I don't know how much material is required to get these rockets off the ground, but how much radioactive material has been sent "showering down on the whole world" by the testing of nuclear weapons? I suspect that many people here experience far more radiation every day from natural sources (radon) than from man-made ones.
Whether France used their veto power or not, they certainly didn't prevent us from going into Iraq. So, obviously they didn't have veto power, because we went anyway. Just because it's written down, doesn't mean it's representative of reality.
Whether rape is against the law or not, it certainly doesn't prevent men from attacking women. So, obviously it isn't against the law, because men rape women anyways. Just because it's written down, doesn't mean it's representative of reality.
Sorry, not trying to wind your clock, but just trying to point out how silly that argument is. Within the UN the veto is a "law" or a rule and within society there are laws against rape. Just because the law is broken doesn't mean it is invalid; rather those who break it are out of order. The US tried to bully the member states into approving the resolution by saying that they were going anyways, and France put an end to it.
Which is exactly why the U.N. has no power, and why France has little power
Even if every statement about France's ulterior motives is true, they are not the only ones who want the UN to have more power. While not a powerhouse like the US, Canada is hardly a third-world country, and yet they want a stronger UN at the expense of their influence. The same for Germany, Britain and Japan (I believe...I could be quite wrong about those particular countries) Just about every country who participates wants the UN to have more power, not just the French, despite what their motives may or may not be.
The U.S. might be more willing to pay attention if it was based more on some democratic principle
Sorry? What could be more democratic than allowing every member to have equal say? I refer you back to my previous point about how only powerful rich people would be allowed to vote in your idea of a democracy. I think that the vetos are a bad idea, just like the permanent membership of the security council is a bad idea. But do you think that the resolution would have passed even if France hadn't vetoed it? We will never know, but I suspect that the answer is no.
Their veto power only means anything if the U.S. cares what the U.N. says
Unilateral action goes against everything the UN stands for. If the US doesn't want to participate then f*** 'em. I'm not saying that this is the best solution or even a good solution, but international consensus is impossible when countries flip the world the bird and go off on these wild goose chases.
I also don't know where you got the definition for "rule of law", but I don't think it has anything to do with just cause or strong and weak people.
Not literally, no...I don't think I tried to pass it off as an official definition; if I did then sorry. But that's what laws were originally designed for: to protect the common people from the rich upper class and the omnipotent monarchy by making a level playing field. No different than what laws do today, whether they are municipal or international.
I would argue that while "important" documents are written in.doc format they are stored as.pdf's (someone else pointed out that HTML is a good bet too). I wonder why?
But the original point is the same; most of what we type could be done on myriad word processors.
I didn't say that the U.S. enforces all the U.N. resolutions
No, but you did say "If France obeyed the rule of law, they would have enforced U.N. Res. 1441, like the U.S. did", which I am still trying to figure out. Rule of law also dictates that without good cause the powerful cannot act against the weak (and vice versa). France was fully entitled to use their veto to prevent the US from stomping around in Iraq and they did so.
The U.S. blindly surrendering its power to the whims of U.N. officials has absolutely nothing to do with the rule of law.
Nor does the rest of the world acceding to the US's demands simply because they are populous and powerful.
When the political structure of the U.N. makes a little more sense, it is more likely that the U.S. will join more completely.
I think what you meant to write was "When they set up a throne for us to lord over the masses it is more likely that the U.S. will join more completely."
I bet France would just love to have all kinds of power over the U.S. because they have been marginalized in the last century.
Oh, like the power you mentioned one sentence earlier? The one I quoted 2 lines up?
A quote from the UN Charter:
"to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest"
"Unite our strength" does not mean "the US tells us what to do and the Syrians bring us coffee", it means everyone works together. A country can participate in this manner or not at all, and this system allows the smaller states to have an equal say for once.
Hey, don't worry; there are still plenty of arenas where you can throw your weight around because you have lots of money! An analogy to your idea of a UN that "makes sense" is a democracy where you have to be rich and 6'5" to vote, because only then are you important enough. Oh sorry, that analogy is clearly lacking, because you are obviously interested in anything but democracy.
Jesus. Lay off the coffee dude; I'm not a fan of MS and I wasn't attacking open source software (heaven forbid)...in fact I didn't even mention it. I agree that open source has a good chance of being adopted, with cost being a major factor.
The key word there was "if". Furthermore, if you had actually read my post you would have seen that I referred to "those" people; implying that I am not Iraqi.
But that IS good advice. Perhaps you should heed it yourself?
"than bondage to Microsoft which is no doubt in Bill Gates' plans."
Or bondage to any other corporation or OS. You don't think that Steve Jobs would like to flood the country with Apple products? If (somehow) MS is the best and easiest choice for them to get back on their feet then so be it. The sooner the better for those people.
You forgot "Can spin kick horizontally across a room by yelling "Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku"". If there is anything I have learned about those Asians it is watch out for Super Fireballs.:-)
Go into the office of any active researcher at a university or in any R&D department and you will find forests worth of journals, textbooks and review articles. Those PDF files add up after a while (assuming you can even access the files; online subscriptions can be prohibitively expensive, particularly when you are not a major university/corporation, and many journals do not offer their full catalogue online just yet) and not everyone has the means to go buy a laptop so they can read journals at home.
Go tell a grad student that they can no longer print journals and see what kind of a response you get:-)
He states in the article that "DLL Hell" was in older versions of Windows. Though XP does not have the same DLL troubles it does have other irritating issues, such as leaving entries in the registry (such as when an uninstall crashes) and leaving files required for installation repair/uninstallation in directories such as Temp rather than a safe location.
I think it is definitely that bad. In the last few months I have noticed a large increase in loading times at home. Even the university connection is slowing down...
Yeah, it takes an incredible number of nurses and doctors to run a system as big as the NHS, and more than a couple of them should not be there because they lack adequate training. A nurse is not always a nurse is not always a nurse.
I can't wait until Longhorn is running on my hospital's computers so that I can feel secure in the knowledge that Microsoft is busy backing up and securing my health records on their personal servers...
Where is the cynicism? I say that this is smart shopping. Having used those computers I can tell you that a wholesale upgrade to newer and newer Windows products, not to mention the looming shadow of Longhorn, is an expensive and scary thought.
The doctors don't use Windows, their secretaries do. In fact, several of the doctors whom I typed for used Macs whenever they could, using the Windows box only when they needed to get patient information from the network.
When I worked there most of my work was word processing (Word 97), email (GroupWise...wise my ass) and accessing online patient records through a terminal. All of this can be done on any platform, except I suspect that few of them crash as consistently and spectacularly (sp?) as a Windows 95 installation.
I am sure that there are specific, necessary programs in use that are Windows-based, but I am also sure that it would not be the first time that they had to write new software for their special requirements (the aforementioned ICSIS (sp) program for checking patient info, for example)
True. No one denies that Saddam is a terrible person and that Iraq (and the rest of the world) would be better without him.
The problem is with the sudden perceived need to dispose of him at all cost, whether every other country and the UN likes it or not. You would swear he was trying to get elected or something:-)
Well, I have certainly picked a fight with someone who knows his stuff! You've pretty much torn me apart but I do have a few comments to make...this will be long and tedious.
>Both the UK and Australia have tight gun controls and increasing violent crime. How do you explain that?
Well, that is only over a 3 month period. The bottom of the page states that violent crime has decreased by 5 per cent. There is a link in that UK report that leads to a Home Office report that states
"Provisional data on the latest trends in gun crime, also published today, show that the total number of firearm offences in 2002/03 (excluding offences involving air weapons) increased by three per cent. This compares to a 35 per cent increase in 2001/02. The update shows firearm offences have been falling since November last year. Final figures for 2002/3 will be published in January.
Around 17 per cent of offences using firearms resulted in physical harm, the majority of which involved only minor injury. Last year there were 80 fatal incidents compared to 95 the year before - a reduction of around one sixth."
(Pardon my HTML illiteracy...I can't make those pretty hyperlinks, so here's the link) www.homeoffice.gov.uk/n_story.asp?item_id=6 43
Violent crime increases while gun crime only marginally increases, or perhaps falls. But what sort of violent crime are we talking about?
"Violent crime: overall stable. Serious violence, less serious violence and sexual offences have increased. This can partly be accounted for by continuing effects of recording changes and a greater willingness of victims to come forward."
As you noted, violent crime is increasing. I always take that "victims coming forward" argument with a grain of salt, but that's just the cynic/scientist in me I guess. Moving along...
"Much of what is recorded as violent crime, such as common assault that amounts to pushing and shoving, involves little or no physical injury to the victim."
Given that the UK has rather different requirements for their crimes than we N Americans (for example, homicide in self-defence is near on impossible to use as a suitable defence in a British court of law) I think it is hard to state that this increase in violent crime is largely/solely due to gun control.
And finally, "The risk of a fatal shooting in England and Wales is still one of the lowest in the world but every crime involving a firearm is a serious concern and every life lost to gun crime is a terrible tragedy. We are working hard to encourage domestic violence victims and victims of sexual offences to report every single crime and we would expect to see these figures increase.
"The BCS reports levels of worry about crime are going down. People are starting to feel safer and get the message that the chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest in 20 years."
This hardly sounds like a region at the mercy of violent criminals. England/Wales has a population of over 52 million people and had 80 total deaths due to firearms. Their per capita homicide rate is one of the lowest in the world. The fact that a shooting in Manchester is front page news in London tells you just how little gun crime there is.
As far as the Australian report is concerned, I have some issues there too (one of them being this is a NRA webpage:-)). One year is not enough time to establish trends (nor refute them?), and if there is one thing I know it is that statistics mean what you want them to. Scrolling down to that table of numbers...
>Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2%.
3.2% of ~70 in a population of 20-odd million is statistically insignificant. To put it blithely, all you need is one guy to stroll into a McDonalds on Christmas Eve and shoot all the staff, and there's your 3.2%. Plus, the same increase was seen in 1994-5 when guns were permitted.
>The news never reports on people who defend themselves with a gun unless that gun was actually fired (cause then it's exciting)
Nor does report on someone being robbed at gunpoint. If someone walks up to you and pulls a gun, whether you have a gun or not he has the advantage. You can pull a gun yourself and cause him to fire his weapon, or you can go along with it and voila! Now he has 2 guns instead of 1.
On the other hand, if handguns were banned then their widespread availability would be stopped. I don't think the "gun control arms criminals and disarms citizens" argument is a good one because it doesn't consider that if no new weapons are entering the country, then no one can get them easily and their cost will skyrocket. If there are almost no guns available then you don't need to defend yourself against them. They could go out a buy a hunting rifle, but that isn't terribly easy to conceal, is it? On the other hand, if you choose to defend yourself and your family with a firearm, then a hunting rifle is certainly a viable option (with quite the shock value!) The balance has been shifted to the responsible citizen. Of course you will (and do) have rifles being used in crimes, but baseball bats and vehicles are being used in crimes too; the difference is that rifles have a purpose other than killing humans. The same cannot be said for handguns, and they should be banned.
>The fact is, guns are a useful tool, like encryption
I think this is a case of apples and oranges. Encryption is not used to kill human beings, nor is it designed to do so. A Tec-9 (spelling?) is explicitly designed to kill human beings and has no other purpose.
>According to you, what guns have useful purposes and why don't semi-auto handguns have a useful purpose?
A handgun has no purpose other than to kill human beings. That is not, IMNSHO, a useful purpose. And as I will point out in a minute, I don't believe self-defence is a useful purpose of handguns either, but rather an attempt at justifying possession.
>Maybe you are not aware, but there is ample evidence and research to show that firearms are commonly used for self defense.
I am aware. I am also aware that both sides of the gun argument produce ample evidence for everything under the sun! I could tell you that pulling a gun makes an aggressor many times more likely to fire that weapon for fear of their own safety, or that guns in the home are more likely to injure yourself or someone you love than prevent a crime. I think that, like most anything, the truth lies somewhere in the middle but my opinion is that possession for self-defence would not be necessary if there were no possession.
Here's my take on it. Let's say that handguns were banned tomorrow and no stores could sell them anymore. By limiting the influx of guns you have started to treat the problem of too many criminals having guns by reducing availability and driving up the cost. As criminals are arrested these numbers will dwindle, though I am not so stupid as to think they will vanish altogether.
Law-abiding citizens who like hunting and target practice still have their hunting rifles, which are quite a bit less useful to a criminal during a mugging or a robbery, while not-so-responsible and law-disregarding citizens would hold on to their weapons for "self-defence". But the key is that few new weapons would be entering the picture, which is a better "cure" than simply arming everyone to the gills. Gun control is an attempt to fix a problem (which is ultimately the various causes of crime, and we shouldn't get into that here:-)) whereas possession for self-defence is just a very heavy-handed treatment of a symptom.
>Firearms provide a significant net positive benefit to society. You may disagree, but the evidence proves you wrong.
Well I am anti-gun, so of course I disagree:-) I think that the fact that there are schools equipped with metal detectors (not just for guns, I know) is a pretty telling indicator of how well possession in self-defence is working out. I'm pretty sure you don't think that children can be considered responsible gun owners, but in the unfortunate case of a school shooting who is gun possession benefiting? If guns were less available then perhaps we would have less school shootings.
While I would like to see guns abolished altogether, I realise that simply will not happen. But I think that self-defence is a pretty shallow reason for justifying the mass production and wide-spread availability of tools that are designed explicitly for killing humans. I really have issues with the "gun control arms the criminals and disarms the citizens" point of view because it doesn't consider that it limits availability of firearms to everyone, criminal and citizen alike. If handguns are abolished and almost no new weapons are available then your average mugger/robber won't be able to find/afford them, and we wouldn't have to defend ourselves from them anymore. Again, I realise that I have painted a rosy, ideal picture, but while changes like this will take time they have to start somewhere.
Anyways, that is my opinion. I know you disagree with me but that's life:-)
I wasn't the one who made the comparison, the original poster was; I was just following it up.
However, this thread is about guns and gun control, and violent crime is not restricted to use of firearms. Their per capita shooting rate (now that's a strange wording) is still low, and I would not be too quick to attribute a rise in shootings to the gun laws. If crime is rising across the board, and not just in gun-related crime, then perhaps something else is afoot?
First, I have issues with my first post being modded as a troll, but that is besides the point:-)
I agree that SOME guns have a useful purpose. But a semi-automatic handgun does not. And I have to agree with the neighbouring post in that I don't see self-defence as a valid reason for having a gun. Either you bury it unloaded in a locked drawer or in the back of your closet so that your kids don't find it, or you leave it in a "convenient" location and run the risk that someone starts playing with it. I think that the trade-off between the very slight chance that someone will break into your house with a firearm versus potential harm to yourself and your loved ones is too great. But I _am_ anti-gun:-)
But I am not proposing that this will take place overnight, or that everyone will comply. My suggestion is not to disarm people by using force, but simply to limit the influx of new firearms. Change should be gradual or, as you have pointed out, it won't work; if I purchased a gun I wouldn't be too quick to hand over my purchase just because someone said so. But having said that, if handguns were banned tomorrow I would be quite content, for the above reason.
Yes, but _staggering_ poverty and class disparity as well. I took an Anthropology course from a guy who spent some time in Washington, and he said that the most depressing part of it all was standing in the middle of the poorest slum he had ever seen while looking at shiny white government buildings. You need more than a few gun laws to fix that problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how much material is required to get these rockets off the ground, but how much radioactive material has been sent "showering down on the whole world" by the testing of nuclear weapons? I suspect that many people here experience far more radiation every day from natural sources (radon) than from man-made ones.
Whether France used their veto power or not, they certainly didn't prevent us from going into Iraq. So, obviously they didn't have veto power, because we went anyway. Just because it's written down, doesn't mean it's representative of reality.
Whether rape is against the law or not, it certainly doesn't prevent men from attacking women. So, obviously it isn't against the law, because men rape women anyways. Just because it's written down, doesn't mean it's representative of reality.
Sorry, not trying to wind your clock, but just trying to point out how silly that argument is. Within the UN the veto is a "law" or a rule and within society there are laws against rape. Just because the law is broken doesn't mean it is invalid; rather those who break it are out of order. The US tried to bully the member states into approving the resolution by saying that they were going anyways, and France put an end to it.
Which is exactly why the U.N. has no power, and why France has little power
Even if every statement about France's ulterior motives is true, they are not the only ones who want the UN to have more power. While not a powerhouse like the US, Canada is hardly a third-world country, and yet they want a stronger UN at the expense of their influence. The same for Germany, Britain and Japan (I believe...I could be quite wrong about those particular countries) Just about every country who participates wants the UN to have more power, not just the French, despite what their motives may or may not be.
The U.S. might be more willing to pay attention if it was based more on some democratic principle
Sorry? What could be more democratic than allowing every member to have equal say? I refer you back to my previous point about how only powerful rich people would be allowed to vote in your idea of a democracy. I think that the vetos are a bad idea, just like the permanent membership of the security council is a bad idea. But do you think that the resolution would have passed even if France hadn't vetoed it? We will never know, but I suspect that the answer is no.
Their veto power only means anything if the U.S. cares what the U.N. says
Unilateral action goes against everything the UN stands for. If the US doesn't want to participate then f*** 'em. I'm not saying that this is the best solution or even a good solution, but international consensus is impossible when countries flip the world the bird and go off on these wild goose chases.
I also don't know where you got the definition for "rule of law", but I don't think it has anything to do with just cause or strong and weak people.
Not literally, no...I don't think I tried to pass it off as an official definition; if I did then sorry. But that's what laws were originally designed for: to protect the common people from the rich upper class and the omnipotent monarchy by making a level playing field. No different than what laws do today, whether they are municipal or international.
I would argue that while "important" documents are written in .doc format they are stored as .pdf's (someone else pointed out that HTML is a good bet too). I wonder why?
But the original point is the same; most of what we type could be done on myriad word processors.
I didn't say that the U.S. enforces all the U.N. resolutions
No, but you did say "If France obeyed the rule of law, they would have enforced U.N. Res. 1441, like the U.S. did", which I am still trying to figure out. Rule of law also dictates that without good cause the powerful cannot act against the weak (and vice versa). France was fully entitled to use their veto to prevent the US from stomping around in Iraq and they did so.
The U.S. blindly surrendering its power to the whims of U.N. officials has absolutely nothing to do with the rule of law.
Nor does the rest of the world acceding to the US's demands simply because they are populous and powerful.
When the political structure of the U.N. makes a little more sense, it is more likely that the U.S. will join more completely.
I think what you meant to write was "When they set up a throne for us to lord over the masses it is more likely that the U.S. will join more completely."
I bet France would just love to have all kinds of power over the U.S. because they have been marginalized in the last century.
Oh, like the power you mentioned one sentence earlier? The one I quoted 2 lines up?
A quote from the UN Charter:
"to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest"
"Unite our strength" does not mean "the US tells us what to do and the Syrians bring us coffee", it means everyone works together. A country can participate in this manner or not at all, and this system allows the smaller states to have an equal say for once.
Hey, don't worry; there are still plenty of arenas where you can throw your weight around because you have lots of money! An analogy to your idea of a UN that "makes sense" is a democracy where you have to be rich and 6'5" to vote, because only then are you important enough. Oh sorry, that analogy is clearly lacking, because you are obviously interested in anything but democracy.
Jesus. Lay off the coffee dude; I'm not a fan of MS and I wasn't attacking open source software (heaven forbid)...in fact I didn't even mention it. I agree that open source has a good chance of being adopted, with cost being a major factor.
The key word there was "if". Furthermore, if you had actually read my post you would have seen that I referred to "those" people; implying that I am not Iraqi.
But that IS good advice. Perhaps you should heed it yourself?
>Sorry, I know EVERYONE was thinking this too... exponentially, not logaritmically
Sorry, i know EVERYONE is thinking that they're essencially the same thing. Have you ever heard of a BODE plot?
Sure. Google and Altavista are essentially the same thing. Have you ever heard of a search engine?
:-)
"than bondage to Microsoft which is no doubt in Bill Gates' plans."
Or bondage to any other corporation or OS. You don't think that Steve Jobs would like to flood the country with Apple products? If (somehow) MS is the best and easiest choice for them to get back on their feet then so be it. The sooner the better for those people.
You forgot "Can spin kick horizontally across a room by yelling "Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku"". If there is anything I have learned about those Asians it is watch out for Super Fireballs. :-)
Go into the office of any active researcher at a university or in any R&D department and you will find forests worth of journals, textbooks and review articles. Those PDF files add up after a while (assuming you can even access the files; online subscriptions can be prohibitively expensive, particularly when you are not a major university/corporation, and many journals do not offer their full catalogue online just yet) and not everyone has the means to go buy a laptop so they can read journals at home.
:-)
Go tell a grad student that they can no longer print journals and see what kind of a response you get
He states in the article that "DLL Hell" was in older versions of Windows. Though XP does not have the same DLL troubles it does have other irritating issues, such as leaving entries in the registry (such as when an uninstall crashes) and leaving files required for installation repair/uninstallation in directories such as Temp rather than a safe location.
...that was my point
I think it is definitely that bad. In the last few months I have noticed a large increase in loading times at home. Even the university connection is slowing down...
Yeah, it takes an incredible number of nurses and doctors to run a system as big as the NHS, and more than a couple of them should not be there because they lack adequate training. A nurse is not always a nurse is not always a nurse.
I can't wait until Longhorn is running on my hospital's computers so that I can feel secure in the knowledge that Microsoft is busy backing up and securing my health records on their personal servers...
Where is the cynicism? I say that this is smart shopping. Having used those computers I can tell you that a wholesale upgrade to newer and newer Windows products, not to mention the looming shadow of Longhorn, is an expensive and scary thought.
The doctors don't use Windows, their secretaries do. In fact, several of the doctors whom I typed for used Macs whenever they could, using the Windows box only when they needed to get patient information from the network.
When I worked there most of my work was word processing (Word 97), email (GroupWise...wise my ass) and accessing online patient records through a terminal. All of this can be done on any platform, except I suspect that few of them crash as consistently and spectacularly (sp?) as a Windows 95 installation.
I am sure that there are specific, necessary programs in use that are Windows-based, but I am also sure that it would not be the first time that they had to write new software for their special requirements (the aforementioned ICSIS (sp) program for checking patient info, for example)
Jamaican roaming pr0n.
Sorry man. Over my head.
Here's my new sig:
"I smile because I have no idea what's going on."
True. No one denies that Saddam is a terrible person and that Iraq (and the rest of the world) would be better without him.
:-)
The problem is with the sudden perceived need to dispose of him at all cost, whether every other country and the UN likes it or not. You would swear he was trying to get elected or something
Well, I have certainly picked a fight with someone who knows his stuff! You've pretty much torn me apart but I do have a few comments to make...this will be long and tedious.
:-)). One year is not enough time to establish trends (nor refute them?), and if there is one thing I know it is that statistics mean what you want them to. Scrolling down to that table of numbers...
>Both the UK and Australia have tight gun controls and increasing violent crime. How do you explain that?
Well, that is only over a 3 month period. The bottom of the page states that violent crime has decreased by 5 per cent. There is a link in that UK report that leads to a Home Office report that states
"Provisional data on the latest trends in gun crime, also published today, show that the total number of firearm offences in 2002/03 (excluding offences involving air weapons) increased by three per cent. This compares to a 35 per cent increase in 2001/02. The update shows firearm offences have been falling since November last year. Final figures for 2002/3 will be published in January.
Around 17 per cent of offences using firearms resulted in physical harm, the majority of which involved only minor injury. Last year there were 80 fatal incidents compared to 95 the year before - a reduction of around one sixth."
(Pardon my HTML illiteracy...I can't make those pretty hyperlinks, so here's the link)
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/n_story.asp?item_id=6 43
Violent crime increases while gun crime only marginally increases, or perhaps falls. But what sort of violent crime are we talking about?
"Violent crime: overall stable. Serious violence, less serious violence and sexual offences have increased. This can partly be accounted for by continuing effects of recording changes and a greater willingness of victims to come forward."
As you noted, violent crime is increasing. I always take that "victims coming forward" argument with a grain of salt, but that's just the cynic/scientist in me I guess. Moving along...
"Much of what is recorded as violent crime, such as common assault that amounts to pushing and shoving, involves little or no physical injury to the victim."
Given that the UK has rather different requirements for their crimes than we N Americans (for example, homicide in self-defence is near on impossible to use as a suitable defence in a British court of law) I think it is hard to state that this increase in violent crime is largely/solely due to gun control.
And finally,
"The risk of a fatal shooting in England and Wales is still one of the lowest in the world but every crime involving a firearm is a serious concern and every life lost to gun crime is a terrible tragedy. We are working hard to encourage domestic violence victims and victims of sexual offences to report every single crime and we would expect to see these figures increase.
"The BCS reports levels of worry about crime are going down. People are starting to feel safer and get the message that the chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest in 20 years."
This hardly sounds like a region at the mercy of violent criminals. England/Wales has a population of over 52 million people and had 80 total deaths due to firearms. Their per capita homicide rate is one of the lowest in the world. The fact that a shooting in Manchester is front page news in London tells you just how little gun crime there is.
As far as the Australian report is concerned, I have some issues there too (one of them being this is a NRA webpage
>Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2%.
3.2% of ~70 in a population of 20-odd million is statistically insignificant. To put it blithely, all you need is one guy to stroll into a McDonalds on Christmas Eve and shoot all the staff, and there's your 3.2%. Plus, the same increase was seen in 1994-5 when guns were permitted.
> Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6%.
What kind of assults?
>The news never reports on people who defend themselves with a gun unless that gun was actually fired (cause then it's exciting)
Nor does report on someone being robbed at gunpoint. If someone walks up to you and pulls a gun, whether you have a gun or not he has the advantage. You can pull a gun yourself and cause him to fire his weapon, or you can go along with it and voila! Now he has 2 guns instead of 1.
On the other hand, if handguns were banned then their widespread availability would be stopped. I don't think the "gun control arms criminals and disarms citizens" argument is a good one because it doesn't consider that if no new weapons are entering the country, then no one can get them easily and their cost will skyrocket. If there are almost no guns available then you don't need to defend yourself against them. They could go out a buy a hunting rifle, but that isn't terribly easy to conceal, is it? On the other hand, if you choose to defend yourself and your family with a firearm, then a hunting rifle is certainly a viable option (with quite the shock value!) The balance has been shifted to the responsible citizen. Of course you will (and do) have rifles being used in crimes, but baseball bats and vehicles are being used in crimes too; the difference is that rifles have a purpose other than killing humans. The same cannot be said for handguns, and they should be banned.
>The fact is, guns are a useful tool, like encryption
I think this is a case of apples and oranges. Encryption is not used to kill human beings, nor is it designed to do so. A Tec-9 (spelling?) is explicitly designed to kill human beings and has no other purpose.
>According to you, what guns have useful purposes and why don't semi-auto handguns have a useful purpose?
:-)) whereas possession for self-defence is just a very heavy-handed treatment of a symptom.
:-) I think that the fact that there are schools equipped with metal detectors (not just for guns, I know) is a pretty telling indicator of how well possession in self-defence is working out. I'm pretty sure you don't think that children can be considered responsible gun owners, but in the unfortunate case of a school shooting who is gun possession benefiting? If guns were less available then perhaps we would have less school shootings.
:-)
A handgun has no purpose other than to kill human beings. That is not, IMNSHO, a useful purpose. And as I will point out in a minute, I don't believe self-defence is a useful purpose of handguns either, but rather an attempt at justifying possession.
>Maybe you are not aware, but there is ample evidence and research to show that firearms are commonly used for self defense.
I am aware. I am also aware that both sides of the gun argument produce ample evidence for everything under the sun! I could tell you that pulling a gun makes an aggressor many times more likely to fire that weapon for fear of their own safety, or that guns in the home are more likely to injure yourself or someone you love than prevent a crime. I think that, like most anything, the truth lies somewhere in the middle but my opinion is that possession for self-defence would not be necessary if there were no possession.
Here's my take on it. Let's say that handguns were banned tomorrow and no stores could sell them anymore. By limiting the influx of guns you have started to treat the problem of too many criminals having guns by reducing availability and driving up the cost. As criminals are arrested these numbers will dwindle, though I am not so stupid as to think they will vanish altogether.
Law-abiding citizens who like hunting and target practice still have their hunting rifles, which are quite a bit less useful to a criminal during a mugging or a robbery, while not-so-responsible and law-disregarding citizens would hold on to their weapons for "self-defence". But the key is that few new weapons would be entering the picture, which is a better "cure" than simply arming everyone to the gills. Gun control is an attempt to fix a problem (which is ultimately the various causes of crime, and we shouldn't get into that here
>Firearms provide a significant net positive benefit to society. You may disagree, but the evidence proves you wrong.
Well I am anti-gun, so of course I disagree
While I would like to see guns abolished altogether, I realise that simply will not happen. But I think that self-defence is a pretty shallow reason for justifying the mass production and wide-spread availability of tools that are designed explicitly for killing humans. I really have issues with the "gun control arms the criminals and disarms the citizens" point of view because it doesn't consider that it limits availability of firearms to everyone, criminal and citizen alike. If handguns are abolished and almost no new weapons are available then your average mugger/robber won't be able to find/afford them, and we wouldn't have to defend ourselves from them anymore. Again, I realise that I have painted a rosy, ideal picture, but while changes like this will take time they have to start somewhere.
Anyways, that is my opinion. I know you disagree with me but that's life
I wasn't the one who made the comparison, the original poster was; I was just following it up.
However, this thread is about guns and gun control, and violent crime is not restricted to use of firearms. Their per capita shooting rate (now that's a strange wording) is still low, and I would not be too quick to attribute a rise in shootings to the gun laws. If crime is rising across the board, and not just in gun-related crime, then perhaps something else is afoot?
First, I have issues with my first post being modded as a troll, but that is besides the point :-)
:-)
I agree that SOME guns have a useful purpose. But a semi-automatic handgun does not. And I have to agree with the neighbouring post in that I don't see self-defence as a valid reason for having a gun. Either you bury it unloaded in a locked drawer or in the back of your closet so that your kids don't find it, or you leave it in a "convenient" location and run the risk that someone starts playing with it. I think that the trade-off between the very slight chance that someone will break into your house with a firearm versus potential harm to yourself and your loved ones is too great. But I _am_ anti-gun
But I am not proposing that this will take place overnight, or that everyone will comply. My suggestion is not to disarm people by using force, but simply to limit the influx of new firearms. Change should be gradual or, as you have pointed out, it won't work; if I purchased a gun I wouldn't be too quick to hand over my purchase just because someone said so. But having said that, if handguns were banned tomorrow I would be quite content, for the above reason.
Yes, but _staggering_ poverty and class disparity as well. I took an Anthropology course from a guy who spent some time in Washington, and he said that the most depressing part of it all was standing in the middle of the poorest slum he had ever seen while looking at shiny white government buildings. You need more than a few gun laws to fix that problem.