They see the world as a battlefield were they have to save their butt with firearms. I'm sorry, but that is not what I can "open-minded". These people need a good therapy, not an assault rifle.
Hi.
The following is quoted from The Labour Party's Evidence to The Cullen Inquiry in May 1996. Full text may be found at http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/ ~johnny/dunblane/labour.html. Population is in millions. Compare especially the US, Switzerland and the UK. Oh, and take them with a pinch of salt because they're only statistics assembled by a political party and are a few years out of date.
First column: Country
Second column: Homicides involving firearms
Third column: Population (million)
Fourth Column: Firearm homicides per million pop.
Hi.
Comparing the US statistics only with those from UK, Switzerland and Japan isn't exactly showing the whole picture.
As a general rule, the US is a conglomeration of various cultures, not merely those of the Japanese, Swiss, and British immigrants.
How do the statistics of Japan compare to that part of the US population that considers itself Japanese American?
How do the statistics look across the demographic plane of the US?
All good questions - I don't know the answers. (I presented those countries' statistics because they're the only ones I had. Sure, this isn't the whole picture, but it's better than none of it. If you want to know the answers to the questions you were posing, a good webcrawl is probably in order.)
The point I was responding to was that Switzerland has lots of guns, but has (from the US's point of view) a low firearm homicide rate - the implication being that that rate is exclusively dependent on cultural factors. Those stats show that both Switzerland and the US actually have quite a high firearm homicide rate compared to the UK (where I am) - the "lowness" of Switzerland's figure is just relative.
What do we conclude from this?
Well, strictly speaking all we can say is that the firearm homicide rate doesn't depend exclusively on availability. I think we can go a bit further and say that it does to some extent - Switzerland's rate is rather high for an otherwise extremely law-abiding country.
(The reason I've not commented on the figure for Japan, in case you're wondering, is that I have basically no real knowledge of Japanese culture and don't feel I can make useful contributions there.)
Cheers,
Mat.
Try this article for a look at how well a total handgun ban has worked for England. Crime involving weapons is actually increasing.
"But the rate of crime is much lower than in the US!," you might say. Not according to this study by the US Department of Justice.
Britain does not use the SAS as a routine policing force for anti-firearms violations.
I am somewhat surprised at the high level of anti-gun sentiment on slashdot. You would think that in a group with a large percentage of self-described nerds with a penchant for anti-government, libertarian thinking, there would be more people into firearms. Or at least that the detractors would be better informed.
Shall we just pick and choose from the Bill of Rights for just those amendments which please us, then? Yes on 1, no on 2? I bet the police and courts find 4 and 5 pretty pesky at times, let's get rid of those while we're at it.
I took a one evening seminar in the law of self-defense given by the SigArms Academy. One of the points made was that a person carrying a concealed firearm should go out of their way to avoid situations and confrontations, MORE SO than you would if you were not carrying. The fact that you have, as a responsible adult, made the decision to arm yourself with an instrument of lethal force, makes it incumbent upon you to as much as possible make it unnecessary to use it.
Most gun owners are not weekend warriors and Rambo wannabes spoiling for a fight. Nor are they even mostly enraged, drunken wife beaters liable to go on a murderous rampage at any second.
I forget where I read this (so I don't have any sources to quote), and I'm against frivolous lawsuits as much as the next guy, but....
The famous McDonald's incident where the lady sued McDonald's for scalding herself with a cup of coffee was not entirely frivolous. The coffee in question was ludicrously hot (enough to cause third degree burns), and a number of people had informed McDonald's of this and asked them to serve it at a lower temperature. McDonald's ignored these requests and continued to serve their coffee at a dangerous temperature. The lady was severely burned (i.e., it wasn't just a little scalding on her finger or something), and the multi-million dollar fine was handed down for negligent behavior on McDonald's part.
If anyone knows more about this case, I'd appreciate a source.
This is something of a straw man argument. Take one possible consequence of many and say loudly, "who could be against this?" It's also loaded: "kill with a casual flick" conjurs up images of bored, jaded gunmen taking life with a yawn and a flick. Let me as a variant of the question: How is taking away the only practicable means of defense for an elderly woman against a violent robber a violation of personal liberty? After all, guns are only designed for killing, self-defense is not a right, and she would most likely only get killed with it anyway.
I hardly think the "right to kill anyone you want as easily as possible" is what the original poster was referring to as an inalienable personal liberty.
That's all that it is. With all this "I'm going to sue", and whining and complaining, everyone caving in fear of a lawsuit, and bad parenting (giving the kids whatever they want, especially when they whine and cry), many people have never learned to cope.
This is the result.
(someone re-write that in English)
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Bowie,
Just wanted to let you know that I totally agree with your comments, and would like to add that, if more parents would keep their kids in their own neighborhoods, within earshot, and paid attention to them and their friends, that things would be alot better. Letting kids go wild at a mall every weekend is not cool.
Some of the best times of my life were during my preteen years, in the late 70's, going to neighborhood barbeques and weekly movies, played in a church parking lot.
Childhood used to be a time of great adventure, and of fun and memories. Now, it's Britney Spears and Snoop Dog.
Kids these days aren't kids. They are miniature adults, having to deal with adult situations and problems earlier and earlier. Every day, I have to listen to my 11 and 4 year old kids singing stuff that would have earned me an ass whipping 15 years ago. It's so frustrating trying to tell them WHY it's not ok to sing it/watch it,etc., when all of their little friends do.
Sigh. I'm old.
Excuse my typos, it's late...
"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
If you are really in a democracy, you do have the right NOT to vote.
Democracy is not equivalent to freedom or lots of rights. It merely guarantees ONE right, the right to vote for laws to be passed. (or to vote for a representitive for the sake of efficiency)
[aside]
Perhaps a representational democracy could be replaced now that we have more and better techonology. Consider the following: I am allowed to vote on every lawmaking decision of which I would to be under the jurisdiction of the changes. However, actually doing this is rediculous, nobody has time to vote on everything unless that's your full-time job (and even then, I argue, you still probably don't know enough about all the bills that need to be voted on). So you can elect or 'hire'* a representative to make reasonable decisions for you on certain issues (such as, "intellectual property laws", "traffic laws", or "all issues which you do not already vote on or have other representation on") If you don't like the way a particular representative is voting, you can, very quickly, revoke his right to vote on your behalf. (and vote yourself, not vote, or find another representative.)
* Perhaps a representative's salary should be paid from tax dollars (as congressmen's are), related to something like the log of the number of people's votes he holds. And these representives could 'specialize' in certain categories of law.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Actually it should be: if people were taught early a healthy respect for PEOPLE, there would be far less violence in our country.
Many guns are illegal, and therefore have an appeal to them.
In my opinion guns have an appeal (especially illegal weapons) because they are romanticized in movies and other forms of media not because they are illegal.
No but if someone is able to use a firearm to express their anger then the firearm was way too accessible. All it takes is one simple unthinking pull of the trigger to kill someone. It is a lot easier to pull the trigger and kill the person you angry with then to hit or stab then same person to death. That's why most gun deaths are "crimes of passion."
Hopefully ESR would agree with me on this point but the main reason adult citizens of the US are allowed to bear arms is because we *are* the US's last line of defense.
I don't claim to be in love with my gun because I'm not. But I do have one. I also know how to properly handle it with responsibility. Every teen interested in the use of firearms was "required" (by the community we lived in) to take a firearms safety class and actually pass with a level of knowledge in the responsibility that goes with gun ownership.
Do I live in fear that someone will break into my house and rob me at gunpoint? No. As of right now, the community I live in is friendly one where I say "Hello!" to one neighbor each morning and occasionally take turns shovelling driveways with my other neighbor.
Of course the flip side of this is if someone did break into my house, I'd confront them with necessary force. I'm not going to go running around my house with guns blazing. That would add an undue amount of pressure to the situation. I'll give them the option of leaving the premises empty-handed, provided they haven't harmed my family. Considering the alternative of going up against a roomful of angered Norwegians, I figure they'd appreciate the offer of a painless way out.
Firearm use as a weapon is warranted, IMO, only when it is absolutely necessary.
>;)
-Vel
And under which of these classifications will you put ESR?
I'm sure he'd be very interested to find out that he's suddenly a Facist or a member of the KKK.
-Vel
Just what, exactly, is an astrophysician?
-Vel
Comparing the US statistics only with those from UK, Switzerland and Japan isn't exactly showing the whole picture.
As a general rule, the US is a conglomeration of various cultures, not merely those of the Japanese, Swiss, and British immigrants.
How do the statistics of Japan compare to that part of the US population that considers itself Japanese American?
How do the statistics look across the demographic plane of the US?
-Vel
Actually, violent crime -- especially "hot" burglaries -- has been INCREASING in Britain and Australia since their gun bans... so if you want to retain your POV, they're very, very bad examples of your case.
US gun control actually disproportionately hurts the poor, as they're the most likely to live in crime-ridden, densely populated, poor neighborhoods with minimal police "protection" (it's difficult to protect proactively against random crime) where violence takes place. By, say, banning cheap handguns -- a favorite policy of HCI and allies -- the law-abiding poor are being disarmed.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
One obvious fallacy in your argument is that if only the criminal has a gun, he does not need to fire and thus alert everybody. Most unarmed civillians do not exactly pose a threat to an armed mugger... so now the THREAT of the firearm suffices. Which IS more intimidating, since now a mugger doesn't have to way 300#...
In addition, this allows for easier hot burglaries, as British statistics demonstrate.
Whereas in the US, anybody who tries such a thing is decently likely to encounter one VERY angry homeowner with a handgun, and therefore simply TRYING is stupid.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Not really. The odds have shifted.
Without firearms, your typical scenario might be a few street punks with chains or knives cornering a briefcase-wielding chap. Or, they can wander into a populated restaurant. Odds definitely favor them in the first case -- although MAYBE they won't kill the chap, they trivially can; in the latter case, it'd be EXTREMELY rare for the patrons to gang up, since nobody enjoys being beat up or crippled.
With firearms, we note that everybody stands a risk of being shot -- including the thugs. In the first case, if Mr. Victim happens to be packing, he poses a mortal threat; and odds are, most robbers aren't willing to face a high risk of death just for a few bucks. In the latter case, any single patron can take down a robber, and the odds STRONGLY suggest that it'd be stupid to rob a restaurant where the patrons are likely armed.
So the scenario is fundamentally different.
This deterrent value is actually borne out by statistics. Have you, perchance, seen a certain volume by a Prof. Lott? He uses statistics from every county in the US, over years...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Hardly.
Check your own crime statistics. Especially 'hot' burglary.
Then check information about the rising use of weapons in British crime.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
They'll just grab a standard kitchen knife and do some random slaughter.
More likely, the criminals will just get the guns same as always (illegally) while your every day joe loses his rights.
'give me my rights, but hold the responsibilities'
Obviously you've never read any of my other posts. I am VERY for giving people their due responsibilties. Tell me, what good does it do if i must vote, but i don't like ANY of the candidates. My not voting then would be a protest. Or maybe i just long for the days when who was president really wasn't that important, and gov't only worked a few months out of the year. I believe that is how our gov't was intended to work.
Heh...ya you got me there. I guess i've fallen to the same trap as most....but thanks for reminding me :)
:)
Perhaps a representative's salary should be paid from tax dollars (as congressmen's are), related
to something like the log of the number of people's votes he holds. And these representives could
'specialize' in certain categories of law.
Intresting, but i like plato's ideas better. Reps by law may own nothing, they MUST live off the charity of thier citizens. I think that would be the way to go
Remember, this isn't a debate on traditional armed robbery - it's about "rage" killings by school children. If their parents,[...]
How about their parents do what mine did; keep them under lock and key, and teach the child NEVER to touch these. When old enough (dependingon your particular child) teach them to use it responsibly. Knowledge is power, and sweeping things under the carpet never solves anything.
oh i forgot to ask you; how many schools are there nationwide, and how many have this problem? I recall very few times when your 'rage-killings' even occured. Don't you think you're overreacting a bit? B/c of a few isolated casing you want to affect millions of people. Try this on for size. Some criminals get off b/c there is not enough evidence to convict them. Well why don't we just get rid of that little requirement. Yes it is the same overreaction that you are proposing.
Earth to clueless ppl:
There is Right and there is Wrong. If the judge had "gone the other way" he would have been Wrong. We shouldn't follow Wrong laws. Call it civil disobedience or contempt, but blindly obeying an ignorant ruling is at least as great a crime against society as shooting up a school. The day we have a population of clueless sheep is the day that Right and Wrong won't matter, and will be the day _I_ start shooting up the place, cause I don't want to live there.
How the original post got moderated to a 5 is beyond me. ugh. We're one day closer.
good to hear from you, signail11. food for thought. unfortunately, it's more like whole-wheat cracker food than steak and potato food. zerokelvin, in his inimitable offensive style, made the same observation. i understand that we have to respect the rule of law and the authority of the judicial system or society will break down. at the same time, it's up to us to QUESTION authority (not DEFY like signal's sig- it's a subtle yet important difference) and to keep an eye on those bozos. the gov't has no more power than what We the People give it.
if your original point was "obey the rulings, even the ones you don't agree with" why didn't you say that? the post came across as wishywashy, like yer others where you are hedging every bet except the technical ones. while you are contributing to the conversation, i felt dumber after reading "If the judge had gone the other way?" and had to clear my air.
pax
just btwn you and me and the trolls :)
i know on one level there is no "right" and "wrong", but on another level, it is Wrong to abuse ppl- and we can do the Right thing. it's all relative, of course. in a given situation, there is a choice between Good and Bad. this is not the same thing as absolute Right and Wrong.
bronowski has lots of Good things to say. hitler was trying to do the Right Thing as he saw it. what is the difference between these two men? reason and enlightenment, imho.
what i was getting at was the idiocy of the original post saying we should take the decisions of judges at face value. posing the what-if led signail11 to believe we should respect the authority of the robe rather than analyzing the case on the basis of its facts. there may not be any absolute truth here, but i feel the judge made the right call, and would've been outraged if he had "gone the other way"
i've just taken a look at the rest of the crap signail11 has posted recently, and i am NOT impressed.
pax
it's "horse", not "whores" eh? this is the dawning of the age of bavaria....
:) it's all so very, very good.
i'm sort of embarrased to even REPLY to a comment with a subject line like this. it's the price we pay for free speech: free sometimes means cheap.
As a Canadian, I've a somewhat different view
of gun control. You make guns hard to get
not because violence won't happen, but, because,
guns make massive violence easy. Its the same
reason we don't make nuclear weapons or
biological weapons easy to get.
Here in Canada, our large cities still have
considerable violence, but relatively few
deaths. Toronto, Canada's largest city of
4.5 million people, we were appalled a few
years ago because we had 58 murders that
year. Detroit had 58 murders in the first
few weeks of the same year, the far largest
share of those deaths due to gunplay.
I am not suggesting that Toronto isn't as
violent as Detroit (it may or may not be),
but that much of the violence is done
with less lethal weapons, and so, fewer
deaths. Past experiences with war makes
the lethality of these weapons quite clear.
Guns kill so much more efficiently than swords,
knives, or clubs.
Ask yourself, which would you prefer:
If someone came at you with the intent
to kill you, would you prefer they wield
a gun or a knife?
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Guns just allow them to do it so much more
efficiently. Anyone up for the legalizing
of personal nuclear weapons???
A comment overheard in a corn field `If you have better ideas, lets hear them. I am all ears.'
A single knife wound may be more dangerous.
An semi-automatic pistol or worse an
automatic rifle or submachine pistol
can fire many shots quickly. And while
you are retrieving the knife from one
person's chest, a pistol user could shoot
10-15 people, or leave 10-15 wounds in
one person. Automatic weapons increase
these numbers appropriately.
Students of history will verify that wars
became much more deadly (total numbers killed)
with guns.
Just the facts, Man....
A comment overheard in a corn field `If you have better ideas, lets hear them. I am all ears.'
quoting this old saw seems to be a knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone brings up the topic of gun control. unfortunately, the reality of this particular Swiss policy is very different from how American gun enthusiasts imagine it.
(my source for this, incidentally, is a Swiss-German guy who lived with my family for a year. At the time he was in his early 20s, and a member of the defence force.)
it is true that members of the defence force are obliged to keep modern automatic rifles in their homes, so that they can have easy access to their weapons when the defence force is mustered (which happens periodically). on the other hand:
i feel like i'm being naive when i hope that this stupid argument will someday go away; unfortunately, the image of a Switzerland where everyone totes around an assault rifle is as alluring to gun nuts as Amsterdam is to potheads. unlike Amsterdam, however, the image of Switzerland is a MYTH.
-steve
--- "We also were guided by the unlikelihood that anyone would face supernatural evil armed only with technology."
It's very difficult to kill someone with a game... Er, well, without bludgeoning them with the box, or something. :)
< sarcasm > /sarcasm >
Many crimes are illegal, and therefore have an appeal to them. If crimes were legal, and people were taught early a healthy respect for crime, I believe that there would be far less violence in our country.
<
But then we have career politicians that stay in congress for LONG periods of time. As we have. When system to try out is limiting the serving period to 1 or 2 years, for the representative,s and senators respectivly, and be able to be realected for up to 10 years, (10 times for repres, 5 times for senate)
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
... they have to catch me first (I run pretty fast when i'm scared :)
And even if they do catch me I still stand a chance of having a superhuman surge of strength and sticking the knife between their eyes instead. Chances are no amount of superhuman strength is going to allow me to stop a bullet and throw it back!
- I did not say anything about forbidding guns for self defence. (I don't believe in them myself, but that is beside the point) I suggested a *licence* for self-defence guns. First prove that you can handle the gun properly and most important: That you understand the consequences should you ever fire the gun at another human being.
Actually, the part you said that I was responding to was:- If cops and hardened criminals are the only ones with easy access to guns, one thing is gained:
And the problem is that general licensing schemes don't solve the high-profile shootings by people who just snap. See the rampage in Hawaii, which has very tight regulations on guns... the most restrictive state in the country, if I recall. New York City style restrictions state that self-defense is not a legitimate use when applying for a license, so the average person is left out of the loop.The self-defense licensing you describe is actually the standard for state-issued concealed carry licenses. But the other licensing... why? It's obvious safety training only addresses accidents. It's laudable to try to reduce accidental deaths wherever you can, but most people don't understand just how low the number of gun accidents are... less than 1000 in 1997 according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. That's one-quarter of the death rate from malnutrition. Maybe your proposed efforts would save more lives if the money and time were put into other programs.
(The AK-74 and its older cousin the AK-47 are assault rifles, legally classified as "machineguns" and are therefore restricted as a matter of federal law to the possessors of Class III firearms licenses. Nobody's hunting with them.)
- Actually, the best defence would probably be a decent alarm system. (And a police with decent response time)
A combination which is more expensive than a typical firearm and, in some places, impossible to achieve.- What do you do in that scenario?
The problem with quoting situations is the specifics involved. It's so easy to generalize and fabricate in order to create support for your position. What if you were unarmed, completely willing to cooperate with a robber, but he said "First we're going to beat the crap out of you, then smash your skull in with this lead pipe, then take everything you have, go to the address listed on your driver's license, unlock the door with the keys in your pocket, and violate your entire family." What would you do then?Pretty ridiculous question, isn't it? But I'll answer yours. If there's an avenue of escape, you take it while keeping your gun at the ready. As long as you have the possibility of escape without an immediate present threat, you're obliged to take it. In most states, this does not apply to your own place of residence (in which it's real hard for a burglar to claim "I was just asking the time"). If they try anything to stop you, you are justified. Like it or not, you can't trust the intentions of a robber, not when so many people are murdered for their jackets or shoes. Or even for no good reason at all.
You always shoot to kill because that gives you the best chances to stop an attacker. Unfortunately, this is a sad fact of life, and stopping an attacker is always the ultimate goal of self-defense. Any expert on the subject will tell you that. But you only shoot if it's your only option remaining.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
For starters, there's no way that you could disarm American police. You apparently believe that armed police beget armed criminals. Who knows, maybe you're right, but that still doesn't change the fact that criminals are dangerous and no police officer in even a medium sized city would consider going unarmed on the beat. Any attempt to disarm America's police force would result in a massive strike or walk-out. Suddenly we'd have no police at all. Do you think that would cut down on crime? If you have a gun for self-protection, you keep it near you. Chances are, if you didn't wake up before the burglar found your gun, he could have simply tied you up or killed you in your sleep. But then home invasions are much less common in the United States than the UK, where they have been on the rise. Why? Because burglars are deathly afraid of armed targets. Most American home invasions do that happen occur while the occupant is away. On the other hand, estimates for the number of defensive gun uses ranges anyway from 100 thousand to 3 million, depending on the source, and most of these (99%) don't even involve a shot being fired. I know my neighbor has a gun. I helped him pick it out. Why would that knowledge bother me? For ten thousand years before the creation of firearms, men have found ways to murder each other. Instead of trying to stop people from protecting themselves, maybe you need to start investigating "Why?"
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
- See numerous countries which have had guerilla led coups, or long running guerilla campaigns for examples. All of which leading to long running misery and suffering for the ordinary person
A coup is an overthrow of the government by a person in a position of authority without the consent of the people (otherwise it's a "revolution"). Generally this refers to the military... which means you're suggesting that countries disarm their own militaries?You can't vote people out. You can only vote other people in, and only when the proper time comes around. You seem to think that someone is going to run under the platform "I am a Nazi, elect me." Here's a clue for you... sometimes politicians lie. No, really! It's true!
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
Your entire position is that "you can only defend yourself after you've been shot". Read it again. Do you realize now how incredibly ludicrous that is? It doesn't bother you that there are (depnding on the source) somewhere between 100 thousand and 3 million defensive gun uses in America each and every year? Or that 99% of defensive gun uses don't involve a shot being fired from either side? Or that a 120 lb woman doesn't have any other defense from a 250 lb man armed or not? Doesn't it seem shocking that American criminals are afraid to do home invasions because they know they're likely to get shot? Or that carjackers focus on vehicles with out-of-state license plates in states with concealed carry laws?
What really demolishes your argument are the document self-defense uses of guns by people who actually have been shot. Have you ever been shot? Why don't you talk to people who have been and still managed to defend themselves before you go blathering on about how impossible it is. Wow, it must really suck to be so amazingly wrong.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
Thanks for the calm and intelligent discussion on the subject (even if we disagree).
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
Try mental problems. One of these kids was on a mind-altering drug preceding the shooting, yet how often was this mentioned in relation to playing quake?
...5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.
There's a wonderful post in *alt.games.quake2* of all places regarding this. I was fairly active in that newsgroup at the time and there was quite a bit of discussion on the topic ever since the shootings. (whole thread here. There's a post further on down describing in detail all of the side effects of the medication.)
Morality/values certainly played a role in this, but as long as we're pointing fingers let's not forget that mental health issues combined with drugs which may actually make ones problems *worse*. Of course being able to admit that we're finger-pointing is only the first steps toward actually dealing with the issues. Something tells me that society as a whole will be dealing with them for some time...
Holding two seemingly contradictory ideas in one's mind at the same time.
I've seen it before, many times, and it's only getting worse...Not saying that I'm not effected by it as well.
In the perfect world, gun control is GREAT. However, we are far from that notion. The people like these "Fucking British fucks" tend to forget about the black market. Now guns come only to those with connections. And there's a better chance that if they rob you, you don't HAVE what THEY have! So they're more likely to take advantage of that situation.
Game, set, match. UK Loses once again.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
OK, so easy access to guns is not the CAUSE of the problem...
But now those stupid people are treating the "symtoms" anyway, we must adapt and choose between treating the stupid symtoms (itches) and the major symtoms (pain).
To me it seems gun control problem is a good-enough symtom to start working at.
You might say:
Q: it still won't prevent people from killing.
A: sure, but compare the murder rate between us and some other country where access to gun is more restricted.
Q: so we have to ban knives, ropes, water,....as well!
A: you have to judge for yourself what the PURPOSE OF EXISTENCE of these tools are. Are ropes invented so that people can hurt other people with it? How about guns - are they invented to do anything than harm?
Thank you.
Most Americans can get through a paragraph without using the word fuck 5 or 6 times. Most of us can also spell committee.
Now for the obligatoy on-topic response
Actually frivolous lawsuits are the result of our litigous society and people trying to get something for nothing.
Now for the obligatory on-topic response
My bad :D
Most Americans (myself included) believe very strongly in the idea that no-one else should try and tell you how to live your life. The unfortunate consequence is that this makes it nearly impossible to prevent crimes through community outreach or to rehabilitate people once crimes are committed.
We feel that we need to 'do somthing' about Columbine, however in typical American style that 'action' is punative rather than rehabilitative.
It's like one of those tigers that you see pacing back and forth in their cages at the zoo. That pacing is charicteristic of an animal neurosis.
Imagine someone in a cage walking back and forth saying.
"I need to get free. I can't get free."
"I need to get free. I can't get free."
over and over.
That's America right now. This behavior will continue until we either
1. accept the status quo or
2. fundamentaly change our social responsibilites to one another so that things like Columbine don't happen.
Either choice will go against many things that Americans believe in.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Hun. My English teacher dislikes me this year because she thinks I play these type of games.
I truth I only play with friends on rare ocations as you know.
The only thing that keeps her talking to me, I think, is that I work at her ISP.
BTW see you in programming class tomarrow.
-----
DemonStreet.com
What most people don't understand, is that if the people have ready access to weapons, there won't be a need for a revolt. Kind of like how I could use a gun to mug you, but I don't need to shoot you. The threat of force is more powerful than the force itself.
It's when people have been living in a stable country all their lives and don't understand the purpose of the second-amendment (which in my opinion, has been violated out of existence), that the stability is at risk.
I don't believe that gun laws reduce crime, but even if they did, I would still oppose them. I enjoy living in the only free country on Earth (maybe it's not a free country anymore though), and there are plenty of others for people to choose if they don't like it.
It doesn't mean anything. Maybe the brits are just nicer people on average than americans. After all, they're not being influenced by evil videogames and television. :)
Maybe they're just all poor and can't afford firearms, especially black market ones...
I'd be more interested in the crime rate before and after a country passed anti-gun laws.
So Britain is a valid example, while Switzerland is not?
How about Iran? Are firearms legal there? Is the crimerate greater or smaller? What about China?
That's a brilliant idea. :) Dave stole one of my Magic cards, so I'll just drop a note in the box that he's planning to go Postal. I'll say he's going to do it on a day when I have a test, as an added bonus.
I can only assume that the comment; "Let's compare the murder rate to Switzerland, where almost every adult male owns an assault rifle. A lot less crime there. " implies you are stongly in favor of strict gun control. After all to get the assault rifle you mention, you have to serve in the military for several years. I fully support that kind of gun control, but I'd be willing to only require a 30 day waiting period, training class, gun locks sold with guns, a maximum numer of weapons without a special permit, etc. I think that would be resonable. You wouldn't even have to join the militray. Compromise, you give a little and I give a little.
E
Do you ever feel like there are people watching you? You're not alone.
Try The Pico Scenario
Its not GPLed... but i think this is what you are reffering to.
Its flash btw.
no
No, I'm not kidding here.. everone will say "excuse me" if they bump into you, no matter how slightly. People will say "excuse me" when they step in front of you. No one will crowd against you, or be rude in any way.
It's amazing.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm gun neutral- don't own any, find them boring. And gun shows are REEEEAAALLY boring.. I mean, how can people walk past 300 tables which all have slightly different varients of the same thing on them without falling asleep? (not a flame-- I really want to know!)
Your wallet stays open. Our source remains closed. We are MSFT
I have a respect for well maintained things.
People who maintain their guns deserve respect.
If guns were legalized, why would there be more respect for them? Guns kill people. A person will buy a gun, and kill someone with it. That's not respect, it's misuse.
.sig:
http://siokaos.org/
If you're advocating the use of force against me to remove my guns from my possesion, when I have not first offered violence against you, then you're violating the basic principle of libertarianism. Violence against another is only justified in self defense. You can call yourself what you wish, of course, but applying labels don't make it so.
I don't oppose gun control because of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution. In fact, the existence of the amendments is not a reason for any of my beliefs. The Constitution does not grant me a single right. Rather, it's a legal protection of the rights that I intrinsically possess as a human being. I'll use the existence of the Second Amendment as a tool to help prevent the US Government from trampling on my rights. But even if the Constitution were amended to completely remove the 2nd, it would not remove my rights to live freely and in the manner which most pleases me.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
This is obvious flamebait and stereotypical crapola.
I do not and have never owned a gun and have never allowed one in my house. I am scared of guns, personally. I am a senior systems analyst (though was originally educated and worked as a biochemist), the mother of a teenaged daughter, and an extremely liberal person by most standards. The only real difference between myself and most liberals is on the gun control issue.
I understand completly that the basis of ANY human rights is the ability of humans to enforce their rights. That's it... period. While I don't personally wish to own a gun right now, I also feel very strongly that I do not wish to live in a country in which it is forbidden - and certainly don't wish my child to grow up in one.
The American revolution could not have occured without private ownership of guns - something well understood by the founders of our country when they included the Second Amendmnet in the Bill of Rights. This is not a "bug" in the Constitution, but an absolutely necessary part of the program. .
Both parties really oudid themselves this time, both choosing the absolute worse possible candidate.
Blech.
Wrong. The average gun owner in the United States is better educated and has a higher income than the average non-gun-owner. At least this was the case several years ago. I haven't seen any stats since the early '90s. But guns in the US aren't any easier to get ahold of now then they were a decade ago, so I doubt the stats have changed much.
And if it did, don't you think business would have picked up on its ability to influence masses of people!
Theoretically, if what people watched and spent time with had any influence on their thinking or behavior (yeah, right) you'd expect that--say--an opportunity to reach everyone watching the Super Bowl would cost tons of money, even for just thirty seconds! Hah!
!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Gimme a break. Just because something has the potential to be lethal doesn't mean that it's going to be used that way. How often do you hear about poeple getting killed by sticks, or pencils, or duct tape? How many murderers (or potential murderers) would actually kill someone if they had to do it with 15ft of string and a post-it note? It's the fact that guns make killing easy and impersonal that most people object to.
"And in the news today, another shocking high school rampage, as two students ran through the hallways with a cup of water and harsh words. Two students were bruised by accidental jostling and one 17-year old girl was a victim of hurt feelings..."
</SARCASM>
Yeesh. Don't trivialize just because you don't agree.
--
--
It's not the rambling I object to, so much as the mumbled incoherancies...
If he had been on private property (i.e. his own property, he would not have been hassled, but since he was on a public street he is subject to the law).
UPS Sucks
"My school is now requiring all teachers to wear name tags because of what happened in Columbine."
My public school took this a step futhor. All staff and students are required were name tags. As it was explained to me the reason for this was to identify any non student, so that they could not shoot up the school.
The rational of this, from my discussions with some teachers, is that the school board wanted to say they did something in reaction to colubine, not to fix the problem, nor even atempt to fix the problem.
I would not say the people are idoits, simply they are looking for the easyesy way out, nothing else.
Nate Custer
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
Excuse me? When did I ever state that "we should respect the authority of the robe rather than analyzing the case on the basis of its facts?" To the contrary, I suggest that we should do exactly that: analyse the circumstances of the case, rather than jumping to the knee-jerk response of saying that the law sucks or that the judge is an ignorant idiot. Civil disobedience is not to be undertaken litely, something which I believe has been forgotten in light of the urge to defy authority for its own sake, instead of for a greater purpose.
.sig quote "Defy authority? Say's who?".
I think Signal 11 says it best in his
Additionally, if you have any problems with the content of my previous postings, I would be happy to hear your comments. My previous postings have usually be rather technical in nature. If I have made an inaccurate assertion, please correct me.
So historically citizens of oppresive regimes have asserted their right to overthrow those regimes.
It is important in any society to have the means to effect change, and fight off oppression.
Many modern nations have ample legal, nonviolent means to combat injustice. We may complain at length about the efficacy of these means, but they are there, and well-used.
I believe that when a government infringes upon your rights, you should avail yourself of all legal, nonviolent means to eliminate that infringement. In the event that these means fail, then it is time to consider revolution and overthrow of the oppressive regime.
For this reason, I think it is necessary to defend the right to bear arms at all costs. Any government that reserves to itself the tools and methods for effecting drastic, violent change is virtually unassailable by its subjects. The people must have access to these tools, or they lose their last line of defense against tyranny.
Before the flames begin (or am I just flattering myself, and this post will be ignored :), please note that I see armed revolt as the last line of defense, not the first--but once that final option is eliminated, then tyrants are free to eliminate all other freedoms as well.
One could argue that this applies to control of information as well, and extend this theory to the Internet, Patent/Copyright law, &c. On the other hand, one could also that my argument is utter crap and proceed to poke large chunks of logic and data through its gaping holes.
These two courses of action are left as an excercise to the thoughtful reader.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It's not the job of the video game industry to be role models for the young. They are only create and produce what the consumer wants. If the market wanted rainbows and singing birds, we'd buy Sesame Street's "I can count to 3 and say my ABC's" HELLO??? Capitalism??? You'd think those righteous, bible thumping Republicans woud be able to understand MONEY and MARKET.
when I think of Republicans, I think of Pat Robertson, and those that push their "family values" on others. You cannot deny that when it comes to what's generally deemed "christian ideals" that it comes from the Republican party. However the truth behind my rant was that I was making a joke... even tho some of it contained personal beliefs. It's amazing we listen to shock comics such as Leary and Carlin, and love them, yet when someone else says it, we're appalled... get over it.
For starters, I am not for complete gun control. But the old Swiss myth is not what you want to rely on. They are assigned the weapon for the period of compulsory reservist duty, then the weapon is turned back in to the government. I don't know the actual statistics on personal ownership, but the old "rabbit in every pot, and SAS in every closet" is nowhere near reality.
I bet you could hit head shots too, when the person you are shooting is in a well lit area, is a child, and is cowering in a corner or under a table. Police in general ( if they shoot ) are shooting at someone hiding behind a car or other object, or running, or in a dark place. Those kids in the school had total confidence that they were the only ones with guns, and could fire at their own leisure. It is much different when someone is firing, or you think they will fire, at you.
Secondly, a computer game gives no more gun training than using windows or somesuch. in each case you use your hand to move a mouse over a target ( icon, baddie ) and click the button. firing a gun is *not* the same!
no, *you* try to find the number of times a criminal was scared away/ shot down by a homeowner, and after a very hard time finding the numbers, because scaring a buglar away with a gun is not newsworthy ( goes against the ultraliberal press' agenda ) , and the fact that people do it everyday and don't tell the police or anything, and you'd find that this number is much much larger than the one mentioned above. ( beware run-on sentance ).
ps there are ( counting ) 5 pistols, 3 rifles and one 12ga shotgun in my house, plus 5 children.
Remember prohibation, or the war on drugs? Both certainly made it harder to get alchol and drugs. I'm being sarcastic of course. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it harder to obtain, in fact, it makes that item more valuable.
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds
This situation is quickly changing and Micro-softdick may soon find itself in more trouble than the mere impotent government.
Real people in real companies are looking very favourably on Open Source as a means of making lots of money. Free software of course is still foreign to them. But, for some companies, the very notion of opening up their code to public scrutiny terrifies not only companies, but the programmers who produce that crap in the first place.
Most programmers that claim that "title" are really very, very bad. I've made a career out of fixing problems that other people make.
If this sounds like a trashing of the programming community you're right. But the blame can be placed squarely on Microsoft's door.
I've been around computers now for a long time. Hey I've been around so long that I feel like I was in the stands when Oscar Wilde went on trial in 1895. Anyway, I've never seen so bad a crop of programmers as we have today.
As always the best programmers are the "hackers" and the ones coming out of schools that accept large sums of money from MS are worse than useless.
Enough ranting, you get the picture. I have to live with it and try to change it.
look.. they also used explosives. now.. last time I checked the law said this was a /big/ no no but that didn't stop them. it's just the same with guns. people that wish to break the law are not concerned if what they are doing is against the law{only stands to reson}. Bombs /are/ against the law yet are still used. Outlawing guns will do nothing more then leave those that wish to break the law as the only ones armed. Now.. I could be crazy but that thought trubles me. Guns are a reality and there is no changing that, the question comes down to 'who do you wish to have the guns?' your options are 1: Outlaw guns and the only ones aremed are the people that breake the law and keep guns. or 2: Keep guns out there and make the results of using a gun in a crime so much more harsh then unarmed crime that people will not wish to use them. My preff is option #2 and as I see it it's the only one that has a real chance of working.
Question reality.
[All in the Family ] (Gloria )"65 percent of the people murdered in the last 10 years were killed by hand guns" (Archie) "Would it make you feel any better little girl if they was pushed outta windows?"
If you were to ban(or much more severly control access to) guns, it would not affect criminals access to guns right away, but over time it would. If the sources a dried up, eventually guns are going to start drying up too. They'll wear out, they'll be used in crimes and confiscated, lost, put into private collections never to be touched again, etc. In 10 years you would see a difference. In 30 they'd be practically non-existant.
Also, you seem to think that all gun related crime is committed by career criminals. Don't forget there are millions of people who are normal everyday law abiding people, who happen to own or have access to a gun, and one day/week/month/year/lifetime something causes them to be very mad/enraged/desperate/drunk/careless/etc and it ends in gunshots and bloodshed. If the people who "OBEY the law" as you say don't have/make the guns available, then none of those incidents are ever going to happen. The guy who shoots his neighbor in a fit of rage was not the criminal(s) you were talking about.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Yeah, like that pesky childhood tendency to press every button and pull every lever they can find.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget the urge to put things in their mouths.
It's a lot easier to intentionally kill someone with a gun. It's a lot easier to accidentally kill someone with a gun. It's a lot easier to accidentally intentionally(rage attack) someone with a gun. Let's get rid of the damn things.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Yeah, and not one person was killed by the explosives. Not one. Nobody. Nada. Every person who died in that building died as a result of a gunshot wound.
Now lets imagine they had access to explosives in the manner they had access to guns. Rather than some tiny pipe bombs, and other homebrew stuff that didn't work, they would have had high explosives that could level the whole building in one blast, prescision detonators that could have made all or some the bombs detonate simultaneously or with precision timing, mercury switches that would triggered more bombs as students fleed down halls, opened doors. The simple fact that it was illegal to aquire these things prevented them from having them.
in short:open mouth, insert foot.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
It is the NRA that fights things like required gun certification. If you want to license them like cars, fine. Register every single damn one to the person who bought it. Keep records of who bought and sold them. If someone has a gun, and can't produce their license confiscate it, on the spot. When a crime happens, you'll know right who to go to. Require recertification every few years. If you can't pass the test, you can't have your guns. period. Severely regulate what is an is not allowed(If I can't have a racecar or a monster truck, I hardly see why an assault rifle is okay). Require saftey features. If your kid takes a parent's gun and commits a crime with it, hold the parent responsible. Take THEIR license away and never give it back. The NRA fights all these things.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
So how about we make voting compulsory, but add an extra line to the ballot that says "abstain." That way, people will still have the ability to say "I hate all the choices."
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Outlaw cars? Hehehe.
The big difference is that guns are designed for wounding/killing. It is their purpose. The same can't be said for cars. You may argue that guns can be used for recreational use (which is true), but they sure as hell weren't invented for that purpose.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
OK I think a point of clarification is in order.
What i was particularly referring to is the incidence of injuries and deaths resulting from the use of firearms. I entirely concur that the use of firearms as a threat is rising, but, (may this long continue to be the case) the weapons are very rarely discharged at all, and almost never in the direction of a person.
After all, armed robbery gets 8-12 years, attempted murder gets 'life'. And on the whole the criminals seem aware that if they injure or kill using a firearm, they WILL be hunted and charged.
Now this doesn't for a minute mean i'm not at risk of being bludgeoned, bottled, knifed or punched, but the risk of involvement in a serious firearms incident is minimal.
TomV
OK, i'll bite.
Every time a person gets shot in this country, it's front page news.
That sounds like a side effect of pretty effective gun laws
tomV
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
I heard this somewhere else... The reason that people try to solve the symptoms of a problem instead of just solving the problem is that people are idiots. There are people out there who are supposed to be solving our problems, but are too stupid and lazy to solve them effectively, so they come up with some random crap that just sounds good and sounds like what people want to hear.
Example: My school is now requiring all teachers to wear name tags because of what happened in Columbine. Why? How will that stop a student (or another teacher, for that matter) from shooting up the school? We also have an anonymous tip box. This was discussed in a previous article, about some company (I forget the name... someone help?) that was doing this, and how it would never work.
Basically, the bottom line is: If you don't know how to solve a problem, don't try to sound like you know how.
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
You have a pretty good point there. I think it could be either. Some people actually do believe that they have the right answer when they're completely wrong... others, as you said, know the correct answer, but won't say it. Very interesting post.
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
Yeah, but that wasn't the point... the point was that you don't need guns to kill people. You can do it with a knife, a baseball bat... heck, you can do it with your hands. Besides, a kid having access to a gun will not cause them to use it - there has to be some other force influencing them.
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
1. There's nothing in the US constitution that says a gun should be available as an over-the-counter consumer good. Most countries with strict gun control in EUrope allow gun ownership for sporting purposes. 3. At the moment, there's no training required at all. Training could be made a requirement to get a gun license, kinda like the drivers license (although if they make it anything like the US drivers ed, they might as well not bother) 4. see point 3 5. Sources?
Mostly correct. It's more complex than simply 'not prosecuring'. A coffeeshop may have up to 500 grams of Marijuana under the counter, provided they have a license to sell it.
This comment was simply in poor taste. The lawsuit was dumb, and easy to make fun of. But people actually died in the incident in question. To mock needless murdur like is in poor taste. You sir seem to have class with a capital A.
I demand one billion dollars for emotional damages-or else I'll shoot.
"Control the media, control the mind."-Cabal
I've got the impulse to run, pick up the rail, drop by the red armor, pick up a buddy or two, and go cap a flag. How about you?
The deadlier the weapon, the more deaths it will cause (by definition).
Only if it is used. I could build a nuclear weapon, set it on the ground somewhere with all the codes locked safely away, and then just turn around and walk away. Certainly a deadly weapon, but a completely harmless one, because it cannot be used.
Very few schoolkids have access to nuclear weapons tho...
I think it is more the case of "The Deadlier The Weapon, The Easier It Is To Kill Someone With It". Sure, you can kill a man with a knife, but you have to be damn sure you want to kill him and you have to get up close and personal. With a gun, you can kill someone by moving a finger and it doesn't need nearly as much mental strength as stabbing someone.
While your conclusion does theoretically make some sense, it is drawn from flawed logic. A weapon does not become more or less deadly simply because there are more instances thereof. If I have a gun, that gun is certainly a deadly weapon. If I have two guns, neither is any deadlier than it would be if it were the only gun I had. If I have ten thousand guns, none of them is any deadlier than it would be if I only had one.
Again, technically true, but you have to agree that the odds of being shot in a country where 10,000 people have a gun is significantly higher than a country where only one guy owns one.
If more guns are available, more deaths will occur, but only if the guns are misused. Likewise, if fewer guns are available, fewer deaths would occur only if the guns removed were ones that would have been misused.
Or in other words "If more guns are available, more deaths will occur unless every single one of the guns that are added is used responsibly. Likewise, if fewer guns are available, less deaths will occur unless every single gun removed is being used responsibly". Fair? The sad fact is that a lot of people who have guns do not use them responsibly, which means, by your definition, that less guns means fewer deaths. But an armed person is in far less danger against an armed opponent than an unarmed person is. Would this be because a person with a gun is a much less threatening target and so you don't want to shoot them? If someone has a gun and wants to shoot you, then they shoot you. If you also have a gun, then they see you as a threat, and they shoot you. Either way, you have to admit, that if those guns were not available, neither person would get shot. Personally, I don't think that humans as a whole are evolved enough to deal with being able to kill from a distance with almost no effort. We're just not mentally equipped to deal with that kind of power. I'd be in favour of a total ban on guns and making carrying knives mandatory, but as the man says, the genie is out of the bottle now.
I'm sorry, I didn't know there was such a thing as the "trenchcoat mafia" I thought it was some colloquial term made up by their fellow students, then exploited by the media. At least, that's what I'd heard.
Yes, but do you think that a Columbine-style mass murder would be possible with a kitchen knife? You could kill one person with a knife before people freak, and then you're not catching more. I mean, think about what would happen if the Trenchcoat Mafia had decided to just kill as many as they could, and get their names into the history books before they died? I mean, they had enough power to go shopping through the school and execute their picks of the students. If they had just been going for raw numbers, I think they could've made it into three digits. Try that with a knife.
Plus, people can fight a knife. I personally know how to disarm a person 3 ways when they attack with a knife, thanks to a self-defense seminar in Judo class. I've never used them, I probably learned them wrong, and would probably gouge my hand if I tried, but at least its possible. There are very few options at gunpoint. Besides, you can run from a knife, and get to safety. You can't outrun a bullet.
Oh yeah? Take a look at England. Damn few people killed by guns. Nobody has guns, not even the cops don't have guns. If they see a criminal with a gun, they call in the friggin' S.A.S., and that's military. The S.A.S. doesn't bother with arresting people. There aren't many gun crimes in England.
Is it just me or was the sarcasm of the previous post lost on this person?
I live in Australia and more and more it is going towards people not taking responsibility for themselves, blame something/someone else.
Recently a guy got paralysed when he went body surfing at a beach, he tried to sue the council for millions because they didn't have signs up at the beach warning that surfing is dangerous. What a fucking loser!
Oh well, good decision by the judge anyway...
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
Grossman really ticks me off because he's a hypocrite. When talking to a group of mostly-gamers, he uses calm, somewhat reasoned discussion. I still think he's wrong, but he comes off as slightly more sensible than the normal media pundit. (Even if he seems to think gamers are also Trekkies/Trekkers.)
However, I hold in my hand an article from yesterday's paper where, when talking at a press conference where he was selling his book, he calls game-makers "scum" who are worse than "pimps, pushers and pornographers". Admittedly, some people in the industry can be total jackasses, but worse than "pimps, pushers and pornographers"? There's a way to take a non-issue and put it in front of the stuff that's *really* causing problems.
But Grossman DOESN'T talk about how the kid was firing semirandomly into a crowd without picking targets. The crowd was dense enough that it would take a good shot to aim and *not* hit someone. Since the ones that were hit likely fell, it's no wonder they weren't there to take the next bullet.
Also, he doesn't mention that a cop who is in a situation where he should fire his gun is on an adrenaline rush and chasing someone who more than likely is better armed than he is.
I heard the judge *does* go the other way ;{
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Grossman's not wrong ... per se' ... he simply doesn't mention that **** ALL **** video games are derivatives of Government Simulation projects.
.... the Library!)
.... A free reference to "Understanding Media: The Extension of Man" by Marshall McLuhan to the first person who can tell me who said "The Medium *is* the Message"
Of course the NYPD has no excuse for not arming their cops with Sega Geneisis systems. Does this sound absurd ? Of *course* it does. It's as absurd as claiming that the world is flat when you're a victorian. Reality is an absurd concept, but video games *do* prepare the youth to be more efficient killers. That (after all) *was* the whole point of developing them in the first place.
First person to pipe up and tell me I didn't cite any facts gets a reference to "Virtual Reality" by Howard Rheingold ISBN 0-671-77897-8 (buy the book yourself or go to the evil predecessor of the InterNET
The opinions expressed here-in are not *necessarily* the opinions of "Howard Rheingold", he joins me in expecting you to think and research for yourself (we're both wierd that way.)
Also
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Hey Asshole!
... WOW .. Huge Farking surprise!)
... there's a new drug on the block, Marijuana") (by now you forgot how this paragraph started ... you have lost the ability to remember what you read at the beggining of this paragraph in true Pavlovian style) that they have a choice!
Someday you should actually *read* Henry Davis Thoreou's essay "Civil Disobediance"
Posting the DeCSS code is *exactly* what my good buddy Hank-Dave was talking about. (Don't know who I'm talking about
If you had a Farging CLUE what you were talking about you would know that:
A) A prerequisite to being a judge is being a lawyer
B) While it is not a specific prerequisite, *MOST* people who become lawyers do so for the power
C) In order to become a judge in America you have to be a member of the "good ole' boy" network, which it can be readily extrapolated is made up of power hungry ex-lawyers
D) (and you actually have to have a brain for this one) The United States could never be considered by any person with a reasonable number of firing neurons and a modicum of desire to use them, given this information, to be a democracy. The actual political definition for what the U.S. currently is, is "Oligarchy" (Government by a few individuals in the interest of those same individuals, at the expense of the masses
-- I'm paraphrasing here too
Look for next years official school curriculum to add "paraphrasing: telling lies to make the goverment look bad" to the definition "InterNET: a threat to the democracy of the United States of America that your friendly, well meaning Government, had to outlaw for your own protection"
Please send thanks in the form of monetary contributions to Emanual Goldstein : C/O Oligarchies-R-US
The Oligarchy strives hard to convince the already brainwashed masses (whom their ancestors have had under their control since before they started the Official Government Documentary "Reefer Madness" with the line "You thought Cocaine and Heroine were bad
Did you overflow your stack? Of course you did! Because I used the same tactics on you that the Oligarchy of the United States of America uses on people with a whole lot less going on upstairs than we do, every day.
"The medium is the message?"
--- It was a reasonable call by a briliant man (
But just as George Orwell (pen name of Eric Blair) underestimated man's inhumanity to man, Henry David Thoreou underestimated the need for civil disobedience!
YOU WANNA BE A PAWN???? GO KILL INNOCENTS! THE GOV WILL PROVIDE DOWNGRADED SEGA SYSTEMS THAT THEY SPENT AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE MORE MONEY ON SO THEY CAN BANKROLL THEIR PORK-FUNDS!
Think I sound like a cospiracy theorist???? Huge surprise there too. G00d luck Winston.
(Did I sound bitter there?)
n the spirit of this:
Dear NSA,
Since RTM retired you've become a bunch of skalliwags. R U ever going to figure out how many of your systems I own, and how I did it?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Hey, I just looked at you're user page, and I owe you a huge apology. I underestimated you. You're a *much* bigger clueless fuck than I originally thought!
Sorry to have under-estimated you (thanks to PigleT for applying his "assinine template" to my original post(s) and pointing out that a hyphen is called for!)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No danger of your name leaking out anytime soon, to be sure!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Clueless person to even more clueless person"
We all know you want us to know what you mean so you don't have to say what you mean. This gives the advantage of you being able to say later that what you said is not what you meant. You're either a politician, or you hope to be one someday. And if you had a clue you would know that being is illegal under certain laws. I'm heterosexual, but if I wasn't, I'd *proudly* proclaim the contrary. Please kill yourself, before some scenario you set yourself up in claims you, and we all have to read about you in the "Darwin Awards!"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
*** If you believe everything you've been taught in school ... if you have no mind ... if you think linux is *THE* operating system, or if you wouldn't crawl on your stomach through a pile of broken glass coated with hydrogen peroxide on a hot summers day just to eat the peanuts out of Angelina Jolies shit (even if you *are* her brother) ... ****DON'T READ THIS**** You might be offended! (and I wouldn't want to offend you (he said with his tongue so firmly implanted in his cheek that chipmunks in a three mile vicinity started to get horny)) ***
...]
.. they have a point ... it used to be up to our government to teach children how to kill ... and they were more than happy to give them real world experience. Now they're being upstaged by these upstart wannabee wags who dare kill without benefit of governmental 'gun-holding' (feel free to apply the "This is my rifle ... this is my gun" faggot little military saying and make the logical conclusion that I'm suggesting that the military isn't happy unless they are holding childrens penises) and choose different innocent people than the goverment would have targeted!!!
... gotta protect them from themselves dontcha know!) that their money would be invested solely for the purpose of killing the innocents they (covertly .. sans public knowledge) themselves targeted. Talk about lack of gratification ... these little piss-ants would actually use the skills they developed using derivatives of the systems the government weenies spent billions (trillions) on and learn to kill unauthorized innocents, all using a $60.00 Sega game???? What a bunch of ungrateful pricks! Didn't they swallow the bullshit we've been feeding them since kindergarten??? How *dare* they have *and exhibit* a mind of their own!
... that is left as an exercise up to the reader who belongs to the triple-digit club (thanks to PigleT who so ingraciously pointed out that there should be a hyphen between triple and digit!)
... (but is it just me, or does it look *exactly* like her X husband Jonny Miller from the Hackers flick???)
[now that we've weeded out the hypocrits
Hey
It's very unpatriotic, to be sure!
When the government started the whole video game revolution with their sims, they had a good faith agreement with the American public (not with their knowledge of course
(Anyone who thinks that I am off base (after you take away the extreme scarcasim I have applied, of course) should read Howard Rheingolds "Virtual Reality" - ISBN 0-671-77897-8 He *doesn't* express the above political views in the above posting
(I didn't sound bitter there, did I?)
Pre-.sig "What I wouldn't give to be Angelina Jolies brother
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Decrease the surplus population
My brother found the US more of a Police state than Cuba. In parts of the US if you walk down the wrong street at the wrong time, the police will hassle you all night long. My brother got arrested just for walking down a street with a beer, on his second day there. While a week before he left for Cuba he got arested for driving with a case of beer on the rear seat - What kind of law is that?. What if you boot is already full. While in Cube everyone is so easy going & the authorites don't kgive a fuck about things like that. BTW, both in totally & at a per capita leval, American law enforcement agencies kill a lot more Americans than the amount of Cubans killed by there govt. Actually by many factors - spurilous warrents, no knock raids, incarceration levals, death sentence levals, forfeiture without proof, mandatory sentencing, etc etc etc - The US could be classified as the only police state in the OECD. In more than many ways the benign Cuban dictatorship, is a lot freeer than the US. BTW did you know that most Cuban cops don't even own guns, let alone reapetedly use them on their own people.
So if you vote for a candidate that doesnt poll first or second your vote isnt wasted as your preference still matters. That the way it is in Australian, where if you have a choice of 6 candidates, you number the squares from 1 to 6 in order of preference. That way if their was a situation like in the 92 US presidential election where Clinton got 40%, Bush got 30% & Perot got 20% (well something like that), then the people who voted for Perot wouldnt had wasted their vote, as their preferences would have gone to either Clinton or Bush, which means the elected leader would have been the choice of a majority, not a minority.
It's the interplay of these various principles that makes governance so interesting and, in my totally biased opinion, the American system so strong.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
If their parents, and their friend's parents don't have any guns, and the shops and shows won't sell guns to them, then they will have a very hard time getting hold a gun.
Then they would just get a gun from one of the many illegal gun dealers out there. Some already do it that way anyway.
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
OK, we ban guns in the United States completely. As someone pointed out earlier, the gun-related crime rate starts by going up, since only criminals have guns. Sure. 30 Years down the road, all the guns are worn out and since no more are being manufactured, the problem is solved. Right? No.
Some people (many people) have the mentality that if the United States does something, then the whole world will follow. Just because the United States doesn't allow guns doesn't mean that no other countries around the world won't produce them. Instead of Americans having guns to protect themselves, we'll have people smuggling them into the US. Yay! That is exactly what they need.
I'm from Canada. I have a really good feeling that the Canadian government would *not* try to prevent us from having firearms.
On another note, I am 16, I play Quake, and I have never shot up a school yard.
I never forget it - it's right there in my mind whenever I'm discussing travel with friends - it's the reason I'll never set foot in America.
Refusing to set foot in America for fear of getting shot makes about as much sense as refusing to set foot in Australia for fear of getting eaten by a crocodile.
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
Why do people always focus -- fixate -- on these extremely rare behaviors? There's not a thing in the world that would have stopped those kids, or Tim McVeigh, for that matter. There will always be a means for acting out violence.
People are evil. Plain and simple. They (we) are corrupt to the very core. To disagree is to only show blindness to the problem. At our heart we are rebels and renegades. No man-made law is going to change this. That is the original message of, "you can't legislate morality." No law is going to fix the broken condition of man's heart.
A gun is no more evil than a rock. A knife is no more murderous than a bag of fertilizer. It is the man that wields these objects that makes them dangerous. In this whole world, only man has the ability to form intent.
A man that I respect quite a lot says that this evil is proof that man is of God's image-- only such an image could be so diametrically opposite.
Until people have a change in their internal condition -- a change of heart -- nothing will change. Cain needed no gun to kill Abel, did he? David needed no "assault rifle" to dispatch Uriah the Hittite, did he? Nothing you can hold in your hand is more dangerous or evil than the heart that is the very core of your being.
What should we have done if the judge had gone the other way? Precisely what we do when the judge rules for a position that we favor. Oh, horsehockey. Our actions should be judged by MORAL senses of right and wrong, not legal judegements. If Roger B. Taney rules that slaves have no rights under law, do we shut down our underground railroad? No. Did you expect Roe vs. Wade to make the anti-abortionists sit down and shut up? Hardly. In this case, however, exactly how would one have engaged in civil disobedience? And how would you boycott the "company"? Signal 11, do you just have these blocks of canned responses ready for quick entry into new stories to karma whore?
Actually, at the time ( and I say at the time, because I don't know what laws have been passed since Columbine ) it was not illegal for an adult to transfer a rifle or a shotgun for a minor. But then again, saying EVERYWHERE in the US is like saying ALWAYS or NEVER in science: It just doesn't work that way. The federal government can't just mandate laws to the states. It can coerce laws from the states through money, but it can't just pull things into federal statutes, thanks to Amendment 10 (Whoa, a post about an amendment other than 1 or 2) which says ~Those powers that are not expressely given to the Federal Government, nor denied to the states, are the realm of the state, or the individual.~ Thats not verbatim, but very close. As for the rest of the gun control argument, I haven't seen anything that hasn't been said time and time again. Because we have PRO Gun Control groups screaming their heads off at the ANTI Gun Control groups and vice versa, there isn't going to be any kind of rational discourse on the subject. Take our Government. Hell, take this thread. :P Those who know it least, know it loudest... I'm being heard in Berlin. :) Forvrin
Here's a comment a friend of mine once made that has stuck with me and made me sure that I'd rather face a person with a gun: A person with a knife is aware that when they stick you, its going to get all over them too. There is no detatchment. Its visceral and personal. Now knowing that, who would you rather face?
You're missing the point. A gun is dissassociative. The knife wielding lunatic doesn't mind having your blood and guts and worse spilled all over his hand. Think about it for a moment. A bullet makes a little hole (Entry). Its about association and perception. There is little trivial about the difference between a knife wound and a gun wound, with the exception of shotguns, which are more messy than knives. But you are something like 30 times more likely to be mugged with a handgun than a shotgun.
You are obviously not an American. If you were, then you would know that the vast majority of gun owners and enthusiasts (myself included) view the groups you cite with as much contempt as you do. By showing your ignorance with such a general statement, you have invalidated your entire argument by engaging in the same uninformed rhetoric as the groups you criticize. Roman_Legion
For the Columbine example, everyone know that if fire weapons weren't so easily buyable, crazed nuts won't be so numerous to perform mass murders. Now, NRA won't allow any politician to restrict ownerships of deadly weapons. And it's well known that power is always in the hand of the ones who have guns, even if they're a minority.
Such things have more related to cowardice than to laziness. As long as America will be made up of nearly-faschist peoples thinking a man is nude without his rifle and of other too frightened to try to do something against gun trade, and prefering to blame games, TV or anything instead, this problem won't be solved.
sigmentation fault
It could be also useful to question the relative place of money and human lives in today's world. As long as mankind will be a tool for economy insted of economy being a tool for mankind, as long as the ultimate success will be to be richer than our neighbours, as long as we will consider every rich man has well deserved his reward... Well, as long as all this, an human life won't appear to be something really important, particularly another's life.
sigmentation fault
Grossman recounts this story (let's not forget he was a main witness and advisor for the case against the media) a lot, but what he fails to bring up is that the kid was obviously temporarily insane.
At that moment, he probably had so much clarity that the gun would not move when he aimed it.
Compare that to the cops, that were in fear of their lives (whether justified or not).
---
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"My life is a patio of fun."
> The federal government can't just mandate laws
> to the states...thanks to Amendment 10
That is a GROSS oversimplification. The Feds pass laws all the time that affect all of us directly. If you don't think that's the case, you need to wake up!
Here's one example -- Federal income tax. There are a few thousand others.
The 10th is as tattered as the 2nd and 4th Amendments. The Feds are always passing laws on things that they weren't given express permission to.
It's a bad scene. Too bad all the other countries suck more.
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
1) To be totally fair, the violence in video games will have an effect on children...or anyone, for that matter. However, the effect is not always going to send the kids rushing to kill the nearest living object. Most of us are proof of that.
2) If the kids are moved to murder someone because of the violence they saw in a video game, they probably had a few problems with their morality beforehand. I cannot imagine a child with a perfect grasp of morality throwing it all out the window because of Quake.
3) Therefore, a lawsuit against the gaming company is ridiculous. Sue the parents for not instilling a greater sense of morality or something that makes just a tiny bit more sense.
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
If you think about it a bit, freedom of speech is totally lost at the point that it is decided that a court may hold a hearing to determine if that speech is permitted. Free speech is not subject to potential restraint or threat of punishment. Free speech in America is a dead issue.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
I've played all of ID's games. I've watched as the monsters in Quake II thrash around on the ground after you've shot their heads off. I've killed the Nazis in Wolfenstein, I've seen the body parts hanging from the walls in Doom, I've fragged all my friends on Quake 3 until my fingers practically bled, but I have never, not once even contemplated briging a gun to school and shooting my schoolmates. At least in my mind there's a difference between the real world and computer games, but I guess in the minds of many of these kids - kids that have grown up with parents who just don't give a damn as to what their child is doing, parents who just don't give a damn as to what they're doing themselves, and what effect it may have on their kids, in the minds of these kids there is no difference between the computer games they play and real life. Instead of making lawsuits against the companies who give the rest of us a little entertainment, a chance to relax, and an outlet for our aggressions, we should take every parent who doesn't play an active, positive, and helpfull role in their child's life, to court.
--Baelmix
>If a law is passed to ban guns or severly restrict them, it will not impede criminals at all.
>Unless you are under some delusion that a gun ban will actually keep criminals from getting guns.
You sound like you haven't lived very long in countries other than the USA, as you miss what is common knowledge in areas with successful gun control - once the laws are in place and the transition period is over, criminals almost universally choose not to use guns because things are so much more in their favour if they don't have a gun. If your experience of gun law systems and culture is restricted to just the USA, you probably can't even imagine how this could possibly be. And to be fair, the US currently has such entrenched gun-culture that the transition period could take a decade - heaps of time to point out that the laws aren't working (and blindly assume this means they won't work) and get them repelled.
The facts of criminal gun use in restricted-use countries is that if someone breaks into my house (I'm not living in the USA anymore), I know with a fair degree of certainty that they are not carrying a gun. How can this be?!? Why would they not leap at the opportunity to carry a gun when they know I won't have one?!?
How it all works is actually pretty complex, but one contributing factor is this:
A single gunshot, anywhere. Even a single sighting of someone carrying a gun, and the equivalent of a SWAT team cordons off the area of the city. The criminal has virtually no chance of escape and a very good chance of being shot like a dog in the street. Criminal gun use is rare enough that a massive police response is both called for and available. Compare this to a criminal choosing to not carry a gun - you have a far greater chance of success, you suffer no loss of intimidation (your victims are not armed), and even if you get caught - not only will you survive, but the penalties are drastically smaller.
IOW, only stupid criminals carry guns, and stupid criminals get caught anyway.
This is only one factor in why criminals rarely use guns where guns are restricted. I can (and do) walk down any street in any part of the city at any time of night or day and not have the slightest fear of being held up at gunpoint. When I'm in the USA, things are completely different.
The best solution would be to change gun culture, but gun laws eventually do change gun culture, and claiming that they don't work based on US gun-culture thinking (eg people need guns or else criminals will use them more), leads to assumptions that just don't live up to life under gun restrictions.
>One obvious fallacy in your argument is that if only the criminal has a gun, he does not need to fire and
:-)
>thus alert everybody. Most unarmed civillians do not exactly pose a threat to an armed mugger... so
>now the THREAT of the firearm suffices.
This is amusing - I live in an area where the gun laws result in criminals choosing to not carry guns, I try to illustrate out one of the (many) reasons why they make this choice, and here you are trying to argue why they _would_ carry guns, when it is already the case that they don't.
Let me address this so-called fallacy. A criminal doesn't need to fire a gun to alert everybody - firing it just removes all possibility of _not_ alerting everyone - removes all chance of success. Just carrying one is an extra, unnecessary risk that is simply not worth it to most criminals - this is the thing that people who have never lived outside the USA seem to find hard to grasp. Besides, getting a restricted weapon (once they have been restricted for long enough) is a big enough hassle to put off all but the fairly determined.
>Which IS more intimidating, since now a mugger doesn't have to way 300#...
>In addition, this allows for easier hot burglaries, as British statistics demonstrate.
Hmmm, muggings? What are they? I don't actually know of anyone I know actually having been mugged (with the exception of those mugged in the US of course). Let me see - the criminal wants money, and with an unarmed populace, he can get it by property theft (as you point out), but with an armed populace this is very risky and a safer form of property theft is to physically ambush people where he controls the game (mug them). Now which do I prefer - property theft without physical harm (burglary), or property theft with physical threat, harm and possible murder (mugging). (Hey - if you can indulge in self-serving naive theorising, then so can I
>Whereas in the US, anybody who tries such a thing is decently likely to encounter one VERY angry
>homeowner with a handgun, and therefore simply TRYING is stupid.
As you point out, a criminal in the US is forced to carry (and even use) a gun whether they want to or not, (else they are a threat to no-one and outgunned by everyone). With sane gun laws, criminals are free to not use guns, and generally choose to avoid them. Crime isn't going to go away, but virtually all crime is about profit (money, drugs, etc.), and murder is a highly unwanted extra complication to the crime. Working gun laws indirectly take guns out of the hands of criminals, and the result is fewer deaths from crime (and also a somewhat different distribution of the criminal activity, as you point out, but I fail to appreciate much relevance), not to mention accidents in the home...
Before you theorise as to why gun restrictions can't work, live for a significant period of your life in an area where they already are working (you give the impression you haven't done this). Find out why they do work, and think about what systems could translate those elements into the US.
I'm not in favour of much gun control - a diminished gun-culture seems far better, but to pretend that restrictions can't possibly work when they frequently so clearly do is just silly, especially from people who have never even lived in places with successful systems in place, as is all too often the case.
It's pointless to try to compare the USA to Switzerland. (Too many variables, the biggest being a VERY different culture). But there is a culturally VERY similar country to the north a bit. More restrictive gun control including a recently introduced compulsory national registry, and a lower violent crime rate, accidental gun death rate etc. (and before I get yelled at by Canucks, I AM one and to prove it I will spell "colour", "centre" and tell you that the last letter of the alphabet is ZED). oh, and for those of you who know about Molson... i am CANADIAN!
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
handguns are a little too sexy for males past puberty... The problem with the states is that they haven't figured out that gun ownership should be a privelege not a right just like driving a car. I'm not allowed to drive a car if I can't prove myself safe, why should I be allowed to carry something a lot more lethal. (at least if you're off the freeway)
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Or the CD... even if it isn't "OPEN SOURCE CD!!!" :)
Perhaps you are forgetting something... Those guys at Columbine killed themselves, too. Why would they CARE if they got shot if they were planning on killing themselves anyway? You're right, it might make some otherwise sane person think twice before shooting, but sane people don't shoot other people unless they have a VERY good reason, and then they try to shoot them in such a manner as to do only the necessary amount damage. Perhaps you've forgotten about the bombs as well. It wouldn't be difficult for someone to kill a whole bunch of people in a school without risking their lives directly even if everyone had a gun. I know someone who has killed someone before, with a gun, because the other guy got pissed off at him, and started waving a gun in his face. He freaked out and blew him away. Now he's going to be in prison for a very long time, and his friend is dead. Neither one of them had any real use for owning a gun except for the fact that it made them feel better to have one -- they were no more likely than anyone else to actually *need* one for something. But, because they were available, and *normal* people still occasionally do dumb things and freak out, one guy is dead and the other is in prison, dealing with the fact that he blew his friend away in his living room with his wife and kids at home. I certainly hope that your post was a joke intended to piss people off.
I believe the topic was something to do with a lawsuit against id software (over a shooting) being dismissed? Everybody cheers.
Bear in mind however, that imitation is the primary human method of learning. It's how you learn to hold a cigarette, kiss, write (or type), fire an handgun (if you get around to it), drive (and so the list goes on).
This also applies to social behaviour; we learn it from the world. That world also includes TV and computers; which may be more real (or at least important) to some people than the world of their school, job or corner store.
All freedoms have their price, and this doesn't just include trite remarks about the blood of patriots; you have to include the odd postal-kiddie on the cheque. That kiddie didn't just appear, they needed a lot of things to go postal; motivation, training and weapons.
I'm not a idealist, so I don't have a carved-in- stone answer, however it strikes me that freedoms and consequences are linked and people only want to look at one or the other. Accept that those good old blood and guts games have a price and accept the price you pay for freedom.
Silicon Rat
PS: Knives? Axes are more lethal, if you don't have a gun.
I live in Scotland (hence the nick) and I honestly have to say that there is sense in nation-wide gun control. Banning the import of guns, the ownership of guns above a certain calibre, carrying firearms in public, and imposing life prison sentances even for armed robbery is a way of life in the UK. With a few tragic exceptions every year, gun-related deaths in Scotland and England are low per head of population. The police do not carry firearms on the beat; the only officers allowed to use guns have to be given authority from an area HQ station, and the weapons themselves are stored in a secured room within the station until they are authorised. They are logged when leaving the station and when they come back, together with the number of rounds that leave and return. I feel this puts a degree of public trust in the police, and only further highlights the fact that the ownership of firearms can be - literally - lethal. Say for example, you own a gun, and one night you're burgled. The intruder finds your gun. You hear this intruder and get up to get your gun - but it's not there. You daren't try and stop this person as you know they are armed, so what do you do ? You lie back in bed and get robbed. With regards to the right to bear arms - I don't mean to put people's noses out of joint, but it's a load of old cobblers ! How could any sane person feel safe in a country where there is a very strong chance that each and every one of their neighbours has at least one firearm ? I realise that in my country's past and even in our present day we are proud of the stance we made against the English and their tyrannical rule over our land, but that's ALL we're proud of - the stance - not the slaughter and bloodshed we caused, and certainly not that we suffered. My point is that we're now living in a society where we value life (in general; not just humanity) more than we did even 50 years ago. Why does anybody need a gun ?
Phillip-Morris causes people to get lung cancer. Smith-Wesson cause people to get killed by bullets. People want to sue Orkin to pay for their broken TV over this commercial (one women threw a motorcycle helmet at the TV, maybe the helmet maker should be responsible for having too hard a helmet). Why doesn't iD (any game makers) cause people to be violent? I mean, this case follows all the other rules, blame someone else. This seems perfectly made for our judicial system.
:)
Am I missing something?
And just how do you propose to do that? You won't be getting any gun of mine; I promise you that. And I know that many, many other people will keep their guns.
Face it, guns are here to stay. The arguments for banning guns sound *so* similar to the arguments in favor of the encryption export laws, which people here are so against.
Still, I can understand the anti-gun position of most people here. If I had been indoctrinated all my life to fear guns, I'd probably hold hoplophobic opinions, too.
If you *really* look at the statistics...I mean *really* look, with an open mind...you will find that gun ownership does not lead to an increase in murders. But you have to be open-minded and intellectually honest in order to see that.
One pointer...compare murder rates in North Dakota and Saskatchewan. See what you come up with.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
Why do I care what a criminal uses to kill me? I want a gun precisely because it's easy to use and very effective. I don't want to try to fight off an attacker with a knife. I'm not a big guy and I probably wouldn't win. The guy has no right to be in my home and no right to threaten my life. If he decides to do those things, I should be well within my rights to shoot him on the spot. I'm not going to play games of chance when it comes to defending myself and my family. I do believe that a person should have to take a training course in order to own a gun though. That would drastically cut down on the stupid accidents that happen when some moron doesn't know how to properly use, clean, and store a gun.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Grossman is full of crap. Moving a mouse cursor over targets IS NOTHING like firing a gun. The only conceivable way it could have helped him is by improving hand-eye coordination, but even Super Mario Bros. will do that, as will tennis. I read somewhere that the kid had fired guns before too. Grossman probably doesn't mention that. The guy is either an idiot or he's got an agenda that we don't know about.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Maybe you'd like to provide a link or reference to these "studies." I've seen studies that "prove" all sorts of asinine stuff. I don't buy this without some pretty damn good proof. Nearly all of the kids that have been involved in the shootings over the last few years have had MUCH bigger problems than the video games they were playing or the movies they watched. Nobody says a damn thing about fixing the real problems though.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
A mistake from a gun can end a life - my life, because you made an error in judgement.
By your logic we should outlaw cars. An error in judgement can kill many people, and does, in fact, kill several orders of magnitude more people every year than guns do. Yet I hear nobody crying for the banning of motor vehicles. "Ah, but they're useful" people will say. So what? A gun is very useful to me in providing a defense for my home and family. Is it my fault that some idiots don't know how to take responsibility for a gun? Why should I have the only reasonably effective means of defending my family taken away because of someone else's incompetence? Aside from requiring training (and/or a competence test) for the purchase of a gun, I don't believe I should be restricted in any way from owning weapons for sport or defense. Such training and testing should cut down on the number of accidents quite a bit. Then the vast majority of gun-related injuries and deaths will be caused by criminals, just as they would if you banned guns altogether. (More on this later)
I don't trust anyone's judgement, thus I'd like to see guns removed from society.
Just like they've removed drugs from society. Just like prohibition removed alcohol and its evil effects such as crime from society, right? Wake up. If you ban guns, people will want them even more, because they will suddenly feel defenseless. There will be many people willing to provide those guns too, because it will become a much more lucrative business, just like drugs. Suddenly only criminals and the government will have weapons. As someone who doesn't trust the judgement of others, surely you can understand that people will not like such a situation where they feel even more at the mercy of those in power. I don't trust the judgement of others all that much either. That's exactly why I want the right to possess a gun. In case their bad judgement leads them to assault me or my family.
Try this article if you'd like to see some numbers. Gun violence is actually rising in the UK now, despite the gun ban. This illustrates the point that it's not legal owners of guns that are the problem. It's the criminals who don't give a damn about any gun ban anyway.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That's an argument?
This Internet thing must be really growing. We seem to be living on different planets or something. I'm saying this because on my planet, real effects tend to matter a bit more than intentions. Just because cars weren't intended to kill people, doesn't mean they don't do it quite effectively. Should we just make our decisions based on intentions from now on? I think I'll end this post right now before I say something very sarcastic. Thank you, drive through.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually, in my case, the odds would be better if I and the attacker both had a gun rather than him having a knife or bat or whatever and me having access to a similar weapon. I'm not big and I probably wouldn't stand much of a chance if it comes to hand-to-hand fighting. At least with a gun, the odds are a bit more even. If I've practiced enough, the odds might even be in my favor.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
but how can anyone say that greater access to weapons makes a society safer? (Obviously if that was true, the US would be the safest place in the world, which it clearly isn't)
Funny how we immediately jump on guns as the reason our country isn't as safe as we think it should be. If we just take away everyone's guns, they won't be able to hurt themselves or others. Damn! It's like we're to be treated like a bunch of kids! I'm not a damn kid. If I choose to own a gun to defend myself and my family, who the hell are you to tell me I shouldn't have that right? It's blatantly obvious that cops don't defend us. They get there after we've become victims and fill out paperwork. I don't see any reason why I should have to rely on sheer dumb luck to decide whether the person who breaks into my home will decide to kill me or not. But that's just one argument.
Have you considered that there are several other factors that play a large role in the problem, a larger role, IMHO, than guns even?
Think about the disparity in wealth in this country. Think about the fact that there are literally millions of Americans living below the poverty line. Think about the fact that public education in this country is shockingly bad. I wonder what kind of difference it would make in the violent crime statistics if people could actually support themselves and their family. I wonder what kind of difference it would make if kids got a good education that would give them some direction in life rather than leave them as barely literate punks with nothing to lose. Maybe if we spent some of this money we're using to fight the "war on drugs" on fixing up schools, hiring better teachers and paying them well, and providing better access to technology so that kids can learn something useful, we wouldn't need to have a war on drugs at all. Kids might end up being smart enough to make these decisions in their best interest. They'd have a good chance of making a living and providing for a family. But the government won't do that. It would make too much sense. We spend all kinds of money on national defense and attacking and defending other countries. We spend a bunch to pay interest on a national debt that we have yet to do anything significant to reduce. Why can't we spend this kind of money to educate all the children of this country the best we possibly can, rather than just relying on those who can afford to go to the best schools to become the leaders of this country? Then again, maybe that's the plan after all.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
>The problem is the US's "all or nothing" stance on guns - this belief
>that a right to own weapons is some divine mandate.
I'm not buying your argument that we'd be safer without guns, but let's accept for the point of argument.
You are talking about something enshrined in the Bill of Rights. To get rid of guns, we need to change the Bill of Rights, removing something. This is a dangerous precedend. Maybe there could be a better list if we were starting from scratch under today's circumstances, but making the BofR negotiable is just too high a price. Hmm, maybe defendants' rights . . . OJ was clearly guilty; let's allow double jeapardy. Those people that aren't willing to be searched must be hiding something. And those hurtful things that those folks are saying; there's too much freedom of speech.
Yes, the price may be high. But even assuming no or minimal benefits from the guns to society, tampering with the Bill of Rights is just too high a price.
hawk, esq.
>Again, technically true, but you have to agree that the odds of being
>shot in a country where 10,000 people have a gun is significantly
>higher than a country where only one guy owns one.
Probably, but the chance of producing such a country by disarmament are much lower than the chances of being shot in the country with 10,000 guns . . .
Windows and Mac users kill with guns, and *nix folks with kitchen knives, and *nix folks who use scripts concoct poisons?
:)
Yes, the evil Dr. Killgood finally has the pink bunny in his sights. No fancy gadgets to go wrong. He aims, he fires . . . no, he doesn't . . .
.
[pan camera to confused look, then pull back]
He looks down, opens his wrist-tag . . . *AUGHH* he used the other brand of batteries! . .
And the bunny bangs its drum as it wanders off once again . . .
I see, so in your mind, frivolous lawsuits are as important as genuine ones. You are exactly the same type of person who probably thinks suing McDonald's for burning yourself is a Good Thing. In fact, you are specifically what is wrong with Americans.
Also, the communist-nonsense you shot at me is a load of garbage. Believing that the courts shouldn't waste time on frivolous lawsuits is not communist. Perhaps you should read some Marx, grow up and come back here when you grasp some basic english.
I'm embarrassed that you're a Canadian.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
Your logic is so massively flawed it barely merits refuting.
You are correct that increased availability of something does make it easier to get a hold of. That's the only statement with even the slightest sense of logic. As for the others...
The deadlier the weapon, the more deaths it will cause (by definition).
Only if it is used. I could build a nuclear weapon, set it on the ground somewhere with all the codes locked safely away, and then just turn around and walk away. Certainly a deadly weapon, but a completely harmless one, because it cannot be used.
So if more guns are available, more deaths will occur, and if less guns are available, less deaths will occur.
While your conclusion does theoretically make some sense, it is drawn from flawed logic. A weapon does not become more or less deadly simply because there are more instances thereof. If I have a gun, that gun is certainly a deadly weapon. If I have two guns, neither is any deadlier than it would be if it were the only gun I had. If I have ten thousand guns, none of them is any deadlier than it would be if I only had one.
If more guns are available, more deaths will occur, but only if the guns are misused. Likewise, if fewer guns are available, fewer deaths would occur only if the guns removed were ones that would have been misused.
We can debate the makeup of the victims (ratio of "criminals" v's "the law abiding") - but how can anyone say that greater access to weapons makes a society safer?
The only safe playing field is one that is level. If you're willing and able to do what it takes, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need a gun. I don't have a gun; I have other means of defending myself and those I love. But those means are very rare, and to be effective they require a far greater expenditure of money, time, and resources than any gun does. So for most, a gun is the only way to level the playing field between themselves and those who would do them harm. No, it doesn't make society a safe place if everyone is armed. But an armed person is in far less danger against an armed opponent than an unarmed person is.
Criminals today are almost invariably armed. In this day and age it's the only way most people can pose any real threat, and posing a threat is the stock in trade of a criminal. You can take the guns out of the hands of the law-abiding, but you can't get them away from the criminals. They already get their guns by illegal means because legal ones are too easy to track, so gun laws change nothing for them.
Now, some gun laws do make sense. Trigger locks, for example. They won't do a damn thing to decrease gun violence, but they will do a great deal to reduce gun accidents. They don't reduce the effectiveness of a gun, because there is no law stating that the locks must be used, only that they must be made available.
Smart guns: iffy. They would certainly help reduce gun accidents and even short-term gun theft. But smart guns rely on technology, and any technology can be cracked given the time and resources to figure out the trick. The best you can do is make it really, really hard to crack. This rules out any remote device like rings or watches which the owner must wear for the gun to go off; "dummy" devices wouldn't be too hard to make (and besides, anything which can be worn can be stolen along with the gun). You'd have to go with something like handprint-sensing technology, coupled with thermal detection so that you couldn't simply chop someone's hand off and use it with the gun. And no backdoors. This is the ideal case, but the gun could still be modchipped. The modchipping takes time; certainly the gun couldn't be used at the place where it was stolen. But no criminal with half a brain does that anyway; they steal guns from locales farther off from the intendeed scene of the crime, to throw investigations off track.
Obviously if that was true, the US would be the safest place in the world, which it clearly isn't
Depends. You're speaking of only one statistic: gun deaths. And indeed, the chances of dying by a gun are greater here than most other places. However, there are far more ways to die than by being shot. Take Mozambique's current situation, for instance. Very, very few people own guns there. But right now, I'd say it's pretty damned dangerous to live there. Then take drug overdoses. I don't know the ststistics here or in other parts of the world. But if drugs are easier to get then it's also easier to die from them (this is the difference between drugs and guns: drugs are bought specifically to be used, whereas most guns are bought in the hope that they never will be). And drugs are certainly easier to get in some parts of Europe, particularly the Netherlands but other places as well. So by your logic, these nations should be as dangerous as the US. The point is that you cannot take one example and draw generalities. It's like seeing one black swan and deciding based only on that observation that all swans are black.
Also, I love this idea of "universal disarmament." It would be great if that were what you really wanted. But it's not, of course; you'd still rather that the government and the police have guns, just not the average citizen. You thus allow a government which could become oppressive at any time to step all over the rights of its people, who no longer have the means to end the problems. And before you start on nonviolent means to getting rid of an oppressive government, I should remind you that a government which is truly oppressive is not going to be ousted by peaceful means. Part of the very definition of an oppressive government is that there is no legal (meaning peaceful) way to oust it. That's how it stays oppressive. And any government, except perhaps a true democracy, has the capability to become oppressive (and true democracy has problems of its own which make it unworkable for anything as large as even a small nation).
The abuse of guns is a terrible thing; I agree with you on this. But the genie is out of the bottle. There are only two ways to prevent the abuse of guns. Only one of these is sure-fire (pardon the pun): the banning and destruction of every single gun on the planet. That simply isn't going to happen. The other one is to teach people respect, both for guns (to prevent accidents) and other people (to prevent misuse of a gun; simply put you don't shoot people you respect, nor do you give them any cause to shoot you).
Something must be done about gun violence. Banning guns is easy, but it's not a real solution, both because it won't be a complete ban (I'd love to see you convince the military and police to give up their weapons), and because it doesn't address why people shoot each other. So something else has to be done.
Well the idea of having a government that derived it's powers and legitimacy from the people as opposed to some guy with a shiny hat was pretty unique at the time as well. (Didn't take the French long to try their hand at it though)
But yes, the 2nd Amendment is there because the framers had recognized the importance of a well-armed society when opposing a tyrannical government. After all, they had just lived through it. The spark that started the Revolutionary War was an attempt by the British military to sieze a privately-held armory in Concord, Massachusetts. The alarm having been raised throughout the countryside, farmers and townspeople used their guns to keep their weapons from being siezed.
But the framers were well aware of the fact that the government they established might one day fail and be no better than the one which they had fought for independence from. So many provisions were set up to both sustain the integrity of the government as long as possible (checks and balances between the various branches of the govt.), and many civil liberties were explicitly guaranteed as well.
Note that NONE of the framers didn't believe in the liberties granted in the Bill of Rights. The only reasons that it was adopted seperately were because:
1)It took a while for everyone to agree that additional checks on the government were needed
2)It was risky explicitly listing some, as that might lead people to believe that unlisted rights didn't exist
3)The federal government wasn't thought to have powers to infringe anyway
But pass it did. And so, should the existing US government go too far it is just that it should be overturned, if necessary by force of arms. I sure wouldn't want to be helpless if it came down to that, and neither did they.
As for slavery, a lot of the northern states were opposed to it, and while it had become reasonably popular in the south (there were still indentures, and many people simply hired laborers) it was a very big sticking point. The colonies would simply never have agreed on the issue and their only solution was to shelve it until future generations could resolve things. Attempts were made to limit slavery though - importation ended at a fixed date.
Of course, slavery didn't *really* take off in the south until the cotton gin was developed.
But don't characterize all of the framers as slave owners, or accepting of slavery. Many were, but not all. (nb that it was also still legal in the UK at the time)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Actually, violent crime -- especially "hot" burglaries -- has been INCREASING in Britain and Australia since their gun bans... so if you want to retain your POV, they're very, very bad examples of your case.
You're pulling that out of your ass, aren't you? Where did you get that stat?
I've seen a stat that showed CLEARLY that, the more guns there was in a country in Europe, the more violent crimes tehre were. FYI there are quite a lot of them in France compared to the rest of Western Europe (I think we come second next to Switzerland), and violent deaths are higher here than in Englang.
Beautiful logic.
High vodka consumption; out-of-control russian language use.
Drinking vodka helps you speak Russian, obviously!!!
It doesn't mean anything. Maybe the brits are just nicer people on average than americans.
You've never been there, have you? ;)
I'd be more interested in the crime rate before and after a country passed anti-gun laws.
What if they pass those gun laws because of an increasing crime rate involving firearms? Plus, if such a law is passed, do you believe firearm are just going to vanish all of a sudden because of it?
But are the Swiss as "in love" with guns as so many in the U.S. seem to be? Those adult males are required to have those rifles because they are part of Switzerland's defense force. I suspect that lower crime rate is more of a cultural thing than a fear of getting shot.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Hi. Let's add a new moderation tag to Slashdot: Gun Control Debate. Oh, and it should be -1.
You are obviously not clear on the meaning of freedom and natural rights. In a free society, i can own anything I wish, as long as it does not infringe the freedom of anyone else. I can own guns, knives, swords, and explosives in massive quantities. Why is it my right to have these things? Because it requires nothing of anyone else, except the willful manufacture and trade of arms.
You, on the other hand, are anti-freedom. You are trying to take away my natural rights by requiring me to do something. You are requiring me to give up my arms, which I have acquired through peaceful and cooperative trade. It is you who represent the dangerous future in America: the future where spineless lackwits strip away the rights of the people, for the supposed benefit of the children/elderly/infirm/whatever.
-jwb
http: //www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/01/16 /STN160801.300x204.jpg
I see one cop with a handgun and another cop with a rifle. Show me your evidence that the British cops don't pack.
I don't buy your other argument, either. Produce official statistics on crime rates in Britain. Thi s article in the Sunday Times claims that more than 3 million illegal guns are held in Britian, leading to over 13,000 armed offences in 1998. It also claims that there are 100 crimes per month involving firearms in Birmingham alone! I don't know what kind of reputation the Sunday Times has, but I've produced hard number and I suspect it is more evidence than you can produce.
-jwb
Perhaps it would be interesting for a bunch of us programmers to get together and make a really "Incorrect" game based on the recent shootings, just to piss people off. It could be something like a really messed up 'Postal,' except GPLed.
Heck, I'm surprised there aren't any MODs out for any of the first person shooters based on these events.
Maybe the US is doing enough about preventing guns from being used inappropriately (I doubt it), but it definately needs to be seen to be doing more.
Australian - and damn proud that our gun laws piss off the NRA from all the way over here (BTW NRA: your pro-gun ads aren't fooling anyone).
What you don't need to kill people is a black trenchcoat, a copy of Quake III or an attraction to gothic nightlife.
A gun takes a simple theft that the insurance companies can handle and turns it into a life or death struggle.
At the extreme end, a gun takes a school caffiteria brawn and turns it into a murderous rampage. America simply has to decide if it wants the risk of death in exchange for the "right to bear arms". Australia, thankfully, has made the right decision (Thank "God" *erhem* that we don't have that damn inconvient Second Amendment...)
Remember, this isn't a debate on traditional armed robbery - it's about "rage" killings by school children. If their parents, and their friend's parents don't have any guns, and the shops and shows won't sell guns to them, then they will have a very hard time getting hold a gun. Radically reduce the number of weapons on the street and even if they find someone who will sell them one, they might not be able to afford it...
People will always find something to get worked up about - the nastier the weapon they can get their hands on, the more damage they can do.
I think the parent of this comment is very sensible.
Actually, I posted too soon. I agree that people spouting anecdotes are pretty worthless, but I do NOT agree that there is ample evidence that violence in the media leads to violent behavior. The studies I've looked at (admittedly only a couple) don't seem to be very conclusive at all.
I think it's worth investigating, but I don't think there's much good evidence either way yet.
Hum, I live in Germany and don't have the right to bear arms (like my 70 million countrymen). I don't feel like a slave ...
And I've never seen a paragraph in the charter of Human Rights which includes the right to bear arms. And IIRC there's nothing about this in the Bible, either.
Each law is made in a certain cultural and historical environment. If the environment changes, laws become obsolete. There are no "eternal" laws or laws which fit any given society at any given time.
Regards
tom
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
"No but if someone is able to use a firearm to express their anger then the firearm was way too accessible."
Even MORE people do the SAME thing with their automobiles in the US. They get enraged and out of control and cause wrecks, a lot of them fatal. Do you think cars are too accessible as well? Or are you willing to admit that you think the benefit of driving yourself to work each day is more important than the benefit of being able to defend yourself and your country?
"That's why most gun deaths are `crimes of passion.'"
Statistics beg to differ when it comes to handgun deaths. Show me some proof from recent years that show that a majority of handgun deaths were crimes of passion by law abiding citizens.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
"In 10 years you would see a difference. In 30 they'd be practically non-existant."
And in 40 years the US people would be ripe for a military coup or unable to defend itself from any kind of tyranical(sp) government. Sure, I admit that we are unlikely to have a serious revolution soon, but maybe 40 years from now, once we're helpless (and unable to reverse such a decision) I don't want to take that chance.
"The guy who shoots his neighbor in a fit of rage was not the criminal(s) you were talking about."
With freedom comes responsability. As a gun owner, I am held to a level of control that prevents me from using my handgun outside the law. If someone is out of control, and they use a firearm to express that anger, why is the gun to blame? Did the gun create the anger or loss of control? No. Did the gun leap into an enraged killers hands? No.
Many US citizens may want to give up certain rights to FEEL safer, but I am not one of them. I would rather live with a risk of being shot than KNOW for a FACT that I have no way to even defend myself from an aggresor who DOES have a gun or knife. I am willing to risk my life in order to maintain the well being of this country as a free nation.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
Earth to clueless person:
The sentence "If the judge had gone the other way?" was referring to the implications this would have on the gaming industry, what would happen to free speech and such things. It was in no way referring to any kind of illegal activity.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
you liberals have a way of treating kids like emotional and intellectual retards
Please don't paint everyone with such a broad brush -- that's part of why these debates (and party politics in general) tend to be so counterproductive.
I consider myself to be very liberal (meaning that progress is good and people should be helped whenever possible), but I have no interest in restricting gun rights for those who wish to exercise them.
I personally have found the ACLU's position on the matter bizarre -- every point on the bill of rights is universally interpreted in the most liberal light (meaning the light giving the most rights to the citizens), except the second.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The truth is, most gun wounds hurt the victim so bad that he/she wont be capable to get their gun
.40 (he was wearing a bulletproof vest). He went down, and the shooter thought he was gone for good. He stood back up, very pissed off and the shooter nearly crapped his pants.
I take it you've never actually seen someone get shot.
The REAL truth is that gunshots are nowhere near the all-powerful force that many people believe them to be. You're better off getting shot thasn stabbed or bludgeoned, in many cases.
Gunshot wounds tend to be fairly clean, many times the bullet passes right through and you're essentially left with a hole (that admittedly could be fatal depending on where it is).
A serious stab wound tends to cause more damage because it generally covers a larger area and is more likely to hit something important like an organ or artery -- plus they're messy because the wound itself is generally jagged and torn, rather than the "simple" star-shaped bullet hole.
being budgeoned (with a bat or other tool) is almost always the worst long-term damage you can get. It breaks off shards of bone and pushes them down into your body (usually into the skull, as you generally hit someone on the head). The blunt trauma ensures that damage is done to as wide an area as possible, and many of the damages are internal, without the puncture of a cut or hole to relieve pressure. Many times a person will die from the internal bleeding & pressure on the brain, and if they don't they can frequently find themselves with a dramatically reduced mental facility due to brain damage.
Of course, this doesn't apply to hollow-point or tumbler bullets -- the whole reason they exist is because someone had to figure out how to make gunshots more effective and damaging.
Given the choice between being shot from 5 feet away (with a regular bullet), stabbed in the torso, or hit with a bat on the head, I'll take the bullet every time. Odds are I'll be able to walk to the hospital myself (albeit in a great deal of pain). After the wound is healed, your life will be pretty much the same (unless of course it hit your spinal cord or similar).
The real tragedy of movie violence is that they don't show the true damages of things like getting hit in the head (likely brain damage) and treat it like "oh, you just tap somebody and they pass out, and wake up with a headache!".
Obviously this varies by the person and the incident -- I've seen people die of blood loss from minor wounds, and I've seen people with 3 nasty shots to the torso walk out of the hospital 6 weeks later. I saw a guy get shot point-blank in the chest with a
Needless to say, the victim had a bruise the size of a Mack truck over his whole torso the next day and could barely walk from pain, but at the time of the shooting he was so pumped on adreneline he would have been happy to shoot the other guy if he wasn't already dead from the three others who were backing him up.
The shooter suffered from Hollywood syndrome, thinking that by firing a gun the other guy would turn to dust or something. Guns just aren't as deadly as people make them out to be.
So in my opinion, the whole thing about using guns as self-defence or for "protecting my house from burglars" is effectively moot
Well, your opinion runs contrary to reality. The FBI acknowledges that a victim with a gun is much less likely to be killed in a crime than one unarmed (this is of course ignoring the issue of unsecured guns, which cause greivous problems when children or burglars get access to them. But burglars rarely use a gun in the house they got it, they simply steal it and pawn it, the source of many illeagal weapons).
But self-defense is a legitimate, and truthful application of firearms. Burglars rarely are interested in shooting people (that's why they're burglars), and statistics show they ALWAYS run when faced with an armed homeowner.
That all said, i don't own a gun and never have. I just don't like them...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Fool! The ability to shoot or repel bullets is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.
No, no, HELL no. The problem is NOT gun laws. The PROBLEM is addiction, abuse, and poverty.
I was right behind you when you were talking about treating the causes and not the symptoms. However I dont think that gun control laws are even anywhere near the root of the problem. That isnt to say that they are a solution either...
Stop for a second and look at the guy who beats his wife and kids. I would bet that he learned to do that by being beaten himself. Abuse begets abuse, and teaches young minds that violence solves problems. The kid who shot the six year old was living in a hell hole by all accounts.
Who takes hits from the bong between classes? The kid who watches his older brother doing it with his friends. The kid who has a Dad who burns more alcohol than a funny car. Combine the biology and environmental factors, and you have kids walking around looking for their next hit before they take the first one. Drugs bring violence and the addicts feed the drug trade.
When was the last time you saw a well paid sysadmin shooting up a convience store in a botched robbery attempt? Probably never. They have the opporunity to get a check that makes the contents of the register seem trivial.
These issues infect people and create patterns in their lives that are hard to break out of. They also tend to lead people to violent paths. Does it always happen? No, people are not automatons. Would solving these problems end all forms of violence? No, when it comes down to it there are a lot more ways that people can be messed up. However, if you could successfully address these problems, I would expect to see a significant decrease in violent crime.
Note: Im not from the North, Im not a Democrat, and Ive shot plenty of guns in my life.
-BW
I'd love to see the stats on crimes involving guns v's crimes involving bombs
I wonder how those stats might be different if guns where illegal. After all, a Ryder full of anfo can take out a bunch of people.
Lookup the stats on the number of times a gun is turned on the owner, and then tell me if you still want to have one in your house
Ive done some target shooting in my day and am comfortable around guns. However for personal reasons I dont want to have one in my home. What I do want is the RIGHT to have a gun if I wanted one. Why? I believe in the concept of inherent and inalienable personal liberty. I am OK with choosing not to have a weapon. Yet I do not want anyone else making that decision for me.
-BW
If politicians have no term limits, then they have NO accountability to their constituents! If politicians have to earn their constituents support, wouldn't they be better representatives? I understand there is the large gray area of money: PACs, lobbyists, soft money, campaign costs.
I've seen news editorials dissing elected politicians for changing their votes on certain issues to "get more votes". Huh?? These people would rather elect a politician with "solid values" than a polictician who is DIRECTLY REPRESENTING their constituents' voiced opinions (via polls)!
cpeterso
I meant, "if politicians HAVE term limits, then they have NO accountability to their constituents."
:-) If the constituents like what their elected representative is doing, then great! Let them keep their job. I think term limits are just a loser's tactic. If the constituents really wanted change, they would elect someone else. They don't need a term limit law to make a choice. Democracy, eh?
It's when a politician had only one term with no possibility of re-election where he/she shouldn't care what the voters think, right? This is always the argument I've heard against single-term laws, that gives them every incentive to say whatever they think will help them get elected, but then there is zero incentive to actually do anything remotely resembling what they claimed they would do once in office.
Your statement is precisely what I was trying to say!
cpeterso
[availability of guns in the US] it's right there in my mind whenever I'm discussing travel with friends - it's the reason I'll never set foot in America.
Interesting. If you are so afraid of dying that the probability of being killed by a gun while a tourist in the US stops you from going there, then your life should be very complicated. Your chances of being run over by a car when crossing the street are much, much higher -- so, presumably you do not cross streets. I also assume that you don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat saturated fat, don't engage in sex (what if a condom breaks?), don't drive in a car, don't swim in the ocean (sharks!!) and generally don't do anything that's riskier than being killed by a gun in the US.
Oh, well.
And, by the way, don't come even if the US prohibits all guns. The chances of your aircraft plunging into the Pacific ocean are still considerably higher than being shot in the USA while a tourist there.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Accually no, it DOOM that makes you kill people, Atleast thats what the media constently says, HAHHA. I never did understand that, noone plays DOOM anymore.
Who takes hits from the bong between classes? The kid who watches his older brother doing it with his friends. The kid who has a Dad who burns more alcohol than a funny car. Combine the biology and environmental factors, and you have kids walking around looking for their next hit before they take the first one. Drugs bring violence and the addicts feed the drug trade.
This is a completely different issue. I take bong hits before class. I smoke a joint on the way to school. And this is not detrimental to me or others around me. I am still a contributing member of society. I work, I pay taxes, I go to school, I release free software. How does my drug use affect you or anybody else?
The war on drugs in another example of treating the symptoms of a problem. In some European countries, where marijuana is legal, where heroin is legal, there is MUCH less of a drug problem than there is in America. You can walk into a pharmacy and get yourself a dose of high-grade heroin, over the counter. While here in the U.S., our government is telling is what we can and cannot do to our own bodies!. No, I don't condone the use of drugs (nor do I count pot as a drug, BTW, anymore than I count tobacco or coffee as a drug - technically, they all are, but should not be in the same category as heroin or cocaine.) But I believe that our government has way too much say in what we can and cannot do. The war on drugs is destroying this country from the inside out. Did you know that 75% of all arrests in this country are for the possession of fucking marijuana?? 75 percent of people arrested are arrested because they want to be able to relax and have a good time, without bothering anybody. Talk about fucking ridiculous.
Dammit, now I've gone and rambled again and gotten completely off the topic. Oh well. I need a place to vent.
That's because the US gun lobby is so strong that politicans try anything and everything else before they're willing to fix the obvious problem of too easy access to guns - because no matter how they handle it, it will lose them their next election. Hopefully the shakeup currently in progress (child safety locks, "smart" guns - wireless keys) will make simply discussing gun control less of an instant election loser...
Yup. I wish that politics weren't so much about getting elected and more about doing something important once in office. There are so many things that need reform in this country (gun control, drug laws, etc...) and it's not going to happen for a long while.
I think bad Hollywood movies are to blame for this, showing brave men responding to gun fire with one or two bullet wounds to their bodies. Even if you just get a "nice" bullet in your leg or so, the blood loss will make you really dizzy and most probably not even capable of targeting a gun, or maybe even hold it.
So in my opinion, the whole thing about using guns as self-defence or for "protecting my house from burglars" is effectively moot. Guns hurt. Instantly and seriously. No self-defense there.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
The Charter of Human Rights, IIRC, includes such insane `rights' as health care and food. That is utter nonsense (IMHO). Rights are in my opinion, things which do nto hurt other people: speech, religion, arms-bearing--not the improper use of arms, which does hurt others, just like the improper use of speech: e.g. `hang him!' to a mob. I hardly consider it a valid authority on what is and is not a human right. Instead, I seek a logic and rationale for determining what should and should not be considered a right. IMHO the right to bear arms is the most fundamental of all. I may be wrong, but that's how I feel.
There are no eternal laws, but rights are eternal. They may be granted or denied, but the right itself is always a right, and any who denies it to another is a tyrant. All IMHO, of course.
And a government which does not protect these rights is worse than useless. It takes its due but does not perform its duty.
A government which does more than this does too much; it intrudes upon what should be the private realm. Also, I have a feeling--I may be wrong--that any time a government steps beyond protecting rights it must inevitably violate rights. For example, welfare involves violating the property rights of the rich in order to better the lives of the poor. I will have to think about that one; it may not actually follow.
The untrained person raised on Hollywood films and some games will not hunch down low; his survival instinct has been conditioned out. He will stand out and will be cut down. The trained person will try to duck for cover and things along those lines. While a video game cannot teach the physical end of things, it can teach the mental aspect of all this.
As unbelievable as it may seem, most untrained people just stand still or run around when they hear gunshots. Most veterans hit the floor and find cover. This is the result of training.
You are right though; all of those experiences taught you how to kill. And they should all be legal, regardless of what they taught. That was my point.
BTW, it was an American officer holding a gun to a VC's head; the VC had just finished killing either a friend of his or his family. I forget which. But a picture never gives context; it just shows some poor fellow about to die.
This means that the so-called rights to food or health care are not rights; for them to be guaranteed you others must be deprived of their posessions. TANSTAAFL; if I wish to feed you then I must take that food from someone. Generally this means that a government which guarantees these `rights' must steal from some of its citizens in order to give to others.
Now, this is not to say that the poor should not be fed or the ill taken care of. Indeed, in my religion these are virtues. But what right have I to impose my religion of caring for others on those very same others? What right do I have to make a misanthrope pay to keep the poor alive? None. Instead, I give willingly of my own posessions to feed the poor and nurse the sick. But I will never make someone else do so.
The right to keep and bear arms does not deprive anyone else of anything: it does not deprive him of his faith, his opinion, his property, his life, his liberty or any other thing. Granted, a weapon can be used to do so, but that is a case of misuse. My freedom of religion could be sued to deprive you of religion, or life, or property, but only if misused.
The one (taking care of the destitute) is a moral duty; the other is a natural right.
Arms-bearing is what seperates the free man from the slave. Among our ancestors the Germans when a slave was freed he was given a weapon as a token thereof. The Romans had a similar concept, I believe. Life is, in some ways, a power struggle. Government--good or bad, excellent or tyrannical--exercises its will through raw violence. It is impossible to do away with this; it is a fact of nature and of life. So we have two options: we can deny it, we can give up our right to wield violence for our own ends, cede our power to a monopolistic wielder of violence or we can reserve our right, the right which indicates our freedom, the right which demonstrates to all that we are not slaves of The Man but our own men.
Note that I do not mean that any individual has a hope against a government--he most certainly does not. That sort of conflict is not what I mean at all. It is the symbolism of the thing. When a young boy is given his first knife, he has attained a certain level of freedom. When he is given his first BB gun, he has reached another. When his father gives him his first .22 rifle, then he is well on the way to manhood.
I could go on about it more, about how familiarity with weapons leads to a greater sense of moral responsibility, but that would be off-topic.
On-Topic Stuff Here
This actually related to the video game issue. There are those who are against guns because they enable slaughter. But if they are against guns, then they must also be against violent video games, for video games also enable slaughter. Col. Grossman, whome I greatly dislike, does have a point. Those games do teach one how to make headshots, clear a room, keep a low profile (in some sense of that phrase; they cannot teach things like keeping the arms in tight).
But is this bad? Of course not. We already have the arguments against this. The video game does not cause anyone (save, perhaps, the demented, who could be set off by popcorn just as well as by video games) to murder. Neither does the gun. They are merely tools. The video game can teach some parts of combat readiness. The gun can be used in combat. But the choice to go into that combat, the choice to shoot and kill one's fellow man: that is made by a human being of his own free will.
I am a gun owner; I own a rifle and a handgun. I am responsible with my firearms. I never point a gun at something I do not wish to kill. I would rather shoot myself than someone else. Somehow that eeevvviiilll thing, the gun, has yet to turn me into a psychopath. But it has taught me a respect for life and death, for actions which do not have an 'undo' button: try looking at the body of an animal, knowing that you killed it and wishing that you could breath life back into it; try looking at the shattered remains of what was just a fraction of a second ago a perfectly normal beer bottle; try walking around with a device which if used properly is perfectly safe but which can be as deadly as anything else in this world. You learn that life isn't like a computer game. In real life no-one runs through a room figuring that he'll only get shot once or twice. No-one who knows what he is doing shoots someone without the clear idea that he is taking the life of a human being. The real world is for good; you cannot undo your actions by going to the Edit menu.
That is the problem with video games; they lead to a sense that nothing is permament. But this does not matter; it is our right to play video games just as much as it is our right to read what we will, believe what we will and wield what firepower we will. And I will defend anyone's right to play video games, and defend any video game manufacturer from this sort of foolish charge. Blame the craftsman, not the tools.
I daresay that I shall be moderated out of sight, but we shall see...
Fair enough. I think I understand where you are coming from. Just please understand that the gun debate is only one small part of our society, and not even the most important to most people. A great many people share your views; that is why the topic is so hotly debated here. Even among those that support gun ownership, they generally don't subscribe to the sort of action hero philosophy that our media is in love with.
I guess what I am trying to say is that America is much more than the face we broadcast to the world. The actions of our political leaders do not always reflect the feelings of the citizens. And that obnoxious/rude/loud American tourist is NOT a true representative of what America is all about (it is just that they are the ones that draw the most attention to themselves).
I guess what I am trying to say is that America is a mish-mash of a great many peoples and philosophies, and that is part of what makes it worth visiting. Heck, visit the Milwaukee / Chicago area and I promise to show you some of the *good* stuff that America has to offer. :-)
Cheers,
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
That is unfortunate. You seem to have boughten into the media hype that portrays America as a gangster filled, crime saturated battlezone. Random gun violence is almost unheard of here... that is why it still makes big news. That is not to say gun violence is not a problem, I just don't see it as something so serious that it should stop you from visiting the country. There is always some risk in traveling to any new place, but that shouldn't stop you from checking out what the world has to offer. Your likelyhood of being shot while visiting America is vanishingly small.
Cheers
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
but I heard the parties are still going to settle this with an old-fashioned gladiator battle, quake3 style. Let's just hope id uses a real champion and not Linus for the sake of name-value like Transmeta did.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Oh yeah, it couldn't be that the border is undefended, and anyone can smuggle stuff across easily.
Its about time that there was some sense brought into the American legal system. This particular lawsuit was just one in a series or frivilous lawsuits, all filed by the parents of the children who were killed in the shooting. Its understandable for them to be greif-stricken, but these lawsuits are not the way for them to deal with it. In addition to them suing id, and some other game/media companies, they also sued the school, including all teachers/administrators that the convicted shooter had from the 2nd grade to present. If I recall correctly, this case was thrown out also. Just one more note, its not Paducah county, is McCracken county. Paducah is the major city in McCracken county.
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Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4
Most of the rage killings AFAIK _are_ from ppl getting in a "rage" over their wife cheating, etc
These points are mutually contradictory. Once someone is in a "rage" over adultery, etc, the detachment and physical distance issues become quite irrelevant -- somone in that state who doesn't have a gun handly will simply use whatever happens to be handy, and in fact is likely to get more satisfaction out of stabbing or bludgeoning the object of their rage.
You are _far_ more likely to be severely injured or killed in a burglary, etc., attempt _if_ you own a gun in your house.
To illustrate the statistical fallacy at work here, let us start with the known fact that buildings with security alarms are far more likely to be robbed than buildings without security alarms. Which of the following is the more reasonable inference?
you have a gun, I need a gun to protect myself
Even if all criminals could be disarmed, this would not remove the size and strength advantages hooligans typically have over their potential victims.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I know that it's bad form to comment on spelling errors, but I had to chuckle at the incongruity of this one.
Getting back to the issue, the storage requirements you describe are for the firearms issued to Swiss citizens by the government as part of their militia/military service, not for firearms generally. See this article from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, not known as a font of Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy thought.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
It is normal and wholesome to respect the law and authority in general.
Oh fucking please. It is normal and wholesome to fear the law and authority. Respect is a different kettle of fish. I will respect two people who sit down and sort out their differences. I fail to respect someone who goes crying to a higher authority stating the letter of the law in order to force someone else into their point of view. But the law has the authority to use force and it is common sense to fear the use of force. Legal systems are based on fear and force, not respect and not common sense.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just think had that lawsuit gone through, there would of been a massacre of JohnKatz articles and Slashdot "update" articles.
The Second Amendment and Games
Of course, it had no effect on anything. In fact, pro-Second Amendment politicians have been attacking games to draw peoples fire away from the Second Amendment (in a rather disgusting display of political cowardice.) I mean after Col. Grossman testified on the Hill that games ought to be regulated as armaments: Lt. Col. David Grossman
since part of his contention was that they were "learn by doing" murder simulators, it has become impossible to seperate the First Amendment issue involved with games from the Second Amendment issue involving guns. Grossman was acting as a consultant on these lawsuits, and has certainly gotten book sales out of them.
What people who are interested in facts should realize is that the emotional hysteria generated by these school shootings has destroyed the existence of rational debate on. Trigger locks, while they might possible preven accidental shootings, would have had no effect on Paducah. In fact, short of siezing guns from people who already had them, gun control wouldn't have been effective in any of these cases. The anti-games stuff is, of course, absurd as well. It is based on a view of games that suggests that they turn normal people into zombie killing machines. I get irritated when political opportunists who are against the Right to Bear Arms or against Free Speech expect us to swallow the most absurd arguments because they hope we've been blinded to reason by the emotions generated by these events. It is like the "red-baiting" mentality, connect your enemies to the commies and hope that no one looks at what you are really trying to accomplish.
The people who brought this suit ought to be sued by ID for bringing a frivolous lawsuit, and for attempting to gain from the suffering and death of innocent people.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Read the reviews carefully! It is even more important to mod up the reviews of the book that are accurate as it is to moderate down Grossman's cronies.
Well, this is the first time I've logged into my Amazon account since Bezos patented 1-Click. (I may have to go to the library one day and see if they have this book so I can write a review. I'm sure not going to buy it for that purpose, though. Hmm... I wonder what colonel would do if I scanned it and put it up on the Internet in PDF format? I'm sure he would thank me, because after all he's written it as a public service... and not as an attempt to cash in on the death and suffering of children, right? (note sarcasm)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie, video game makers
It has some interesting data on the case:
While it's good news that the Anti-Gamer Agenda didn't manage to push its agenda any further than they have in past cases, it's a little frightening that these twisted, single-minded fanatics have been pushing this <insert obscenity> at the American people for so long. I just wonder when the American people will see the truth, that it is these people, the ones pushing lawsuits like this, who are truly dangerous to the United States and who need to be pushed out of the mainstream and sent to the fringes, where they belong! I find fascist-leaning lunatics like Grossman to be far more dangerous than any gamer, and far more likely to cause death and suffering.All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
And, of course, voting should be compulsory, like in many modern democracies.
If you are really in a democracy, you do have the right NOT to vote. After all, the more things you are compulsed to do, the less freedom you have. And if you have no freedom, why have a democracy at all?
Good judgment. After all, to quote AJ from UserFriendly when he visited the world of Sluggy Freelance:
:) ).
"I just mastered the keyboard mouse combo, do you expect me to get the arms and legs combo?!?"
Come on now, getting up and shooting somebody would mean having to like get up and stuff, and I just got my keyboard settings set up properly again (the Dvorak keyboard is great for typing, but man does it ever screw up the keyboard
IMHO, violent video games reduce the chances I would go and shoot someone. It's just logistically too different. sarcasm { Except for maybe stuff like Area 51 - you actually use a red plastic gun in that one. } Besides, after blowing up my coworkers with a rocket launcher in Quake, my stress levels are far below homicidal levels.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
I do have to question any parent who lets a child be over exposed to this (or any other) form of media that displays death so much. I've played the hell out of Doom, Doom2, Quake1 2 and 3 and I haven't gone out on a shooting rampage (note: I did put in an application at an american post office the other day, but that's a different issue;). This is testiment to the fact that in moderation these games are fun.
If a parent sees a child displaying anti-social behaviour and leaves the kid alone in his room for 2 years to watch death (in a video game or Martin Scocesee movie) 24/7 . . . newsflash! Jr is gonna be a little depressed.
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The 80% the following term is an interesting concept - kind of a not-quite-term-limit (i.e., you have to be a damn popular incumbent to be allowed to keep the office). The % might be adjusted - maybe just 2/3?
We should also modify the election system to make sure that only candidates who are supported by a majority of the population can be elected - right now, by playing opponents against each other, candidates who represent distinctly minority views can gain positions of power over the majority. The CANDIDATES might enjoy the game, but I don't think it's good for the society as a whole to be in that situation.
I'm not convinced about the compulsory voting - there's a lot of people who I would prefer not be making decisions about my future - I wouldn't trust their judgement to order me my next McDonald's meal, much less decide whether or not I should be shot for attempting to cross the street. (Now perhaps compulsory EDUCATION about how to "get along" in a society?)
There's another issue in today's current setup, which is related to why incumbents keep getting reelected even though they keep screwing the country over and over - they really DO keep an eye out for their voters - by bribing them with "pork", if nothing else.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that they behave in a manner which helps the society as a whole - just those people who they need the votes of. Therefore, you get a whole bunch of greedy, grasping politicans who do everything they can for their OWN voters, usually to the detriment of OTHER voters (and if your representative isn't strong or clever enough, you get screwed).
What you need is a way for all of the OTHER voters to kick out so-called "national" representatives if they are convinced that those representatives don't represent their best interests, even if they didn't vote them into office in the first place.
That way, you have a balance between the voters in a particular locale picking somebody to represent their interests, and everyone else having the ability to make sure that representative doesn't trample on THEIR interests.
Well I guess now the debate over wether violent video games make people violent is going to get heated.
A debate like will never end in our(game fans) favor. The argument will only get violent its self.
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DemonStreet.com
The french revolution was bad news indeed for the aristocrats, but IIRC most of the victims were regular people whose snitching neighbours carried a grudge. And I seriously doubt that Napoleon was more benign than Louis XVI (albeit less clueless)
Admitted, a revolution now and then might shake some pieces into place. Far too often the end result is a new nomenklatura. Most often the cause is a weak formal ruler in a tradition of strong governments and a strong informal leader.
The new leader might be smarter, but not neccesarily better for the people. Power and corruption, same old story.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Rare, yes, but they get a lot of attention. If you are pro-gun, a licensing scheme might target high-profile gun abuse without really affecting legitimate use. That is, lessen the pressure for even harder gun control laws.
one thing is lost: the millions of acts of self-defense using a gun that occur each year in America.
No.
I did not say anything about forbidding guns for self defence. (I don't believe in them myself, but that is beside the point) I suggested a *licence* for self-defence guns. First prove that you can handle the gun properly and most important: That you understand the consequences should you ever fire the gun at another human being.
citizens have absolutely no reason to expect the police to protect them
But they *should* have. The risk of getting caught *should* be enough to discourage all but the really desperate. Unfortunately that is not the case
how do you propose that people protect themselves...
Actually, the best defence would probably be a decent alarm system. (And a police with decent response time)
You might succeed in scaring a mugger off with your gun, but if he is *not* scared? If he calmly says "You don't have the guts to fire, and if you do me and my friend here will swear that we were just asking you what time it was when you pulled a gun on us."
What do you do in that scenario?
Shoot?
To kill?
Given the choise between losing your wallet and face a manslaughter charge (or at least assault with a deadly weapon or something similar) do you really think that the latter is a better option?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
There are no quick fixes to social problems.
No laws will stop "career criminals".
Disasters happen, one incident does *not* create a pattern.
Guns are effective, therefor dangerous, tools. I dont want a gun in the hands of anyone whom I wouldn't trust with my sysadmin password. That is *my* stance. I cant tell *you* what to do.
Killing is wrong.
Yes, killing a "criminal" is also wrong.
You prepare fo a revolution if you want, but before you start, think about how much good it did in russia.
Peace, please?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I do not believe any restrictive gun-control sceme will work in the US. (for the record I'm not american) I am certain that the majority of american gun owners are very aware of the responsibility that comes with the freedom to bear arms. I certainly realize that a "real" criminal (as opposed to a casual thief) will not be affected by any law. (carrying a gun w/o licence is peanuts compared to robbery, at the very best it gives a police officer something to book him for)
The reason for my thoughts about a licencing sceme is that I was wondering about how to target the not insignificant minority that are not hardened criminals, but fail to take their responsibility seriously. Perhaps the implications would be overbroad, perhaps too narrow. It is still more constructive than digging trenches.
general licensing schemes don't solve the high-profile shootings by people who just snap
Not all of them, but perhaps some. Unfortunately we never hear of the incidents that *don't* happen
It's obvious safety training only addresses accidents
Why the bold "only"? It is also obvious that there is a large grey zone in the statistics you refer to, since it (probably) only contains accidents that resulted in personal injury (and where the victim saw a doctor)
Actually, I had a "hidden agenda" concerning safety training. Mandatory safety training is something that the average law abiding citizen might agree to. Therefore it is a form of licensing that might actually be accepted. It does not affect your *right* to buy a gun, it just throws some inertia into the system. It makes you stop to think for a moment. And that might do more good besides simply reducing the number of accidents.
Oh and I know what an AK74 is. And I can tell the difference btw AK47, AKM and AK74. Guess I should have included a smiley :-) Dammit assault rifles (or automatic carbines) are really fun shooting. Don't get me started or I'll lose all credibility as a pro-control guy...
[Alarm system]
I *did* say best, not "the most cost effective"
And finally the scenario.
What I was getting at was that all cases are not simple matters of "Obvious homocidal robber vs Law abiding citizen"
The cops finds person A with a smoking gun over the dead body of person B. No witnesses. Homocide or self defence?
Someone pulls a gun at you because he just escaped a mugger who somehow resembled you and (in panic) honestly think you want him dead. Regardless of who kills who, he could probably claim self defence.
A foreigner who does not understand when the texan shouts "freeze" grabs inside his coat for a phrase book...
You always shoot to kill because that gives you the best chances to stop an attacker. Unfortunately, this is a sad fact of life, and stopping an attacker is always the ultimate goal of self-defense
Is the ultimate goal of self defence not to escape or minimize any harm intended for you?
A dead person in your house can cause you far more harm than some lost property.
That is why *I* don't believe in guns for self defence. I respect your opinion. I don't want to take *your* gun (if your judgement is as good as your writing) I just want people to think before making a desicion.
Regards
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Sharon: Should we blame the government?
Liane: Or blame society?
Dads: Or should we blame the images on TV?
Sheila: No, blame Canada
Everyone: Blame Canada
(full text)
It all fits in our present society where nobody ever bears fault. Everything is the result of somebody else and that somebody else should pay. Good to see that the judge had some common sense. Alot of these weird cases don't need the wisdom of Salomon, just some plain old common sense.
Use Adsense for Charity
I recognize that giving up these things "for the children" (sorry, obligatory), will be hard for some, but if we save just 1, just one life, won't be it worth it?
Let's live in the nerf (tm) society where none of can get hurt, ever. The government can do it better (tm).
For the children!!!! :-)
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Perhaps I should be more clear. I didn't mean that less-violent gun owners are more likely to take classes, I meant that simply the experience of owning a gun is an educational one that teaches respect for the weapon and the lives of all people concerned. In some areas (including the one I live in) it is mandatory to take an NRA safety course before purchasing a firearm. I am in support of these programs. You should be certified fit to use a gun just like you should be certified fit to drive a car.
I didn't say purchasing a weapon, I said owning a weapon. If you've never used a firearm, then you don't know what I'm talking about. But if you ever do, you will quickly understand the deep respect and responsibility that is instilled in you by the knowledge that you have the power to easily kill people. Regarding your statement about accidentally shooting someone: Accidental gun-deaths are extremely rare; you're more likely to die accidentally by falling, slipping, or fire. Maybe we should make slippery floors illegal? Hmmmmm :)
In many communities, including mine, an NRA (or equivilent) certification is required to purchase a firearm. I support these requirements for the same reason I support the idea of driver's licenses.
5. Sources?
See Taking aim at Gun Control for some interesting statistics.
- In the US, every citizen is guaranteed a fundamental right to own a firearm. The founding fathers realized that fundamental rights MUST REMAIN ABSOLUTE, or you might as well have no rights at all.
- In the US, almost half of all households have a gun in them. It is therefore statistically ludicrous to assign severely abnormal traits to gun owners.
- Studies have shown that gun owners who are properly trained are likely to be less violent than non gun owners.
- All instances of children accidentally shooting themselves or each other is the result of irresponsible parents failing to properly secure their guns and teach their children proper respect for them (Yes, children CAN learn respect for things, you liberals have a way of treating kids like emotional and intellectual retards)
- In the past 30 years, the number of firearms owned by Americans have increased from 122 million to more than 220 million. During that time, violent crime, school violence, and domestic violence rates have decreased.
Some more things to learn- Taking aim at Gun Control
- Why gun control is wrong (by Yours Truly)
- GunCite - Everything you need to know about gun control and why it's wrong.
- Ethics from the barrel of a gun: what bearing arms teaches about the good life - Written by the same dude who brought you The Cathedral and the Bazzaar
Thank you for listening to my rant. You can go about your business now.But with this new type of violence, nobody knows when something is going to happen. Usually, the people act alone, are extremely secretive, and do it for themselves, not a group that has to communicate with other people. It is even harder to predict because the cases of mass shootings are so diverse--it seems everyone that does it, does it for a different reason.
But the numbers of mass shootings are definitely on the rise--whether the such kids derive their inspiration from others who have done the same or references in popular culture remains to be seen.
I predict that most, if not all, of the effect is due to hearing in the news of other kids doing a mass shooting. Take for instance the movie "Natural Born Killers". If there was ever a movie to promote a mass shooting, NBK is it. Eventually, NBK was sued because one of these kids got some inspiration from it. But this kid did his deed years after the movie. Why weren't there more shootings before him motivated by the movie, when the movie had a greater audience? The reason is that the culture at the time, violent movies or no, did not promote mass shootings in any way. It just wasn't something that people did. No one would even think of doing it.
The first successful plane jacking for money happened in the early 70's. Before that, no one even had even really conceived of doing it. And those crinimals that had probably thought of it as hypothetical than as a rational crime to commit. But after it happened, many copy-cats tried the same thing, and we have had sporadic plane-jackings since.
Mass killings are here to stay for a while, but this is because they started in the first place, and kids realized it could be done, not because of any new entertainment media.
Nuff said, can't beat the writings of an italian marxist on toilet paper ;-)
Working for the (other) man
...before somebody thinks of blaming us.
I have an idea. All you Slashdotters who are parents, tell your children you love them. It just might work.
I am a geek. I was physically assaulted at least twice weekly in school by my "peers". I was a social outcast. I had few friends. In many respects, I resembled these killers.
I've played Doom since I was thirteen. I played all the violent games since; Duke, Quake, etc... I even played Operation Body Count, fer chrissakes.
And I've never killed anyone. I'm actually decently proficient with a gun, and could land eight hits with eight rounds on a target the size of the head and upper torso.
This is all because my parents love me, and raised me to be a decent human being. Maybe if some of these parents tried it, we'd have fewer shootings.
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
Its great that the suit was dropped, but the thing is, some damage has already been done. id already had to pay quite a bit of $$$ for lawyers. The case started at least 6 months ago, right? Thats six months of paying for a lawyer through that time. There are TONS of other ways this money could have been spent that would be much more productive for id. Hell-throwing it in their furnaces would have been better. _That_ is what is wrong with the judicial system today...anyone with money can sue anyone else whenever they want to and cut them out of a few grand. Im sure whoever was sueing them had all kinds of groups behind them(Mothers against Games or some such crap like that)...
Yes, but Switzerland has firearm storage laws similar to other parts of Western Europe & some Australian states, where the said firearm has to be stored unloaded, without any ammunition & (if possible) disable in a locked steal box that's bolted & welded or cemented down, with the ammunition & if possible the fireing pin, stored in another part of the house in a similar way. Seeing as the vast majority of firearm incidents (probably over 90%) are not acts of premeditated criminality, but due to accidents, impulsiveness, drunkeness, jealousy, domestics & that sort of thing & the fact is thats why these things happen more when there's easy avaliabilty of firearms. Also if you classify a criminal as some one who has committed more than just a couple of felonies & or get a proportion of their regular income through illegal activitiesthe, then the simple fact is the vast majority of criminals don't possess firearms themselves, & if they did, then the odds would be it would be pawned by the end of the next working day. BTW, where do you think criminals get their firearms from? They buy 'em or otherwise aquire them from average everyday mostly law abiding people. Thats why by simply making firearms less avaliable, decreases the amount of firearms avaliable to criminals too. Personlly I think that the world is vastly overpopulated with people anyway, so the more Americans who go arround shooting each other, then the better the planet's enviroment will be. So don't think I'm advocating gun control, I'm just debating the issues.
I guess Amazon is being "selective" in which reviews they are posting. Otherwise, how can such tripe average a 4-star rating?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I'm getting really tired of people who think that laws which originated hundreds of years ago are still completely applicable today. While on the one hand I agree that too many new laws make things too complex for simple folks, the fact of the matter is that we need more laws because there are more people. Not that I like these laws, but we have to learn to live with them, just like we have to learn to get along with each other.
It is normal and wholesome to respect the law and authority in general. Balanced against that statement is the nasty little fact that tyranny makes use of working within the system to insure that nothing ever changes. Responsability can be used as a weapon against fairness. Often the real progress in the world is made by those who buck the system. The very folks who developed the computer industry were counter culture nerds and geeks who denied the more common values and goals of life.
There seems to be a real bad Slashdot code bug around here - the Score descriptions aren't showing. Meaning, if a post is rated (3, Informative) the 'Informative does *not* show up (only the "(3,)") does.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
... There's no way in hell John Carmack would have enough money left this year to buy another Ferrari.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
This type of frivolous lawsuit is completely detrimental creativity. There may be a correlation between violence and video games, but even that does not, in any way, equal causation. I could just as easily mention that it rained here in Toronto, and that prices of pizza went up in China. The two seem unrelated, but statistically, there is a correlation. However, it doesn't take much to conclude that the rain didn't cause the pizza prices to change.
The problem is that the individuals who were both victims and agressors in this case refuse to acknowledge that it wasn't something as trivial as movies or video games, but a greater pervasive problem throughout a society.
You want a focus group? Try Canada. We recieve the same movies, video games, and much of our culture is related. Clearly, the media is not to blame.
I could theorize about the lack of guns in Canada, or our less liberal view of hunting for children, but that would just bring out the gun-nuts. I'm more concerned with showing what isn't the cause - the media - not placing the easy blame.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
Remember the PMRC?
Wasn't that the committee that declared Tipper to be the inventor of music?
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2B1ASK1
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Fortunately judges take a dim view of this sort of attitude and I hope it stays that way.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This will never make it into the mainstream media. You will not see this story appear on CNN, MSNBC, or [insert your favorite news media source here]. The intial lawsuit was considered "news" and "interesting" and therefore fit for distribution becuase it would attract eyeballs and therefore ratings. But a lawsuit being dismissed?
Why, it's completely boring and uninteresting. Who would ever care about such a thing? Result=no public exposure when these ridiculous lawsuits get thrown out as they should. Chalk it up to a fundemental flaw in the media system and how it perceives its relationship to those who receive information from it. The media has no legal responsibility whatsoever for printing or distributing a retraction or correction to an inaccurate previous story. The media has no legal responsibility to present both sides of a story. The media has no legal responsibility to follow up on a story and report on its aftereffects.
Victories in the courtroom are all well and good, but when was the last time you say Bernstein, Junger, or [some ludicrous lawsuit thrown out or some issue resolved in favor of any resonable sense of justice] receiving equal prominence with, say, the RIAA or MPAA's receiving preliminary injunctions against such "pirating and hacking tools like DeCSS"?
Hmmm...I guess that makes him a bisexual judge `;^)
Okay, I'm a smart-ass!
Have a look at my web site
4-6-2000
In a decision that has just been made
available, id has prevailed in the
Paducha lawsuit on all points. Judge
Johnstone has dismissed the case on
all grounds, validating what we have
said all along: the case lacked a
shred of merit.
Now that this legal hurdle is out
of the way, work can finally resume
on id's latest title, "Columbine
Revenge 2001," and our latest add-on
pack to Q3A, "Cafeteria Crossfire"
When I was a kid in the late 70's/early 80's, we had a games we all knew about in the neighborhood. Ahh yes, back in the pre-PC age of analog, we had to come up with games instead of buying them, believe it or not. We had three neighborhood favorites. "Ghost In The Graveyard", "Smear The Queer", and "Guns".
In "Ghost In The Graveyard", we played it only at night. One person was selected to go somewhere in the neighborhood and hide. The rest of us would split up and search for the ghost. The fun came when you had the crap scared out of you when you came across the person hiding, or heard a scream of terror somewhere in the neighborhood. I liked Ghost In The Graveyard, and played it alot. However, it didn't make me worship satan and bite the heads off of chickens later in life. It was a game.
At the risk of sounding patronizing, or incredibly insensitive towards gays, i'll tell you about the next game. "Smear The Queer" was a variant of rugby. Before the days of political correctness, it was a sure-fire way of humilitating and physically punishing your friends as a group. The person with the football ran around and had to avoid relinquishing posession of it, even after being tackled and beaten into submission. I liked playing Smear The Queer, and played it alot. However, it didn't make me a gay-bashing redneck later in life. It was a game.
Similarly, "Guns" was alot of fun. Any object in the household that even vaguely resembled a firearm was used in an imaginary war of attrition with a line drawn between houses. In my case, I managed to get a discarded power-drill from my dad which looked vastly more impressive than the simple garden-hose sprayers and silicone caulking guns the other kids had. We chased eachother around the neighborhood, the 6 of us, for hours on end, jumping over cars and diving over bushes, hiding under stairwells and such, our imaginations running wild with the thought of gunning down our friends in a real-life Quake arena, if you will.
However, it didnt make me a homocidal mainiac with an unquenchable thirst for human suffering. It was a game.
So, here I am, 20 years later. I have no interest in the occult. I have no urge to physically assault gay people, and I have no bizzare fixation with firearms. Infact, it would scare me to even know someone involved in any of those activities, let alone be a participant in any of those activities myself.
When the line between fantasy and reality is blurred in the mind of a child, you can often times look directly at that kid's parents and point out very, very severe problems in how they handled the task of raising their child. Dylan Klebold left his house every morning wearing a black trenchcoat with a swastika armband on, leaving a sawed-off shotgun ontop of the dresser in his bedroom. His parents did nothing about it, unfortunately. And by the time they understood the gravity of their own neglect of their child, a dozen or more kids lay dead in a school.
Your upbringing wont cause you to become a psychopath later in life. The _lack_ of an upbringing, however, will. Thats not to say that companies like Id are immune from scrutiny but the fault most often lies with internal causes rather than external ones, like TV, music, or entertainment in general, IMHO.
Flame away. Thats how I see it, and i'm-a stickin' to it.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Bowie J. Poag
Thank God they didn't get a stupid judge in this case - that would have been bad news.
Lawsuits like this make me wish I wasn't an American. This country has way too many problems with trying to treat the symptoms of a problem rather than the causes of the problem. Example: all the shit that followed Columbine. People are cracking down on people dressing in black and being different than other people, rather than trying to figure out why these people have a tendancy to go nuts and start shooting. If they just looked at the problem in a larger scope, they would see that they are not the causes of the problem - the cause of this problem is people harassing these people because they are different, and the people who are trying to fix the problem are just making it worse.
...check out the Amazon customer reviews on Lt. Col. David Grossman's Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill .
:-)
This will give you an idea of what id and the gaming community as a whole are up against. For those tuning in late, Col. Grossman is the chief evangelist behind this and similar lawsuits which attempt to pin the blame for recent school shootings on creators and distributors of popular culture.
Never one to let facts and statistics interfere with a good diatribe, Grossman and his cronies excel at distracting their followers' attention from the fact that acts of violence in schools (not to mention the rest of US society) are occurring less frequently these days than at any time since the 1960s.
So if correlation really does imply causation, as Grossman would have us believe, then we should be thanking id Software and Valve for selling American kids a violence-dousing cathartic.
Personally, when it comes to figuring out what drove Michael Carneal to go postal at his junior high school, my money's on the town uranium-enrichment plant.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
What should we have done if the judge had gone the other way? Precisely what we do when the judge rules for a position that we favor. One cannot selectively pick and choose which judicial mandates to ignore and which to accept based on the personal self-benefit that would be derived from such a position. I too am utterly outraged when some judge rules for some idiotic company only interested in enriching its own pockets at the expense of the consumer and trodding over the rights of the many; however, if we accept the rulings in our favor, and thereby the implicit underlying premise that our common abstract conception of justice will eventually prevail in the end through the judicial process, we would be inconsistent to refuse to obey a ruling that had gone the other way.
Civil disobedience: a term use frequently by Slashdotters in a flimsy justification for disregard of the law. It's a noble concept, but mirroring the DeCSS code, for instance, just doesn't cut it, IF you are not willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of your civil disobedience. If the judge had gone the other way, fight vigourously to have the decision overturned on appeal, pester your legislators for change in tort reform, contact all the civil liberties assocations that you know about, boycott the company, whatever. But I believe that it would certainly be hypocritical to defy such a ruling under the assertion that the judge is a moron, or some such nonsense.
....because if I can go from pushing the 'CTRL' key down with picking up a submachine gun, striping it, cleaning it, reassembling it, loading and cocking it, aiming it, and firing it, while using the proper stance, BRAS technique, staying on target, target discrimination, etc etc whilst wearing a scratchy trench coat then DAMN, hold me back!
Oh, and since I've played Falcon 4.0, don't let me near an Air Force base; I can bugger off with a Falcon and bomb people to death!
Besides; anybody who's actually played Doom knows that if somebody was going to kill people, Doom Style, they'd do it with the CHAINSAW!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play Heretic II for the EXPRESS purpose of learning how to cast magic spells.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.