What makes you think a handgun within the hands of your typical street thug is much different? And how is being confronted with a knife at all preferable to being confronted with some other weapon? Why doesn't the anti-gun crowd ever talk about reducing crime rather than having a singular focus on gun crime? How's all that knife crime working out for you in the UK? That's some progress you've made there.....
without realising that they lack basic freedoms that people in other countries take for granted.
What freedoms do I lack that other countries take for granted? Do educate me.
And yes, American police will wrestle you to the ground if you jaywalk (because hey, you might be carrying a gun).
Ah yes, the time honored tactic of linking to one example and using it to imply that it happens all the time. I see your arrest for jaywalking and raise you an unjustified shooting on the tube. At least I can ride the subway in the United States without worrying about being shot by the police;)
You had me until the pirate party bit. I'm talking about fundamental freedoms and you are linking to a party whose main goal is to legalize copyright infringement? I'll take my right to keep and bear arms and right against self incrimination over my "right" to share the latest Nickelback CD with thousands of people I've never met......
The pirate party may have some laudable goals (reducing the length of copyright) but their primary goal is laughable on the face.
1. Pure political activism on the part of someone at Flickr/Yahoo. Remember Citizen, Dissent is Patriotic... unless Democrats are in charge then you must Doublethink; To Question the State is Treason.
When have Liberals/Democrats ever tried to silence dissent? I thought such actions only occurred under evil Republican administrations?
I'm not a denier. It's probable that man is having some sort of impact on the climate. How much of one I'm not smart enough to say but you can't say with creditability that the sheer scale of human civilization isn't having some sort of impact.
That said, what do you do about it? Most environmentalists refuse to consider nuclear as an option, though there are a few notable exceptions. Their solution seems to consist of throwing billions of dollars at "renewables" while advocating policies that will result in a reduced standard of living. This is completely unrealistic because people will never willingly accept a reduced standard of living nor will they long tolerate a Government that seeks to impose one.
My employer just paid big bucks for an "energy audit" to see what we could do to reduce our carbon footprint. It was a complete joke. Here a list of some of the "suggestions" that the auditors came up with:
1) Get rid of all the fish tanks throughout our building. Aquariums consume energy. The therapeutic value they provide for our clients was not considered, apparently.
2) Reduce the lighting in employee offices.
3) Get rid of the air conditioning in our server/telecom room. Yes they actually suggested this.
4) Put lockboxes on the thermostats in employee offices and lock them at 78 in the summer and 68 in the winter.
5) Install automatic faucets in employee bathrooms. Evidently we can't be trusted to turn the water off after washing our hands.
In conclusion, all we need to do to reduce our carbon footprint is work in the dark, ditch a part of our program that benefits our clients, sit in uncomfortably warm/cold offices and invent a way for computers to operate without generating heat.
And people wonder why the mainstream regards the green movement with skepticism. Sometimes I think the only way to appease the die hard greens would be for the bulk of humanity to die off and the remainder to go back to a hunter-gather lifestyle.
Because people go to the US mostly for the "branding" that was built over the last century
Yes, that's why my ancestors came here. The "branding". My grandfather often told me stories about how his family would sit around the hearth in Germany and debate which country they should relocate to. Public relations and marketing was a huge factor in this decision. Economic opportunity and personal liberty had nothing to do with it at all.
People don't come here because of the "branding". They come here because the United States was founded by immigrants and is one of a handful of genuinely multi-cultural countries that exist on planet Earth. I can drive across my small city of 50,000 and meet people "fresh off the boat" from areas ranging from Laos to the Ukraine to the former Yugoslavia. I can drive through neighborhoods built by Italian immigrants and their descendants. Ditto for neighborhoods built by Greek, Chinese and German immigrants. My small hometown has at least one each of a Christian Church, Jewish Temple, Islamic Mosque, Sikh Temple and a Hindu Temple.
That's just a sampling of the diversity that you'll find in one pathetically small American city. Visit a large city like New York and you'll find a representative of almost every culture, religion and race from planet Earth. That's why people choose to come here. It's also our greatest advantage and something the rest of the world will never be able to match us on. We do tend to get complacent periodically but sooner or later the sleeping giant wakes up and takes the world by storm. 25 years ago people were predicting that Japan was going to out-compete/out-innovate us and dominate the world. How'd that work out again?
Last but not least: a lot of research is defence-funded. Some do not have problems with that, but Einstein would not have accepted that. Guess where the next Einstein will look for a position?
And yet, amazingly enough, Einstein decided to come here. He even wrote a letter to FDR encouraging him to undertake the development of a weapon of mass destruction. You may not like the fact that America spends so much money on defense but when the chips are down you have no problems begging us to come and save your sorry ass.
America wasn't an interventionist power until the rest of the free world got clobbered twice in the span of twenty years by aggressive non-free countries. Would it surprise you to learn that at the start of WW2 our Army was smaller than Portugal's? We were quite content to remain out of your affairs until it became apparent that you couldn't save yourself and we'd wind up fighting your enemies sooner or later anyway. Might as well fight them on your soil instead of ours if the conflict is inevitable.
I'll tell you a secret: America goes from Canada to Argentina. The US are not America, whatever your language's customs may be. I was specifically restricting my focus to the US using an unusual word to avoid implying that non-US Americans do not already have to learn language at school
Take your geography lesson and shove it up your ass. Believe it or not but I am aware of the geography of the western hemisphere. Are you aware of the fact that the commonly accepted adjective to describe a citizen of the United States in the English language is American? Are you aware of the fact that the full name of my country is the United States of America?
The use of the "word" US'ian is intended as nothing more than a way to piss off Americans and manufacture an issue where none exists. Ireland is part of the British Isles but I don't hear anybody demanding that the British call themselves "UK'ians". Interesting bit of hypocrisy, isn't it?
WW2 was the last time the Americans actually did defend (although that too is debatable). All the other wars were the Americans forcing their view on other people.
Yeah, one only has to look at the difference between Pyongyang and Seoul to realize how horrible it is when Americans "force" our view on other people.
We should withdraw from every foreign alliance, disband the bulk of our standing Army and go back to being a neutral power willing to trade with everybody. Our nuclear deterrent and armed population should be sufficient to discourage any direct attacks on our country.
You are wasting your time. "We inherited this problem because of the stupidity of the previous administration!" is the get out of jail free card for Democratic partisans. Nothing you say is going to convince them otherwise. Everything that's currently wrong in Washington is the fault of George W. Bush. I doubt they'd believe otherwise even if they heard it from someone on MSNBC.
That said, it makes complete sense to get the CO2 emissions under control
How do you purpose to do that without forcing China and India to halt their development at gunpoint? If global warming is primarily man made then we are already fucked. The West could cut our standard of living to a stone age level and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in the end.
About the only technology that could make a meaningful difference in the end is nuclear and we've largely abandoned it because of a vocal minority of people scared by anything with the word "nuclear" in the title. The renewables that are currently in production don't scale well and will never be able to displace coal and nuclear for the base load.
And since US courts require witnesses to swear at the bible
No they don't. You are free to affirm rather than swear an oath. I did this when I had the "privilege" of testifying in front of a Grand Jury once upon a time.
That depends on the sites you go to doesn't it? If your fetishes lie with something easy to spell and remember (grannysex) then it's probably easy to memorize the urls. If they lie with something harder to spell (bukkake, yes I had to look it up) or a strange combination of fetishes (bukkaking russian granny foot sex hairy gang bangs) they might be a little bit harder to memorize;)
It would be political suicide to try to curtail the HRA
Given the number of other rights willingly surrendered by the good people of the British Isles I'm not sure that I believe it would be political suicide to go after the HRA. They've willingly surrendered the right to remain silent, the right against self incrimination and the right to keep and bear arms. Why is the HRA sacrosanct if those rights aren't?
One of the nice things about handguns is they are small enough to store in an unobtrusive lock box. Most of them will allow you to keep the handgun in a ready state and can be opened in seconds. Handguns don't give you the stopping power of the shotgun but it's harder to keep the shotgun in a ready state if you have kids to worry about.
We don't have a written Constitution like the US, which can be amended as the government wants if it can get a supermajority in Congress and supermajority of the States
While it's true that there is no supra-legal constitution equivalent in the UK (the Human Rights Act is legislated), the ammendability of the US constitution makes them both mutable in practice. That said, the real-politik of the situation is that you can't just go rewriting the HRA or constitution willy-nilly.
Umm, it's a bit harder to pass an amendment to the US Constitution than it is to pass an Act of Parliament.
This includes, removing the firing pin, removing all ammunition, locking the firearm in a secure location, and storing the firing pin and ammunition in seperate locations from the firearm (also under lock and key).
"Hang on a second Mr. Murderer, I need to retrieve my gun from the first safe, my firing pin from the second safe and get my ammo out of the third safe. Can you continue the attempt to kill me after I've finished with these tasks?"
Seriously, any one of the items you listed would be sufficient to secure a firearm. No need to get carried away. You should also educate your children on what to do if they encounter an unsecured firearm. Your scheme does nothing to protect them if they wind up at a friends house whose parents aren't as diligent as you are.
Yes, it is. Only a Hippie Liberal douche flower child would claim that it isn't. Even the UN Charter acknowledges that war is justifiable in certain instances.
I find it interesting that the preamble of the constitution says that the right to life is unalienable, but you say that " That's not a right. You have the right to due process before the state deprives you of life". I am not a constitutional scholar, but it certainly sounds to me that the right to life is inalienable.
Well for starters, that isn't the preamble of the constitution that you quoted. It's the American Declaration of Independence. It also says that liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights but that doesn't stop us from locking up criminals. You don't have to be a constitutional scholar to understand it either, just read the plain text of the 5th amendment to the US Constitution. Here's the relevant part: "nor shall any person... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
but locking someone up for life, certainly seems like a workable alternative to killing them
Why? Because it's more humane? What's humane about being locked in an 8 foot by 10 foot room for the rest of your natural life? If you've committed egregious crimes then I really don't see why society can't put you out of our collective misery. Why should society have to expend limited resources to support someone who murdered/raped innocent people or whom betrayed that society (treason/espionage) and placed every member of it in harms way?
Personally I'd say that it's better to keep a million killers alive for 100+ years than it is to execute an innocent man - for I may be that innocent man.
If you are that innocent man are you seriously going to tell me that being locked in a cell for the rest of your life is preferable to death? Innocent people being convicted of crimes is a horrible outcome regardless of what the punishment is. If I was in that situation I'd rather be dead than live the rest of my life clinging to the hope that the person who actually committed the crime comes clean. I'd probably off myself after my appeals were exhausted.
But that also makes me a better judge of what is reasonable - it hasn't happened to me, and thus I am less biased and blood thirsty
Why do you assume that capital punishment has anything to do with being blood thirsty?
you really do need to give them a kick in the groin when they fail to realise that their idea of 'nirvana' isn't a good fit, let alone a perfect one for everybody else.
I never claimed that our system is a good fit for everybody else. This discussion started when some naive individual suggested that one world government would represent an improvement over the current system. If your issue is with one size fits all solutions then I would think that you would stand with me in opposition to this ridiculous idea.
My own personal pet peeve with US society, is that I find it very ironic that a country that enshrines into its constitution that church and state must be kept 100% separate, and does a horrible job of it compared to a country like Denmark, that has a state religion enshrined into its constitution.
Why do you think we do a horrible job? Because some politicians wear their religion on their sleeve? So what? The US goes so far as to allow people like Tom Cruise to freely practice his religion of choice. Many European countries (Germany, France) fail miserably on this point. Why aren't you criticizing them as well?
Actually, my biggest pet peeve with US society is that instead of having a media that is eternally in opposition of the government, you have one that is essentially a propaganda machine for the parties. Fox does the better job (I think the opposing 'team' there would be MSNBC),
Fox and MSNBC aren't propaganda machines. They are echo chambers that have found i
Slashdot Mirror
One would hope that the British Army would be smart enough to defeat the EU army before it had Westminster surrounded ;)
Knives only work within the attacker's reach
What makes you think a handgun within the hands of your typical street thug is much different? And how is being confronted with a knife at all preferable to being confronted with some other weapon? Why doesn't the anti-gun crowd ever talk about reducing crime rather than having a singular focus on gun crime? How's all that knife crime working out for you in the UK? That's some progress you've made there.....
without realising that they lack basic freedoms that people in other countries take for granted.
What freedoms do I lack that other countries take for granted? Do educate me.
And yes, American police will wrestle you to the ground if you jaywalk (because hey, you might be carrying a gun).
Ah yes, the time honored tactic of linking to one example and using it to imply that it happens all the time. I see your arrest for jaywalking and raise you an unjustified shooting on the tube. At least I can ride the subway in the United States without worrying about being shot by the police ;)
You had me until the pirate party bit. I'm talking about fundamental freedoms and you are linking to a party whose main goal is to legalize copyright infringement? I'll take my right to keep and bear arms and right against self incrimination over my "right" to share the latest Nickelback CD with thousands of people I've never met......
The pirate party may have some laudable goals (reducing the length of copyright) but their primary goal is laughable on the face.
1. Pure political activism on the part of someone at Flickr/Yahoo. Remember Citizen, Dissent is Patriotic... unless Democrats are in charge then you must Doublethink; To Question the State is Treason.
When have Liberals/Democrats ever tried to silence dissent? I thought such actions only occurred under evil Republican administrations?
That Hitler's dead and *whoosh*? ;)
I'm not a denier. It's probable that man is having some sort of impact on the climate. How much of one I'm not smart enough to say but you can't say with creditability that the sheer scale of human civilization isn't having some sort of impact.
That said, what do you do about it? Most environmentalists refuse to consider nuclear as an option, though there are a few notable exceptions. Their solution seems to consist of throwing billions of dollars at "renewables" while advocating policies that will result in a reduced standard of living. This is completely unrealistic because people will never willingly accept a reduced standard of living nor will they long tolerate a Government that seeks to impose one.
My employer just paid big bucks for an "energy audit" to see what we could do to reduce our carbon footprint. It was a complete joke. Here a list of some of the "suggestions" that the auditors came up with:
1) Get rid of all the fish tanks throughout our building. Aquariums consume energy. The therapeutic value they provide for our clients was not considered, apparently.
2) Reduce the lighting in employee offices.
3) Get rid of the air conditioning in our server/telecom room. Yes they actually suggested this.
4) Put lockboxes on the thermostats in employee offices and lock them at 78 in the summer and 68 in the winter.
5) Install automatic faucets in employee bathrooms. Evidently we can't be trusted to turn the water off after washing our hands.
In conclusion, all we need to do to reduce our carbon footprint is work in the dark, ditch a part of our program that benefits our clients, sit in uncomfortably warm/cold offices and invent a way for computers to operate without generating heat.
And people wonder why the mainstream regards the green movement with skepticism. Sometimes I think the only way to appease the die hard greens would be for the bulk of humanity to die off and the remainder to go back to a hunter-gather lifestyle.
Because people go to the US mostly for the "branding" that was built over the last century
Yes, that's why my ancestors came here. The "branding". My grandfather often told me stories about how his family would sit around the hearth in Germany and debate which country they should relocate to. Public relations and marketing was a huge factor in this decision. Economic opportunity and personal liberty had nothing to do with it at all.
People don't come here because of the "branding". They come here because the United States was founded by immigrants and is one of a handful of genuinely multi-cultural countries that exist on planet Earth. I can drive across my small city of 50,000 and meet people "fresh off the boat" from areas ranging from Laos to the Ukraine to the former Yugoslavia. I can drive through neighborhoods built by Italian immigrants and their descendants. Ditto for neighborhoods built by Greek, Chinese and German immigrants. My small hometown has at least one each of a Christian Church, Jewish Temple, Islamic Mosque, Sikh Temple and a Hindu Temple.
That's just a sampling of the diversity that you'll find in one pathetically small American city. Visit a large city like New York and you'll find a representative of almost every culture, religion and race from planet Earth. That's why people choose to come here. It's also our greatest advantage and something the rest of the world will never be able to match us on. We do tend to get complacent periodically but sooner or later the sleeping giant wakes up and takes the world by storm. 25 years ago people were predicting that Japan was going to out-compete/out-innovate us and dominate the world. How'd that work out again?
Last but not least: a lot of research is defence-funded. Some do not have problems with that, but Einstein would not have accepted that. Guess where the next Einstein will look for a position?
And yet, amazingly enough, Einstein decided to come here. He even wrote a letter to FDR encouraging him to undertake the development of a weapon of mass destruction. You may not like the fact that America spends so much money on defense but when the chips are down you have no problems begging us to come and save your sorry ass.
America wasn't an interventionist power until the rest of the free world got clobbered twice in the span of twenty years by aggressive non-free countries. Would it surprise you to learn that at the start of WW2 our Army was smaller than Portugal's? We were quite content to remain out of your affairs until it became apparent that you couldn't save yourself and we'd wind up fighting your enemies sooner or later anyway. Might as well fight them on your soil instead of ours if the conflict is inevitable.
I'll tell you a secret: America goes from Canada to Argentina. The US are not America, whatever your language's customs may be. I was specifically restricting my focus to the US using an unusual word to avoid implying that non-US Americans do not already have to learn language at school
Take your geography lesson and shove it up your ass. Believe it or not but I am aware of the geography of the western hemisphere. Are you aware of the fact that the commonly accepted adjective to describe a citizen of the United States in the English language is American? Are you aware of the fact that the full name of my country is the United States of America?
The use of the "word" US'ian is intended as nothing more than a way to piss off Americans and manufacture an issue where none exists. Ireland is part of the British Isles but I don't hear anybody demanding that the British call themselves "UK'ians". Interesting bit of hypocrisy, isn't it?
WW2 was the last time the Americans actually did defend (although that too is debatable). All the other wars were the Americans forcing their view on other people.
Yeah, one only has to look at the difference between Pyongyang and Seoul to realize how horrible it is when Americans "force" our view on other people.
We should withdraw from every foreign alliance, disband the bulk of our standing Army and go back to being a neutral power willing to trade with everybody. Our nuclear deterrent and armed population should be sufficient to discourage any direct attacks on our country.
Only if your point is to confirm that the GP was correct. You seem to have left Congress out of your particular blame game. Any reason why?
You are wasting your time. "We inherited this problem because of the stupidity of the previous administration!" is the get out of jail free card for Democratic partisans. Nothing you say is going to convince them otherwise. Everything that's currently wrong in Washington is the fault of George W. Bush. I doubt they'd believe otherwise even if they heard it from someone on MSNBC.
That said, it makes complete sense to get the CO2 emissions under control
How do you purpose to do that without forcing China and India to halt their development at gunpoint? If global warming is primarily man made then we are already fucked. The West could cut our standard of living to a stone age level and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in the end.
About the only technology that could make a meaningful difference in the end is nuclear and we've largely abandoned it because of a vocal minority of people scared by anything with the word "nuclear" in the title. The renewables that are currently in production don't scale well and will never be able to displace coal and nuclear for the base load.
And since US courts require witnesses to swear at the bible
No they don't. You are free to affirm rather than swear an oath. I did this when I had the "privilege" of testifying in front of a Grand Jury once upon a time.
Thanks for the lecture on morality :)
It can't be that hard.
That depends on the sites you go to doesn't it? If your fetishes lie with something easy to spell and remember (grannysex) then it's probably easy to memorize the urls. If they lie with something harder to spell (bukkake, yes I had to look it up) or a strange combination of fetishes (bukkaking russian granny foot sex hairy gang bangs) they might be a little bit harder to memorize ;)
It would be political suicide to try to curtail the HRA
Given the number of other rights willingly surrendered by the good people of the British Isles I'm not sure that I believe it would be political suicide to go after the HRA. They've willingly surrendered the right to remain silent, the right against self incrimination and the right to keep and bear arms. Why is the HRA sacrosanct if those rights aren't?
One of the nice things about handguns is they are small enough to store in an unobtrusive lock box. Most of them will allow you to keep the handgun in a ready state and can be opened in seconds. Handguns don't give you the stopping power of the shotgun but it's harder to keep the shotgun in a ready state if you have kids to worry about.
We don't have a written Constitution like the US, which can be amended as the government wants if it can get a supermajority in Congress and supermajority of the States
Fixed that for you.
surrounding the UK Parliament and saying, "Comply or else."
Or else what?
While it's true that there is no supra-legal constitution equivalent in the UK (the Human Rights Act is legislated), the ammendability of the US constitution makes them both mutable in practice. That said, the real-politik of the situation is that you can't just go rewriting the HRA or constitution willy-nilly.
Umm, it's a bit harder to pass an amendment to the US Constitution than it is to pass an Act of Parliament.
and holding manufacturers of all tools responsible for irresponsible misuse
I think that's a fabulous idea. Let's start by suing CmdrTaco because of the GNAA and all the morons who responded to your post with indignation :)
This includes, removing the firing pin, removing all ammunition, locking the firearm in a secure location, and storing the firing pin and ammunition in seperate locations from the firearm (also under lock and key).
"Hang on a second Mr. Murderer, I need to retrieve my gun from the first safe, my firing pin from the second safe and get my ammo out of the third safe. Can you continue the attempt to kill me after I've finished with these tasks?"
Seriously, any one of the items you listed would be sufficient to secure a firearm. No need to get carried away. You should also educate your children on what to do if they encounter an unsecured firearm. Your scheme does nothing to protect them if they wind up at a friends house whose parents aren't as diligent as you are.
I think it is quite obvious that what I said is true.
No, it's only "quite obvious" to you. But then you've already closed your mind to ideas that compete with your world view so I'm not really surprised.
There is a difference between disagreement and one person being blatantly ignorant.
Yep. You are demonstrating it quite well :)
Yes, it is. Only a Hippie Liberal douche flower child would claim that it isn't. Even the UN Charter acknowledges that war is justifiable in certain instances.
I find it interesting that the preamble of the constitution says that the right to life is unalienable, but you say that " That's not a right. You have the right to due process before the state deprives you of life". I am not a constitutional scholar, but it certainly sounds to me that the right to life is inalienable.
Well for starters, that isn't the preamble of the constitution that you quoted. It's the American Declaration of Independence. It also says that liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights but that doesn't stop us from locking up criminals. You don't have to be a constitutional scholar to understand it either, just read the plain text of the 5th amendment to the US Constitution. Here's the relevant part: "nor shall any person ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
but locking someone up for life, certainly seems like a workable alternative to killing them
Why? Because it's more humane? What's humane about being locked in an 8 foot by 10 foot room for the rest of your natural life? If you've committed egregious crimes then I really don't see why society can't put you out of our collective misery. Why should society have to expend limited resources to support someone who murdered/raped innocent people or whom betrayed that society (treason/espionage) and placed every member of it in harms way?
Personally I'd say that it's better to keep a million killers alive for 100+ years than it is to execute an innocent man - for I may be that innocent man.
If you are that innocent man are you seriously going to tell me that being locked in a cell for the rest of your life is preferable to death? Innocent people being convicted of crimes is a horrible outcome regardless of what the punishment is. If I was in that situation I'd rather be dead than live the rest of my life clinging to the hope that the person who actually committed the crime comes clean. I'd probably off myself after my appeals were exhausted.
But that also makes me a better judge of what is reasonable - it hasn't happened to me, and thus I am less biased and blood thirsty
Why do you assume that capital punishment has anything to do with being blood thirsty?
you really do need to give them a kick in the groin when they fail to realise that their idea of 'nirvana' isn't a good fit, let alone a perfect one for everybody else.
I never claimed that our system is a good fit for everybody else. This discussion started when some naive individual suggested that one world government would represent an improvement over the current system. If your issue is with one size fits all solutions then I would think that you would stand with me in opposition to this ridiculous idea.
My own personal pet peeve with US society, is that I find it very ironic that a country that enshrines into its constitution that church and state must be kept 100% separate, and does a horrible job of it compared to a country like Denmark, that has a state religion enshrined into its constitution.
Why do you think we do a horrible job? Because some politicians wear their religion on their sleeve? So what? The US goes so far as to allow people like Tom Cruise to freely practice his religion of choice. Many European countries (Germany, France) fail miserably on this point. Why aren't you criticizing them as well?
Actually, my biggest pet peeve with US society is that instead of having a media that is eternally in opposition of the government, you have one that is essentially a propaganda machine for the parties. Fox does the better job (I think the opposing 'team' there would be MSNBC),
Fox and MSNBC aren't propaganda machines. They are echo chambers that have found i