In lieu of a thoughtful reply (which would be lost on you anyway), I will instead respond in caricature of my favorite Muppet, Beaker. You two appear to have a lot in common, so perhaps you will understand.
Meep meemeee, meep mee-meep. Meep meep meep.
You'll forgive my poor Muppetese, but I think he told you to, *ahem*, "meep off"? How dreadful! I wouldn't have thought him capable of such profanity.
Hey, if you keep saying that shit and over again, you're going to put yourself into a hypnotic state. You *already* sound like a broken record, and I'd really hate for the world to suffer a dazed version of you.
You know, the thing is it's not just the parts of the Constitution which protect firearms ownership that I like... I love that our framers saw fit to guard other basic rights. The right to free speech, peaceable assembly, for instance. The right to be secure in one's papers and possessions, and to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. The right to due process.
The protections afforded by this language, which is backed by the blood, sweat and tears of generations of patriots, has eroded under the watch of folks like you; whether they wear the mask of a democrat or the guise of a republican, the goal is ever present, to make slaves of you and I. The difference is, you apparently welcome that outcome with open arms. I, most certainly, do not.
Today, we have "free speech zones", where the only thing free about speech is that you're free to listen to your own hot air, safely quarantined away from the very people who should give a damn--so that your voice will not haunt their dreams and disturb their sleep.
Today, we have a police force which citizens cannot trust, and rightfully so, because they can and will use every opportunity to fuck you up and make you trip over legal landmines, whether or not you deserve it, and they use these powers indiscriminately. If you allow them, they will push your rights until they bend, they will continue until they break, by god they will get you to waive your right to due process even if it takes fifteen hours of interrogation; and more often than not they will get away with it.
Of course, it cannot stop there. I have no doubt that weasel-dicks will continue to "interpret" constitutional language around in circle until even these interpreters need interpreters. That has, after all, been the modus operandi for many more years than you have under your belt. If you think this a novel idea, well, it's a pity.
And we wonder why some folks go crazy and feel the need to hurt people in the first place. I think the simple answer is, your brand of society has a great capacity to manufacture people like them.
Anyway, rest assured that you have never had me frothing at the mouth. Frankly, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be upset about. I came to a battle of wit appropriately armed, and when you finally got around to mustering, it became all too obvious that you forgot your weapon, son. You started down the road of petty insults and ad hominems, and that's plenty telling of your...capacity. The only thing that's remotely upsetting to me, about any of this exchange, is that such incomplete individuals as yourself manage to make it to the polls; and then to add insult to injury, they successfully cast a vote.
You don't argue, because you have no platform to argue from! That's why gun laws have become increasingly more and more liberal (i.e. tending towards liberty--not the double speak version people use today), despite problems like this... If you're not in a right to carry state, you may soon be.
You kind may have had better luck before the widespread adoption of the internet. But openness in communication brings freedom in other circles.
The tide is turning on you even now, and I think you can feel it--hence the smell of desperation and denial which is so thick in the air. We'll continue teaching our children to love liberty and to cultivate freedom. You can't win legitimately against that. And in the event you do, we'll continue to teach 'em about Plan C as well.
P.S.
Boy...Do you ever have the wrong idea about me! Creationist? I'm about as anti-religious as one gets.
I knew you wouldn't refrain from using the ultimate straw man, and that's why I threw him out there. You haven't even put up an attempt to refute a single one of my points, and I've demolished one you throw up--and you just gotta go after straw men because that's how weak your position is. And now I'm a racist--with a beautiful black girlfriend, btw. Hurr durr.
And now gun owners are more likely to suffer crime, huh? Here's a big fat LOL. Do guns now have some sort of magical criminal-attracting quality in your strange universe?
Watching you argue a point is like watching a monkey fucking a football.
What else can you do with a gun in a civil society? How about competition? Bullseye shooting, practical shooting, long range shooting, and then there's hunting, of course-- But the number one will always be: keeping one or two, or twenty, around to defend yourself and your home! Billions upon billions of rounds of ammunition are expended in this country every year, and such a vanishingly small percentage of these deadly projectiles are ever directed at a living being.
You may just as well argue that all young black and hispanic men should be jailed, because people fitting those profiles are responsible for a disproportionate amount of all violent crime... Especially murders (with or without firearms), and rapes! Heck, look at the murder rates by state... The higher the concentration of blacks and hispanics, the higher the murder rate! Shocking!
Hey, I'm not a racist, but you can't argue with the numbers.
You might do better to look at the list of countries by HOMICIDE rate, were we're only one or two points ahead of many European countries who have strict bans on firearms and comparative ethnic monocultures.
Guess, what? The homicide rates in these wanna-be socialist utopias, with universal health care, comprehensive welfare...are non-zero?! They don't have guns you say? Imagine that! Wonder what they kill each other with?
Right. First, I must apologize, I guess I misidentified your Aussie sarcasm for American stupidity. Lot of that in this story.
Secondly, I can only think these flows of money haven't been targeted, because it's either convenient to let it go, or more likely, extremely profitable to someone important. My guess is that it goes to both the Republican and Democratic parties, who use it to keep the reform parties out of contention. Apparently, they put the remainder up their nose in the form of a fine white powder.
True enough, sir. Unsurprisingly, the violence disparity between the west and the east also continues to this day; discounting California of course, since the only thing 'western' about California is their geography!
This is the part where you examine the universe of possible uses, and historical real world data, and realize that, mostly, guns wind up being used for bad.
I see. Where we disagree then, is on this conclusion. We can talk about “facts” and “real world, historical data” until we are both blue in the face. I noticed you have not provided this data or presumed facts...So, if you want to talk data, then let's put some numbers to it! I'm not going to cite the following numbers since this is a blog post, and not an academic paper. If you're interested or not too lazy, this data is easy enough to find from reputable, unbiased, government sources.
It's estimated that there are currently 310 million (310,000,000) privately owned firearms in the US—or about one for every man woman and child. For the last few decades (it's been amazingly steady) there have been 10-12,000 non-accidental firearm-involved death per year. Additionally, there are another ~15,000 suicides by firearm, and IIRC, an average of 500 accidental deaths yearly. Those numbers include justified homicides and homicide by police officer, by the way. So, let's say that 30,000 Americans die via firearm every year, for a nice round number.
That gives any individual gun about 0.01% chance of being involved in someone's death—probability (by a slim margin) says that it will be used by the owner to take his own life...Or you could say that a gun has 0.005% chance of being involved in a non-accidental homicide. If we were talking about any other phenomena under the sun, I'm sure that we would both agree that these are vanishingly small occurrences, by the numbers. But no, we're talking about guns, and guns come with emotional baggage. Let's compare it to motor vehicle deaths:
Up until the last few years there have been an average of 40,000 motor vehicle deaths every year. It's kind of dropped off in recent years, to ~35,000, despite an increase in the number of cars, presumably due to better vehicle safety/engineering. There are about two-hundred million licensed drivers in the US. That gives any driver about 0.02% chance of taking a life.
By that metric, I would have to say that passenger vehicle drivers are about 100% more dangerous than firearm users, including violent criminals. 1) the vast majority of those 40,000 deaths are accidental 2) only half of the total firearms deaths are accidental. Accidental deaths have a 100% additional danger-factor bonus, in my books, so that makes drivers 200% more dangerous.
Now, is any of that being 'intellectually dishonest'? Excepting the “danger-factor bonus”, this is all based on facts, and realistic real world numbers, not conjecture or emotion. If you can find conflicting data, from reputable sources, I invite you to challenge anything I have said in the above. I formally welcome you to prove me a liar.
If you allow people a modicum of one freedom or another, an anti-social minority will use that freedom to fuck some of the the other people over. Guaranteed. It's as simple as that...Yet I still subscribe to the philosophy of maximal individual liberty.
You can't restrict everyone so much that you prevent the extrema, short of locking everyone in a padded cell. Some psycho will always figure the next way to be evil--because they don't think like you and I.
In this case, a predatory individual ambushed a bunch of people, and he used a handgun. It's a bad strategy to be subject of an ambush, because by definition, they're impossible to totally defend against.
It doesn't matter if it's a gun. It doesn't matter if it's a car. It doesn't matter if it's a hammer. It doesn't matter if it's an eighteen-wheeler. It doesn't matter if it's the stock market. It doesn't matter if it's a bunch of chemicals which are widely available and useful in their own way, but which can be mixed in some fashion to form some volatile explosive or poison gas or whatever. It doesn't matter what IT is!
If I haven't been abundantly clear: Whatever *IT* is, some antisocial jerkoff will figure out its potential as an instrument of chaos and destruction. That's the point. The point is, it could have been anything. Look at the Akihabara massacre in Tokyo, Japan. The guy used a two-ton truck turned missile to run over a bunch of people, and then he went around stabbing TWELVE other people with a knife--Four of the Seven dead were killed with the knife!
He could have just as easily bashed their brains in with a common framing hammer: they would have died instantly instead of bleeding out--and what hero is going to tackle a guy bashing people brains in? Regardless, he racked up more fatalities and injuries than Tuscon guy, all without using a gun! How do you propose the innocent people of Tokyo deal with such a person? Ban delivery trucks and *anything else* which could be used as a weapon? Should knife users be licensed? C'mon.
Guns can do neither good nor evil. They are inanimate machines. Tools. Can tools be used, BY A PERSON, to do bad or good things? YES. Do guns, in particular, make it easier to do bad or good things, compared to many other tools? YES. Does that mean they're a bad thing for people to have? I, for one, don't think so.
How was ANY of that even part of the prior conversation? I have been nothing but genuine. Christ, I bet you're as manic-depressive as that crazy fucktard down in Tuscon... I also bet the reason you're a such a hoplophobe is that you're afraid you'd use one in a similar manner.
Have a great life, you cooky cock-gobbler. And try not to go on a rampage if a gun inadvertently crosses your path.
It's not like that belief isn't parroted *all over the internet*. I'm sure if you bothered to look you could find a few hundred such references here, here, here, and here. Concentrate your searching to the time when gun laws were being liberalized.
The "Wild West" beloved of writers wasn't constantly violent.
The wild west wasn't very wild at all, quite frankly--unless you count some of the things the white men did. It has absolutely been romanticized and aggrandized over the years, first by contemporary novelists, and later by Hollywood. I take that back: Buffalo Bill was one of the first to rake in the cash promoting this perception of the west. More people were killed by their horses and livestock than were ever killed by men wielding guns.
And your "southern neighbours" get their "highly illegal" guns where?
Yeah, because the cartels clearly got the.50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, RPGs, anti-tank rockets, and thousands upon thousands of grenades from the US civilian gun market--where those devices don't exist. Enlighten us, will you please? Where did those weapons come from?
So, they've smuggled over a few semi-automatic AR-15s / AK clones. A few rifles, compared to the above weaponry which has been captured from the cartels, are hardly interesting.
Maybe they aught to secure their borders, and stomp out the fuel for their cartel problem??? I for one wish we had the good sense to help with that particular issue.
a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. You're arguing using the exception to the rule as the basis for your sweeping generalization. One nutter uses a gun to do harm, therefore all gun owners are dangerous lunatics. You're using demonstrably false logic.
Furthermore, your hypothetical 'vigilante' scenario illustrates your extreme level of bias on the subject. To be honest, you really seem to be confused on that particular issue. A vigilante is someone who illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, which makes said vigilante himself a lawbreaker--for taking the people's and his victim's right to due process into his own hands when he has no such authority.
Suppose some witness to the event pulled his gun, then and shot and killed the crazed man while he was in the commission of his ill-deeds. He would be defending the lives of himself and anyone in the vicinity--no? This slaying would be justified in any sane court of law. By the very definition, this hypothetical individual could not be a vigilante. I suppose the onlookers who tackled the madman are vigilantes too, for exercising their power of citizen's arrest?!
If someone there was armed, maybe he did not have a clear shot? Maybe he thought he saw a crowd of girl-scouts behind the murderer. Or maybe a gun isn't a magical item that will save all victims from harm--even in "gun happy [sic] Arizona"? But I have never seen a sane person claim that.
Having a gun on your person simply gives an individual more opportunity to defend oneself and his/her loved ones. You won't see Suzanna Hupp say that having her revolver (which she had to leave in her vehicle, by law) would have prevented the deaths of her parents or the other 21 good people slain by a madman that day... But you will hear her say that it may have given her an opportunity she would not have had otherwise. We all know how today's tragedy ended, we know how Luby's ended. These tragedies are diverse situations.
But even this lady, who is as much a victim as any other person at Luby's cafeteria that day, argues for more liberalized gun laws, at the very same time strangers were using the deaths of her parents as a tool to leverage for stricter law.
No. We should put the blame were it is deserved. On crazy humans. There are sick individuals out there who receive no/little help. Instead of going after their chosen instruments--which could literally be anything... Cars, knives, sharp rocks, you name it... We aught to seek them out and treat their conditions where applicable, and segregate them from society when it becomes apparent that they can't be successfully treated.
And the first amendment is about vocal cords, quill feathers, simplistic printing presses and stagecoaches. That was the sum total of communication technology at the time--so naturally only those modes of communication are constitutionally protected. Can you imagine a world with such lunacy?
All of these modern 'high capacity', 'rapid fire' communication methods you like to use... You use hem because your government is generous enough to grant you the privilege.
Video cameras? We'll outlaw them because they capture dozens of frames per second, and they have hours of recording time. The casual moron could inadvertently embarrass someone important, after all. Heck, the casual moron could use these devices to make child porno. That's pretty evil. We need to ban private ownership of video cameras. Only licensed journalists will be able to own one.
Radio? Television? E-mail? The founding fathers could have never dreamed of such things--and the casual moron could use these technologies to do something bad. Come to think of it, he could distribute and consume child pornography with these technologies. So, we're free to peruse your private correspondence to our heart's content, and we'll also censor the TV clear of things which are arbitrarily 'too controversial', or 'lacking in decency', or things which just happen to be politically damaging. Wouldn't want to cause a fuss.
But things aren't so glum, chum. If you want to communicate freely, you can simply use quill and ink, and disseminate your mail via stagecoach courier. We can't snoop on you then. Too antiquated to be useful in the modern world? You can't find someone willing to carry your mail across the country via horseback? The horses get frightened while crossing the freeway? You don't say?
Just like there's no connection between Mexico's southern borders, where *anything* can be bought it you have the money, just like there's no connection with Mexico's estimated 100,000 military deserters--some of whom formed the Zeta cartel we hear so much about (and the others who joined because the pay is better and they don't get shot up by cartels...
But those guys are former Mexico Special Forces, and they continue operate like it... Not only are their tactics better than the federal police force, they're also armed with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, RPGs, helicopters, and likely at least one of a number of Stinger SAM missiles which were conveniently 'unaccounted for' at some Mexican armories. You can bet many of their other weapons are similarly sourced. The remainder of the really fun toys are probably weapons the US dumped on the Nicaraguan contras. Yeah, no connection there.
But nobody talks about the thousands upon thousands of automatic weapons and explosive devices captured by the police--because it's the gun shows and the 'gun show' loophole in Texas which are responsible. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. If we keep telling this lie long and loud enough, everyone will believe it! *smile*
The only conclusion we can successfully draw in this sea of ill-conceived conclusions is thus: once again, the actions of one hateful lunatic, and the lives of his victims, will be used as tools to further an agenda against a legion of overwhelmingly peaceful, law abiding citizens. I'm not sure I would want the memory of a loved one to be used (and undoubtedly abused) by strangers in such a manner, or for such a cause, but it will happen. May peace be with the victims and their families.
Yeah, you're right. This is a procedural problem. And it might be most efficiently remedied by a syringe (loaded with an appropriate dose of fentanyl) in the driver's seat of a desirable honeypot car. The doors would lock when the would-be thief puts the car into drive, simultaneously actuating the tranquilizer which is injected into the thief's ass. I could see this being a revolutionary new form of entertainment for vigilantes.
By the time of the F4 and Vietnam, it was two generations behind and not comparable to anything modern, but it was the one aircraft the NVAF had a-plenty. When its pilots made kills, it was because they were working heavily and successfully with Chinese 19 and NVAF 21 pilots--and those pilots attained ace status much more often. It would be more analogous (probably generally inferior) to the F-86 & especially the Super Sabre, and during Vietnam it was more of a threat against aircraft on bomb runs, and of course helicopters.
The one and only feature that made it a significant threat at all against F4s was the cannon, and the fact that cannons were so stupidly left off of F4 for much of the war, and also that US pilots weren't trained in / or had little experience in dissimilar air combat. It's like trying to shoot down a Sopwith with a sidewinder; maybe they didn't generate enough heat to seek (relative to the fighters the AIM-9 was designed to counter) and if you didn't have guns to engage them, you're kind of at a disadvantage while the other pilots are hustling you.
Presto Profito! These must be talented wizards, with the a wave of a hand and the utterance of some arcane terminology, the heavens crap monies right into their bank accounts! Let's see Harry Potter do that.
Slashdot Mirror
In lieu of a thoughtful reply (which would be lost on you anyway), I will instead respond in caricature of my favorite Muppet, Beaker. You two appear to have a lot in common, so perhaps you will understand.
Meep meemeee, meep mee-meep. Meep meep meep.
You'll forgive my poor Muppetese, but I think he told you to, *ahem*, "meep off"? How dreadful! I wouldn't have thought him capable of such profanity.
You're worse than the guys who wrote the bible: Once isn't nice, twice won't suffice, thrice is awwriiight!
Hey, if you keep saying that shit and over again, you're going to put yourself into a hypnotic state. You *already* sound like a broken record, and I'd really hate for the world to suffer a dazed version of you.
You know, the thing is it's not just the parts of the Constitution which protect firearms ownership that I like... I love that our framers saw fit to guard other basic rights. The right to free speech, peaceable assembly, for instance. The right to be secure in one's papers and possessions, and to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. The right to due process.
The protections afforded by this language, which is backed by the blood, sweat and tears of generations of patriots, has eroded under the watch of folks like you; whether they wear the mask of a democrat or the guise of a republican, the goal is ever present, to make slaves of you and I. The difference is, you apparently welcome that outcome with open arms. I, most certainly, do not.
Today, we have "free speech zones", where the only thing free about speech is that you're free to listen to your own hot air, safely quarantined away from the very people who should give a damn--so that your voice will not haunt their dreams and disturb their sleep.
Today, we have a police force which citizens cannot trust, and rightfully so, because they can and will use every opportunity to fuck you up and make you trip over legal landmines, whether or not you deserve it, and they use these powers indiscriminately. If you allow them, they will push your rights until they bend, they will continue until they break, by god they will get you to waive your right to due process even if it takes fifteen hours of interrogation; and more often than not they will get away with it.
Of course, it cannot stop there. I have no doubt that weasel-dicks will continue to "interpret" constitutional language around in circle until even these interpreters need interpreters. That has, after all, been the modus operandi for many more years than you have under your belt. If you think this a novel idea, well, it's a pity.
And we wonder why some folks go crazy and feel the need to hurt people in the first place. I think the simple answer is, your brand of society has a great capacity to manufacture people like them.
Anyway, rest assured that you have never had me frothing at the mouth. Frankly, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be upset about. I came to a battle of wit appropriately armed, and when you finally got around to mustering, it became all too obvious that you forgot your weapon, son. You started down the road of petty insults and ad hominems, and that's plenty telling of your...capacity. The only thing that's remotely upsetting to me, about any of this exchange, is that such incomplete individuals as yourself manage to make it to the polls; and then to add insult to injury, they successfully cast a vote.
You don't argue, because you have no platform to argue from! That's why gun laws have become increasingly more and more liberal (i.e. tending towards liberty--not the double speak version people use today), despite problems like this... If you're not in a right to carry state, you may soon be.
You kind may have had better luck before the widespread adoption of the internet. But openness in communication brings freedom in other circles.
The tide is turning on you even now, and I think you can feel it--hence the smell of desperation and denial which is so thick in the air. We'll continue teaching our children to love liberty and to cultivate freedom. You can't win legitimately against that. And in the event you do, we'll continue to teach 'em about Plan C as well.
P.S.
Boy...Do you ever have the wrong idea about me! Creationist? I'm about as anti-religious as one gets.
I knew you wouldn't refrain from using the ultimate straw man, and that's why I threw him out there. You haven't even put up an attempt to refute a single one of my points, and I've demolished one you throw up--and you just gotta go after straw men because that's how weak your position is. And now I'm a racist--with a beautiful black girlfriend, btw. Hurr durr.
And now gun owners are more likely to suffer crime, huh? Here's a big fat LOL. Do guns now have some sort of magical criminal-attracting quality in your strange universe?
Watching you argue a point is like watching a monkey fucking a football.
What else can you do with a gun in a civil society? How about competition? Bullseye shooting, practical shooting, long range shooting, and then there's hunting, of course-- But the number one will always be: keeping one or two, or twenty, around to defend yourself and your home! Billions upon billions of rounds of ammunition are expended in this country every year, and such a vanishingly small percentage of these deadly projectiles are ever directed at a living being.
You may just as well argue that all young black and hispanic men should be jailed, because people fitting those profiles are responsible for a disproportionate amount of all violent crime... Especially murders (with or without firearms), and rapes! Heck, look at the murder rates by state... The higher the concentration of blacks and hispanics, the higher the murder rate! Shocking!
Hey, I'm not a racist, but you can't argue with the numbers.
You might do better to look at the list of countries by HOMICIDE rate, were we're only one or two points ahead of many European countries who have strict bans on firearms and comparative ethnic monocultures.
Guess, what? The homicide rates in these wanna-be socialist utopias, with universal health care, comprehensive welfare...are non-zero?! They don't have guns you say? Imagine that! Wonder what they kill each other with?
Right. First, I must apologize, I guess I misidentified your Aussie sarcasm for American stupidity. Lot of that in this story.
Secondly, I can only think these flows of money haven't been targeted, because it's either convenient to let it go, or more likely, extremely profitable to someone important. My guess is that it goes to both the Republican and Democratic parties, who use it to keep the reform parties out of contention. Apparently, they put the remainder up their nose in the form of a fine white powder.
That's one explanation, anyway. :)
True enough, sir. Unsurprisingly, the violence disparity between the west and the east also continues to this day; discounting California of course, since the only thing 'western' about California is their geography!
This is the part where you examine the universe of possible uses, and historical real world data, and realize that, mostly, guns wind up being used for bad.
I see. Where we disagree then, is on this conclusion. We can talk about “facts” and “real world, historical data” until we are both blue in the face. I noticed you have not provided this data or presumed facts...So, if you want to talk data, then let's put some numbers to it! I'm not going to cite the following numbers since this is a blog post, and not an academic paper. If you're interested or not too lazy, this data is easy enough to find from reputable, unbiased, government sources.
It's estimated that there are currently 310 million (310,000,000) privately owned firearms in the US—or about one for every man woman and child. For the last few decades (it's been amazingly steady) there have been 10-12,000 non-accidental firearm-involved death per year. Additionally, there are another ~15,000 suicides by firearm, and IIRC, an average of 500 accidental deaths yearly. Those numbers include justified homicides and homicide by police officer, by the way. So, let's say that 30,000 Americans die via firearm every year, for a nice round number.
That gives any individual gun about 0.01% chance of being involved in someone's death—probability (by a slim margin) says that it will be used by the owner to take his own life...Or you could say that a gun has 0.005% chance of being involved in a non-accidental homicide. If we were talking about any other phenomena under the sun, I'm sure that we would both agree that these are vanishingly small occurrences, by the numbers. But no, we're talking about guns, and guns come with emotional baggage. Let's compare it to motor vehicle deaths:
Up until the last few years there have been an average of 40,000 motor vehicle deaths every year. It's kind of dropped off in recent years, to ~35,000, despite an increase in the number of cars, presumably due to better vehicle safety/engineering. There are about two-hundred million licensed drivers in the US. That gives any driver about 0.02% chance of taking a life.
By that metric, I would have to say that passenger vehicle drivers are about 100% more dangerous than firearm users, including violent criminals. 1) the vast majority of those 40,000 deaths are accidental 2) only half of the total firearms deaths are accidental. Accidental deaths have a 100% additional danger-factor bonus, in my books, so that makes drivers 200% more dangerous.
Now, is any of that being 'intellectually dishonest'? Excepting the “danger-factor bonus”, this is all based on facts, and realistic real world numbers, not conjecture or emotion. If you can find conflicting data, from reputable sources, I invite you to challenge anything I have said in the above. I formally welcome you to prove me a liar.
If you allow people a modicum of one freedom or another, an anti-social minority will use that freedom to fuck some of the the other people over. Guaranteed. It's as simple as that...Yet I still subscribe to the philosophy of maximal individual liberty.
You can't restrict everyone so much that you prevent the extrema, short of locking everyone in a padded cell. Some psycho will always figure the next way to be evil--because they don't think like you and I.
In this case, a predatory individual ambushed a bunch of people, and he used a handgun. It's a bad strategy to be subject of an ambush, because by definition, they're impossible to totally defend against.
It doesn't matter if it's a gun. It doesn't matter if it's a car. It doesn't matter if it's a hammer. It doesn't matter if it's an eighteen-wheeler. It doesn't matter if it's the stock market. It doesn't matter if it's a bunch of chemicals which are widely available and useful in their own way, but which can be mixed in some fashion to form some volatile explosive or poison gas or whatever. It doesn't matter what IT is!
If I haven't been abundantly clear: Whatever *IT* is, some antisocial jerkoff will figure out its potential as an instrument of chaos and destruction. That's the point. The point is, it could have been anything. Look at the Akihabara massacre in Tokyo, Japan. The guy used a two-ton truck turned missile to run over a bunch of people, and then he went around stabbing TWELVE other people with a knife--Four of the Seven dead were killed with the knife!
He could have just as easily bashed their brains in with a common framing hammer: they would have died instantly instead of bleeding out--and what hero is going to tackle a guy bashing people brains in? Regardless, he racked up more fatalities and injuries than Tuscon guy, all without using a gun! How do you propose the innocent people of Tokyo deal with such a person? Ban delivery trucks and *anything else* which could be used as a weapon? Should knife users be licensed? C'mon.
Guns can do neither good nor evil. They are inanimate machines. Tools. Can tools be used, BY A PERSON, to do bad or good things? YES. Do guns, in particular, make it easier to do bad or good things, compared to many other tools? YES. Does that mean they're a bad thing for people to have? I, for one, don't think so.
How was ANY of that even part of the prior conversation? I have been nothing but genuine. Christ, I bet you're as manic-depressive as that crazy fucktard down in Tuscon... I also bet the reason you're a such a hoplophobe is that you're afraid you'd use one in a similar manner.
Have a great life, you cooky cock-gobbler. And try not to go on a rampage if a gun inadvertently crosses your path.
It's not like that belief isn't parroted *all over the internet*. I'm sure if you bothered to look you could find a few hundred such references here, here, here, and here. Concentrate your searching to the time when gun laws were being liberalized.
The "Wild West" beloved of writers wasn't constantly violent.
The wild west wasn't very wild at all, quite frankly--unless you count some of the things the white men did. It has absolutely been romanticized and aggrandized over the years, first by contemporary novelists, and later by Hollywood. I take that back: Buffalo Bill was one of the first to rake in the cash promoting this perception of the west. More people were killed by their horses and livestock than were ever killed by men wielding guns.
And your "southern neighbours" get their "highly illegal" guns where?
Yeah, because the cartels clearly got the .50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, RPGs, anti-tank rockets, and thousands upon thousands of grenades from the US civilian gun market--where those devices don't exist. Enlighten us, will you please? Where did those weapons come from?
So, they've smuggled over a few semi-automatic AR-15s / AK clones. A few rifles, compared to the above weaponry which has been captured from the cartels, are hardly interesting.
Maybe they aught to secure their borders, and stomp out the fuel for their cartel problem??? I for one wish we had the good sense to help with that particular issue.
a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. You're arguing using the exception to the rule as the basis for your sweeping generalization. One nutter uses a gun to do harm, therefore all gun owners are dangerous lunatics. You're using demonstrably false logic.
Furthermore, your hypothetical 'vigilante' scenario illustrates your extreme level of bias on the subject. To be honest, you really seem to be confused on that particular issue. A vigilante is someone who illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, which makes said vigilante himself a lawbreaker--for taking the people's and his victim's right to due process into his own hands when he has no such authority.
Suppose some witness to the event pulled his gun, then and shot and killed the crazed man while he was in the commission of his ill-deeds. He would be defending the lives of himself and anyone in the vicinity--no? This slaying would be justified in any sane court of law. By the very definition, this hypothetical individual could not be a vigilante. I suppose the onlookers who tackled the madman are vigilantes too, for exercising their power of citizen's arrest?!
If someone there was armed, maybe he did not have a clear shot? Maybe he thought he saw a crowd of girl-scouts behind the murderer. Or maybe a gun isn't a magical item that will save all victims from harm--even in "gun happy [sic] Arizona"? But I have never seen a sane person claim that.
Having a gun on your person simply gives an individual more opportunity to defend oneself and his/her loved ones. You won't see Suzanna Hupp say that having her revolver (which she had to leave in her vehicle, by law) would have prevented the deaths of her parents or the other 21 good people slain by a madman that day... But you will hear her say that it may have given her an opportunity she would not have had otherwise. We all know how today's tragedy ended, we know how Luby's ended. These tragedies are diverse situations.
But even this lady, who is as much a victim as any other person at Luby's cafeteria that day, argues for more liberalized gun laws, at the very same time strangers were using the deaths of her parents as a tool to leverage for stricter law.
No. We should put the blame were it is deserved. On crazy humans. There are sick individuals out there who receive no/little help. Instead of going after their chosen instruments--which could literally be anything... Cars, knives, sharp rocks, you name it... We aught to seek them out and treat their conditions where applicable, and segregate them from society when it becomes apparent that they can't be successfully treated.
the second amendment is about muskets and militia
And the first amendment is about vocal cords, quill feathers, simplistic printing presses and stagecoaches. That was the sum total of communication technology at the time--so naturally only those modes of communication are constitutionally protected. Can you imagine a world with such lunacy?
All of these modern 'high capacity', 'rapid fire' communication methods you like to use... You use hem because your government is generous enough to grant you the privilege.
Video cameras? We'll outlaw them because they capture dozens of frames per second, and they have hours of recording time. The casual moron could inadvertently embarrass someone important, after all. Heck, the casual moron could use these devices to make child porno. That's pretty evil. We need to ban private ownership of video cameras. Only licensed journalists will be able to own one.
Radio? Television? E-mail? The founding fathers could have never dreamed of such things--and the casual moron could use these technologies to do something bad. Come to think of it, he could distribute and consume child pornography with these technologies. So, we're free to peruse your private correspondence to our heart's content, and we'll also censor the TV clear of things which are arbitrarily 'too controversial', or 'lacking in decency', or things which just happen to be politically damaging. Wouldn't want to cause a fuss.
But things aren't so glum, chum. If you want to communicate freely, you can simply use quill and ink, and disseminate your mail via stagecoach courier. We can't snoop on you then. Too antiquated to be useful in the modern world? You can't find someone willing to carry your mail across the country via horseback? The horses get frightened while crossing the freeway? You don't say?
Tough shit.
Just like there's no connection between Mexico's southern borders, where *anything* can be bought it you have the money, just like there's no connection with Mexico's estimated 100,000 military deserters--some of whom formed the Zeta cartel we hear so much about (and the others who joined because the pay is better and they don't get shot up by cartels...
But those guys are former Mexico Special Forces, and they continue operate like it... Not only are their tactics better than the federal police force, they're also armed with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, RPGs, helicopters, and likely at least one of a number of Stinger SAM missiles which were conveniently 'unaccounted for' at some Mexican armories. You can bet many of their other weapons are similarly sourced. The remainder of the really fun toys are probably weapons the US dumped on the Nicaraguan contras. Yeah, no connection there.
But nobody talks about the thousands upon thousands of automatic weapons and explosive devices captured by the police--because it's the gun shows and the 'gun show' loophole in Texas which are responsible. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. If we keep telling this lie long and loud enough, everyone will believe it! *smile*
The only conclusion we can successfully draw in this sea of ill-conceived conclusions is thus: once again, the actions of one hateful lunatic, and the lives of his victims, will be used as tools to further an agenda against a legion of overwhelmingly peaceful, law abiding citizens. I'm not sure I would want the memory of a loved one to be used (and undoubtedly abused) by strangers in such a manner, or for such a cause, but it will happen. May peace be with the victims and their families.
Hahaha... Good catch. Hopefully the thieves are elephant size, or that's going to be a nap they don't wake from!
Yeah, you're right. This is a procedural problem. And it might be most efficiently remedied by a syringe (loaded with an appropriate dose of fentanyl) in the driver's seat of a desirable honeypot car. The doors would lock when the would-be thief puts the car into drive, simultaneously actuating the tranquilizer which is injected into the thief's ass. I could see this being a revolutionary new form of entertainment for vigilantes.
By the time of the F4 and Vietnam, it was two generations behind and not comparable to anything modern, but it was the one aircraft the NVAF had a-plenty. When its pilots made kills, it was because they were working heavily and successfully with Chinese 19 and NVAF 21 pilots--and those pilots attained ace status much more often. It would be more analogous (probably generally inferior) to the F-86 & especially the Super Sabre, and during Vietnam it was more of a threat against aircraft on bomb runs, and of course helicopters.
The one and only feature that made it a significant threat at all against F4s was the cannon, and the fact that cannons were so stupidly left off of F4 for much of the war, and also that US pilots weren't trained in / or had little experience in dissimilar air combat. It's like trying to shoot down a Sopwith with a sidewinder; maybe they didn't generate enough heat to seek (relative to the fighters the AIM-9 was designed to counter) and if you didn't have guns to engage them, you're kind of at a disadvantage while the other pilots are hustling you.
Hrm. I suppose you're right! I guess ol Harry has a future in stocks after all.
Presto Profito! These must be talented wizards, with the a wave of a hand and the utterance of some arcane terminology, the heavens crap monies right into their bank accounts! Let's see Harry Potter do that.
Well, their justification will undoubtedly be this: There's a certain culture which believes dogs to be unclean.