Slashdot Mirror
Garmin Engineer Shot And Killed By Man Yelling 'Get Out Of My Country!' (theverge.com)
lxw56 writes:
Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed at a local bar in Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin. Co-worker Alok Madasani was also injured along with bystander Ian Grillot, who attempted to help the men. "The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15 p.m. that night," reports The Verge. "A witness said he yelled 'get out of my country' to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were 'Middle Eastern.'" In 2015, Garmin employed 2,700 workers in Olathe and has plans to double this number, which the article notes has led to "increasing diversity" in the community.
Bye bye immigrants.
Leave quickly and take your shit skin families with you
2020!!!
Hmm... Wonder whether companies are going to have red-state or any-state hiring problems going forward. Yeah, things are cheaper there but somebody might end up punching your ticket if you look or sound funny. Crazy people are everywhere, but they seem better armed in the US.
Oh wait, no... he actually shot and killed someone. KellyAnne, get out there and do what you do...
I would expect a REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE as well
Police found him there after putting out an APB (Applebees Point Bulletin), which is the tool they use to find all racists in the Midwest and South.
Something about making psycopathy great again, something like that?
The suspect was believed to be Mexican. He escaped in a station wagon full of children.
That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked.
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic. Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
We're not having a hiring problem at all. We don't hire any Trump supporters, and we don't have offices in red states. It's super simple. Let the assholes wallow in their own poverty. We're happy to pay taxes so that they can live on the dole, like most of them do, but we won't hire any of them. And, it's not about spite, either. It's just basic employee screening. Somebody who votes for Trump is not the kind of person we want working in our organization because obviously, they have problems with rational thinking.
Is this confirmed by other sources as well?
It's retarded enough to be true, granted, but it sounds exactly like so many fake stories that have popped up in the wake of the cheeto monster. The Verge being one of the worse tabloids doesn't help either.
The Indians I know consider themselves south Asian.
WTF!!!!!!!! That is so fucking STUPID!
Not sure where your second point comes from.
(Most) Indians may be 'caucasian' the way science means it (in as far as it ever uses the term, because it is a largely meaningless concept).
But Indians are not 'caucasian' the way Stormfront means it.
that's geographic classification.
was just trolling anyway, geez.
2nd point mostly comes from troll under the bridge
but that classification is still used in forensic anthropology and is not meaningless but does describe a migration of humans and their descendants. Also, Europeans and Indian's language comes from common branch of human languages, "proto indo-european"
Drunk guy at a bar gets thrown out for yelling at people. Comes back and shoots up the place. Including shooting a white guy named "Ian"
The Verge is an extreme leftist publication. They're going to paint it as anti-trump as possible because it fits their narrative. Doesn't say anything about the white guy getting shot twice does it? It just says he got injured... Here is more of a full story from another leftist source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/world/asia/kansas-attack-possible-hate-crime-srinivas-kuchibhotla.html
That being said, this is an obligated "Why is this on Slashdot?" An engineer got shot? Low level engineers die every day... I don't see them on here very often.
Definition of Race (noun)
a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/race
We need a Trump Casualty Counter for when:
1) People are killed are harmed because of stoked up hate used to win an election.
2) Innocent families are ripped apart because of Trump policies
3) Families are destroyed directly or indirectly by policy changes, particularly ones that clearly have no net benefit and are only racially motivated.
4) Any increase in rape and other crimes against women that can reasonably be attributed to the environment that was fostered. (Many crimes cannot be reasonably attributed, but when you elected Trump, grab em by the **, I would not expect a new era of respect for women.)
5) casualities attributed to defunding programs, particularly if those funds are wasted.
6) Every single life that is destroyed because republicans made it harder to get birth control and all the rest. People do make mistakes. Demanding abortion be stopped is one thing. Making sure the resources are there so that mother is taken care of and her child is taken care of up through college is another. (The mother has to be taken care of while pregnant, less the child be born unable to eventually be able to become a productive adult.)
7) Every single time a voter believes a lie by trump it is a causality to our very democracy, or by any other politician for that matter. You could model democracy as a bunch of AIs of varying intelligence being fed a stream of raw sewage. They aint gonna produce optimum results folks. Garbage In Garbage Out.
Why not call this guy a terrorist ?
If he had been a Muslim shooting an American it would be classed as terrorism.
Or does it not suit the US narrative ?
"Get out of my country, immigrant"
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
CBS News
the comments section, i mean. honest question.
why do you guys bother keeping this comment section running, when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet? okay, sure, there are communities specifically geared towards right-wing fascism and racism that are probably worse, but this site is supposed to be about, you know, tech news and stuff. but you guys have let it erode into something gross that almost nobody other than despicable morons want to participate in. i remember years ago when articles would have hundreds of interesting and insightful comments, with actual experts weighing in with well thought out reactions. those people are all gone, and with very good reason. are you glad they're gone? do you miss them? do you miss relevancy?
i doubt you are proud of providing a forum dominated by some of the worst elements of humanity. so that's why i'm asking why you continue to do so.
i could live a little longer in this prison
One white guy doing this is news.
A black person "hating whitey" who kills or assaults someone just for being white isn't news at all, now is it?
I blame #BlackLivesMatter
Guess which one happens more often?
Indians are not Caucasian. They're not even a single race, the northern Indians for instance are way smarter than the dark ones. They still should keep to their country.
In unrelated news, that /. conveniently didn't report on, a man (most likely from the religion of peace since the police didn't release his background, as is standard for muslims) ran over a crowd in Heidelberg. Yeah, again. Funny how for decades these things almost never happened and now that people from the most violent countries ont the planet come over it happens every week. It's almost like it's related.
I think you need to take some geography classes. The big mountain range near India is the Himalayas, not the Caucasus mountains. Different mountain range entirely.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
After all, he encouraged it, right? With his "bring a gun" rhetoric.
There are a lot more of black-on-white crimes committed - every day. But no, THOSE can't be "hate crimes". Because "hating whitey" is soooo "progressive".
You want to call for violence because Trump won?
Well, what goes around, comes around.
You progtards have managed to really piss off the people who actually exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. You want to "punch a Nazi" because you need to "resist" losing an election? Go ahead - then you deserve to be shot by that "Nazi".
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic. Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Only if your definition of race comes from the 19th century, which in itself is a little racist. These days race is a social or cultural construct, in which case this is quite clearly racism.
It would be xenophobic if there were an equal number of attacks of foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes who speak English. Since there aren't, racist is a more accurate description.
which is the tool they use to find all racists in the Midwest and South.
You realize you're responding to a story about bigotry with some bigotry of your own, right?
Wrong, and I work in HR so I know. Indians, for Fereral reporting purposes,
are considered in the same category as Black Americans. It's just a fact, not
a racial slur or judgement. We love it when a manager hires an Indian Woman -
two bird with one stone. But those are rare hires because culturally, single
Indian women are rare (they're usually with their husband or family) so sometimes
it's a washout.
CAP === 'dealing'
Indians are Caucasian, research Indo-European migrations before spewing in ignorance please.
And history lessons. Racially motivated attacks against people in Europe - come on. I won't say they invented that, but they've certainly kept the practice up over the years.
Per your a:, Indians and Europeans came from the same stock, part of the Indo-European migrations.
Pretty much all Trump supporters are not racists, that is yet more Fake News meant to make people hate each other who really should not. In the face of a shooting why are you trying to make people hate others more, not less?
What triggers this shooting was a vet who couldn't get assistance from the VA. After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.
Mathews apologized to the family's in her statement, calling Purinton's actions "senseless." She said he had a drinking problem that became worse since his father passed away in October 2015, and he'd been trying to get assistance from the VA.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
Well, there are furries...
Keep going. There's more:
a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
: any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits
2: a group of individuals who share a common culture or history
3: a major group of living things
These are all from the very same page you linked. If you're going to use a dictionary to slap someone down, make sure you understand every way the dictionary says the word can be used. Not just the one that suits you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist
With Obama out of office the racism will die down, without a part in power to fuel it for their own gain. With Trump in power the country can finally move past race again and let real healing begin.
There will be a few more incidents like these though as long as Trump Haters continue to fan the fires of race.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you need to take some geography classes. The big mountain range near India is the Himalayas, not the Caucasus mountains. Different mountain range entirely.
Within what range of the Caucasus mountains would I have to be fom in order to be caucasian?
That's why educated people who talk about "race" use the term "ethnicity" instead. It's more specific although it's no magic bullet because it also includes culture, not just gene pool.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Some Indians are even Aryans (or so I heard)!
Those additional definitions I left out support a wider classification of race (which would have further supported my argument), while at the same time I included one definition that didn't support my argument, which means I did the exact opposite of including only the definition that suited me.
I agree. This is supposed to be full of intelligent IT professionals but it reads like r/the Donald mixed with 4chan fuckery.
Jesus, no wonder nerd hate is on the rise.
What's that got to do with anything?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Cat people.
Dog people.
Goat people.
Hatfields.
McCoys.
la Cosa Nostra.
Tomato lovers.
Racists.
Trump.
Per my b: it includes more general classifications as well.
IMDB boards are being shut down precisely because the signal to noise troll ratio is so high.
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
So now along with 5000 Genders, we got a million races based on beer preference.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've been on a lot of right-wing boards. Those fuckers are triggered by everything. I really can't get that stressed over loopy college girls being scared of shit, but supposed bad-ass conservatives being terrified of Muslims/poor people/leftists/the gays/blacks/millennials/a cool black president/taxes etc. Just makes me want to slap every last one of them preferably with a chainsaw. What's the deal guys? Are you all on medication or just I'll in the head?
ðY
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh
Sikh wearing turbans have been mistaken for Muslims by uneducated rednecks, beaten and sometimes killed.
The worse part of such a horrible crime is the Sikh have also suffered death at the hands of Muslims.
For everyone's goodness, do not hurt people for wearing funny hats, and if you must travel in America, take my advice - buy a nonsports related baseball cap, not red, blue, or black. Maybe a white baseball cap.
In many parts of America, wearing the wrong color or hat can get you beaten or killed. Sorry, but this is true, I've experienced this hate myself for wearing the 'wrong' kind of T-Shirt.
We all know why companies bring in Indian H1-Bs. You may not want to admit it but we all know you know. The reason is they work long hours and kiss ass and get paid shit. They don't speak English well. They never really integrate. It pisses a lot of us off that they're here under these circumstances. Some people snap earlier but everybody snaps eventually.
Only if your definition of race comes from the 19th century, which in itself is a little racist. These days race is a social or cultural construct, in which case this is quite clearly racism.
And as we increasingly expand simple concepts like race or gender, it merely dilutes them to the point of pointlessness.
It means that members of a club are a race. Members of a political party are a race. Rednecks are a race Fraternity members are a race. Liberals are a race. Conservatives are a race.
I use ethnicity for the most part just because of the silly destruction of the term race. But I harbor no illusions that the wordsmits won't screw that up as well.
And I identify my gender as a Lamborghini Countach. Which makes my race as Gearhead.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
White man shoots non white man: this is indicative of all white men who are now empowered by KKK grand wizard Donald Trump.
Muslim religious zealot kills dozens of innocents while previously and publicly professing his intentions on video: he clearly acted alone and this has nothing to do with islam.
Will anyone even see this comment: unlikely.
On a side note I knew when I first saw this it would "become" international news. I also knew the typical anti-white slant would be in every propaganda piece. And above all else, I knew goddamn well it would appear on the new and improved /.
You can do your own research.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
About US military bases in their country.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Are you part of the 18% or so that do? Really...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I work for Garmin at a different location and information I got from a co-worker, who used to be based in Olathe, was that the shooter drove to another bar where he told the staff he was in hiding from police. The staff there then called police who arrested him.
I have been to the USA often and have friends there. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom. I realise that any critique of US gun control or freedom means I will now be modded down.
I have 15 mod points now that I can't use since I am posting here. I could have used them to mod down the hateful posts but I want to post. I am genuinely saddened to hear of the death of a co-worker and such a needless death is so hard to understand. I have no idea how to fix the gun problem in the USA, if it was easy it would have been done already. Sorry America, you have a problem and the stats are pretty clear on that point.
My thoughts go our to Srinivas' family, I am sorry for your loss.
Dude... people who like warm beer aren't just another race... they're another species. Aliens trying (and failing) to fit in.
Society breeds behavior.
Dialectician. Archology.
Saw this story on Yahoo (of all places) yesterday.
Their article has some extra information....
At any given time, she said, more than 100 Garmin employees are in the H-1B program, which lets American companies bring foreigners with technical skills to the U.S. for three to six years.
In an eight-year period until fiscal year 2016, Garmin on average obtained 49 certifications for foreign labor — a prerequisite for hiring with an H-1B visa — for an average of 70 positions, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gps-device-maker-garmin-reeling-workers-gunned-down-013731087.html
Furries? You can blame Disney for that. I mean, have you ever seen Lola Bunny?
#DeleteFacebook
"Killed By Man Yelling...
Congrats on the worst headline-gore I have seen this year.
could you post the name of your company? I don't vote for Trump but I want to be sure I never end up working for your organization by mistake.
Also I was wondering: do you have a diversity program in place? And if so, how can you possibly justify the hypocrisy of selective diversity based on political views?
Of course you won't post the name because you're a liar and/or a coward. But thanks for playing.
lucm, indeed.
Actually, he was shooting his mouth off (no surprise) and the bartender call the cops. (He was arrested in my home town.)
we got a million races based on beer preference.
Go home, beer drinker
lucm, indeed.
At the peak of the evolution of a species there is only its extinction. But do not worry folks: since Trump (which bring us to pro-apes era) we are not at the evolution peak of the genus "homo" any-more, this mean we litter basters will live still a lot.
It would be xenophobic if there were an equal number of attacks of foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes who speak English. Since there aren't, racist is a more accurate description.
It would be racist if the attacker had shouted a racist epitaph upon attacking; however, he shouted a xenophobic epitaph "Get out of my country!" instead.
I have been to the USA often and have friends there. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
And what makes you believe that you're not the one people can't have a rational discussion with? If you're so quick to put all pro-gun people in the same bucket as the lunatic who shot that guy, then you're not much better than the people who put you in the same bucket as ISIS terrorists.
There's no "correct" side in differences of opinions. You may think that your own opinion is better but that doesn't make other ones irrational. I'm not going to bring up all the arguments of pro-gun people (there's plenty of websites for that) but there's a lot more to it than "being a god given right".
lucm, indeed.
I'd mod you down if I had points, but instead I'll just say the right to bear arms is a good thing.
It is important to remember that radicalized Christian Kansans are responsible for more acts of terrorism in America than the seven Islamic countries on the travel ban combined. In fact, they're so pervasive that they immortalized one in a mural on the wall of the state Capitol building. Any reasonable country would consider restricting travel to or from the state of Kansas for the protection of America from some very bad dudes.
I work for Garmin in New Zealand and have been to Olathe a few times. Garmin has great inclusive culture to it and I am genuinely saddened to hear of Srinivas' death.
I am disappointed to read posts that somehow infer that Srinivas' employment in the Olathe office was at the expense of a US resident getting a job. That is simply not true. There is a world wide shortage of skilled workers. We have two US employees in our Auckland office and no one here complains about them taking our jobs. We employee every skilled Kiwi we can find but the shortage means over half my team are from China and Taiwan. We welcome them as we need more skilled people to get keep our business competitive. None of the locals, such as myself, see these people as stealing our jobs.
It is the same in Olathe, they will employ any US citizen with suitable skills ahead of a foreign worker as it is less hassle but they can not get enough staff with right skills, in part because Garmin set the bar quite high when it comes to skill levels. I have meet people with a wide range of backgrounds in the US Garmin offices and have never seen even a hint of racism or sexism.
My mind can not comprehend how the shooter could feel justified in taking a life even if he really thought immigrant were taking local jobs. These kind of people need to stop blaming immigrants for stealing jobs and take a good hard look at themselves.
Purinton has recently has a sex change operation and was unfortunate enough to have had a large branch driven up between his legs by a gust of wind, splitting his jeans, So what he was actually said was "Get out of my cunt tree". I hope everybody will calm down now that is cleared up.
My coworker is dead because of your right to bear arms, tell me again how that is a good thing?
Innocent gun owners didn't shoot these guys. Scapegoating and sending the police after innocent people isn't the answer.
If you wish to redefine the meaning of "race" (or "sex" for that matter), you need to change the law that bans discrimination based on it.
Because, unless the law has explicitly changed in between — as in, passed by Legislature and signed by the Executive — what was legal at one point shall remain legal at another.
Funny, this argument — But I identify as Black! — didn't help certain Ms. Dolezal keep her job at, of all places, NAACP... Evidently, some races — whatever the term means — are more equal than others. Had she been fired for being Black while masquerading as White, she and her team of lawyers would've all been millionaires by now.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Just about every other developed country in the world disagrees. The few that have a similar (well, within a 2-3x factor, the US is just that much of an outlier) level of gun ownership (like Switzerland) do it in a way so incredibly different it may as well be another concept entirely.
It just so happens that the rest of world is also doing fine without all those guns.
Why? When compared against similar countries with much stricter gun laws we have statistics which show more crime, more accidental shooting and more suicides. Lets face it, in reality, too many Americans have nothing more than fetish for firearms, making them our most dangerous sex toy.
it's as shame. The guys he shot weren't even Muslims.
It is a good thing you didn't have mod points then, because I don't see a reason his post deserves to be modded down. In fact his post is better because at least he attempts to justify his position, whereas you don't motivate yours at all.
In other words my coworker is dead because millions of innocent gun owners haven't been arrested, how is that a good thing?.
How many thousands of people would die trying to enforce gun control on a population unwilling to surrender their guns? We tried alcohol prohibition because so many people died In relation to the consumption of alcohol. It turned out to be a mistake.
Having screamed for anti-immigrant violence and sexual assault becoming common place because of Trump, Illiberals could never offer any actual evidence. Maybe, this guy is what they need. Finally...
Meanwhile the number of victims of the "Black Lives Matter" assholes — the very foundation of their movement based on a lie — uncounted scores.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive - and, quite often, they happily go hand in hand.
#DeleteChrome
It's not a good thing, but you're also making a big assumption. That he wouldn't have killed otherwise if this guy didn't have access to firearms. There are many, many ways to kill someone. The guy could have waited for your coworker to leave the restaurant and simply run him over with his car or attacked him with a machete. You're only limited by your imagination. This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense. The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY wanted to kill middle easterners (or whatever), he would find a way. Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
The presidents and followers bigoted words and actions are to blame for this and more to come.
They are to blame and no one else..
(.)-(.)
No he isn't.
Your co-worker is dead because some fucking asshole shot him.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
There is no silver bullet. These are complex times with complex social issues that take insightful determination to solve. Knee-jerk reactions like "take away guns", "kick out the Muslims", "build a wall", "get a gun" and the like do not go very far in terms of a solution. Bigotry, hatred, sexism aren't going to be fixed like that.
"Doing something" for the sake of reacting may not be the best choice.
Beware of the Leopard.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment. The Founding Fathers used their own experiences to craft a document which (was supposed to) enshrined rights to people while limiting that of the government. However, as James Madison pointed out, there has been more abridgement of freedoms of the people by the silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations (paraphrased).
The second reason for the amendment, and one the NRA absolutely refuses to recognize, is those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia. Unlike today, the Founding Fathers envisioned a small standing army, if at all, with the militia doing the brunt of the work to slow or repel foreign invaders or put down rebellion, as George Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion.
Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.
The original amendment, as proposed by James Madison, the guy who wrote the Constitution, was:
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not.
This is why gun control is such a contentious issue. The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, says citizens are allowed to own firearms. Where the argument comes in is where to draw the line on a) who can own a gun (as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot) and b) what restrictions on gun ownership (type of weapon, amount of bullets, etc). As you have seen, some believe there should be no restrictions and others say there should be plenty of restrictions or even no ownership at all.
We already have plenty of gun control - any talk of additional gun control is only talk of further chipping away at this basic American right.
I think the statistics are pretty good. The last I read, nearly half the households have firearms. There are usually about 33,000 firearms related deaths a year. More than half of those are suicides, so only about 15,000 are left. There was just an article that over 1,000 of those are people killed by police. A lot of the remaining 14,000 involve garbage killing garbage. What is left - people murdered - isn't bad when you consider how big and diverse this country is. In fact it is pretty amazing when you think about it.
And yes, that is the price you pay for that significant bit of extra freedom. It isn't just about self defense. In this day and age where there is so much going on between climate change, political unrest, and outright attacks taking place within the borders of the US armed citizens are just as necessary as they have ever been. It is the difference between being a citizen and a subject.
Listen ukoda, gonna 'splain this to you real simple.
Your coworker is not dead because of the American right to bear arms; you coworker died at the hands of a criminal (or deranged). Period.
The person could have used hundreds of other as fatal methods to commit the crime, but it's a crime to kill another human under those
circumstances; not a crime to be a legal gun-owning American. We don't know if he legally owned a gun and we do not believe the cost
of a human life is a fair price for the right to bear arms in the country. It shows how little you think of your coworker. If I heard you say that at a
company I worked, I'd do everything to have you fired. I think the biggest threat you bring to our way of life are these very narrow world views.
India is a mecca of street-poopers (I've been there) and corruption and the caste system and the treating of women like dirt and I could
go on. We don't want that type here. You should understand the kind of nonsense you spew and that it is offensive to native born Americans.
But that doesn't mean you're going to be the target of a turkey shoot, but I would definitely distance my family from careless ideals you carry.
CAP === 'upholder'
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom. I realise that any critique of US gun control or freedom means I will now be modded down.
People with hate in their heart will just as easily use a machete, a baseball bat, a crowbar, or even a vase or broken beer bottle. Gun control is irrelevant for this discussion.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I'd mod you down if I had points,
Don't mod down someone if you disagree with what they wrote. That is abuse of the moderation system. Write a reply instead.
but instead I'll just say the right to bear arms is a good thing.
You might want to provide some arguments for that.
I am not really here right now.
one way of looking at this is that this might be an early example of american guerrilla patriots fighting back against the elites and their invading army of cheap-labor economic terrorists. I am not saying that i myself take this perspective. I am just posing this question.
Fuck the billionaires.
Dude... people who like warm beer aren't just another race... they're another species. Aliens trying (and failing) to fit in.
I like Tequila too. I might be trans-beerqueer.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You push hate, bigotry, violence, and xenophobia, so of course this kind of stuff escalates. :(
Stay tuned, more acts of horrific inhumanity to come
we got a million races based on beer preference.
Go home, beer drinker
I have the right to drink beer! Now those Pabst Blue Ribbon drinkers - they're the sickos. Would you want your children taught by someone that drinks PBR?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We all come from the same stock, sport.
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
That's just what I was wondering. So everybody who uses PC-BSD - am I now the same race as them, regardless of their ethnicity?
I'd like to propose that we ban people from driving vehicles of all sorts. They kill far more people each year than guns. And next we should ban the top Leading Causes of Death:
Heart disease: 614,348
Cancer: 591,699
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
The one thing I know about Europeans is you can not have a rational discussion with them about numbers nor freedom. Freedom has a price and we should be shooting to eliminate regulations and restrictions where there are no victims: drivers licenses, vehicular registration, mandatory vehicular insurance, public schooling, government police, social programs, and similar. These things all have costs associated to them and with freedom (ie zero or low taxes) one can choose which to put their money into and we'd have a much better system.
We don't need government and violence to achieve positive social and financial improvements. I can choose to get health insurance, enter into a cost-sharing program for health care, hire security that has my interests at heart rather than maintaining the status quo, place my kids into a school that makes financial sense (ie rather than puts me into poverty as the current system(s) frequently do), invest for retirement, and charity (that's right- you don't need to use violence and theft to get people do donate- the means can't be justified by the ends). I say no victim, no law.
http://www.freestateproject.org/ - Migration of those who prefer freedom to New Hampshire for the purpose of forming a free society- it's for those want liberty and freedom over the little bit of temporary safety supposedly provided by government (though its near always just security theatre really)
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Freedom is messy but then again so is life. Shall we get rid of automobiles? People genuinely believe their right to own a car is a good thing and the deaths from accidents and environmental destruction, while tragic, are the price of convenience.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
I think you need to take some geography classes. The big mountain range near India is the Himalayas, not the Caucasus mountains. Different mountain range entirely.
Actually the range is called the Himalaya.
It's ok, many people make the error of adding the "s" to the end of the name. But they, and you, are incorrect in doing so.
Unfortunately, 'terrorism' is now a code word for Jihad, and the term has elbowed out all other terror acts committed by non-Muslims. If everybody would use the j word to describe terrorism done by the allahu-akbar screaming crowd, and the t word for its doing by anyone else, that would clear things up a lot
"White americans should be disarmed so my indian bros can rule over them in management and hire only indians"
Get the FUCK out cuck.
Found the Trump voter.
Make America Hate Again!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> I use ethnicity for the most part just because of the silly destruction of the term race.
The term "race" isn't being destroyed. It isn't even changing. All that's changed is that you are running into the limits of your grade-school understanding of the world. Time to grow up. Biology has always been a small and completely arbitrary part of race. For example, it wasn't until just a little over 100 years ago that the Irish and Italians were considered "white." You know that phrase "Tall, dark and handsome?" - That was never about black men, it was about europeans. People who were not white then but are now.
Here's Ben Franklin expounding on the concept of whiteness as commonly understand at the time:
That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.
Furthermore, the one group of people who consistently think race is not genetic? Actual geneticists.
For example, Dr Craig Venter, you might have heard of him, he created the Human Genome Project.
Venter had this to say 16 years ago:
''Race is a social concept, not a scientific one''
FYI, "ethnicity" and "race" - they are basically the same thing.
ethnicity
noun
The fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition.
Not surprised at the huge negative response. Most of the responses back my statement "They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing". My point is if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... you will see you are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than places like New Zealand. Some of you claim it is need to defend your democracy but there is nothing wrong with democracy here. We rise up and protest as needed and if the worst came I am sure people could overthrow an unjust government without mass arming of ourselves.
One poster pointed our that to disarm your country would result on mass deaths. I think that poster was right and wouldn't suggest trying that. They easy no easy fix for your problem, and I am not proposing any. I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
Social/cultural constructs are real, and we don't have to listen to your silly definitions. We know that by the scientific definition of race the human species has no races, but we also know the historical context of what groups the word "race" in the human context has defined and what physical characteristics went into that, and we can use it.
This space intentionally left blank
The right to bear arms is a good thing AND a bad thing. The problem with America is in everyone picking the most extreme view either being the number one cheerleading fan or the number one most vitriolic hater. There is no subtlety in America.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
I'm very liberal, own guns, and you can have a rational discussion about guns with me. We're not all raving gun nuts, frothing at the mouth and screaming about how "the gubbmint is gonna put us all into FEMA camps." (Although now that Trump is president, I start to wonder if some of those cranks might be on to something.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin.
That's a big headquarters.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'd rather have "Knee-jerk reaction" and take away guns from society that has a "Knee-jerk reaction" to kill someone. It is common theme: can't solve it, can't talk, can't discuss it, I have more power b/c I have a gun and I will just shoot to prove my point - is approach that kills people!!! In less civilized countries you will get a hit in the face, get a couple punches, moronic opponent will get arrested, and be done with "dispute" - but at least you will be alive.
Indeed it doesn't solve the root cause, but it often gives people a damn good fighting chance, and I say that as someone who was the victim of an attempted stabbing. If everyone had a gun I probably wouldn't be posting this right now.
Furries? You can blame Disney for that. I mean, have you ever seen Lola Bunny?
Every night, in my dreams.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
If you feel that the intent of this means that only recognized members of an organized militia should have guns, consider this:
"The right of the people to keep and use soap shall not be infringed. Proper sanitation, being necessary to the preparation of healthy food, the right of the people to wash their hands, shall not be infringed."
Would you interpret that statement to say that only people who prepare food are allowed to wash their hands?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
All you "Christian" hacks ought to read what Christ said. Hint: he never advocated hating anyone.
woop another bigly maga guys. i'm sure adam here has much bigger things to contribute to society.
Man gets shot by right wing extremist.
Typical slashdot apologist starts talking about how the victim didn't belong to a "race".
Not Caucasians per she... Nlbut the topmost caste - Brahmans - are Aryan, which is probably what you were thinking of.
That is not what I said. Read it in its complete context. As I said, one of the reasons the Founding Fathers wanted citizens to have weapons was because they intended them to be part of the militia. Nowhere did I say only those who were part of the militia should be the only ones to have weapons.
Madison's original wording makes this very clear. Citizens are allowed to bear arms with the understanding they should be drilled in the use of those weapons as part of the militia.
Thanks, that is the first reasoned response I recall. Actually we have reasonably high gun ownership in New Zealand but they are normally rifles for sport or farming and hand guns are rare. We have debates here about arming our police but I think we have it right where none are armed but many have access when needed in a lock box in their vehicle. Here I do not live in fear. I feel safe have in drink in all but the worst bars, walking almost any street at night and never fear being pulled over by the cops. I don't fear someone breaking into my home at night, they will wait until I go to work to break in. I don't lock my car when I drive or get nervous when I stop at the traffic lights.
I like visiting the USA but do feel nervous about where I go and what I do. I have thought about working there for a year or two as the place does have some merits but I would not immigrate, life is too much better here.
I was not trying to start a flame ware, I was talking about the loss of a coworker, the first time in my near 40 years of working. Was not surprised at the response I got but I was disappointed, I figured Slashdotters would be reasoned in their responses, I guess I over estimated them. I think for real improvements to happen there there has to be a change of thinking more that a change of law and I would hope people there would look at the other sane countries and maybe wonder why things are different and try and envision a better future for themselves.
Recently, WH disallowed many media calling them fake. Among the ones which were allowed are fox and breitbart. Breitbard does not even mention this and fox has only one item published even before the arrest was made and no further coverage.
Well, for a start that isn't what they put in the constution, so your assertion is entirely answerable with "Yes". If your founders had found that only a washed millitia could curb the excesses of an out of control government but nobody else needed to be washed, then they would have put that in the constitution. Your attempt to make this ridiculous replacement relies on the above being a sensible assertion for a group of people designing a country to make, in which case every other sensible person in that country should be agreeing with it.
That we DON'T think that soap should be used by millitias to control a federal governments over-reach is why they didn't put "soap" in the place of "(military) arms" in your second amendment.
If they'd used bombs and mines in there instead of "arms" would you be saying that everyone should have access to nukes and anti-tank and anti-personnel mines?
Go back to your fake news...MSNBC? CNN? whatever floats your boat.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.
You might think that folks getting shot is a price to pay for the freedom to own fire arms. I'm not gonna bother arguing that point yay or nay (and I wish the left would drop it, it's a losing issue). But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit. It bothers me that a sentiment so obviously wrong can get so much traction with the American people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So quite why you think "no more control" of immigration is somehow equivalent of "adding gun control" is entirely why I can see you are not thinking about this at all and have come up with a lame-ass excuse that really doesn't hold water.
It takes 6 months and a clean record of no crimes for an immigrant to get into the USA. How about the same control on guns? 6 months of invasive background checks and no guns if you have a criminal record for gun controls equals what you have for immigration.
I'm just not obsessed with racial guilt because it's bullshit.
All groups take advantage of their hegemony. Feeling guilty about it is just being stupid. I 100% guarantee you the next hegemons won't give two shits about whatever guilt they should feel about oppressing you. Or me.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You can't have a reasonable discussion with people because you neither reason with people nor discuss with them. Pronouncements aren't reason. Monologuing isn't discussion.
but it does make me question the easy availability of guns. The trouble with guns is they make it easy and oh so quick to make a snap judgement that changes everything. It's a big problem for the suicidal and hell, this guy just basically committed suicide. His life is more or less over. He might not die in prison, but he'll be pushing 60 when he gets out.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Your extermination via breeding loss will not be wrong it will be written by the winners of history, IOW none of you lot.
(PS you're speaking bollocks. Since human ownership starts with empty unowned land by other humans, the first ones there were the native american indians who took land nobody owned, whereas you white fuckers stole it. It really is quite clear the difference)
Sounds like the bandwagon fallacy to me.
It doesn't matter if "just about every other developed country in the world" disagrees. Just about every other developed country in the world could be wrong.
You said that they are doing fine without guns. Well, America is doing fine with guns. Shootings like this are rare (when you adjust for population and especially population density). Other types of fatal violence (like knife violence) happen in America too, just like in other countries. And of course, some shootings still happen in countries where civilian gun ownership is banned.
I am quite familiar with the arguments put forth that eliminating gun ownership reduces violence. And none of them are sound.
There's no amount of massaging of the statistics that will change the fact the US gets waaaaay more gun deaths per capita than any other Western country. You're up there with Uruguay and Panama. That, alone, is proof enough that the bandwagon fallacy doesn't apply.
Things in the U.S.A. will get even crazier than this and really quick.
Killing the H1B Program is an Administrative way to prevent these sort of "events".
Perhaps after 50-years or so, the H1B visa can be re-introduced, but for now it must be killed.
I feel safe have in drink in all but the worst bars, walking almost any street at night and never fear being pulled over by the cops. I don't fear someone breaking into my home at night, they will wait until I go to work to break in. I don't lock my car when I drive or get nervous when I stop at the traffic lights.
I feel pretty much the same here in the US, to be frank. I only lock my car door when I drive because if I'm in an accident it prevents the door from flying open and ejecting me from the car (seatbelt or not, that's often what happens). Shootings in bars aren't common here, but the papers play it up and make it sound like it happens all the time, everywhere. In 50+ years I've never seen a shot fired in a bar, and I've been in plenty. :)
The same for break-ins, most criminals will wait until you're gone, but there's always the crazy ones whose goal is to hurt someone and they'll carry a weapon. Guns, knives, machetes, whatever- they're intent is to harm, not rob. You'll find them in every city in the world but I don't think there are more of them in the US per capita than elsewhere. (I may be wrong about that, I haven't looked at any stats.)
-
I like visiting the USA but do feel nervous about where I go and what I do.
Is this due to the presence of firearms, or the general level of violent behavior you perceive in the US?
-
... I figured Slashdotters would be reasoned in their responses, I guess I over estimated them.
Slashdot used to be more of a "reasoned discussion" kind of place, but it's really gone to hell in the last 5 to 10 years. Sadly I think much of the internet has descended into hair-trigger flamewar territory, not just Slashdot. :(
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Seriously wtf guys, really?
Up next: how to make clickbait single page!
that's going to be this guys new war cry...
No he isn't.
Your co-worker is dead because some fucking asshole shot him.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
There is no silver bullet. These are complex times with complex social issues that take insightful determination to solve. Knee-jerk reactions like "take away guns", "kick out the Muslims", "build a wall", "get a gun" and the like do not go very far in terms of a solution. Bigotry, hatred, sexism aren't going to be fixed like that.
"Doing something" for the sake of reacting may not be the best choice.
A right wing terrorists shot somebody to death, there are two underlying issues. The fact that right wing extremism is being enabled at the highest ranks of the US Government, and that the US is so infested with guns that it's really easy for unstable individuals to get guns. You can try to fix both.
I stole this Sig
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this.
Yes, it does. Guns are an ideal tool for killing, which is why the gun is the preferred choice for those who choose suicide. Without guns, violent idiots have a much more difficult time killing people, thus reducing the problem. Tools matter. Pretending they don't, as you are doing, is just completely stupid.
How can you be so fucking stupid? Guns make killing easier. That's why they exist.
What does Disney have to do with Lola Bunny? She's a Looney Tunes character, which is a Warner Brothers property.
You keep calling the victim your coworker.
Did you actually know him?
Did you really work with him?
Have you ever met him?
Or do you just get paid by another division of the same multinational corporation that paid him?
You are trying to make this tragedy about you and your anti-gun crusade -it isn't.
Except that guns make murdering another person much easier and convenient such as in this bastards case.
If guns were kept out of the hands of psychopaths like this nazi-fuck shitstain, this man would still be alive.
YOU massage the stats when you use the phrase "gun deaths."
Why not just look at "deaths?"
We would expect higher "gun deaths" where there is higher gun ownership. But if there are lower per capita deaths overall, that would mean that gun ownership saves lives. Or, if the death rates are the same, that would mean gun ownership is a net neutral.
If you want to make the claim that gun ownership results in increased fatalities overall, then you need to compare apples to apples.
This jumps out at me every time someone uses the phrase "gun deaths" instead of "deaths." It makes it clear that they have an agenda, and have already picked the subset of stats that seem to support it. In any other context, we would call this practice "deception."
My nervousness is about the presence of firearms. I see the police wearing them, I see guns for sale at Walmart and I see signs about gun policies on the entrances to building. Combine that with the news reports and statistics and it is concerning. I use the rational side of brain to remind me that the media do hype things up and while it is much more dangerous than back home the risk is still small as long as I don't do anything stupid I should be fine. As a result I normally enjoy my visits and I like 99% of the people I meet.
Was he a H-1B worker?
Pardon me, but I wasn't born yesterday. When an entire motive is determined by the statement of one unnamed witness, and it just so happens to be a rare validation of a major unsubstantiated trend narrative, I am suspicious. I'll be waiting a few weeks to let this story play out before I believe it.
"Hands up, don't shoot" anyone?
"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"
Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.
Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
I stole this Sig
Guns kill easiest. Guns kill efficiently. A car and machete are tools that have many uses. A gun is a weapon, and has a single purpose. It kills. It kills well.
Scapegoating and sending the police after innocent people isn't the answer.
But black folks are scapegoated, incarcerated in droves and murdered by police all the time and most seem OK with it. It's an American tradition!
The bandwagon fallacy is "this is true because so many people believe it." It doesn't matter whether it is actually true or not. That reason for believing it is fallacious.
So, the bandwagon fallacy applies to the original statement, directly and precisely. The fact that you refuse to recognize this very simple and objective fact of logic reveals quite a lot about you.
It's not that simple.
If right wing extremism is being enabled at the highest ranks of US government, then presumably this sort of thing is acceptable at the root of the US government as well, meaning it is deeply rooted with the fabric of American sub-culture. You don't just elect a new government to get rid of this problem.
Gun infestation isn't the problem. It is a problem, sure, but it isn't *the* problem. The real problem lives above -- at the root: in any number of American sub-cultures where it is becoming more acceptable to hate. Taking away guns doesn't fix that. It might make it worse. If it's not a gun, then its a Ryder truck with a bomb in it. Its poison gas.
Your proposed solution to elect a new government and take away guns through policy-making is insufficient. I am not saying I have the solution, but so far, policy-making and official electing have done nothing but manifest more problems on top of problems -- in my opinion.
Beware of the Leopard.
Please try to keep in mind that you, or your culture, don't get the privilege of defining what is "rational" for the whole world, or specifically in someone else's culture. "Rational" is defined by the culture it is being considered within.
I strongly agree with that, as does a large percentage of the american people. It was an early amendment to the constitution and is still there because it's a strong belief within our culture.
The basic principle at work here is "You have a default right to do whatever you want to do. But there are laws that place restrictions on cases where your right to this freedom infringes unfairly on someone else's right of freedom." We try not to make things illegal "just because we don't like them". When we do, those laws are often struck down later. (prohibition, women's suffrage, slavery, etc) We still have some dumb laws on the books (suicide, marijuana, etc) but they too will go away eventually, because they aren't protecting the freedoms of the right people in the right way. I see the second amendment as a statement that reminds lawmakers that this specific freedom is appropriate here. My freedom to own a firearm creates a certain risk to the public. Criminals with firearms create a risk to the public too, which includes ME. (and there are other factors) When the risks are calculated and compared, allowing me to continue owning a firearm for personal defense against armed criminals results in the greatest preservation of the public's freedom . It's just simple math.
In your culture, the variables are different. Different percentage of criminals, criminals with firearms, odds of random citizens causing harm, etc. It may not work for you where you live, in your culture. England seems to be doing better with gun control, but now look, a lot of police are armed, and that didn't used to be the case. Its clearly slowly sliding downhill as their culture changes. Now look over here at Chicago, one of the most gun-restrictive places in the country. LOOK at all the gun crimes. A total disaster of policy over there, and a perfect example of why "gun control" doesn't work in our culture. So don't come over here and tell us "You're doing it wrong!", because you really have no idea what you're talking about, not here.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back.
True. Of course, it also helps if the people in question aren't so cowed and beaten down by racist oppression and gaslighting they don't have the will to defend themselves anymore. And no, rioting is not fighting, it's just a mindless temper tantrum. It takes guts and heart to want to stand and take the war to the oppressor, something which centuries of bullying and abuse have largely drained from my people, sad to say.
the dangerous ones in the US to worry about are a certain kind of gun owner.
they wear blue uniforms when they go to work each day.
you know what I'm talking about.
those gun owners are scary and can end your life. try to avoid them, even talking to them.
then, chances are, you'll generally be safe in the US.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Social/cultural constructs are real, and we don't have to listen to your silly definitions.
Exactly. We don't have to listen to yours either. And can you quote back to me exactly where I said they were not real in the first place?
I find as long as a person isn't engaging in sex with a minor, I'm fine with wherever they want to dip their wick. I'm fine if they want to enter the state of marriage, and enjoy the rights and responsibilities of that state. Awesome. Finding love is better than finding hatred.
Facebook's 51 genders?http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/15/the-complete-glossary-of-facebook-s-51-gender-options.html Oops maybe its 58....
Agender Androgyne Androgynous Bigender Cis Cisgender Cis Female Cis Male Cis Man Cis Woman Cisgender Female Cisgender Male Cisgender Man Cisgender Woman Female to Male FTM Gender Fluid Gender Nonconforming Gender Questioning Gender Variant Genderqueer Intersex Male to Female MTF Neither Neutrois Non-binary Other Pangender Trans Trans* Trans Female Trans* Female Trans Male Trans* Male Trans Man Trans* Man Trans Person Trans* Person Trans Woman Trans* Woman Transfeminine Transgender Transgender Female Transgender Male Transgender Man Transgender Person Transgender Woman Transmasculine Transsexual Transsexual Female Transsexual Male Transsexual Man Transsexual Person Transsexual Woman Two-Spirit
Which is exactly why I say it is pointless. Explain if you will, the difference between a Transsexual male and a transsexual man. And is it worth getting offended if you identify as a trans male and someone assumes your gender is transgender male? Must be if there is an official separate designation.
The list shows that whatever you feel like calling yourself is an acceptable gender, therefore, it follows that the term gender has no meaning. The likewise silly term some people use as identifying as a " Blackhawk Helicopter". Well how would you deny that?
You have male, female, and indeterminate, if you feel the need. And the hijacking of gender into sexual or non-sexual preference needs shelved under "none of your damn business."
Now on to Social/Cultural. My background is Hungarian/Ukrainian/Italian/Scotch-Irish. My Mother was Italian, and My Father was Hungarian in the latest generation, with the Ukrainian one generation back.
So am I blessed to have so many cultures to pick and choose from, or do I have to pick one and stay within it so I am not guilty of cultural appropriation? I can tell you that you would have been mortally offended, because we enjoyed aspects of every culture that was part of our past. Except Scotch Irish - I'm not certain how that was neglected.
All of these things exist - I'll thank you for not putting words into what I write - that's rather offensive, you know.
We know that by the scientific definition of race the human species has no races, but we also know the historical context of what groups the word "race" in the human context has defined and what physical characteristics went into that, and we can use it.
And you could line up people by skin pigmentation/race from lightest to darkest, and no one, not even the most discriminating racist could tell the dividing line. I seldom use the "race descriptive anyhow, because you and your ilk spend a lot of time changing the word and getting offended if someone uses the wrong term, It doesn't turn you into a racist to use the term African-American. Yet everyone knows what you are talking about.
Even then, it can be an issue. On NPR I was listening to a newswoman interviewing a woman from Germany that also happened to be from an African nation, and also happened to have skin pigmentation typical of a person from that nation. So th
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And as we increasingly expand simple concepts like race or gender, it merely dilutes them to the point of pointlessness.
You mean that as we discover that not everything is black and white, nature tends to be infinite shades of grey, we should just give up and stick with black and white?
Just because the stupid end of society can't deal with grey doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
I use ethnicity for the most part just because of the silly destruction of the term race
The classical definition of race was only three groups, Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. It is not pointless to introduce more granular classifications, if anything it helps us understand all the variations that exist among humanity. This is how science and progress works.
And I identify my gender as a Lamborghini Countach. Which makes my race as Gearhead.
That explains a lot.
Fine. Let's assume for the sake of argument that guns are a fundamentally bad thing and need to be banned. There are over 300 million guns in the United States alone. Please tell me how you plan to get rid of them in such a way that disarms criminals equally as well as it disarms law-abiding citizens.
You can't, and that's the crux of the problem. Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Law-abiding people, by definition, do obey the law. Pass a law banning handguns and you guarantee 100% disarmament of law-abiding citizens whilst simultaneously stopping very few if any criminals from getting them. Congratulations! You just made violent gun crime easier for every thug, bank robber, rapist, murderer, and so on. We absolutely need more of that, right?
Every time there's a shooting, people like you come out of the woodwork screaming about how bad guns are and how they must be eliminated. As noted above, there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. Today about 99.99997% of them were not used in a violent criminal way, yet you insist they are a dire threat to anything and everything. Your argument is both irrational and illogical.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If everyone had a gun I probably wouldn't be posting this right now.
Far more people have guns than you are probably aware. That's because the vast, huge, overwhelming majority of them are kept for defense instead of assault. There are over 300 million guns in private hands in the United States. If the owners of these decided to be a problem, trust me, you'd be dead by now. That you're not is prima facie evidence of the stupidity of your argument.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist, alchohol fucks everyone up, just in different ways, none good and many lethal. Now if only dude had been stoned, sure he could likely have shot himself whilst stoned trying to clean his second favourite toy but at least he would not have shot someone else. Guns and alchohol do not mix https://psychcentral.com/news/.... That is all that this story is about, once drunk, all logic and reason is gone to be replaced by alcohol fuelled depression and stupidity. Shooting people whilst drunk is either racist or xenophobic, it is simply alchohol fuelled stupidity. Would it have happened sober, no. Would it have happened stoned, no.
The reality is alcohol cost far more in losses to society than the profit it provides. Out suffering and wallets, are alchohol industry profits. For every dollar you spend buying alchohol, that alchohol will be spending another dollar in wasted taxes paying for the damage alchohol causes.
People are self medicating with all sorts of crap as a result of the stresses of psychopathic capitalism, it is time to ensure the mendicants do not cause more harm than good (people have a right to feel good, even if via intoxicants and fuck any sick fuck who demands people must fucking suffer, they must be fucking miserable, that they must slave and die on the inside every day, those people who demand it are disgusting).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
No one is in denial that homicide is a problem. Where we differ is the severity of the problem in relation to the severity of the proposed solutions. For example, the most recent statistics show there were over 30,000 automobile deaths last year, far more than deaths due to violent use of a gun. Do you propose banning automobiles? There are nearly 4,000 deaths annually due to drowning in pools, more than violent homicides by firearm, yet I don't hear you calling for a ban on pools.
There is no such thing as a perfectly free yet perfectly safe society and a great deal of harm can be done trying to achieve such a thing. For example, while shootings such as these make gun usage seem uniformly bad, there are no newscasts highlighting positive use of firearms for self defense. Nobody gets any air time when a five-foot, 100lb woman doesn't get raped by a six-foot, 220lb thug because she successfully defended herself with a firearm. There are innumerable permutations on the latter, none of which get any attention. Ban firearms by law-abiding citizens and you guarantee a target-rich environment for criminals, none of which will give a damn about any gun ban laws because criminals do not obey the law.
If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and magically delete every gun in existence then I might agree with your stance. That is impossible and any rational, reasonable person should know that. So long as criminals can get their hands on a weapon do to harm upon me and my family, I absolutely demand the right to legally obtain and wield one of my own for defense.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pretty sure that's Warner Brothers. Anyway I prefer Jessica Rabbit.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.
Hmm....kind of like Selective Service?
And, equally, The Second Amendment was also intended to protect The People from a tyrannical domestic government who would probably not call up a "well regulated militia" to protect The People from itself and would also love a federal database of gun owners to keep any uprisings in check.
So while your argument may be reasonable it was clearly never the intention of The Founding Fathers to only grant the federal government the ability to overthrow a repressive domestic regime when the need arises.
It is probably time for Garmin to close up shop in the US. They need to calculate the cost of moving out in terms of logistics, sales and protecting their employees.
There are all kinds of excuses being offered that the killer was a "lone" nut but I beg to differ. Garmin needs to move its employees out of all hostile environments.
I have purchased several Garmin products and will continue to buy from them if they choose to move out of the US.
You mean Indio, CA? You can't get a CCW permit in California unless you have a good reason, and "safety" is too vague. So either there's more to the story or the guy wasn't actually carrying a weapon, or he was carrying an illegal weapon, in which case gun laws don't really help. Did you even see it?
And besides, with the exception of your interpretation of his "attacking body language", there's nothing in this anecdote that has any relevance in the discussion. You took a progressively more anti-gun position knowing full well that the other guy was pro-gun, and the discussion ended with him saying that he didn't have to listen to you. What does that prove? Did he point his gun at you? You clearly stated that he put his hand inside his jacket (allegedly to reach this alleged gun) before the discussion got heated.
If you don't want awkward conversations to end awkwardly, don't engage strangers on topics on which you know they will disagree.
lucm, indeed.
I see the so-called original as a stronger protection of the right to bear arms. The first sentence is perfectly clear. The second sentence is rational for the first. But it really doesn't matter what the first draft was, does it? What was ratified is what has the force of the supreme law of the land.
Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things.
Ignoring all the off topic and closet bigot posts above...
I hope this poor excuse of an American rots in jail and gets charged with hate crime. In addition I hope the two survivors sue him for every penny he is worth.
And kudos to Mr Grillot for standing up to this ass. We need more people like him!
He drove 80 miles away... I think he was sober enough to make a non-lethal shot.
The interesting thing that I find in the gun control debate is that Progressives show great concern and compassion for gun victims and demand we "do something" because of all the deaths from guns.....
From the site http://www.gunviolencearchive....
Total number of gun deaths in 2014: 12,556
That is a horrifying number and is alarming. However, those same Progressives literally shrug off this statistic:
from the site https://www.guttmacher.org/fac...
Total number of abortions in the US in 2014: 926,200
Thats nearly TWO orders of magnitude more deaths.
I know I know, "clump of cells" and all. But Progressive are incredibly blasé about life in one sense and incredibly dramatic about it in another.
Another statistic:
From the site: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topic...
Car crash deaths: 35,092
So I'll finish with this. I get that strengthening abortion restrictions is something that Progressives won't do because well "those aren't people". And the Right won't move on gun restrictions because of the right to bear arms.
But you know what would be the best thing and save a lot of lives would be? How about we keep government from restricting our access to self driving cars because they can't figure out who will be liable. Because the longer we wait to get access to self driving capabilities the more people will be impacted by that last number. And thats one we can actually affect, although ironically by having the government not overly regulate.
Why does anyone have to die? Change (or reinterpret) the law to be something less permissive than "guns for everyone!" Then reeducate the public to change peoples' opinions and provide a safe way to surrender weapons for disposal.
It won't be fast or easy of course -- we're talking on the scale of a couple of generations since the "reeducate" part tends to mostly be picked up by the younger generations (us adults get pretty set in our ways no matter how stupid they are.)
There will always be holdouts of course, and there will obviously always be a need for a certain segment of the population to retain firearms (military and law enforcement) but you can go a long way by just not teaching kids stupid things.
We're already doing it for racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Of course nobody with a brain would claim those problems are "solved" by any stretch of the imagination, but if you compare today to say 1950 its pretty obvious that we're at least on the right track.
Or at least we were until January. Hopefully this recent derailment is temporary and we can get back to sanity again after 2020..
Cars kill easily, poisons kill easily, bombs kill easily. Guns can be used as a sport that doesn't include killing anything.
Finally, I'd rather be killed "well" than badly. But I assume you meant efficiently. Again, my three examples above are efficient.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I would debate the "inexpensive" part of it as there are numerous ways to kill that require FAR less money. For example, knives are a device designed to cut or kill things. This notion that a whackjob like the guy in the story would not be daunted by not being able to get a gun. Personally, I'd rather be killed by a gunshot than stabbed to death, but that's just me.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Police found him there after putting out an APB (Applebees Point Bulletin), which is the tool they use to find all racists in the Midwest and South.
Could you explain the reference for someone who has never been to an Applebees?
What's that got to do with anything?
It's important because the linguistic analysis that identified migrations and population groups disproves certain 19th century racial theories.
The Germans, for example, defined themselves as a "pure race," and claimed there was some benefit to maintaining that pure race against mixing with, for example, Jews or Negroes.
The study of migrations showed a history of constant mixing over thousands of years. This was confirmed by DNA analysis.
So the 3,500 year old Egdved girl http://en.natmus.dk/historical... who was celebrated as Denmark's national ancestor, turned out to have come from the Black Forest in Germany. And she traveled back and forth.
People often think of Grimm's fairy tales as German. But actually the same stories are translated from one European language to the next, in French, for example, or English. And there are older languages from medieval times that fill in the gaps between major European languages.
Put it all together and you get a picture of people traveling throughout Europe, and mating with each other, over thousands of years, after they left Africa. The aristocrats traveled quickly and the peasants traveled slowly (over generations). The Neanderthals mated with modern humans. This genetic mixture was probably good in terms of health, since inbreeding populations are more likely to have genetic diseases.
I haven 't studied the history of India, but my understanding is that the British colonials found a less hierarchic society and turned it into a more hierarchic society, on the model of certain British and European aristocratic ideas, which saw a great chain of being with protozoa on the bottom, animals in the middle, and British aristocrats (like themselves) near the top, right under the angels and God.
Change (or reinterpret) the law to be something less permissive than "guns for everyone!"
It's the Constitution. You can't change it without overwhelming majority support. And gun rights have majority support in the US.
You can't "reinterpret it" either -- it means what it says, and you won't be able to enforce a "reinterpreted" meaning on an unwilling population.
Then reeducate the public to change peoples' opinions and provide a safe way to surrender weapons for disposal.
We have government "by the people". Government "by the people" doesn't "reeducate" the people.
Good point. Americans don't drink beer just some watery brown stuff so he's better off going home.
Yes, I know it was a joke. So is my reply. I've had some very good beer in Houston but it was from people who brew their own.
I had trouble getting figures for here, based on 0.09 per 100,000 over 4 million that looks to be about 4 fatal shooting a year currently. I think that figure jumps up if you include hunting accidents. Our car deaths run at about 300 a year so compared to your 3:1 car to gun death ration I guess we are really bad drivers? It is hard to get figures here as the leading causes of death are mostly health related due to poor diet. Shooting probably would not make the top 100 of our list of causes of death.
And to answer your first statement road safety is debated here a lot more often than gun control. There is little demand to do something about gun control here but plenty of demand to do something about road deaths. No body talks about taking cars off people but changes here have brought the car death rate down from a peak of 600.
'murkins.
No the coworker is dead because Garmin is abusing the system for an H1B visa. There is NO reason a H1B visa should have EVER been granted. Example Garmin tried recruiting me but their offer was 20k less than all the other offers in the same state.
Garmin is basically committing H1B fraud.
The focus on the least important bit of the post above is telling and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I've been told that it is quite difficult in comparison to kill people with knives even after extensive training. A gun is a handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things. I was killing things with a rifle at the age of nine, and that's at range. A pistol at very short range is even easier.
72 people from those 7 countries have been CONVICTED of TERRORISM since 9/11 in the US.
Now that we have the travel ban bullshit strawman out of the way and debunked... Obama did NOTHING over 8 years of Chicago mass killing non-stop while president. He didn't care because it was blacks killing blacks, just like you don't care either, since you failed to bring up the BIGGEST problem with guns in the US.
Why don't you racist liberals get the fuck out of the way and let someone FIX a problem once in a while. You think letting a few hundred blacks killing each other in Chicago year after year is good, because it leads to stats you can pull up as a reason to put in gun-control. The rest of us non-racist bastards, would prefer to do something to help Chicago out, like make it POSSIBLE for jobs to come up there instead of taxing/regulating the crap out of business because preventing people from making a "profit" is the best thing you think could be done.
Now get off my lawn, you racist fascist totalitarian bastard.
What visa? If you are a H1B , you shouldn't even have a job a Garmin.Example Garmin failed to recruit me because their offer was 20k less than all other companies in the same area.
This from Wikipedia:
Miller Lite won the World Beer Cup's gold medal in 1996, 1998, 2012, 2013, and 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
lucm, indeed.
Where bigotry, ignorance and xenophobia are endorsed by the government.
Not for long.
If enough of them decided to do their duty as citizens and get off their asses to vote you may have a point, but for some time US government seems to have bounced from one quite unrepresentative group to another. Currently we have a bunch where "is he rich" seems to be the main selection criteria even for military advisors.
So I disagree. Oliver North and the others running the NRA may have that view and the cash from their members to influence politics but is it really deeply rooted with the fabric of American sub-culture? The squeaky wheel is getting attention but does it really reflect the entire situation?
Also, to stave off knee-jerk reactions, there are many choices between the utterly stupid extremes of a total ban and zero restrictions. As it is your neighbor can't legally use a mortar to bombard prairie dogs so there is some gun control already.
I have 15 mod points now that I can't use since I am posting here. I could have used them to mod down the hateful posts but I want to post
So you use your mod points to mod down AC troll?
Elok
Indians are Asian.
India is in Asia.
Meanwhile in New Orleans:
Police Chief Michael Harrison says one person in custody and that he is being investigated for driving while intoxicated.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Indians are Asian.
https://www.reference.com/geog...
The fact that you can't refute my arguments is telling. I have no reason to be ashamed, whatsoever. You write like a politician with an agenda rather than a regular Joe with a real argument. You probably think I'm some alt-right, gun-nut, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I even favor gun control. I voted for Hillary. However, I have problems with people using ridiculously poor logic to support their positions. Your imagination is very limited. Maybe you should take some art classes.
Oh, congrats on killing things. I have guns and have never killed anything.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
That's just what I was wondering. So everybody who uses PC-BSD - am I now the same race as them, regardless of their ethnicity?
I'm pretty sure you need more than 1 person to qualify as a "race".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Try browsing with all comments enabled, as you are meant to if moderating. A guy died and yet all some people can post is hateful, racist and often off topic rants. The worst posts are by anonymous cowards. After you have read some of those, usually already mod to -1, tell me you wouldn't mod them down too? Slashdot does not allow you to both mod and comment in the same post, which is a fair restriction. I chose to post as I take the death of a coworker personally and think it is something to be talked about constructively and like adults.
BTW when I mod I almost always mod up, not down, and I try to mod based in the value of the content, not my view. If I disagree with a view I will not mod it down for that reason.
I would note that most post that attack me lack any real arguments, they are just rhetoric. Some are well reason, even if I disagree, I will at least try and understand their view point and respond appropriately.
A gun is a weapon, and has a single purpose. It kills. It kills well.
Uhmm....my apologies but I would respectfully dis-agree. A firearm has two purposes. One is a show of force. I.E. the possibility of hurting or killing you. The other is to actually hurt or kill you. Every armed force, police department and knowledgeable gun owner knows this. And many times, the show of force is enough to deter the other party from attempting to do something to the armed person, whether that person is military, police or armed citizen. It is only after the show of force and after the person/group trying to hurt you continues on with the process of trying to hurt you (I.E. you are in "fear for your life") is an armed citizen in the US (at least in most states) allowed to defend themselves with said firearm.
Thank You, Gordon
Geographically, yes. However Russians are also "Asian" (and depending on the textbook occasionally Europe and Asia aren't even referred to as separate continents anymore - just "Eurasia" since it's all really the same landmass).
While Indians may be from Asia, they are not Mongoloid which is what most people think of when they say "Asian".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You don't need a visa to work short term in the USA if your are employed elsewhere. I am a New Zealand citizen and work for Garmin in New Zealand but will sometimes to travel to Olathe and our USA based customers to sort out problems. It is classed as business travel and is only a short term thing, typically only a few days.
Your coworker, and my former colleague (I was in Garmin Consumer SW Engineering for several years) was killed by hate. I grew up in Chicago, I lived through a shooting. No amount of laws stopped a determined psychopath when she came into my school and shot a kid in the head and then fled into a neighborhood home and shot the the homeowner. My home is in Olathe, and I know the people. My small block is incredibly heavily armed; I know at least three neighbors with semiauto rifles and handguns. My neighbors are wonderful people, and there's no way any of them would use such a weapon in a hateful manner, and neither would I. Kansas enacted constitutional carry precisely because there was no increase in gun violence after concealed carry was passed.
I don't care if you don't like guns. That's your belief, and you're entitled to it. But you're naÃve if you honestly don't understand what power hate can have over people.
So what's your point?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Try browsing with all comments enabled, as you are meant to if moderating. A guy died and yet all some people can post is hateful, racist and often off topic rants. The worst posts are by anonymous cowards. After you have read some of those, usually already mod to -1, tell me you wouldn't mod them down too? Slashdot does not allow you to both mod and comment in the same post, which is a fair restriction. I chose to post as I take the death of a coworker personally and think it is something to be talked about constructively and like adults.
BTW when I mod I almost always mod up, not down, and I try to mod based in the value of the content, not my view. If I disagree with a view I will not mod it down for that reason.
I would note that most post that attack me lack any real arguments, they are just rhetoric. Some are well reason, even if I disagree, I will at least try and understand their view point and respond appropriately.
Thumbs Up for the section in bold.
Listen, I understand your noble cause and everything, but you'll achieve nothing trying to fight hate troll and lurk even here on Slashdot. Save yourself some sanity in topic that are personal like this one and filter everything under 1.
Oh yeah, and obligatory xkcd : https://xkcd.com/386/
Elok
Could have been killed with a knife moron. Your co-worker is dead because of a drunken racist. The weapon-of-choice is secondary.
Sorry kid - I refuted everything apart from your inexpensive knife distraction so you've got that utterly wrong. It may work at your high school debating club but it's a big world out there and your obvious bullshit relies on a tiny bubble full of the naive.
So? Is that supposed to be another distraction?
So something demonstrating thought instead of directionless whining after a six-pack or two? What's with the "dumb is good" fetish?
How about acting like a human being instead of an Eliza bot with a random insult file.
How about actually reading the original of the book you've taken your name from? It may help you grow up. Is that enough for you to get an idea of how much your "take some art classes" made me laugh? You may note my post earlier was critical of your disgusting action and not you personally, but if you are going to write shit like "you should take some art classes" the gloves are off.
You disgust me writing such shit as you did in response to a murder. How fucking immature.
It is called the Selective Service. You must sign up on your 18th birthday. How in the hell do you thing the draft is legal? Every male 18 to 45 IS the militia. If the feminist were honest. It should be. Every person 18 to 45 is the militia.
Quantum leap much?
"Americans have the right to bear arms, but not the right to use them" ~ © 2017 CaptainDork
The right to bear arms is revoked for felons, the insane, and the tenants of some state-sponsored housing.
Additionally, the legality of a firearm discharge is determined by due process.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
They didnt refute your argument because you're argument is foolish and was thus dismissed. You jumped on the smallest of points (are guns cheap or not) within the above text rather than address what is actually being said. Then you make the claim that guns aren't cheap because there are cheaper ways to kill people? So something cant be cheap because something else is cheaper? Sounds like ridiculously poor logic to me. Maybe you should take a college class on logical thinking.
Oh and scary knives!? So many people get killed by knives in all of those country's without guns it's just crazy!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government
The government has nuclear weapons. Should we allow the citizens to carry nuclear weapons to be able to "defend themselves from the government"?
Well, you can play word games, and invent new definitions until the cows come home. But at the very bottom, at the end of the day, a leopard can't change its spots. And a nlgger will always be a nlgger until the end of time. No changing that. Play games all you want, but that will never change the genes.
What's interesting is that every race despises nlggers. Chinese, Japanese, South Asians, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis, Europeans, South Americans, Eskimos--everybody--despises nlggers. Even nlggers hate nlggers.
For that to be possible it has to be as rigged as the Eurovision Song Contest.
Oh wait a minute, the link says the category of "Best American-Style Light Lager" but you cut that out of the middle of your quote.
WTF is it with the goldpost shifting and the misrepresentation by omission - OVER A JOKE. Your misquote makes it appear that it won the medal for the best beer in the world many times but here is what Wikipedia really has if your link is followed:
Do you pull this dishonest little stunt often? Why? WTF is wrong with you? This issue is so incredibly trivial but you lowered yourself that far.
So he bought his gun illegally?
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The KKK officially supported Hillary Clinton you idiot.
So if KKK support makes you invalid to be president, as you suggest, I guess you are a Trump supporter.
I already read Moby Dick, but thanks for the suggestion shitbrick. And you never refuted anything. All you did was make a separate argument or to act as if my argument was some kind of distraction just because it doesn't fit your narrow world view.
Your problem is that you think you know me and what makes me tick and you don't. I don't give a fuck about distractions. I don't need them, especially with people of your intellect.
Your fake outrage about me telling you to "take art classes", you can shove up your ass as well since you implied I was somehow trying to pull the wool over your eyes and said that was "telling". That's fucking insulting. Sorry but actual arguments are not distractions. I'm also sorry they're inconvenient for you but, tough shit. Grow up. You can't win them all. While you're at it, request a refund from whatever institution educated you (if any), because you got short changed hard.
Finally, fuck off and die. We're done here.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
My point is blatantly straightforward. I would suggest reading the thread.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
>"You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not."
No, the amendment is what it says, not what one of the authors wanted it to say. There is a huge difference. The reason the wording was changed was exactly to convey a different meaning. Had they wanted it to be just for a militia, it would not have been reworded before being approved.
>"as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot"
Wrong. The general rule is anyone convicted of a FELONY criminal offense.
>"Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things."
Since we want to be honest: They are also a way of equalizing the populous to provide defense. Without them, everyone is prey to those who are physically stronger. And just like every other prohibition, almost every gun control will negatively affect mostly the "good" people and not the "bad", who will continue to obtain and use them illegally. The "bad" people generally do not obey the law.
You made a mistake in your math there. For the most part, criminals in the US only have guns because they are so widely available legally. Thus, your (and everyone else's) gun ownership clearly creates a very substantial public risk that is self reinforcing. More guns mean more criminals with guns which means we need more guns to keep ourselves safe which means criminals will have even more guns which means we need more guns and on and on...
The statistics are plain as day that all of our guns arent making us safer when you run us versus any other Western nation with substantial gun control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And pointing to regional gun control in the US will of course shows that gun control "doesnt work" because illegal guns, made plentiful by wide open gun laws outside the region, still come into the region freely.
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A word of advice to all Pakis, and Indians, and other Chimps,
Don't ever get in a car and drive beyond the streetlights of town. You may not return. There is no cell service. There is no law.
People like you go for a drive outside of town, and up into these hills, but these people are never seen again.
Oh, they might find the car. Sometimes. But the driver and passengers? Never. These hills are beyond the law. People disappear and are never seen or heard from again. You don't have a chance. If your car breaks down, you might as well kill yourself. Because after the locals find you, you'll wish you had died.
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans
It also sounds odd to the current U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed in D.C. vs Heller the right to bear arms for self-defense. A later court finding (People v. Aguilar) summarized the majority opinion:
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court undertook its first-ever "in-depth examination" of the second amendment's meaning Id. at 635. After a lengthy historical discussion, the Court ultimately concluded that the second amendment "guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation" (id. at 592); that "central to" this right is "the inherent right of self-defense" (id. at 628); that "the home" is "where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute" (id. at 628); and that, "above all other interests," the second amendment elevates "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home" (id. at 635). Based on this understanding, the Court held that a District of Columbia law banning handgun possession in the home violated the second amendment. Id. at 635.
So at this point they've basically decided it's a self-defense thing. The idea that the Second Amendment is to facilitate armed insurrection to overthrow a tyrannical government (a.k.a. the so-called "Second Amendment solution") has no current legal basis. The dissenting opinion went with the "well-regulated militia" idea:
The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.
Here are the first six drafts of the Second Amendment and the final version:
Between the US and Europe, only the latter have spawned oppressive, murderous government after government since the writing of the US constitution.
He's playing you. PC-BSD is dead. It's been dead for years.
I got my Remington 870 shotgun for about $300. I got a pipe wrench for probably $20, it's 18 inches long and weighs at least five pounds. My 8 pound sledgehammer was also about $20. If someone wanted to fuck someone up real good and didn't have $300 to spend on a cheap shotgun then $20 at just about any hardware store will do just fine. That's assuming the person isn't a complete weakling, of course.
I consider them n1gger-lite. Shit skin curry eaters. I shed no tears for Mr. Haji Germin.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it's our country and this is how we have chosen to live. You don't have to come here or live here if you don't want to. What we Americans resent and oppose utterly are foreigners telling us how to live or trying to take away our rights, including our individual right to bear arms. Most Americans don't begrudge Europeans or others the right to live as they choose, even if that's different than our way of living, and yet the Europeans especially cannot seem to resist the urge to tell us how wrong our way of living is. Meanwhile, we Americans are paying the bill for their national defense. The least they could do in return is show us some more respect or perhaps we should leave them to deal with Putin by themselves instead?
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
Governments behave differently when the people are armed. They are more restrained, less authoritarian and more cautious in the exercise of their powers. As for enabling authoritarianism, the first thing that authoritarians everywhere do is disarm the populace because they know perfectly well that an armed people will not stand for tyranny. For example, one of the first things that both the Soviets and the Nazis did when they gained power was to restrict gun ownership. Coincidence? I think not.
still pretty good. And still better than if the person has a gun.
As for it 'not being wrong' well, that doesn't make it bullshit. You're side stepping my point, which is that guns make it _too_ easy to kill people. You can do it on a whim. Just point, pull trigger, done. Bullets travel in a span of time you can't even measure without special equipment or techniques.
You're right about the wishful thinking part though. Wishful thinking never gets you _anything_. Including a reduction in gun deaths. It takes action. Australia took action. The banned just about everything and, well, what do you know. Gun deaths plummeted and they haven't had a mass shooting since the ban.
Bans work, but America has a gun culture that means a ban is political suicide. So I'd settle for more root cause work. Social programs to eliminate poverty and address mental illness. But I can't even get those. So we're back to wishful thinking. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
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Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it's our country and this is how we have chosen to live. You don't have to come here or live here if you don't want to. What we Americans resent and oppose utterly are foreigners telling us how to live or trying to take away our rights, including our individual right to bear arms.
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. An opinion would be "you should have more gun control", when I originally wrote the comment I included that opinion, but then I decided to simply stick with the fact "guns do not protect you against tyranny". Now, you can argue that fact is wrong, but don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
Governments behave differently when the people are armed. They are more restrained, less authoritarian and more cautious in the exercise of their powers. As for enabling authoritarianism, the first thing that authoritarians everywhere do is disarm the populace because they know perfectly well that an armed people will not stand for tyranny. For example, one of the first things that both the Soviets and the Nazis did when they gained power was to restrict gun ownership. Coincidence? I think not.
That authoritarian governments try to disarm their enemies, and that gun ownership enables authoritarian governments, are not mutually exclusive.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety (since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing). That creates a demand for a stronger more authoritative government to keep the violence at bay.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
I stole this Sig
The buyback scheme was 2003, and 1996, there is certainly a drop there. You conveniently mention 1996, where there were still a lot of gun, but not 2003 the second buyback. I wonder why. Maybe because that woulds not support your contention I guess. Murder rate 2001- 2003 :310 , 318, 302. 2004 and following years : 263,259, 280, 255 ,263. What other stuff happened in 2003 beside the buyback ? Nothing.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
fuck you
Your post is like a graffiti minus the artistic skills. It's too bad though that you didn't add an unexpected element of punctuation, such as a question mark; it would have made for a much deeper statement. Something to keep in mind for the next time you are overwhelmed by your emotions.
lucm, indeed.
That's correct, Indians are not Caucasian. The north Indians are known as Aryans (not the same as Hitler's Aryans--ha ha obviously!). The dark "toasty" smashed nose thick lipped monkey-looking Indians live in the south of India, and they are known as Dravidians, completely unrelated to the Aryans (the so-called "lighter" Indians).
For some insight into the culture of India, please take a look at this photo shoot taken by the shocked Chinese tourists who witnessed the sights of this ungodly country, everything from rotting human corpses to streets covered wall to wall with human feces.
After looking at that photo shoot, you will never view Indian people the same way again. They are not human.
Teenage much?
No, that was your cheap knife line.
So when you make a personal attack the people you attempt to bully are supposed to remain silent? Also it was so incredibly fucking ridiculous - take art classes to learn about the world or something? Of course you are going to get ridiculed by that Mr Kiddies version ten page Moby Dick. Unfortunately it is very easy to know far too much about you and far too much about "what makes you tick" from what you have written. You are a naive blank slate that the NRA and other manipulative pricks have written whatever they wanted on.
So you've given up on the smug vegan thing of telling me I should never have killed things? Are all the losers that have been conned by Oliver North's NRA as utterly pathetic and thin skinned as you are?
A gun is a tool for killing. It is not a flag. It is not a penis substitute. Why the fuck do you losers treat it as if it is both?
Laws against guns would take forever to have significant impact on gun deaths. But there are laws that could greatly reduce gun deaths in very short order. We're just too entrenched in our existing paradigms to see them.
First, about two-thirds of gun deaths are self-inflicted. A nationwide right to easy, humane, and convenient suicide could cut gun deaths in half in very short order.
Second, a large portion of those deaths that aren't self-inflicted are in some way related to the drug trade. We need to end the battle against drugs. Legalize them. Period. And manufacture and offer quality drugs at very low prices. The drug trade and war would die for lack of funding. Without a monetary motive, pushers would virtually disappear. Without pushers, far less people will ever try drugs. Drug deaths of all kinds and drug usage would plummet. It has always been all about money and drug laws create drug profits.
These two out of the box changes could not only eliminate as much as 75% of gun deaths in America in short order, they could greatly reduce deaths from drug overdose which are higher than gun deaths and save billions being wasted to wage a war that is actually fueling the problem.
But, to even have this debate in this article is disrespectful to the man who lost his life. This man lost his life due to vile, despicable, ignorant racism - not a lack of gun laws.
Blacks deserve to be scapegoated. They drain the economy of trillions of dollars in entitlements and "programs". They are violent and lazy and shiftless. They bide their time drinking malt liquor and smoking weed while waiting for the first of the month for their next government check. They are responsible for almost all of the violent crime and drug dealing and prostitution.
Blacks will never be part of America. They will be the eternal outsider, forever the hated underclass who destroy the quality of life for all. My advice to Negroes is to go to Africa and live among your ancestors, free of the scourge of the white man.
This job was even in the USA. Try qualifying for it, instead of making yourself a liability.
Uncle Donald is going to fix everything that's broken ...
Here is the funeral that Mr Srinivas can look forward to: The Srinivas Kuchibhotla family burial ground..
Buh-bye, sand n1gger!
Indian-boy got what was coming to him.
He comes here and steals American jobs. He steals the bread out of the mouths of American children. He causes Americans to suffer.
So fuck you H1 Boy. You played the game and lost. Fuck you and all your family. Let the lizards of the Ganges feast on your rotting corpse! Let your relatives know that this is only the beginning. It's a new era, a golden dawn in America!
Learn the language
Learn the culture
Become part of it
Fuck these segregated communities that do their own thing.
2020!!
Sorry America, you have a problem and the stats are pretty clear on that point.
Which can be fixed with more guns, not less. Repeal all the gun disarming acts of the last century and let people take care of the problem.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
2024!
Widdle Indian-boy got what was coming to him.
He comes here and steals American jobs. He steals the bread out of the mouths of American children. He causes Americans to suffer.
So fuck you H1 Boy. You played the game and lost. Fuck you and all your family. Let the lizards of the Ganges feast on your rotting corpse! Let your relatives know that this is only the beginning. It's a new era, a golden dawn in America!
Americans are paying the bill for their national defense.
Uh, no, you're not. You're not paying for that. You're deciding to inject yourself in places where you don't belong.
Speaking of which, could you please *stop* meddling in the affairs of other countries, the way you so eloquently argue for the people of other countries to stop expressing their opinions about your (lack of) gun laws?
You can have whatever gun laws you want. Conversely, you should stay the fuck out of other countries.
Your hypocrisy is showing. You should do something about that.
Sure it is, you're discriminating against people of races which are not those of whom you shot. You should be more inclusive by shooting people of all races.
China, India, Cyprus, Israel and most of Russia are all in Asia. That doesn't mean everyone from those places are a single race called 'Asian'.
Far more people have guns than you are probably aware.
I don't care who has a gun. I care how many hot heads carry them everywhere they go.
saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms [...] That may sound odd to Europeans
It really shouldn't, given the "Verordnung gegen den Waffenbesitz der Juden". If laws were introduced to restrict gun ownership in Germany to the same level as in the UK, say, I rather hope there'd be some stiff resistance.
Seriously? almost the same thing as UK with Brexit: Trump has given wings to all those racist in the US and you will probably see more of this assasinations since the US is full of guns. The US is like a drug addict: it first needs to recognise there is a probelm (with racism, with guns...) to start treating it. Won't happen with friend Trump.
Trump is at least trying to slow the flood of people who would tend to kill us. Obama wanted more.
And yes, I know some were "American". They tend to be children of immigrants. Some are actual immigrants. Some are from long-established American families... but turned to jihad by immigrants, often having been converted to Islam while in prison.
Obama can condemn it all he wants, but his actions speak louder than his words. He was an enabler for evil.
I know just how this went down. Wizened middle aged alcoholic looks at the happy bright young foreign brown people in the bar, compares what he sees to his disappointed dead-end life and thinks, "How come they got all the money and the jerbs? I'm a veteran - I got skills I'm technical same as them. I could do what they do. They stole ma jerb. Goddam illegals coming here and taking our jerbs!"
Exits stage left to fetch gun.
A word of caution and advice to all Indians, Pakis, and other Chimps,
Don't ever get in a car and drive beyond the streetlights of town. You may not return. There is no cell service. There is no law.
People like you go for a drive outside of town, and up into these hills, but these people are never seen again.
Oh, they might find the car. Sometimes. But the driver and passengers? Never. These hills are beyond the law. People disappear and are never seen or heard from again. You don't even have a chance. If your car breaks down, you might as well kill yourself. Because after the locals find you, you'll wish you had died.
From a language point of view, Caucasian and Aryan is synonymous. The proto-indoeuropean or proto-aryan languages developed between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which are connected by the Caucasus Mountain Range. There is a western branch of the languages (celts, romans, germans, slaws, baltians, albanians, greeks, armenians etc.pp.), and an eastern branch (sanskrit, hindi, urdu, bengali, persian, pashto, kurdish...). Two other branches of the languages have died out, the Anatolian and the Tocharian languages.
It's ok. Many people make the error to correct others without being correct themselves.
The Caucasus mountains are Asian too, at least their southern part is. Does that makes all Caucasians half asian?
To get your point across.
For those of you who DON'T know, the Whiskey Rebellion was basically proof that America became the exact establishment it was fighting against before it even really got rolling.
'No Taxation without Representation.' But the big eastern/port companies got a tax break on producing/selling booze thanks to a flat fee if they produced more than X amount, while the westerners (mostly the Appalachian types at that point in immigrant-centric American colonialism) had to pay full tax rates, having not really having a voice in this discussion due to distance, lack of bodies, and not always clear proof of land ownership (something that is often forgotten: there was a period where you had to be a landowner to have a vote in the US! Just like women and slaves, your vote either didn't count, or wasn't your own!)
Furthermore even some of the founding fathers believed that a long term established government would lead to corruption and eventual chaos, as it has in the 250 years since.
I hate Indians. Bangladesh and Pakistan too. I hate Muslims too. There is a clash of civilizations and it would be best if these filthy groups were annihilated.
I would love to wake up and see CNN reporting "India and Pakistan mutually destroyed in nuclear war". I swear, I'd go to the store and buy a bottle of champagne. I'd take the day off and celebrate! I'd take the week off and celebrate!
yeah but they make it super fucking easy, cmon this argument is totally flawed... I think you might actually need to ask a convicted murderer to explain it to you, do you really think it's as easy to kill someone with a knife or a rock as it is to with a gun... we aren't just talking about more physical commitment, emotionally it's way more intimate... pulling a trigger goes a long way to completely detatching you from what you are doing.
For a start, if your very drunk you probably don't have the abity to kill someone without a gun. If you are sober then you will have to be much higher on the phycopathic scale to kill someone with your hands OR if there are legitimate reasons the bar will be much higher.
There is also no massaging of the statistics that will change the fact that of those countries where gun ownership is common, the US is the only one with such a huge number of murders and assaults.
The US is a deeply dysfunctional country. Banning guns will not make that problem go away as people will just use other weapons and it isn't clear to me that those would always be less effective.
And when I look at how US politics has been evolving, I cannot help but think that the reasons for enshrining the right to bear arms in their constitution are more pertinent than ever.
Because dying is intransient - everyone dies. The only metrics that would affect that statistic would be average life expectancy (live longer) or moving away and die somewhere else ("cheating the statistics"). Death statistics are pointless. Your argument is pointless. Go away you internet troll.
Gun amplify spur of the moment decisions out of proportion.
How's this for a thought: why don't you shut the hell up nlgger? You precious little black turd of stinking bile encrusted excrement, put down the 40 and the blunt, get off your Alcatel 2G obamaphone and your double-wide steatopygia and get a job in your own country.
The Founding Fathers...
That's an argument analogous to "The Bible says...". And that's why the so-called "debate" about gun control is impervious to facts: gun ownership has a quasi-religious status in American culture. No amount of rational argument is going to shake the faith of a fundamentalist gun toter. And as this seems to be a religion practised only in the USA, that also accounts for why it not only sounds "odd to Europeans" but to many others who are not initiated into the brotherhood.
And it's why it's futile (and sometimes dangerous) for the rest of us to challenge.
Are modern governments made my invulnerable and immortal people, and are their enforcers invulnerable as well? Authoritarians will use ANY reason to crack down on civil liberties, and if you are actually living in a dictatorship you do not have any civil liberty anyway and defending them will result in your imprisonment and/or death.
And in countries without guns they simply use knives or stones.
Guns are not the problem. Drunk stupid people are.
The UK, AU and Japan/China may have no guns, but that doesn't keep people from killing each other.
Ask the UK how bad the knife violence is. Ask an Aussie how bad knife violence and how high the rape stats are.
Small minded c u n t s blame guns.
And this excuses a murder exactly how?
Found another xenophobe, I'd say.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I hate useless fat fuck Trump troll cowards like you, no matter what race they are.
The coastal states of the US need to dump the flyover bit in the middle, and create two civillised countries, and let the deplorables pay for their own welfare, and let Darwin sort em out.
Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things.
Wrong. You've fallen for the pro-gun propaganda. Things are dead already. You could pretend that guns are designed to punch holes into things, but they are pretty bad tools for that. Guns are devices for killing living beings. More often than not, human living beings. A gun is a tool for making your decision stick that another life should end now. In a simple manner detached from the evolutionary inhibitions that the killing weapons of natural predators come with.
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
There is no shortage of racist bigots. It is a natural trait evolved in human's tribal history. Civlized behavior is not natural but acquired through education and learning and insight. If you freely distribute weapons making it easy to kill other people, those weapons will naturally see more use by people unfit to be members of a civilized society than otherwise.
Nobody wires his house's electricity with blank wires on the theory that blank wires don't kill people, but people kill themselves by unjudiciously touching those wires, and so the wires cannot be considered the cause of fatalities.
But the U.S. wires its citizens like that.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control.
And this is where the discussion quickly disintegrates, because any discussion with someone who believes in the right to bear arms is quickly labeled "irrational" when the person who believes in less gun control doesn't immediately agree with the person who believes in more gun control.
It is still a rational discussion even if your counter-party does not abandon their position and cede to your argument.
Nearly all the people I've known who have been gun rights advocates, even those who have been senior members of lobby organizations, have been in favor of gun control measures, usually enforcement of existing gun control laws like prohibitions on convicted felons from possessing them (as one example). In fact, a major theme is that the government itself does not prosecute many gun control measures already on the books.
I doubt more than a small percentage of the people charged with gun crimes in Chicago who are eligible for Federal charges were referred to Federal prosecutors and further, that Federal prosecutors declined to prosecute a number of cases that were referred to them. If you can charge a violent felon with a gun crime, why wouldn't you?
Because gun control advocates label any discussion which doesn't start out with "How much more gun control should we have?" as *irrational*, it's led to the belief that gun control advocates really are gun ownership ban advocates -- there isn't a threshold for them where there is "enough" gun control, they favor outright gun ownership bans and often won't say it directly.
"Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America."
Plenty of foreigners fully understand this, and still think that America has a massive gun culture problem.
Sure you can. If you interpret it that way (I don't), the Constitution guarantees everyone a right to own a weapon ("bear arms"). Nowhere does it guarantee a right to own bullets.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The fact that you can't refute my arguments is telling. I have no reason to be ashamed, whatsoever. You write like a politician with an agenda rather than a regular Joe with a real argument. You probably think I'm some alt-right, gun-nut, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I even favor gun control. I voted for Hillary. However, I have problems with people using ridiculously poor logic to support their positions. Your imagination is very limited. Maybe you should take some art classes.
Oh, congrats on killing things. I have guns and have never killed anything.
The parent did indeed fail to defend himself, but I think his point was that a knife can be used for many purposes besides killing someone. What have you ever done with your gun, if you've never used it to hunt?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Please tell me how you plan to get rid of them in such a way that disarms criminals equally as well as it disarms law-abiding citizens
You might like to look at the UK, where owning a pistol went from something anyone might do for self defence, to something that you'd only do if you were a member of a shooting club, to something that you basically can't do, over a period of a few decades. One of the ways that this happened was by significantly increasing the penalties around the '60s for crimes where the perpetrator was armed, as well as for illegal trafficking in firearms. If carrying a gun to a crime means that, if you get caught, you'll spent 20 years in prison instead of two, then a lot of criminals will take a knife instead. If a firearm-related murder with an illegal gun leads to the seller going to prison for almost as long as the perpetrator then black marketeers find something lower risk to sell.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
" those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia."
As it is today.
The only difference is that it is, in fact, automatic. If you are a citizen (or declared to want to be), not part of the National Guard or Naval Militia, and you are male from 17 to 44, you are part of the UNORGANIZED MILITIA.
10 U.S. Code  311 - Militia: composition and classes
Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ"
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 14; Pub. L. 85â"861, Ââ1(7), Sept. 2, 1958, 72 Stat. 1439; Pub. L. 103â"160, div. A, title V, Ââ524(a), Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1656.)
-Styopa
this is the correct answer
The joke would be on you. Apparently CNN is fake news...
Oh god, furries too?
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. ... don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
So you're presenting an ... unsubstantiated fact? I'm not sure that's a thing. For most of us a 'fact' based on your gut feelings is a type of opinion.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety...
I see no evidence of either. I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates, some have even found a modest negative correlation. And you and I might be anxious around guns, because we aren't used to them, but people that grew up with them don't seem to be.
...since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing
Right, 'cause if he only might be packing a knife, or have a bunch of buddies back at a table, or just be bigger than me, he's totally non-threatening.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government, so they must not think that they're in a dangerous society. When they advocate for "harsher laws and more aggressive police", they're only talking about the narrow group of things that they believe are the government's business - that's more libertarian than authoritarian.
It disingenuous that you do not state your country of birth.
Yes, it does matter to this discussion; you are not a native from New Zealand.
CAP === 'superior'
Alcohol doesn't make people use racial slurs and shoot people . . .acerbic stupidity and bigotry does. . .
Indians are as "caucasian" as my big black cock. Which they don't have btw.
They must be the bad cousin, cause they never get invited to Aryan Nations meetings.
That's also diversity.
No matter how often you say that diversity is good for the business who needs cheap labor.
No matter how often you say that diversity is good because people can eat something exotic.
No matter how often you say that diversity is needed because it shows the world how good and tolerant we are as a society.
No matter how often you say that diversity is necessary because the ancestors of some people have done something in the past that is considered bad today.
No matter how often you say that any opposition to diversity is racist and fascist and pure evil.
With imposed diversity you also impose an identity crisis. People who no longer feel at home where they were born and grew up. It doesn't matter how wrong you think this feeling is. You can't change the way people think or feel. You can only control the speech and ban the expression of speech that you don't like. But you can never ban the idea and feelings of these people.
You can disarm the entire country so they can no longer shoot people. But you can't take away the wish to kill from these people.
You can force them to work together with people they don't like. But you can't force them to enjoy it.
You can force them to live among the people they don't like. But you can't force them to be happy about it.
That's something I always miss in discussions about the progressive society. We do not want to repeat the mistakes made by the 20th century progressive dictators, but in the end the mistake will still be made.
The 'angry white man', you can't forbid him to be angry. Either you can start to listen to him (no more immigration, close the border, build that wall, make America great again) or either you get rid of them (concentration camps, deportation, murder them). Now if politician listened earlier to the wishes of that 'angry white man' their was no need for a wall or a ban on immigrants. There would simply be a better guarded border that stopped more illegal immigrants. There would also be more laws protecting the workers instead of deregulation that let jobs move to low wage countries, domestic jobs being filled in by cheaper foreigners and created a housing bubble that destroyed the live savings of many people when it popped.
Now some people have become so desperate that they even voted for someone like Trump. Some people even see Trump as their savior, no matter how hard it is to understand. And still I see the media on both sides of the Atlantic make the same mistakes. In France there have been three weeks of riots in various cities. Trumps says some half truth about it and exaggerates it, Hollande immediately replies and says nothing is happening in France and releases some statistics about the increased number of Tourists in Paris since last year. Last year Paris was still recovering from the terrorist attacks, of course the numbers can only go up. The three weeks of riots are real, even when only a small group of people are affected. What problem do you solve by denying the riots exist? Well I can only say no problem. This mistake will be abused by someone like Le Pen who can claim that Hollande lies and then come up with populist half truths while trolls on the social media can fabricate fake news after fake news. Le Pen is the daughter of a true fascist and Nazi/Vichy France supporter. She broke with her father, but for me that doesn't matter she is still a fascist I hate. For other people it doesn't matter, they still like her more than the 'lying' Hollande. I can't even blame people for having lost trust in Hollande or the center right parties, no matter how much I detest the extreme right.
In Germany it was the habit to not talk about the background of offenders while they were often done by people with an immigration background (it is striking that 4% of the population is responsible for up to 60% of the violence hence why the media/politicians didn't want to talk about it to prevent racist thoughts). Today a car drives into a group of
The fallacy here is that "criminals only obtain guns legally". They're criminals, and surprise! they don't mind breaking the law to get something that makes their "job" more successful and lowers their odds of being caught.
Restricting access to guns affects law-abiding citizens a lot more than criminals. You end up with an imbalance like in Chicago, where many criminals have guns and very few citizens do. That's the worst-case scenario for the citizen, for more than one reason. A survey of inmates jailed for B&E ("breaking and entering") reported their number one concern was "homeowner with gun". It's a credible, powerful, proven deterrent. In the endgame, a criminal would MUCH rather stare down the barrel of a gun held by a law enforcement officer than their victim, because the victim is much more likely to actually pull the trigger. Officers have restraint and training, try to justify their actions, and know what they can legally do or not do. Joe public is rattled and twitchy in that situation and often shoots even unarmed burglars because they're focused exclusively on their own personal safety. We can debate the legality of the citizen with the gun later, the point is it's a serious deterrent for the criminals.
Criminals in Chicago have a much lower risk of encountering a homeowner with a gun, and if you're the only one with a gun in a gunfight, you generally come out way ahead. Chicago is THE place to rob people right now, because they're unlikely to be able to defend themselves if you have a gun - your risk as a criminal is very low. And if your argument is that gun control limits the guns in circulation, no it does not. Every time the government tries to dial up control, there's a run at the gun stores. Lately they've been trying the other angle of limiting the availability of ammunition. That's resulted in popular ammunition FLYING off the shelves every time a store gets their allotment in. It's too late to restrict availability, there's too much already in circulation and trying to tighten the belt just leads to more panic hoarding.
TL;DR: "Make guns illegal, and only ones left with guns will be the criminals." (both by definition, and in practice)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
First would dispute some of your logic. The second amendment of you constitution says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". So to me the clear intent was to make sure that the early US government had a body of armed and trained civilians to call on to defend it should Britian, or any other European power, decide to invade. This goal did indeed make a lot of sense 200+ years ago but not so much today. However importantly the clear aim was the defence of your country i.e. not to fight against your government but to fight for it against foreign invaders. If you want to have a look at a "well regulated militia" today try Switzerland. They arm, but also train their citizens. The result is a well regulated and trained militia but very few deaths due to gun violence.
Secondly though there seems little point for the law in today's world. The US has a huge military force and it is just about inconceivable that it would ever need to rely on armed citizens to defend itself. That same force means that even you interpretation, that citizens need guns to hold the government to account, is also irrelevant today. There is no way that they could possibly defeat the US armed forces if they continued to follow the government's orders. The best defence of democracy today is the same as it has always been: the will of the people. Governments are made up of people and if enough people refuse to serve it, and many resist it, it will fall.
So I agree that there was a very good reason for the law initially. However now the actual aim of that law is being completely ignored and, in today's world, the aim is irrelevant anyway. If you cannot change your laws to deal with changing circumstances you will end up in a lot of trouble.
A gun is a weapon, and has a single purpose. It kills.
That reminds me. It's that time of the year again where some very nasty papers with bull's eyes printed on them hang out at the local shooting range, and they are really asking to be killed.
All the books label as [north-western] Asian, which does seem odd, judging by looks, but what do I know.
Perhaps Splashdot should start using Google's new Auto-Comments-Whitewash API just introduced and made free to all.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
This is just plain wrong. You should read/watch the news. Land wars, the kind fought with rifles like the ones you say are useless, still make up and decide 99% of armed conflicts. You think because drones entered the scene everything is magic hollywood effects? We blast and just send in soldiers to hand out food?
Don't be so daft. You are the one that is wrong, and the numbers show it.
How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe.
I know I know, "clump of cells" and all. But Progressive are incredibly blasé about life in one sense and incredibly dramatic about it in another.
There are strict legal limits on abortion, which basically boil down to 'you can't kill it if it has a brain stem'. Do you eat meat? If so, the animals that you kill are closer to an intelligent being than anything that it's legal to abort. The millions sperm that die every time that you ejaculate are also denied the ability to grow into an adult human, but you don't seem too concerned about those, yet that have precisely the same level of intelligence as an aborted zygote and each one has half of the ability to grow into an adult human. Attempting to claim some kind of moral equivalence between a collection of insentient cells and a living sentient human is insulting to anyone reading your post.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sorry about the gender thing. Transgender people are really biologically distinct. I think we're going to get to a point where we're past this idea that everybody has to be one thing or another. I mean, I'm never going to argue with any person who wants to consider themselves the opposite gender, but I'm not sure why you would want to embrace that as opposed to developing an identity as a transgender person. Yes, we get treated pretty crappy, but otherwise it's not like it's inherently bad. To be honest, it's actually pretty cool as long as you're not saddled with crippling mental issues from dealing with the gender binary.
The alternative to recognizing that mental gender is a separate biological process which occurs after the sex organs are developed is to tell people that their gender does not exist. This is resulting in mass suicides. If your position is that transgender persons deserve to die, well, I suppose that would be logically consistent. I'd very much hope that not to be the case, however.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
...us...the corporations cram more foreigners into the West so they can lower wages, drive up consumer sales, increase profits...and the corporations use the media, hollywood and schools to cram anti-white multiculturalist propaganda into the minds of malleable school kids
According to some sources up to 94% of gun homicides are attributed to guns obtained by illegal means, though another source puts that number at a minimum of 70%. The problem in the US is the culture that glorifies violence, and mainly in the inner city as ~80% of gun violence is gang related. Any solution that proposes to disarm the people that have legally-obtained weapons will only affect the statistical outliers and not the main causes of crime here.
There is no simple solution and the conspiracy theorist in me believes that the reason that guns are so easily obtained illegally is because it's a long-game plan to turn public opinion against weapons, and then the government can legally disarm the majority all while the gangs continue to wipe each other out. The end game is that we'll no longer be able to revolt when our government overtly begins transforming our country (the world?) into a dystopian fusion in which everyone is tracked (1984) while the population is happily distracted by our vapid culture (Brave New World).
I see you found a newspeak dictionary. I don't care how old it is. Just add all-inclusive definitions so that you can use 'racist' for any argument. Unfortunately dictionaries are complicit in creating and maintaining this meme. Race is in the genes. All other characteristics are mutable. So far, a person cannot change his/her genes/chromosomes. So true racism is against (or for) something about a person that cannot be altered. It is not wrong to oppose dilution or changing a country or society based upon cultural/ethnic grounds. This is especially true when there is culture clash. Historically cultures take over other cultures' territories by war. Infiltration is a kind of silent war that will eventually erupt.
I too am really nit just disappointed, but ashamed of threads like this
unfinished: (adj.)
That is part of the Aryan/Dravidian theory invented by the Brits to justify their rule as one in a long series of invasions. It has been conclusively disproved by genetics- as in science..
In all fairness- This particular tragedy could have been avoided by improving how geography is taught in US schools...Even a subscription to National Geographic could help- I remember learning a lot about Pacific Island tribes from them at school.
Its strange that you STILL dont understand that the people will never allow this to happen.
It really comes down to this: Are you willing to die to disarm arm those that are willing to die to prevent you from succeeding.
Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist,
No, but getting drunk and shooting a brown person while yelling "get out of my country" is racist, drunk or not. Being drunk doesn't make it magically not racist, much like punching someone while drunk droesn't magically become "not assault" just because you're drunk.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Sean Spicer, 2/24/2017
Q Can I first ask about the shooting in Kansas of the two Indian Americans and what the President’s response to it was, but also if there’s any concern that some of the rhetoric that the President or -- that generally has been out here recently could have contributed in any way to that or stepped up violence?
MR. SPICER: I mean, obviously, any loss of life is tragic, but I’m not going to get into, like, that kind of -- to suggest that there’s any correlation I think is a bit absurd. So I’m not going to go any further than that.
If rhetoric killed by itself I doubt there would be anyone left alive to post on Slashdot by now.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And yet, the US has a higher rate of non-gun homicides than the rest of the developed world. It's pretty hard to pin that on gun ownership.
If guns don't have a magic killing power, why do people need them at all?
It's neither, it's cleaning up your country.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
Atleast take the guns away from alcoholics! They are not sane enough to handle killing machines!
A person who can't tell a Middle Eastern person from an Indian one should not be allowed a gun.There should be a test for knowledge and decision making ability before some one can buy a gun.
This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense.
what.
The purpose of guns is to be more effective at killing things than not having guns. Your argument against that is literally arguing against the second amendment, not for. The second starts:
so if guns are actually totally useless and no worse than pointy sticks, then that nullifies the first part of the second amendment, which means the conclusion is not implied by the conditions. Your amended second amendment would be:
The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY
Yeah, but guns reduce it from REALLY wanting to kill people to a vague, passing notion of killing people. It lowers the barrier to entry a lot.
Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
Yes, one of the most effective ways which is WHY ownership is enshrined in law in the second amendment.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A gun is a tool, which fires small pellets at a high velocity. Pellets can be fired at a variety of targets for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons are both self-defense and aggressive violence against other human beings. They are neither the easiest not most efficient way to murder human beings, efficient mass murderers use fire while poison is easier for killing one at a time. Your local Home Depot is more dangerous than your local gun store. Firearms are, however, the best means of self- and community-defense yet developed. As the cliche says, God made man, but Samuel Colt made man equal.
The U.S.'s murder rate is linked much more to its prevalence of economic injustice and history of racism than to the legal status of firearms. (There is no correlation between a state's murder rate and it's gun laws, but there is one between it GINI score and its murder rate.) Criminologists are pretty clear that gun control laws have little effect on violent crime, and may increase it by decreasing the ability to citizens to defend themselves.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
He didn't respond to any of your statements of fact. He responded to your opinion that you think Americans are wrong.
ENGLISH, MOTHAFUCKA! DO YOU SPEAK IT?
The US Military couldn't keep a lid on iraq or afganistan, despite having oceans of money and high end weaponry
You can't hold territory with a jet
It kills... what? If the answer is "people", then you're right, they're a terrible danger and should be outlawed. But if the answer is "the millions of white-tailed deer that prance out into traffic and in front of cars and cause untold vehicular deaths", then guns actually save lives.
So the answer is not to ban the tool, it's to ban the action. Thus, murder is a crime, and owning a gun is not (unless, of course, you're not trustworthy because you have a criminal record).
Law must be reactive, not proactive. Proactive law leads inevitably to thought crime. You cannot punish someone for something they haven't done yet. You can't read minds. You can't foretell the future. You can only go by a statistical probability. You can monitor people with a high chance of committing a crime. You can't just punish them. Otherwise, you become the tyrant you fear most.
In practical terms, that means you have to come to terms with gun crime and try to prevent it without being a tyrant and taking away everyone's guns. Because today it's "guns" and tomorrow, you can replace that with "computers" or "cars" or any other object. The sense of that sentence will stay the same: taking away peoples' stuff and/or restricting their freedoms is tyrannical.
The most probable gun shot victim: black
Second most probable: white
Most likely to pull the trigger: black
Odds cop kills black vs cop kills white: cop more likely to kill white.
Numbers don't lie.
You can mod the truth down now because it doesn't fit your non-reality based beliefs and/or political agenda.
You're making an irrelevant argument.
The argument you need to be making is "Gun ownership directly causes an increase in overall murders".
There's not a chance in hell you're at a mid or larger sized company and discriminate in hiring based on political views.
Real companies don't ask nonsense like that.
Are you at a public company? I'd like to know which stock to short. Thanks!
Well, count me in.... I was BORN here. That makes ME a NATIVE American.
Yeah, Adam and Eve, sport!
Here's a recent article that seems relevant. It's talking about suicide rather than homicide, but the point is the same. People who try to kill themselves with drugs or knives only have a 5% chance of dying. People who use guns have a 90% chance. Guns really are different. They're amazingly effective tools for killing. That's what they're designed for. Now add the fact that you can carry one with you everywhere you go, and it only takes a moment to pull it out and start shooting. The time from when you think, "I want to kill this guy," to when he's lying on the floor with a fatal injury might only be seconds. There's nothing else like them.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I live in the USA often and have friends here. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about car control. They genuinely believe that the right to operate a vehicle is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic and have a higher rate of deaths than from guns, are the price of freedom to drive everywhere. I realize that any critique of US car control or freedom means I will now be modded down for pointing out that many other things in life cause death to humans but that we still continue to use them.
It's been rebranded to TrueOS, I was using the former term since many may not know it by its new name
Alright, for starters you must have skipped the part of my post where i explained why regional US gun control will always fail so I'll just ignore all of that in your post and you can get back to me. And no, short term stock piling does not mean gun control is doomed to fail. Stock piles are found and confescated or run out.
After that, that just leaves your criminals will always get guns cause they're criminals and again you seem to have ignored what I said above. Since this point is the crux of our discussion I'll repeat myself though.
America has drastically higher gun violence and homocide rates ( but yet similiar rates of crime in general so maybe guns arent the "proven" deterrent you claim) then any other comparible Western nation precisely because we have so many guns. ALL guns start out as legal. There is no such thing as illegal gun factories in this country and we are an exporter of guns, not an importer, both legally and illegaly speaking. Once again, our criminals are FAR more likely to have guns then in any other western country because we have so many legal guns.
Our homocide rate would not be 3 to 4 times higher than western Europe if guns made us safer!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic. Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Indians Identify as Asians
I did. You pointed to a bunch of tools that have different primary uses then killing people and that are used at rates drastically lower than guns to intentionally kill people and then you point to a minor side use to guns as if all that stuff is the same. I thought maybe you didnt articulate your point properly but it seems like you just made a poor point now.
As stated in the post you replied to, guns are far more efficient at killing people then anything you listed because that is a guns primary purpose and what they have been designed for.
Any rational person would rather have someone try to kill them with a knife then a gun because knives can be run away from. It's why waaaayyyy more people are intentionally killed in this country with guns than knives or any of the other nonsense you mention (bombs kill too!? Good thing they're totally legal!).
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
The US also has way more deaths from pretty much every other way you can kill people. We have a bunch of nutty violent people, but instead of doing things like encouraging mental health treatment we instead fill up our prisons with people who use marijuana, and encourage a society where acknowledging mental illness is a completely unacceptable sign of weakness. :/
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America.
Foreigners understand quite well.
We have 2017 now, not 1760 ... or 1780 ... the one who is not understanding is america. (not only regarding guns. But also drugs, parenthood, alcohol etc. )
But thanx for the informative post, probably some did not know about the distinction between "people" and "militia".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
These days race is a social or cultural construct,
No it's not. This is just ideological rhetoric.
In rest of the world, the rational thought would be, "I'd rather lose my rights to hold a gun than risk having many innocent people get killed."
For american, it's the other way around, "I'd rather risk having many innocent people get killed than lose my rights to hold a gun."
Individual right to hold a gun is more important than the collective right of the population to not get shot.
I see no evidence of either.
Then google.
The USA have the highest per capita gun related crime rate of the world (and the highest kill rate by toddlers (ab)using a gun).
But you like to live in a third world country, so go ahead killing each other.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
Yet you're so willing to twist things to justify that same authoritarian government policy. There's a reason one of the first things authoritarian regimes do is confiscate weapons. It saddens me that Euros always seem so willing to throw up their hands. Talk about stockholm syndrome.
So we are not blaming Reagan for making it ok to push all the mentally ill out on the street.
I would be happy to blame him but enough time has passed it does not apply in this case. I think it was wrong to put so many mentally ill people out of asylums.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think most I know don't like people coming into their country breaking laws, particularly Immigration Laws.
Some people are upset. Some people are more upset than others.
Importing large amounts of people using the law to enable legal immigration, to malign, or aggravate a local culture in a country is probably a bad idea.
I can't think of something more politically charged than importing large numbers of people for the gain of a few, to undercut the hard work of a local culture to educate themselves only to find that they are priced out of the market. You can see this happening in the USA right now and it is creating structural problems economically that, are going to be quite explosive in the coming decade.
This idea that anything goes for profit or labor cost to obtain unfair trade deals by leveraging Third world people in a 1st world context will bring war if it isn't stopped. It incites people to listen to these globalist complain they can't find qualified people to do a given job, for example, when they are being blatently untruthful and only care about the cost of labor.
A very very nasty big war is coming.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
and your guns are useless against a modern military. Don't kid yourself. You and your ar-15 don't stand a chance even if you set it to full auto. Hell, we didn't even win the revolutionary war. France stepped in with the supplies and also tried up England. You need to focus on keeping things from getting to that point. If it ever gets there it'll be too late.
That said, while I'm not opposed to more gun control I understand there are millions of Americans with a strong emotional attachment to guns. Guns are a community for them as well as a symbol of strength. That's not going to change. As a lefty I'll happily drop the gun issue if I could get folks on the right to help fix the systemic problems (poverty, lack of health services, no social safety net) that result in all these mass shootings. Yeah, I still have some issue with the widespread availability of guns (I've know people with temporary depression who've blown their heads off; it's too easy to kill yourself with a gun) but ultimately I'm a progressive and will take the best route to progress.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is just plain wrong. You should read/watch the news. Land wars, the kind fought with rifles like the ones you say are useless, still make up and decide 99% of armed conflicts. You think because drones entered the scene everything is magic hollywood effects? We blast and just send in soldiers to hand out food?
Don't be so daft. You are the one that is wrong, and the numbers show it.
How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe.
Once an armed conflict starts weapons are easy to come by. ISIS is actually a great example of what I'm talking about.
Their origin in Iraq is unusual as they were part of a long-term insurgency partially made up of a former standing army, once you have a violent conflict it's always easy to get more guns into the country (and they got a lot of US military hardware Iraqi troops left behind as they fled).
But in Syria Assad did two things when the Arab spring started, first he started torturing and committing outrages to turn the protests violent, and second, he released all the extremists from his jails. He was faced with peaceful protests and he worked hard to create a violent Islamic insurgency, the reasoning being that while lots of people wanted the peaceful protester to take power no one wanted the Islamists in charge.
It's exactly what I'm talking about, authoritarians want an internal threat so they can be the lesser of two evils, so Assad created that threat.
In the US, if you hate Muslims and want to take away their rights the first thing you want to do is get as many guns as you can into their hands. Inevitably a few of them will use them and you'll have the public outrage to do whatever you want.
I stole this Sig
I sympathize with your sentiment and feel for the loss of your coworker. I only wanted to respond to one part of your comment.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
All rights do have a cost in blood. Habeas corpus, speech, assembly, and bear arms. All of those rights had a cost beyond treasure. The US fought 2 wars to get those rights for everyone and they were the bloodiest wars in American history. People say "be eternally vigilant" to protect the rights we have but that doesn't tell what you have to be vigilant about; people have to be vigilant about the cost of rights. The more that people forget what it costs to get and keep those rights the more that that price will be paid.
It was a genuine good thing that the Battle of Athens saved the ballots from a tyrannical government that decided to shoot a black man in the back while voting to count the ballots in secret. It is a genuine good thing that citizens can protect themselves from a tyrannical government. An armed citizenry is one of the checks on the government to protect the citizens from tyranny because people are corruptible. The whole point is that you cannot trust people in any position of power.
The right of arms is a right of self defense. Guns are a tool to that enables the citizenry to protect themselves from rogue agitators to state aggression. It is a tool that equalizes the odds of any violent encounter regardless of the physical and fighting prowess you or the agitator may have.
Getting rid of a right to citizens does nothing to address the real issue of people doing bad things. Getting rid of speech will not end racist bigotry anymore than ridding guns will end violence.
>citizens who know how to build IEDs are more fully able to defend themselves from the government
fixed that for you
I guess you can call me a troll too but I used to think smart people came to slashdot. Where the fuck did you pull that Eastern Indians are white? Out of your ass I think. Not only does anthropology say they are two races of people also open your fucking eyes. Indians white? your fucking color blind we're brown. Then you pull out your ass that there is some kind of connection between Hindu and English. Have you ever heard both languages? They're no when close to each other. "proto indo-european" my ass. Goddamn go back to school and listen and get an education.
I find it strange that white people always want to make others white or make bones found somewhere in the world as white people. Things are always white. Of course your stupid comments just show how STUPID you white people really are.
I try long and hard NOT to be raciest but comments like your own only increase my opinion of your race. The dumbest and most violent fucks that were walked the Earth.
See Neandertals still walk the Earth.
I wish White people would go back to where they came from the world would be a better place......
Guns kill better than cars. But cars are killing WAY more people than guns, and have been doing so for decades upon decades!
If you really want to save lives, Make cars safer for God's sake, because innocent people are dying every fucking day and nobody fucking cares.
But when orders of magnitude fewer people get shot, everybody goes apeshit.
People are fucking stupid.
My heart does go out to the families of the guy who died but gun control is not the answer. I had experience like this once a guy came into a place and shot and kill a friend as he turned towards me to shoot me I shot him dead. If I hadn't had a gun and used it me and others would have also been dead. Sure my friend died and the attacker died but that was it no one else died because I also had a gun and was ready to use it to protect myself and others.
Take away guns from honest people and only nuts and criminals have guns. Look at Switzerland everyone has a State issued firearm yet they have the LOWEST murder rate it the world. Guns have nothing to do with it. It is the person and their mindset that kills.
Thank you for the well reasoned and thought out argument. Most of the responses have seen here have been, from the outside looking in, irrational so I think the core issue is my culture sees things fundamentally different from yours.
When I consider your statement "Guns are a tool to that enables the citizenry to protect themselves from rogue agitators to state aggression" I guess I can't speculate on that in the USA context but I don't think it is true for New Zealand and similar countries. I do wonder if modern communications has changed the balance of things too. For example many people ask why cars are not banned since they kill people too. So lets say my government fixes this problem by banning all private transport and mandates people must use government supplied buses that run twice a day. People would protest in parliament in huge numbers and would probably enter the parliament buildings and stage a sit in until the law was reversed and new elections called. The police are not armed but have access to fire arms. They would never wear fire arms in such a situations, they would use batons. The protesters would not be armed. We have a lot of significant size protests and I have never in my 54 years hear of a protester caring a fire arm and the police have never carried then against protesters. The police would form a chain armed with riot shields and batons, the sheer number of protesters would push them over. There would be injuries, the most serious of which would broken bones. If a corrupt government ordered the police to use lethal force against unarmed protesters our police would refuse. Likewise our military would refuse to get involved. Both the police and military here know it would be both illegal and immoral and in the face of overwhelming public protest would respect the power of the people. For example for any small protest people are likely to be arrested for blocking roads and distributing order but left alone if well behaved. Large protests are allowed to break the law and block roads as the police take the pragmatic view it is what the public want. I have faith that here at least the public can over throw an unjust government without the need to arm the masses.
On the other hand I do lament the gradual erosion of freedoms by governments world wide, including here, but can't see how the right bear arms would help fix that here.
And the modern example of a well-armed populace being crushed by a government crackdown using heavy weapons is ...?
Sure hope that Indians will take this as a hint and pack up and go back to their own country. Unfortunately for them, if they don't pack up and leave, theses incidents will grow and spread. It would be better for all Indians to return to their OWN country before another one gets killed.
Those who attack Indians are just doing their job as loyal Americans. They don't like killing Indians, but it's a job that has to be done, like it or not.
So listen all you Indian boys, please go home before its too late. Before you're just another rotting charred corpse floating down the Ganges.
Signed,
Ignorant W. Trumper
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back.
When was the last time American citizens had to use firearms to defend themselves from the government?
The USA have the highest per capita gun related crime rate of the world
This appears to be both false and irrelevant. I couldn't find a source for all 'gun-related crime' across countries but even with more guns than people, the US's firearm-related homicide rate doesn't even make the top 10. And even if it was, it's possible that guns reduce crime while at the same time the crimes that do occur are more likely to involve guns.
(and the highest kill rate by toddlers (ab)using a gun).
So a country that has more than three times as many X per capita as nearly every other country has more accidents related to X? Who would have thought! Is it possible that countries with more boats have more toddler deaths in boating accidents? Let's find out!
But since none of this has anything to do with your claims about authoritarianism and tyranny (or your ... 'creative' definition of a 'fact'), I guess you concede those points?
I do wonder if modern communications has changed the balance of things too... ... They would never wear fire arms in such a situations, they would use batons. The protesters would not be armed.
Modern communications do not change human nature. We can communicate faster and with more people but what drives a man to violence does not change from 100 years ago nor what drives a politician to be corrupt/tyrannical. The structure of US government is predicated on the fact that power corrupts and governments tend toward tyranny.
Tyranny does not have to come from the government. A recent is example is the UC Berkly riots where the rioters were beating people up while the police stood idly by. Another thing to consider is when the government does not enforce law and order. An example being the black panthers in CA storming the legislature armed to protest gun control measures and to protest the governments inaction in their communities that was plagued by violence. Guns make any protest to be taken serious and forces the government to acknowledge or respond.
If a corrupt government ordered the police to use lethal force against unarmed protesters our police would refuse. Likewise our military would refuse to get involved. Both the police and military here know it would be both illegal and immoral and in the face of overwhelming public protest would respect the power of the people.
This is generally how it is in the US but just as you alluded to the gradual erosion of freedoms by the governments so to do people gradually justify tyranny. A recent is example is "punch a nazi". It went so far as to "punch someone that defends a nazi". Nazi turned into "someone I disagree with or who has opinions I don't like". How long does it take for the entire political right to be characterized as nazi justifying violence to an entire segment of society? From the rhetoric we have heard, it doesn't take much. Even the social justice "all white men are racist, all hetero are homophobic, etc" rhetoric had the same dehumanizing justification for violence. The right of arms means that even if that rhetoric gets out of hand, those "protesters" have to understand fully that if they advocate violence ("this is a war" Berkly riots), that they will have to be willing to put their lives on the line instead of hiding behind group think, propaganda (narrative crafting from news/government), and a complicit government allowing such riots to occur by not breaking them up when they turned violent.
If you are the receiving end of those protests or rhetoric and the government is complicit with those aggression, the right of arms gives citizens the ability to defend themselves from mob justice and police inaction. Every group has to think twice about making another group the scapegoat of their violence because everyone can defend themselves regardless what the government does.
Do you remember several decades ago, when some lunatic in Detroit killed two Chinese gentlemen because he was mad about Japanese cars? In his twisted logic he was protecting his automobile industry jobs! This has nothing to do with Trump or Arabs. It has to do with insanity and rationalization for murder and violence. In America we use guns. In the Middle East, they use bombs. In China and South America they use knives. The enemy can be anybody who simply is not you.
Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Not according to the Supreme Court of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Innocent Muslims didn't blow up your towers or kill your buddy in Iraq. Scapegoating and sending the police after innocent people isn't the answer.
Oh and don't think I'm just being a smartass, I know you support the hate shit that's going on right now.
There is a country that does in a pretty similar way, complete with shall-issue concealed carry of handguns. It's Czech Republic.
Now look at its crime stats and compare to US.
Allow me to rephrase OP's comment. His coworker is dead because scum like you are alive.
HITLER
BR>That is all.
And what's that got to do with anything?
Perhaps you should study more. The caste system existed before the Romans, let alone anything recognisable as Britain.
But what's that got to do with anything?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, alcohol doesn't make you do anything. What it does do is lower inhibition which allows the stuff you normally keep suppressed to bubble to the surface. You are't going to commit a racist/xenophobic crime under the influence of alcohol unless you already had the racism/xenophobia inside of you before hand. - signed a former cop and current medic working in a rural area dealing with an epidemic of alcoholism.
Nah, FUCK YOU. I'LL DO WUT I WANT! This is 'Merica (FUCK YEAH!) and I have the freedom to do whatever the fuck I want with my mod points. I may just use every one I get now to mod you down just cuz.
A gun is a tool which fires small pellets at a high velocity. Pellets can be fired at a variety of targets for a variety of reasons which all can be summarized as transferring a kinetic energy load into said target which invariably results in catastrophic damage to the impact area.
A gun's SOLE purpose is to destroy things. If that thing is alive, then it will probably die. I can also dance around the issue using technical terms. Your argument is null.
You just did it again! You are attempting distraction and you aren't very good at it.
But talking about weaponry, could you give us your opinion on harpoons and the rights of obsessive-compulsive Captains to own one?
I'm tickled pink that muslim chimp bit the dust. Ha ha ha ha ha! Fuck that corpse with a pork rib! Fuck that dead sorry ass sonofabitch and the horse he rode in on!
Could you substantiate that fact for us, fact-man?
Tense situations can escalate quickly, unless the murder was pre-meditated whether the attacker was carrying a gun or not could be the difference between the victim living or dying.
> Shooting people whilst drunk is [n]either racist or xenophobic, it is simply alchohol fuelled stupidity. Would it have happened sober, no. Would it have happened stoned, no.
I've never shot anyone while drunk, and I've been pretty dunk!
Would it have happened while not rascist? No.
well, fuck me for enjoying target practice...
Aww look its another cowardly useless fat fuck 4chan troll, talking al tough whilst cowering frightened in its moms basement.
But Progressive are incredibly blase about life in one sense and incredibly dramatic about it in another.
Nope. That's Conservatives. They get hyper-dramatic about abortion, but ignore things like miscarriages, freak out over birth control, and despise free school meals.
Progressives consider facts like these:
In 2013, 664,435 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 200 abortions per 1,000 live births.
Compared with 2012, the total number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions for 2013 decreased 5%. Additionally, from 2004–2013, the number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions decreased 20%, 21%, and 17%, respectively. In 2013, all three measures reached their lowest level for the entire period of analysis (2004-2013).
Women in their twenties accounted for the majority of abortions in 2013 and throughout the period of analysis. The majority of abortions in 2013 took place early in gestation: 91.6% of abortions were performed at 13 weeks’ gestation; a smaller number of abortions (7.1%) were performed at 14–20 weeks’ gestation, and even fewer (1.3%) were performed at 21 weeks’ gestation. In 2013, 22.2% of all abortions were early medical abortions. The percentage of abortions reported as early medical abortions increased 5% from 2012 to 2013. Source: MMWR.2016;65(12);1–44.
That's right, abortions are uncommon, and going down. You can probably attribute some of that to the availability of birth control. And given how many of them are at less than 13 weeks, you're in the miscarriage range. The rest? Likely dominated by medical necessity.
This story was the feel good story of the weekend! I love it when Muslims and Indians get punished. This Indian chump was brought before the People's Court and found wanting! Verdict: Guilty! Sentence: Death by firing squad! It looks like Mister Indo Mud Man should have stayed in his own country. He was a bad boy and stole an American job. He was caught, and punished for his crime against humanity.
I Hate Indians And Muslims
And as we increasingly expand simple concepts like race or gender, it merely dilutes them to the point of pointlessness.
You mean that as we discover that not everything is black and white, nature tends to be infinite shades of grey, we should just give up and stick with black and white?
I mean nothing of the sort. Can't imagine why you would think that. It's well known that in the hypothetical situation of lining up everyone in the world by skin pigmentation, it wouldn't be possible to make a determine what race a person belonged to. But let's say we wanted to get involved in some genetic diferences between people that miht result in their propensity for certain diseases. Tay-Sachs ideas, which appears in the genetic population of Ashkenazi Jews, and Cajuns in Southern Louisiana. Interestingly enough, this genetic mutation, which is fatal if two carriers have an offspring, can protect against Tuberculosis, which is why the allele persists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–Sachs_disease
Sickle Cell disease, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which is probably the one you are most concerned about, is one carried by people from Sub-Saharan Africa. Some people in the Middle East also carry this genetic allele.
People from Sub-Saharan Africa have Vitamin D Issues when living in northern Latitudes, and people in Northern Lattitudes are prone to melanoma when outside of their area of origin or latitude.
All based on the grouping of where the person originated.
Now where you are coming from is best summed up by a paragraph from Wikipedia's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Since the second half of the 20th century, the association of race with the ideologies and theories that grew out of the work of 19th-century anthropologists and physiologists has led to the use of the word race itself becoming problematic. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and emotionally charged synonyms: populations, people(s), ethnic groups, or communities, depending on context.
Ideology. The same application of human ingenuity that allows conservatives to deny simple concepts like the Greenhouse effect, 20th century Soviet Communists to deny genetics for their more ideologically acceptable Lamarkian theory, where a organism can change into another by something akin to will. Where Liberals can declare Genetically modified foods as poison, while disreagrding that humans have genetically modified food for thousands of years. And for both liberals and soncervative subgroups to insist that the thimerosol in vaccines causes autism, then shift to "it must be something else, but its still the vaccine!" when thimerosol is removed and no change is observed - and to hold that belief when it is concusively proven that the researcher was invilved in a scam with a lawyer to strike it rich. Ideology can raise us to new heights, or kill us.
And don't even go to your next move, which would be to accuse me of liking crackpot theories like the Bell curve, which presumes racial superiority by virtue of averaging IQ tests, that most unsatisfactory method of measuring intelligence. It's bullshit, and tells you nothing about any individual person you meet. Also used mainly by White's are superior people as some sort of excuse for keeping those sub-saharan's out of power. Oddly, they don't say much about East Asians being presumably more intelligent then they are. It's bullshit with a not quite sane agenda group being it's proponents.
Just because the stupid end of society can't deal with grey doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
Well, aren't we just the assuming one. I call prejudice, assumption, and bigotry on you. You dear sir, are indeed a bigot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Get Out Of My Country You Scumbag Wog! Now!
Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things.
Guns don't kill people; large holes punched into their bodies, the loss of bodily fluids from such a hole, and/or the gross tissue damage caused by the impact of leaden slugs propelled from a certain distance by the controlled ignition of a charge of gunpowder kill people!!!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It's not a good thing, but you're also making a big assumption. That he wouldn't have killed otherwise if this guy didn't have access to firearms. There are many, many ways to kill someone. The guy could have waited for your coworker to leave the restaurant and simply run him over with his car or attacked him with a machete. You're only limited by your imagination. This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense. The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY wanted to kill middle easterners (or whatever), he would find a way. Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
You've never seen the ads in a firearm aficionado magazine, have you? Or read the strangely wistful fantasies, always featuring firearms, of what they would do to home invaders which are posted by Second Amendment Defenders in forums such as this? Or been instructed by the NRA about how defenseless we would all be without a gun at hand? Or tried to explain to a military group that they will in future be armed with edged weapons exclusively?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"
Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.
Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.
It's kind of amusing how the same folks who argue that without a gun people would still be able to kill other people without too much trouble are the same people who interpret the Second Amendment's Right to Bear Arms as meaning...... Guns!
Next guy who tells me, "Firearms in the hands of the citizenry are the way to assure that governments do not assume tyrannical power, therefore the Second Amendment" or similar gets a dose of "Guns are not the only way to kill a person, if somebody wants to kill government tyrants they will find a way, even if guns are not available" etc.
And I'm not even a real gun-hater.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"There is no silver bullet."
Way ironic.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Mister India Job Stealer should have not been killed.
It woiuld have been better to strip him naked and bind him well. Castrate him, penis, testicles, scotum, the works!
Take his severed meat and shove it down his throat and make him swallow it.
Next, cut off his eyelids, ears, lips, and nose. Then blind him with acid. Amputate both his arms. That should be enough for a first offense.
Maim him thoroughly. But for heaven's sake, don't kill him! Maiming him should be enough for first offense.
If Mister India Job Stealer tries his tricks a second time, then all bets are off! What say you?
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
Thankfully, our new Trumpist overlords (whom I, for one, welcome) have removed the illogical ruling which prevents those found cognitively incapable of managing their own disability checks without another person's supervision from indulging their Second Amendment rights without assessment by authorities. After all, just because you are one of the 0.025% of the population found by a court to lack the rational ability to manage a disability check doesn't mean that you should lose your constitutional right to take up arms against a government you feel to be oppressive. Or, maybe a brown guy in a bar.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I get drunk 3 times a week. I have yet to shoot anyone or get in ANY trouble what so ever. You puritan pussy fuck. By the way. I am stone cold sober right now. That wasn't the drink talking.
You know that there are plenty of countries in the world that have far more lax gun control laws and yet *DONT* have all the shootings that the US does. For example in part of Europe you only have to be over 18 to buy a gun. Yep. That is it. No licence required.
The problem in the US is that there are a lot of Americans who are just itching for an excuse to shoot another american in the face.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
Poor little Srinivas Kuchibhotla. There are no more sands in his hourglass. Worms are beginning to feed on his corpse. He thought he would be a big shot and come to America. Now he's going home in box. Let this be a lesson to all who would try the same.
Guns kill better than cars. But cars are killing WAY more people than guns, and have been doing so for decades upon decades!
If you really want to save lives, Make cars safer for God's sake, because innocent people are dying every fucking day and nobody fucking cares.
WTF are you talking about? We've been making cars consistently safer for decades, and continue to do so. Rearview cameras and blind spot detectors are the latest iteration in a long line of safety devices. Removing the driver as the weakest safety link is also in the works, and even if it's not ready quite yet it will be someday.
Meanwhile every gun discussion is mired in thought processes from the 1700s.
People are fucking stupid.
They sure are. Thank you for demonstrating it so eloquently.
What's this have to do with the price of dead Hindus in Alaska?
I would guess people using drugs or knives to slit their wrists to die are really just making a cry for help. It's extremely easy to OD on drugs if that's your goal. And if you don't know how to slit your wrists correctly, it will take hours for you to die. If you use a gun, you're not playing around...you really want to die. In any event, I agree they are very effective tools for killing; however, people wanting to kill in the first place have serious mental problems. The US has an abysmal mental health system. It's probably the worst in first world countries. Our crazy people usually just end up in jails or prisons and then are released when their time is served. There used to be asylums but they went out of favor because the became synonymous with patient abuse but there needs to be something like that in place, as well as free mental health care for anyone who needs it.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Or are more people killed with guns just because it's easier? If guns disappeared from the planet, would people switch to knives or some other tool? My concern with people putting so much focus on guns is simply that it side-steps the big issue: mental health. The mental health system in the US is terrible. There have been lots of news stories about over the years, but nothing ever changes. Gun deaths are a side-effect of something else.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
How about this argument.....
The left commonly likes to advocate that abortion is a right.
According to the CDC, in 2010, 765,651 abortions were performed (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6208a1.htm). That's 765,651 human beings who will never get a chance at life because it was taken away from them, by someone else.
The right commonly likes to advocate for gun rights
According to the FBI, in 2010 there were 8,775 gun homicides in the US (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl08.xls)
NOW,
If the human life is what is important, which is more detrimental to preserving said life? Is it the abortions which prevented over 700 thousand people from having a chance at life or is it the gun rights which claimed the lives of 8,775 people?
Except that's exactly what happened at The Ohio State University. The individual ran his car in to a crowd that had gathered after a fire alarm and then when he got out of the car, he started swinging at people with his machete. The reason nobody was killed is because an armed OSU security officer was on site and shot him as soon as he had clearance to avoid endangering bystanders.
I'm well aware there are gun nuts. The problem is that politicians and the NRA do everything in their power to scare everyone into thinking that it's just a matter of time before the government comes and takes your guns. And then it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to totalitarianism. Politicians lie their asses off to incite fear and there are zero repercussions for it and there are too many stupid people to see it for what it is. In short, guns are just a political football.
Personally, I have no problem with gun control and there definitely needs to be more of it. It's FAR too easy to get a firearm in this country. Hell, you have to take a written test and a driving test to get a driver's license but you don't have to know anything about guns (and how to safely use them). The second amendment needs to be rewritten.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government,
Wanting to cut $1M off welfare and spend $100M more on prisons doesn't make one in favor of a small government.
Nope, those conservatives want a huge government in involved in every aspect of people's lives. Telling people who they can sleep with, what services they can get from a doctor, and all that. Massive, invasive authoritarian fascist government. Gun rights activists are as much fascists as the fascists who grabbed guns in the '30s.
Now consider this - that ammendment also says this has to be 'well regulated'.
Yet that part is apparently always ignored.
It's supposed to be well regulated. That means - with good regulations around it. Sane gun control laws = well regulated.
Do you know what ELSE could meet that requirement ? Nothing.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates
Well it's interesting how conveniently Americans go from "all gun ownership is legal" to "only illegal guns are used for crime"... how can there BE illegal guns if all gun ownership is legal ? Even then - 100% of all illegal guns no matter WHAT law system makes them illegal were once legal. Illegal guns all START OUT as legally owned guns.
The only possible exception are home-made fire-arms, which are a tiny minority of them - and only 'illegal' in the sense that their manufacture did not pass through the usual regulatory channels (in the US - there are so little of such that it's quite possible that in most states those are quite possibly entirely legal).
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's a LOT easier to defend yourself against any of those than against a gun. A gun-wielder doesn't have to get close.
Besides which -this 'perfectly logical' argument is disputed by the fact that deadly hate crimes are among the biggest reductions in the immediate aftermath of gun bans everywhere. Guns give people a major ego-boost - exactly because they are hard to defend against. Take that away, and a helluva lot of hate-filled people are too scared to actually ACT on their hate.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
No it's not. This is just ideological rhetoric.
Or Science. But I'm sure that won't change your mind...
How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe
The irony there being that they are operating in an area with extremely permissive weapons laws and they somehow haven't led to the polite society that gun enthusiasts always talk about.
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
So now along with 5000 Genders, we got a million races based on beer preference.
--------
But they won't let race be fluid, while gender can be. I don't understand, gender is much more defined. We all descended either from Adam and Eve - or - from the same group of curious monkeys. When we breed between races our offspring are not sterile like a liger or mule. But, for some reason it isn't PC to let race be fluid while gender can be.
Plenty of gun laws already on the books. Having more won't help anything. Look at Chicago and Washington, D.C. they have draconian gun laws and their gun crime levels are obscene. You can have your oppression in your country, thanks. We have a Bill of Rights here.
It does. It also illustrates your rather disappointing lack of humor.
It could just be that you aren't as funny as you think you are.
And it's where left wing, reshuffle everything idealists end up turning simple concepts into meaningless messes. And where you don't understand why when a decent majority of people believe in most of your concepts, you are adament about derailing the train for the least important matters.
And herein lies the point of your babble. A little rant about the left, or the democrats, or whoever it is you hate.
For the record I have no political leaning, both sides are as crazy as each other, so anyone attacking one, is clearly on the other and therefore to me just as crazy.
If you want the science, you can start here: https://www.scientificamerican...
Wanting to cut $1M off welfare and spend $100M more on prisons doesn't make one in favor of a small government.
The US federal budget for prisons is less than $10 billion while the budget for entitlements is 2.33 trillion, basically prisons are rounding error in the kind of thing that they'd like to cut.
But hey, you pulled some numbers out of your backside - totally convincing! /s
Nope, those conservatives want a huge government in involved in every aspect of people's lives. Telling people who they can sleep with, what services they can get from a doctor, and all that.
You do realize that those are Evangelical/social conservatives, not pro-business/small government conservatives, right? They don't even overlap that much.
Massive, invasive authoritarian fascist government. Gun rights activists are as much fascists as the fascists who grabbed guns in the '30s.
Hyperbolic fear-mongering at its most absurd. "Less government intrusion" is literally a cornerstone of their political philosophy, but in your mind that makes them fascists.
>Please try to keep in mind that you, or your culture, don't get the privilege of defining what is "rational" for the whole world, or specifically in someone else's culture. "Rational" is defined by the culture it is being considered within.
Errr no. Rationality, be definition, is not determined by culture, religion or anything other than two things: facts and numbers. The things you cite are such perfect examples of irrational arguments that they are recognized as a fallacyh ("appeal to tradition"). They are not valid rational arguments.
More importantly - there isn't a single situation in the USA. There is a world of difference in what gun ownership even MEANS depending on where you live. In the country-side, a gun is a way to feed your family, in the worst-case (rare) scenario of a crime it may actually be an effective defense - but even if it's a bad defense it's better than nothing, which is the alternative, and the risk FROM the guns are low because you're isolated - if you miss your target you hit a tree. Big deal.
In a city - the facts are entirely different. Here - guns are used PRIMARILY to blow heads off, and hardly ever for things like hunting. Here - their extremely inefficient nature as a defense tool has much more serious consequences than "I missed and the bad guy got me" - here when you miss, you kill an innocent bystander. There isn't any empty space around you for the bullet to go. There aren't any trees to hit - your backstop is innocent people.
And never over-estimate the effectiveness of guns as a self-defense device, in all human history we have not invented a LESS effective tool for that job (with the possible exception of the bow and arrow). Guns only fire straight if your breathing is right, and your hands are steady. When your life is at risk - staying calm is very hard, and when your not calm your hands get sweaty and shaky, and your breathing becomes rapid - that makes it virtually impossible to hit what you intend to shoot at - and, in a city, that almost guarantees hitting somebody who has nothing to do with the event. I love guns, I grew up with them in a rural area - and I'm an excellent shot. But I refuse ot own one, I refuse ot have one in my house - because this is a city I live in now, and a gun is a terrible idea. The risk of my toddler getting her hands on it is BIGGER than the risk of us being attacked. The odds of it helping if we ARE attacked is so low that it's now worth the risks. There's a reason why the number one performance enhancing drug for Olympic shots is Prozac... what good is a self-defense device that only WORKS if you are perfectly calm ? A good self defense device should work well even if you are panicking. Guns are terrible at the job. Hell a bat gives you better odds - you can swing accurately enough to hit your target even if you're panicking (and the adrenaline rush would probably make you swing HARDER than you otherwise could) - and if you DO miss the odds of killing your own kid or the neighbor's kids are practically zero. You can just swing again.
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Yeah yeah, we'll care about THAT hypocrisy when pro-lifers all accept that they are morally binding themselves to also oppose the death penalty AND support a comprehensive welfare state.
If you demand the birth of a kid to a person ill equipped to care for one, but won't assist in the feeding, clothing, shelering and schooling of that kid - then you're not pro-life you are pro-birth. And that's morally repugnant.
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Your number is off by a bout 3000 times.
The fatal shootings last year in the US were well over 12-thousand.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I fucking hate mud people. Street shitters are at the top of the list.
Getting drunk and doing stupid things[...]
Terminating a human's life willfully is not something I would characterize as a "stupid thing". It is pure unadulterated evil and anything that brings anybody closer to committing this most horrible deed of all should be something society should steer clear off.
There are huge penalties for the lethal combination of drinking and driving. There are none for the much more lethal combination of drinking and carrying guns.
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
And carried the means to do it at a whim and the crooking of a finger, like a drunk and petty God wielding power over death and life.
Not every good thing is worth its price tag.
Ditto!
Effectively there are only two races: The Human Race, and the Mud People.
The Human Race includes Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Eskimos, etc.
The Mud People consist of everyone else, essentially the horrible looking people with skin like mud. These people are Muslims, Pakis, Indians, Bangladeshi, Aboriginal, Africans, Negroes, Mexicans, non-European South Americans and Central Americans, Brazil (of course--the land of mud people and race mongrels). If this group would suddenly cease to exist, oh what a wonderful world it would be!
Thanks! Fascinating. I was unaware that Anatolian languages were extinct. Never heard of the Tocharian languages. I went and did some research after your post, and it really is very interesting. Glad you took the time to explain.
We need guns to protect our homes and family from ferral predators--negroes, mexicans, pakis, muslims.
[...]What we Americans resent and oppose utterly are foreigners telling us how to live or trying to take away our rights, [...] The least they could do in return is show us some more respect or perhaps we should leave them to deal with Putin by themselves instead?
Oh! So now we should worship you for not minding your business while at the same time never comment on your business?
As for Putin, his strongest fan seem to be your president, so we already have that situation. What is new?
Governments behave differently when the people are armed. They are more restrained, less authoritarian and more cautious in the exercise of their powers. As for enabling authoritarianism, the first thing that authoritarians everywhere do is disarm the populace because they know perfectly well that an armed people will not stand for tyranny. For example, one of the first things that both the Soviets and the Nazis did when they gained power was to restrict gun ownership. Coincidence? I think not.
Yeah, right. 'Governments behave differently and are less authoritarian.' You really have drunk your Kool-aid.
Try to cross your border and see what the fine TSA agents say about your 'less authoritarian' illusions. Or how the media is portrayed by the leadership of the 'country of the free'?
For each day you come closer to being a totalitarian state. So hold your guns close to you. They are your comfort blankets lulling you into believeiving you are safe from the big bad government. But let me let you in on a secret: they don't care about your guns because they are useless. If, no, sorry... When they want to take the last of your freedoms from you, you can try to shoot the freedoms back. I feel sorry for you.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
Maybe not the underlying issues but take away the guns and you have a lot less people getting shot and killed. The guy might have still been assaulted but it's a lot harder to actually kill someone with your hands or a knife. It's ridiculous to say taking away the guns won't change anything, because it will.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
We need guns to protect ourselves from feral negroes and mexicans. Bad dudes. Band hombres.
Lock them up. Lock them up a birth.
If the truth be told, shooting third world foreigners is patriotic. The more dead turd worlders, the better.
In other words my coworker is dead because millions of innocent gun owners haven't been arrested, how is that a good thing?.
How many thousands of people would die trying to enforce gun control on a population unwilling to surrender their guns? We tried alcohol prohibition because so many people died In relation to the consumption of alcohol. It turned out to be a mistake.
I'm surprised you haven't been modded to insightful because what you point out is really the core of the issue.
Until the vast majority of the US population is actively on the side of banning the public ownership of firearms it simply will be impossible to enforce. A huge number of Americans feel that the responsible ownership of guns is a good thing for the population and leads to more good than bad--unless that sentiment shifts no law will last and no action by the political and law enforcement bodies can happen without serious outrage and a perception of rights being trampled. It will be seen as an unjust law and will be broken or overlooked by even the most law abiding of citizens.
Shifting gun ownership is a tough nut to crack because the more crime and violence you have the more people want to defend themselves... and when crime and violence is low trying to take away guns is seen as an unnecessary restriction on freedom. So there's effectively no way to gain the sentiment.
Trump WON! Big league. You lost. You fucking lost. You picked the wrong side. And you lost. I guess that makes you a loser. YEAH! BIGLY!
When out of the blue an H1-B indo-chimp flies in and steals your job, and you have to train them or lose even your piddly severance pay, then you'll be full of nerd hate too.
What's this have to do with the price of dead Hindus in Alaska?
New to posting, eh?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But they won't let race be fluid, while gender can be. I don't understand, gender is much more defined. We all descended either from Adam and Eve - or - from the same group of curious monkeys. When we breed between races our offspring are not sterile like a liger or mule. But, for some reason it isn't PC to let race be fluid while gender can be.
To be blunt, the gender morass as they are trying to define it, has shifted from sexual characteristics to sexual preferences, and in doing so, they have shown themselves to be rather obsessive compulsive about attaching a label to everything in sight. Even worse, they are wordsmithing so obsessively that in their world of genders, a Transsexual male is not the same gender as a transsexual man. A distinction with no difference.
And yeah it's like the opposite for race.
One might be forgiven for believing that they just like bitching.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. An opinion would be "you should have more gun control", when I originally wrote the comment I included that opinion, but then I decided to simply stick with the fact "guns do not protect you against tyranny". Now, you can argue that fact is wrong, but don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
I'm down with this, mostly, but then you say -
More more guns you have the more murders you have
Which is unsubstantiated opinion. Take the country you're pointing at as an example - the states with the fewest murders by gun, have the most registered gun owners; the states with the most murders by gun, have the fewest registered gun owners.
So when you say things like -
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
- please realize that some of the math you base your understanding on involves obviously incorrect data ;)
And, if I were prone to making fallacy fallacies, I'd toss your entire opinion out of the window. You can't seem to separate fact from opinion, consistently, and this proves, conclusively, that you are no authority on the subject matter at hand.
It may be "racist" (a word without meaning) or whatever you want to call it. Maybe the gunman was drunk, maybe not. But the bottom line is that the gunman did the right thing. He is a patriot. Too bad about the dead haji, but hey, that's the way it crumbles, cookiewise.
I'm pretty sure it can be classified as both racist and xenophobic.
Perhaps those Americans are correct that owning guns secures their freedom. How many lives have been lost under HItler, Stalin, Mao, and others when guns were restricted? How does the freedom of the average European compare with that of an American? Just last week, a Dane was charged with blasphemy for burning a Quran. Is that Dane truly free? Most Americans would say no. Freedom has its price, and most US citizens are comfortable with that.
yea, because groups of native guerilla soldiers could never drive out a technologically more advanced adversary, that only happens in Fairytales and movies... oh wait...
My father had a saying "I know a ni1gger when I see one!"
Maybe WoW is a race. Maybe. But there is no doubt that the ni1ggers are a race, the lowest race.
Your linked data actually proves the point that Americans are a free society due to guns. If one looks at the list, there are nations that have greater deaths per capita from homicide with far fewer guns per capita. There are also nations that have extremely low homicide rates with high guns per capita. So, the correlation that guns lead to the death by homicide is not there. Rather, culture drives the death not the tool.
Interestingly, the largest component of US deaths by guns is suicide. Even in choosing our death, Americans have freedom.
It does. It also illustrates your rather disappointing lack of humor.
It could just be that you aren't as funny as you think you are.
Do you just skim posts, finding something to take umbrage at? Didn't read what I wrote after that? Allow me to explain.
You didn't have to find it funny. A person would look at that, and say "that's ridiculous" some might find it funny, some not. And that's okay. But even so, a display of non-insulting humor where a poster pokes fun at themselves, indicates an extension of friendly notion, that even if if the recipient does not find it amusing, at least they can make some judgements.
And your response tells me much about you, taken with your other posts like:
Only if your definition of race comes from the 19th century, which in itself is a little racist.
Just because the stupid end of society can't deal with grey doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
Nice.
And it's where left wing, reshuffle everything idealists end up turning simple concepts into meaningless messes. And where you don't understand why when a decent majority of people believe in most of your concepts, you are adamant about derailing the train for the least important matters.
And herein lies the point of your babble. A little rant about the left, or the democrats, or whoever it is you hate.
I have to chuckle, when there are others here who label me as a liberal or socialist. No, actually I tend to analyze a situation, and put it to a test of whether it makes sense, and if it is likely to work, or it it is just screwed up ideology. I've torn conservatives to shreds when they try to trump science with politics and declare the energy retention characteristics of different gases, or when they express such a faulty concept of human nature as to believe in trainwreck economics like the trickle down effect or Laissez-faire.
But the left comes into a well deserved beatdown when they require 88 genders, which means that a simple term once based upon what parts you were born with, has completely changed to mean sexual preference. And so fluid that there is somehow a difference between the aforementioned Transsexual man, and Transsexual male.
For the record I have no political leaning, both sides are as crazy as each other, so anyone attacking one, is clearly on the other and therefore to me just as crazy.
Racist, stupid, and now crazy. What a bundle of joy you are. handing out the pejoratives like candy at Easter.
Your idea of labeling anyone who criticizes one political affiliation as automatically belonging to the other political affiliation is simply wrong, especially when you seem to demand fluidity in other matters, yet are in a big hurry to label me as something that I'm not.
If you want the science, you can start here: https://www.scientificamerican...
Race as a social construct is very nice for psychologists, but tell me, is it bad to know that people originating from a certain area and subject to certain diseases by their genetics now forbidden knowledge? Is the very researching of this sort of thing racist? From the article:
"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."
Wordsmithing, and basically completely abandoning race altogether for some regional approach that will soon become race again.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control.
I know you believe your coworker would be alive if there was gun control; but you are wrong. The guy would have killed him no matter what; perhaps by dragging him behind a truck until all of his skin was torn off as happened to a American of Mexican descent. Or perhaps your friend would have been lynched. That used to be real popular.
I should mod you down for making this about gun control instead of hate, but meh. Your lack of rational thought is typical.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
When the UK started importing Jamaicans and Pakistanis and Indians things went downhill fast. Jamaicans are innately criminal. It truly is in their genetic makeup. And the flotsam from the Indian subcontinent can not even be termed civilised.
When was the last time American citizens had to use firearms to defend themselves from the government?
Arguably it's high time, considering how the constitution is being trampled over for fun and profit. But nobody can actually bothered to view his guns in the light of the purpose of the second amendment.
Vermont which is 99% white, has no gun laws. You can carry concealed weapons, or open carry, no matter. No need for a permit. No need to ask permission. Constitutional gun rights are totally respected in Vermont. And it has the lowest rate of gun crime in the nation. Almost none.
Why? It's the demographics. Vermont has favorable demographics. However such policy would never work in a state like Mississippi where 40% of the populace belongs to a race which exhibits no impulse control. Gun crime is much higher in Mississippi because of the Negro problem.
Demographics are everything.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Good news everyone, gun control debate over!
of course you can't have a 'rational discussion' because in YOUR OPINION the only rational thing is only for the government to be allowed to be armed. So, by definition, any other viewpoint is irrational.
Go back to your country and stay there, I don't want YOUR LAWS to govern MY country. I don't want to be part of the Euro zone, I don't want France and Germany running the world.
So in short, Fuck Off.
And yet, despite knives being much cheaper and more readily available, far more people in the US choose to murder with guns than with knives, or any other implement for that matter. There must be SOME reason that guns are the weapon of choice for murderers.
The only reason you think it is wrong is because you don't want to discuss the issues with violence that still occur at close to the same rates in countries that have instituted gun control and you have been conditioned to think you couldn't live your life without government control. Using them as an excuse for problems or as a reason a government would take away more rights is proof that your argument is hypocritical. It's the "think of the children" meme that invokes stupid judgement while ignoring greater issues. It's like saying we need to give governments more power because if we don't they will take it.
Now consider this - that ammendment also says this has to be 'well regulated'.
There are loads of gun control laws and the only people they affect are those who follow the rules...they have no real impact on criminals as we see time and time again. I would say that in general firearms are pretty well regulated, but you can't regulate intent and intent can change at any time. How do you regulate or control intent?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Many "innocent" gun owners stand up for the right of people like this (i.e. the general population) to walk around with loaded guns. I would say the culpability of gun ownsers is about on par with everyone who voted for Trump - even if you disagreed with his blatant racism, you tolerated it because you thought other things were more important.
You need to follow the full thread, my 'here' is New Zealand. You do make my point, you do have 3000 times the fatal shootings for 70 times the population. But, hey, freedom ra ra ra!
It's a good example why it's a bad idea for people to walk around with guns (or knives).... If he didn't have a gun all he would be able to have done is beat the guy up, but that would be easier for the crowd to control..
Even though I like guns very much, it should not be available (easily) to regular citizens. Most people are killed by their own guns by accident, and that should tell something.. But then again, most people are just too stupid to understand that.
Thank you for your reasoned response. I agree that numbers by themselves paint a too simple view of a complex issue and I acknowledge there is no quick fix. I just wish people would take the time to think about things and to wonder what are the options. At the risk of creating further offense I notice the USA is very inward looking. My last trip there was for 2 weeks and during my time there I only saw two TV news stories about what was happening outside the USA, all the other news was internal.
Well your logic falls apart there since no one is saying the government and military need to turn all of our guns in as well. Guns make the weak stronger, most people wouldn't listen to cops if they didn't have the threat of force. And a literal countless number of people would be worse off from home invasions and muggings and violence without guns to protect them. I'd give up guns if all the police and all the military gave theirs up. But I'm secure in knowing that will never happen.
Where do you get these statistics?
The USA trolls insurgents into engaging them and then calls in air support. I've never heard of what you're spouting where did you get your info?
99% rofl please just shut the fuck up
ISIS is seizing land?? Please tell us more about this? ISIS is losing idiot.
The 19th-century idea of race could be more varied, with "race" used to refer to nationality.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
People have generally switched to knives in Europe due to poor gun availability and their 3 to 4 times lower homocide rates reflect this.
Absolutly mental health is an important concern and as you say the US doesnt do a very good job at taking care of those with issues. The homocide and gun violence levels in the US versus Europe are so drastically different that it doesnt seem that mental health issues alone can come close to explaining away the difference, however.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I've read about history, not just the news. I know what happened in Yugoslavia, in WWII, where a group of enthusiastic individuals with rifles and the like got into fights with poorly trained, poorly led, and poorly equipped regular troops. It wasn't pretty, and it would be worse now, and major power armies nowadays are neither poorly trained, poorly led, or poorly equipped.
Land wars, since the end of WWI, have been conducted by trained groups of people with a variety of weapons, including rifles, machine guns, grenades, and mortars. The German Army was highly successful in WWII, and their low-level tactics were based around machine guns, riflemen being secondary. Forces that were primarily rifle-armed, such as the WWII Chinese Army, were routinely defeated. ISIS has lots of weapons, not just rifles, from the collapse of national armies in the area.
Moreover, in the US it's illegal to go out and buy a modern infantry rifle. A private citizen may only buy automatic weapons that were made before 1987.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The US federal budget for prisons is less than $10 billion while the budget for entitlements is 2.33 trillion, basically prisons are rounding error in the kind of thing that they'd like to cut.
But hey, you pulled some numbers out of your backside - totally convincing!
Except it wasn't about those numbers in the way you portray it.
The point being made, was that the gun-rights activists would choose to cut 1 million from welfare, but gladly endorse 100 million in prisons. Not to make any real point of scale. And this is born out in the analysis of Trumperton's budget. Look at his spending priorities.
These are the people who vote for 3-strikes laws, who vote for 10-20-life. Who scream for marijuana criminalization. Who freaked out over civil-unions so badly they guaranteed same-sex marriage.
But anyway, looking at the numbers, the federal government has about 10% of the nation's prisoners, so you're ignoring the other 90%.
but hey, look at the spending increases, look what we're getting
You do realize that those are Evangelical/social conservatives, not pro-business/small government conservatives, right? They don't even overlap that much.
Too bad for the ones who made the choice of their tent-mates then.
Hyperbolic fear-mongering at its most absurd. "Less government intrusion" is literally a cornerstone of their political philosophy, but in your mind that makes them fascists.
Nope, it makes them HYPOCRITES. Was that hard for you to grasp?
That you fail to grasp it, well, that's part of the hypocrisy. You'll never deal with it.
You're thinking about it wrong. To understand his point you have to start with the premise: "I like guns!", and then work your way backwards trying to justify it.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment. The Founding Fathers used their own experiences to craft a document which (was supposed to) enshrined rights to people while limiting that of the government. However, as James Madison pointed out, there has been more abridgement of freedoms of the people by the silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations (paraphrased).
The second reason for the amendment, and one the NRA absolutely refuses to recognize, is those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia. Unlike today, the Founding Fathers envisioned a small standing army, if at all, with the militia doing the brunt of the work to slow or repel foreign invaders or put down rebellion, as George Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion.
Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.
The original amendment, as proposed by James Madison, the guy who wrote the Constitution, was:
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not.
This is why gun control is such a contentious issue. The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, says citizens are allowed to own firearms. Where the argument comes in is where to draw the line on a) who can own a gun (as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot) and b) what restrictions on gun ownership (type of weapon, amount of bullets, etc). As you have seen, some believe there should be no restrictions and others say there should be plenty of restrictions or even no ownership at all.
Amen brother
LOL - yeah France and Germany are doing really well right now.
The only safe population is an armed population.
The general population drives cars without murdering pedestrians and prepares and serves food with murdering diners. If the general population can be trusted not to commit murder in those ways, what makes them prone to commit murder with a gun?
mmmm... Yeah if you count the inner cities that make up 97% of all of the gun crime in the country then yes. And those cities are *gasp* the strictest in the nation on gun laws! But that can't be! You just told me that having no guns makes it better!
Except in the entire rest of the country which have just as many if not more guns there isn't a major problem with shootings. This also doesn't count the differences in countries' methods of what is a shooting (some countries don't count when police shoot, some do or don't count suicides, etc). Just pretending that "the rest of the developed world agrees" on something doesn't mean it's best for everyone. Every other developed country has a different history, different topology, different climate. Do you have to worry about bears wandering through London? Do you worry about coyotes coming into your back yard in Eindhoven? Do the police live too far to respond to an emergency in Brighton that waiting for them to come defend you is impossible? Is hunting for food common in Versailles?
Different countries are different. Film at 11. Just because something is what we want, and what works for us doesn't mean it's for you. Just because you want to be self-righteous about something doesn't mean we value that viewpoint. Europeans especially should know better. Holocaust, purges, revolutions. If you wish to let other people ensure your own safety, then by all means do. We choose to ensure our own, for ourselves.
Because everyone else explicitly singles out guns when they talk about arms. They don't say "small arms stabbings". They don't call a cutlery dealer an "arms dealer". Playing with words doesn't change the meaning. You know better and know what they meant. It's quite as easy to choose to run someone down in a car than it is to use a gun. There are plenty of security footage videos on youtube of people running down others in their cars for revenge. Guns get the magic headlines. "He was gunned down". They don't say "He was baseball batted down" when someone is beaten to death. When a gun was used, it is now the star of the story... because it pushes buttons for people who are scared of them.
is those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia.
They already have that. Every male over 18 is registered and eligible for drafting. Unless of course you think about female gun owners.
captcha: corpse
Inebriation is no barrier to driving https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehic..., it is just a barrier to driving properly.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
http://www.petition2congress.c...
Casteism
https://qz.com/889524/the-us-s...
Casteism
Brahmin are the most racist/casteist people from India; 90% black money in India is with Brahmins; http://www.livemint.com/Leisur...
I'll do software jobs and Americans should do menial jobs. This type of uncivilized Caste system is not acceptable in USA; https://qz.com/918834/indians-...
Casteism
Race as a social construct is very nice for psychologists, but tell me, is it bad to know that people originating from a certain area and subject to certain diseases by their genetics now forbidden knowledge? Is the very researching of this sort of thing racist?
Originating from a certain area isn't race. That is the point. How do you define race these days? It's not being from a certain area, since migration patterns throw this out the window. It's not the colour of their skin or their features since the variations are so large. So how do you define race in a scientifically useful way? And to bring it back on topic, how is this case of shooting an Indian that you thought was Arabic, not racist?
The point being made, was that the gun-rights activists would choose to cut 1 million from welfare, but gladly endorse 100 million in prisons.
It wasn't clear that this was a hypothetical, but I still don't think the libertarian-leaning, 'small-government', pro-gun type of conservatives want to spend more money on much of anything.
But anyway, looking at the numbers, the federal government has about 10% of the nation's prisoners, so you're ignoring the other 90%.
Yes, but now you have to include state and local budgets into the mix as well. This was just a quick, order-of-magnitude estimate.
These are the people who vote for 3-strikes laws, who vote for 10-20-life. Who scream for marijuana criminalization. ... Too bad for the ones who made the choice of their tent-mates then.
Every political group has to ally with other groups it doesn't completely agree with, that's how politics works. Do you think that communists like working with pro-globalization neo-liberals in the Democratic party?
I think this particular sub-group would be fine with married gay marijuana farmers living next door as long as they didn't have to fight gun-control legislation every election cycle.
Nope, it makes them HYPOCRITES. Was that hard for you to grasp?
The fact that you think all conservatives are a homogeneous mass of group-thinkers make them hypocrites?
Americans go from "all gun ownership is legal"
Who's for that?
Illegal guns all START OUT as legally owned guns.
For the most part, yes.
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in (how is that border wall working?) that might prevent homicides committed with guns, but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
There is a reason soldiers are given guns as their primary weapon and not a car or knife. As long as a soldier's primary weapon is a gun, this argument carries no weight.
>What does this have to do with the homicide rate?
Nothing as such - I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns (and the side claim that this implies gun control would have no effect).
But let's address YOUR claims then:
> Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones),
Countries with gun bans generally do. Not military as a rule but cops in Britain and New Zeeland are unarmed for ordinary police work. They only get a gun issued when they are entering a specific, known-threatening situation. They don't get to walk around armed. Result: In the past 20 years exactly 2 people have been shot by police in the UK. The US cops kill more people than that EVERY DAY. But when the odds are that criminals won't have guns - there's no reason for the cops to carry anything more dangerous than a nightstick.
>and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in
You will never prevent ALL of them. But contrary to your claim - you don't NEED to. Because it turns out - smugglers don't sell shit to random people on the street. To get a smuggler to sell you something you need to have criminal connections. You need people to vouch for you. They won't sell you a smuggled gun unless they are damn sure you're not an undercover cop.
You can't just walk down to the docks by Sydney harbour and start asking random strangers to sell you an illegal gun. Now your hardcore career criminals - they'll still have guns (biker gangs in Aus for example), but they tend not to be involved in petty-crimes like housebreaking and the like. Their crimes rarely have much impact on the general public.
On the other hand the moron who wakes up one day and decides he wants to go into some public place and start shooting until he leaves the biggest pile of bodies he can before he gets shot ? That idiot - he can't GET a gun in those countries. Which is why events like that are extremely rare there. The US had 48 mass shootings in the last 20 years. The next 20 countries COMBINED had 22. Many of them had none. All of them have decent gun control laws.
> but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
Non-gun homocide isn't JUST low because guns are easy to find in the US - it is low EVERYWHERE - because it's actually pretty fucking hard. People tend to fight back if you try to kill them. With a gun - you can kill them from far away, reliably. With a bat or a knife - you have to seriously risk your own life if you want to do it. So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT.
>I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'.
Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT. You'll never have a homocide rate of zero, but you can get pretty damn close if you take guns out of the picture. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fact that we can't end ALL murder isn't an argument against preventing SOME murders.
>All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
No. It's taking away a stupid choice (for self defense - there is no worse thing ever designed than a gun, it's the perfect thing to attack with, it's an atrociously bad thing to defend with) to let other people feel their hearts still beating. There is a reason you are stasticially MORE likely to get shot if you own a gun than if you don't - MUCH more. It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used when you are calm and your breathing is under control is the dumbest thing ever to give to somebody who is afraid for their life.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Now imagine the power hate has over people with guns - people who are already committed to being able to kill someone, and who see that as a valid way of solving problems...
Why don't you simply read some statistics, hu?
t's possible that guns reduce crime while at the same time the crimes that do occur are more likely to involve guns.
In the country that probably has the highest crime rate after third world countries like Somalia? And you want to be proud about that or use it as an argument?
Who would have thought! Is it possible that countries with more boats have more toddler deaths in boating accidents?
Some accidents can be avoided, some not. A gun is just a waiting accident, especially in countries where you don't have to show that you can properly handle the gun. Toddler related boat accidents are btw. extremely rare. And that a toddler kills you with a boat is close to impossible.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yup and this days that militia is called "National Guard", as per Militia Act of 1903
Your statement makes no sense. So if the Army developed a laser weapon and that became the standard firearm, you'd be fine with firearms? Try again.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns
I've never claimed that - I was just trying to keep my claim about sources more conservative.
But let's address YOUR claims then:
Followed by two paragraphs that in no way address any of the arguments I'm trying to defend (which aren't mine, by the way - I was just pointing out the nonsense in quantaman's post).
So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT. ... Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT.
30 seconds of Googling (none completely unbiased, but they have actual numbers and citations, unlike some people):
Washington Post: Zero correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws
Washington Examiner: No, states with higher gun ownership don't have more gun murders
Crime Research: COMPARING MURDER RATES AND GUN OWNERSHIP ACROSS COUNTRIES
It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used...
Scaring people off is self defense, even if you never draw your weapon.
You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane.
They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
And it's not gun ownership per se that's the problem - and very few people think it is, it's lack of adequate regulation to ensure that before you get a gun you
1) Are not a felon (you know like expanding background checks to online and gun shows would do - the only thing Obama tried to achieve and failed)
2) Maybe some restrictions on WHAT KIND Of guns you can buy - an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER.
There is literally nothing useful you can do with it that is not also harmful to other people.
Canada's gun ownership isn't far behind the USA - but homocide rates are far lower. But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Same in New Zeeland.
Restricting guns to those that have legitimate purposes - like hunting rifles, works. For self-defense a single shot weapon or maybe a semi-automatic pistol is just fine. You won't hit your target anyway so at least don't hit more than one innocent bystander.
And before you say "But Switzerland" the gun-nuts always cite Switzerland and none of them know a thing about it. I have friends who live there - and they filled me in on the bits that you don't know. Firstly - yes, everybody in Switzerland owns a gun - but nobody gets it BEFORE undergoing extensive training (which they must update yearly). And nobody NOBODY in Switzerland has a gun in his house. Those guns they own - are all kept in central armories, you're not ALLOWED to take it out of that armory except for your annual training updates or if a war were to break out. So, in reality, Switzerland is one of the most gun-free societies on earth.
The reality is that there are a lot of things that contribute to homocide rates, gun ownership is just one of many. But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact. And even if it had NO influence on homocide rates it would STILL a good thing because at least other weapons don't kill innocent bystanders.
But you probably don't need to ban them to get most of the good effects. Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim. You'll have a lot LESS innocent bystanders if people in America would at least stop holding their damn guns SIDEWAYS ! Could we PLEASE at least teach people not to do that stupid shit ? It may look awesome in a Spike Lee movie but you would be more accurate shooting blindfolded !
Oh and make the test useful - at least one person in the USA in one of the few states that has at least a basic proficiency test was able to pass it. He can't READ it though - because he is completely blind.
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Update: since I wrote the last post the US 2nd circuit appeals court found that the AR-15 is not constitutionally protected. Antonin Scalia's Heller ruling established the idea that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to fire-arm ownership - that ruling drew the line at "military grade weapons" as not being thus protected, using the M16 as an example.
Thus far the NRA has claimed that the line drawn is at full-auto versus semi-auto. But the appeals court has roundly rejected that reasoning today saying Heller's line is drawn on lethality. Specifically whether the weapon is "most useful for military work" - that line means the AR-15 falls outside it's scope despite being only a semi-automatic. It is, in fact, mentioned by name as a weapon that - while not being fully-automatic has a rate of fire and lethality so close to that of the full-auto M16 that it must fall in the same legal category as legal category's should be based on practical effect rather than arbitrary lines.
This is a pretty good step forward as a weapon I myself earlier said has essentially zero legitimate uses is no longer constitutionally protected. You *could* use an AR-15 for self defense - but it's a ridiculously cumbersome weapon for that job - it's MUCH more suitable for killing a large number of people, which when the military does it is called "war" but when a citizen does it is called "mass murderer" (that I think the latter name should also apply to the former case we'll leave aside).
If you really want a weapon for self-defense - your best bet is actually a mid-to-large calibre revolver. The short barrel doesn't make a big difference - accuracy in self-defense situations is terrible anyway but the shorter bullet-travel-distance reduces the odds of hitting an innocent bystander. But a revolver is a relatively simple mechanism so your risk of a jam is greatly reduced (the number one downside of pistols for self defense - besides the ones applying to all guns - is their high tendency to jam) , it can be effectively wielded by a person who isn't very strong and can't handle a big kickback - and medium-to-large calibre because small-calibre weapons are more prone to jamming.
I still don't think it's a smart approach ot self defense, it's still a terrible technology if that's your goal - but if you INSIST on using a bad tool for the job - at least use the BEST of the bad tools and let us take the one that has near-zero usability for that purpose out of the hands of the people who would like to use it to shoot up schools because their pissed they can't get laid.
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You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane. They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The whole reason we have constant arguments about this in the US is that we have vast differences in culture - many people have grown up with guns all around them, others haven't seen a gun fire except on TV or in the movies. Some cities essentially banned all guns until recently, other places have tried to make gun ownership mandatory.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
As my third link did...
And before you say "But Switzerland"
France, Greece, Belgium, ...
an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER. ... But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact.
Because you say so.
the US 2nd circuit appeals
You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right? Don't throw a party until the Supreme Court has its say. And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim.
I wouldn't have a problem with that, but remember I was in this to defend people who are pro-gun against a load of nonsense several posts ago. I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I do, groups that make use scary made-up terms like 'weapon of war' and 'assault weapon' to sway people, and politicians that run around screaming 'ban guns' every campaign and then claim they just want 'common sense gun control' that look like the first step in the process of banning them.
The classical definition of race was only three groups, Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. It is not pointless to introduce more granular classifications, if anything it helps us understand all the variations that exist among humanity. This is how science and progress works.
There's a fourth - Australoid
In the country that probably has the highest crime rate after third world countries like Somalia?
So not only are you wrong, but since you made it up you knew it was likely wrong before you said it, and don't care. Sad.
The US's homicide rate is below both the average and median for all countries. It's probably the worst of the first-world, but nowhere near third-word rates.
>Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
Rate of fire. The distinction that matters. Hunters need one shot every hour or so. A rate of fire of more than once per minute is excessive. Only SOLDIERS need more than that.
>Because you say so.
And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans. Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban - and more importantly, there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted. Conservative Americans would do ANYTHING to stop terrorism - EXCEPT lose out on the chance to sell the terrorists guns.
>You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right?
Yes, but since this was directly based on a standing supreme court ruling - by one of the most conservative supreme court judges of all time - the ultimate activist judge, the oughts of that are quite low here. Of course nobody can predict a court outcome with any certainty, but if I was going to place bets - I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here.
>And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
So it was just a 'political victory' when that same supreme court found that the 2nd ammendment DOES create a personal right to own fire-arms - in the SAME decision that this was based on ?
Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing. It's, of course, possible that the political victory can be wrong - but all the data suggests it's not.
>I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I
While I would be happy to say that gun control laws shouldn't be the same even across a state. Cities and rural areas have completely different realities when it comes to guns - to have the same rules apply doesn't make sense. In a rural environment (as I wrote above) a gun can feed your family - and while it may not be good for self defense it's better than the alternative which is "nothing at all" since the cops couldn't get there in less than an hour and the population is too small for private armed-response services to be available and even if there were THEY couldn't get there in under an hour. Even then though -an old fashioned no-cartridge chamber-loaded hunting rifle is all you actually need.
In a city - where there is about a 50% chance any shot will kill an innocent bystander - the situation is entirely different, the population density changes everything - the stats are all different, and self-reliance is is utterly impossible in the first place. It's literally not possible to EXIST in a city UNLESS everybody is inter-dependent, there's no possible way millions of people in close proximity can co-exist without existing interdepently. Different scenario - different outcomes - different rules should apply.
In a city - 99.999% of all times a trigger is pulled it's to commit a murder. It makes no sense not to curb the availability of the guns for the in a thousand cases where it's for a legitimate purpose. In a rural environment - homocide isn't even in the top TEN most common reasons to pull a trigger.
The trouble is that the two things exist side-by-side. It's impossible to enforce a gun-ban in a city if you lack one in the surrounding country-side. So how do we adapt the rules to the situation ? Frankly - Australia is pretty similar to the US in this regard, including vast rural areas with scattered big cities - but the ban there did not, ultimately, have any major negative effects. One way to solve the discrepency is simply to make the city rules apply everywhere on the basis that since the vast majority of people live in the cities the smallest harm is the one that only annoys a tiny portion of the population - rather than leads to excessive death in the vast majority.
But this may not be the only approach one could take. I'd be open t
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Also, to add onto what you say, amending the constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the states. Until an amendment is voted upon, all regulation of firearms by the federal government is actually unconstitutional except when twisting the amendment to mean something clearly not intended by the people who wrote and signed it originally.
Until that 2/3 vote, the amendment stands.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here. ... Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing.
But in an argument over facts, they are. If every country on Earth banned everything more dangerous than a thumbtack, would that mean that guns cause facism or increase the homicide rate? If they all ordered citizens to be armed when in public would that change the facts we're discussing?
The image in your head of you shooting the big bad criminal before he can hurt your family is a fantasy - we can't base real world policies on daydreams.
Again, I've never even held a gun, I own no guns, I wouldn't even know how to turn off the safety. I'm only arguing facts, which for you seem to be the least important part of an argument you're having with a cartoon gun-nut straw-man.
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Rate of fire.
They're the same - they're semi-automatics. (Unless you're saying 'hunting rifle' means bolt-action. Or you're talking about ones modified to emulate fully-automatic behavior, but as you've mentioned even the NRA seems to be OK banning/regulating those.)
Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban
And they've halved in the US over the last 20 years, while civilian gun ownership has gone up 50%. All that tells me is that even if they're related other factors are far more important.
there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted
Which is irrelevant - ten people dying is terrible, but does it matter if they got shot or someone drove a truck into a parade?
But lets check the List of massacres in Australia to be sure - Monash, Hectorville, Hunt family, Logan ... wha?
A gun is a horrible, horrible tool for self defense ... Bruce Schneier
Again, that's not something I've made a claim about. But at least you've sort-of mentioned a source, even if it isn't an actual citation.
And these facts ... They won't go away because they are inconvenient or don't fit your personal narrative of how things work.
Same to you.
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That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
Care to back that up with something?
Nobody increased pilot's licenses until ONLY airline employees and fighter-pilots could qualify
Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
In no other country with a license-to-own-a-gun scheme has this happened ... Why do people fear something that has absolutely never happened to anything, ever - on the basis of fallacious reasoning?
But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
if a civil war creates a need they will FIND them
No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
>>That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
>Care to back that up with something?
Sure. Every philosophy textbook written in the past 3000 years. Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
>Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
The suggestion of a licensing scheme is not pushed by people who want a complete ban. Why would you not assume the former is a good compromize to leave the ban-wanters without a leg to stand on - rather than jumping to a fallacious slippery slope argument ? There has never been a slippery slope in all of human history except for actual, literal slopes that were, you know slippery - like wheelchair ramps with soap on them. But metaphoric slippery slopes are a flagrant fallacy. They are a bullshit argument people make up to prevent reasonable actions by falsely claiming that the reasonable action would automatically cause an unreasonable action.
>But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
Actually - no, a one-step-at-a-time ban has not happened. Bans are typically done in a single massive law pushed through at great personal political cost often ending several politicians careers as they act on what they believe are right. Then you have countries that go for strong regulatory frameworks and licensing schemes - in ALL of those guns remain legal to own, and owned by the majority of people who previously owned them.
It's certainly possible that a country could go from 'no gun law' to 'license and permit' to 'gun ban' but there has NEVER been a a case where this was a planned path. The closest was 'no gun law decades ago' because 'regulation and permit's and a completely diferent government many decades later - responding to a major event like a massacre ended up banning guns and abandoning the old regulatory approach - NOT expanding it.
That's not a slippery slope, that's a series of entirely unrelated events by very different people decades appart.
>No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
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Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
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Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
You might have heard of him, but you clearly didn't read Aristotle. This might be more your speed, and they have a whole section on "non-fallacious usage".
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
So you're down to mindless insults. I think I'll call this a victory. :)
Right - because pointing out that you asked a really stupid question at the end with a completely obvious answer - after meticulously answering your every statement with facts - is REMOTELY SIMILAR to being "down to mindless insults".
No - the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments. I just refuse to respond to the dumbest question I have ever seen with anything more than scornful derision. Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
Even so I'm not even sure that counts as an insult - it honestly just seems like a mildly euphemistic but essentially accurate description.
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after meticulously answering your every statement with facts ... the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments
Except you haven't answered the vast majority of my statements - on rate of fire, Australian mass shootings, the correlation between gun ownership and homicide - all of them were just never mentioned again after I made a rebuttal. On the other hand, every post you've made has brought up irrelevant things that are unrelated to anything I've mentioned - court cases, mass shootings, self-defense - that's all you making a straw-man, which you still couldn't defend properly.
So from my perspective you have (by omission) conceded nearly every argument you've put forward, while desperately trying to come up with something I can't rebut with a single sentence or link. So even though I'm not pro-gun, this discussion has just solidified my belief that pro-gun people have reasonable (if not entirely convincing) arguments, and gun control advocates (at least the ones here) are just responding to their gut reactions and don't have reasonable arguments.
Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
At least that a reasonable misunderstanding of the point I was making.
So to clarify my first point, I do believe that in peacetime the number of guns can be reduced (by say, 95%), my point about drugs was about who still manages to get them - people who don't care about breaking the law, or who are desperate. So the remaining 5% of the guns will be in the hands of career criminals and other dangerous people, not hunters and old people on isolated farms. So it's plausible that even a fairly effective gun ban might not even lower gun crime that much.
So if we reduce civilian gun ownership by 95% (and I have to assume you advocate this in every country) where do the gun come from in wartime (say a second US civil war)? Military and law enforcement in the country need them, foreign ones are state-owned and controlled, so you can't count on them getting smuggled in. And even if every civilian-owned firearm on earth found its way to the US quickly that would barely get the rate up to the current world average, let alone the US's rate, let alone the even higher rate that would occur if they had all the guns they have now and were importing more. On top of that people who are gun owners now would instead have to pay inflated wartime prices while the economy has collapsed to get their hands on one. But you don't think any of this will affect availability? They'll just ... "FIND them"?
How many third world countries are left on the planet? 5 or 10?
Sorry, I suggest simply to check some statistics, or wikipedia. USA is barely out of the leading 1/3rd in murder cases, as well with guns as without. However it seems it improved over the last decades and my numbers were a bit outdated.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, I suggest simply to check some statistics, or wikipedia
What a good idea! Here's some people citing solid data ... looks like the US rate is below average and median - weird.
Well, maybe they're biased. I'll check the wiki's List of countries by intentional homicide rate, sort by rate, and ... 108 of 218, and still 21 away from Somalia, which isn't even counting civil war deaths.
You can't "reinterpret it" either
You sure as hell can. Or at least SCOTUS can. The text of the second specifically states that the right to bear arms was necessary in order to allow a militia to protect the free state. It says nothing about the current motto of guns for self-defense. Which was apparently not even made an official interpretation until 2008 (http://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/report/the-second-amendment-and-the-inalienable-right-self-defense even though it was common mantra long before that.
Not to mention any gun control laws of any sort (even "don't let convicted criminals have guns") is technically reinterpreting the second amendment. At least if the federal government tries to enact such a law (there's apparently some question whether states could enact such a law without technically violating the second. That same link talks about it a bit as well.)
Heck, SCOTUS can even repeal constitutional amendments if they feel like it, as was done with the 18th amendment (prohibition.)
Government "by the people" doesn't "reeducate" the people.
No, the people reeducate the people. I never said anything about the government. You have the NRA "educating" people about how awesome guns are. Why is there no massive organization of that scale to present the opposing side? In fact given how much the NRA contributes to campaigns, I would expect the government to be among the last places to promote gun reduction and safety. I mean how many times did Obama promise to do something after the string of mass shootings last year? And what was done? A bunch of squat because he was up against a Republican congress that was intentionally squashing anything he did out of spite, no matter whether it was good for the country or not. That's even before we start into how many of them are in the NRA's pockets.
And gun rights have majority support in the US
And there's the problem. As long as people want their crazyassed neighbor having the right to own firearms, nothing will change significantly.
Hence the need to reeducate people with modern facts and research rather than some one-liner law from two centuries ago that no longer really applies as it was intended (we don't see too many militias around) and was written at a time when gun technology was wholly different (they didn't have a lot of uzis, miniguns or rocket launchers to worry about in 1791.)
Actually a car would have been easier.
It's true, it's H1-B is not immigration, it's a visa. People come to the US on various kinds of visas everyday.
Just like it's wrong murder German tourists here on visa, it's wrong to murder people on a work visa (H1-B, TN, etc)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire