ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That's all well and good, but the ACLU only defends most of the freedoms protected in the Bill of Rights; they deride and ignore the 2nd amendment. And in regards to the 2nd amendment, Obama is very much anti-rights.
I may vote for Obama anyway, with the hope that the Supreme Court will save the 2nd, and Obama as president may save the 4th...
You don't convince somebody to keep letting you tie them up by hurting them so badly they never want to do it again.
Certainly that's true for healthy individuals, but I suspect there are plenty of people with co-dependent personalities who would likely do just that. How many battered women keep going back to an abusive boyfriend or husband, even to the point of making excuses for his behavior?
During reentry the temperature would get so high that the hydrazine would boil
That's almost certainly not true. When meteors hit the ground they're cold, because atmospheric friction ablates them at a rate faster than thermal conduction can transfer heat to the interior.
In other words, the tank outer layers may not have survived re-entry, but it's still entirely plausible that a chunk of hydrazine ice would have hit the ground.
the 2nd amendment clearly states "Congress shall make no law." Actually, it says "the right of the people... shall not be infringed" -- which, IMO, is a much stronger statement than "Congress shall make no law."
I keep wondering if any of the candidates, R or D, understand the Bill of Rights... aside from Paul, who obviously does and therefore has no chance.
Redshift (z) is a unitless ratio. It used as a (nonlinear) measure of distance in extra-galactic astronomy and cosmology.
The quantity 1+z is the ratio of the scale of the universe now to the scale of the universe at that redshift. Our local area (Milky Way galaxy) corresponds to z=0. So, for example, the universe was 7 times smaller at z=6, and the density of intergalactic gas is proportional to (1+z)^3.
Artists, musicians, filmmakers and performers have a right to profit from their creations.
Be careful here... that's the kind of thinking that got the US into a mess with copyright laws. Copyright grants a limited monopoly, but that's not a right to a profit.
Habeas Corpus is fine, provided you're a citizen (arguably, if you're not a citizen, you're not entitled to said rights).
No, that's not even remotely arguable. In what civilized society is it acceptable for the government to have the power to detain or arrest someone -- even a non-citizen -- with no possible recourse to challenge the legitimacy of that arrest?
Habeas is a fundamental right of all people.
Luckily, so far the Supreme Court seems to agree with me on this, though we'll soon see if that continues...
The rights written in the Bill of Rights apply to all humans, and are not granted by the Constitution. As much as I agree with your sentiment of principle, SCOTUS does not agree. For example, consider the 2nd amendment, which is only allowed to citizens and permanent residents (who hold "green cards"). Aliens who do not hold a green card are denied 2nd amendment rights.
I'm a moderately experienced amateur astronomer, and a professional astrophysicist. I have a nice TMB 105 apochromatic refractor, and I would never recommend one to a beginner. Good apo refractors have impeccable quality, but they are not cost-effective, unlike a halfway decent 10" Newtonian (which will cost 1/4 as much, yet give far superior views).
Aperture is king. Aperture wins. You can never get enough aperture
My advice is to forget about astrophotography for the moment. Do not get a DSLR camera -- you will want a dedicated astro-camera with a cooled CCD sensor. You will also want a good equatorial mount (Losmandy, Astro-physics, or similar) which will cost at least ~$2000. Deep-sky astrophotography is expensive and for the moment, you're better served with a good visual instrument to get you started. (If you just want to take images of the moon and planets, you can get by with a webcam and a lower cost equatorial mount.)
With a $1k budget, you won't be able to do deep-sky astrophotography. Given your budget, the economics of astro-imaging, and the difficulty of putting a large telescope on a quality equatorial mount, your best bet is to forego imaging until you can save a substantially larger amount of money. In the meantime, get yourself a 10" or larger Dobsonian-mounted Newtonian. They may look cheap, but you will appreciate the aperture when viewing deep-sky objects.
What nonsense. The Prius battery is designed to last the lifetime of the car. It does not have to be replaced "every 2-5 years."
The on-board computer regulates the battery's charge, and never allows it to go below 40% or over 80%. So it is never deep-cycled. Toyota's testing showed no significant degradation after 150,000 miles. Prius have been driven over 200,000 miles in service with taxi fleets with no battery problems.
Now lithium batteries are a different story... which is why no current hybrid uses lithium batteries.
Ooooh, a dangerous heavy metal like Cadmium and Mercury? Not hardly; Ni has a lower atomic weight than copper and zinc. And it's not nearly as toxic as (for example) mercury.
Manufacturing the batteries and disposing of them when they wear out after five years or so is an ecological nightmare.
Hardly... at least insofar as the Prius is concerned. Its batteries are recyclable, and NiMH isn't toxic or dangerous like lead-acid or lithium anyway. Furthermore, the batteries should last the life of the vehicle; testing showed no measurable degradation after 150,000 miles.
Your an idiot if you think... You're really naive if you think... Learn some history... you used a stupid example... It just sounds like you don't know what your talking about...
First: lose the attitude. You don't even understand what I've written, yet you assume an extraordinarily arrogant tone. I might be more inclined to oblige you with a nice clarification if you don't call me an idiot every other sentence.
Unions during the Gilded Age? WTF?
I didn't specify a time period. I said those problems (low wages and poor working conditions) were solved by trade unions and legislation, and the solutions had essentially nothing to do with the presence of an income tax. You can have trade unions without an income tax.
The "[the Gilded Age] sounds good to me" comment is what I am aiming at.
I never said that, and this is the crux of our disagreement. You are assigning to me opinions which I do not hold. Just because there were certain aspects of 19th century America which I find desirable does not imply that I wish for a return to the 19th century. You are reading things into my posts which I did not, in fact, write; and then you insult my intelligence as a result of your imperfect reading comprehension. Please stop.
I am going to ask you to articulate your point again. As I understand, your comment on no social security implies that a small government is less restrictive in that it doesn't take your money away in form of taxes. Thus in effect you get more liberty. No how is an argument like that related to the American government at the turn of the century? Do you know anything about that time period?
I think the connection is rather obvious. This discussion was started by a comment about how taxes are necessary to the structure of society. I brought up the 19th century as an example of how the US went without income taxes for a protracted period of time. Since that time, liberty has been curtailed somewhat, though the standards of living have greatly increased. But I don't think there is a strongly causal relationship between the expanding economy and decreasing liberty in the US.
In short, I don't like our decades-long trend toward a more authoritarian federal government. (And I'm not a Libertarian, BTW... I tend toward the liberal-libertarian end of the political spectrum.)
Do you realize that for the vast majority of the population the income tax was a non-issue? The vast majority of the population was so dirt poor that there would be no liberation effect from not having to pay income taxes. The implications of having an income tax during that period where completely different then what they are now.
Well for one thing, the initial income tax in the US was 3% for annual income over $600 (about $10,000 in today's money). That would have minimal effect on rich and poor alike; it's a hell of a difference from the ~20% to 30% that most people pay today.
Thank you for stating a fact! Now how does this prove your theory that the military industrial-complex is solely a product of a large government. Have you considered why it expanded in the 20th century? Have you heard of communism? The cold war? WW1 and WW2? You think a nano-government would continue to pursue a isolationist policy with Hitler on the verge of destroying one of America's most crucial markets (let alone Hitler's dislike of international trade and pursuit of self sufficiency)? You think a nano-goverment would ignore communism, something that aims to destroy the American economic system? What about the rise imperialist policy? And you still haven't addressed technology. You do understand that the expenses involved in maintaining a few thousands soldiers on horseback differs developing a stealth fighter?
Ah, I see now... you're arguing against a political ideology, rather than my commen
Your an idiot if you think... Oh yes, let's construct a series of ridiculous straw-man arguments and claim I'm an idiot for believeing them. How insightful.
Atrocious working conditions were dealt with through unions and legislation. I don't see a direct relationship between that and an income tax.
The US military was rather small in the 1800's up until the Civil War... look at the Mexican-American war, where the US army had a few thousand soldiers (still sufficient for us to take Mexico City). The military and supporting industry expanded tremendously in the 20th century.
You think there would be no war on drugs with limited government? Once upon a time, even cocaine was legal in this country. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good idea, mind you. My problem with the war on drugs isn't about socialism, or (strictly speaking) social conservatism -- it's about authoritarianism. The federal government seized the power to declare posession of a substance illegal... where did it get that power? A constitutional amendment was required for prohibition, but now the government conveniently ignores that fact thanks to a heinous misinterpretation of the interstate commerce clause.
You're really naive if you think that the war of terror is simply product of an expanded bureaucracy. I never said that it was...
There of course was plenty of land to sell (as we moved those pesky Injun's out of the way). Unfortunately, invasion and genocide are frowned upon these days, well if it takes longer than 3 years. Ahem. I think you mean "give away." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Act
You're kidding, right? So I wonder, how could the federal government possibly have managed before 1913? Until the 16th amendment was ratified, the US federal government did not have the power to levy an income tax. (Of course, the federal government did collect an income tax from 1861 until 1894, when a court ruled the practice unconstitutional.)
This country operated without an income tax for many years. Of course, there was no social security, no giant military-industrial complex, and no "wars" on drugs or terror. Hm, actually that sounds pretty good to me...
First, the sweetener was not aspartame (though this may well be irrelevant).
Second, the amount injected into the rats was 150 mg/kg, which roughly doubled the expressed insulin levels. That is roughly (to witin a factor of a few) the amount of sweetener in a typical 12-oz soft drink... and humans typically mass hundreds of kg. So it's not clear that there is a significant effect of diet soft drinks on insulin levels in humans.
I have a 2005 Prius, which is EPA rated at 51 hwy, 60 city.
In actual driving, I get lower mileage around town... but that is probably not a fair representation, since I live in a small town and my driving distances are typically very short. The engine never gets fully warmed up. When I lived in California, the heavy traffic and longer drives often left me with much higher mileage (70 mpg in heavy traffic!).
Mostly I do highway driving, where I often get 53 mpg if I drive 65 mph. If I slow down to 55 mph, I can get 63 mpg.
I love my Prius... and the EPA is nuts for downgrading the official mileage.
Err.... you might want to check your facts; I mean, your assumptions. Nowhere did I mention US towns. Nowhere did I say that you mentioned US towns.
Not only that, but you manage to selectively assume causation when it suits you, and throw it out when it doesn't. Even if the argument used is exactly the same as yours, just with different data. I assumed no causation at all in that post. Causation can be observed, however.
At VT, citizens are not permitted to carry weapons for self-defense. So when a madman starts shooting people, the students have to call the police for protection (and the police did not stop the shooter). Look carefully here: the students are disarmed, so for protection the have to call upon other armed people (police). Result: 32 people were killed by a single student with a handgun.
This happened in a place where guns are already illegal, and indeed there is an obvious causal connection between the inability of the students to defend themselves, and the large number of casualties. I don't see how further prohibitions will help. (And when has a prohibition ever actually worked? Alcohol prohibition didn't work. The "war on drugs" hasn't worked.)
Wow. I haven't seen any cogent argument so far that supports the theory that more weapons in the population equals more safety. It's either "it's obvious, stupid!", uses anecdotes in place of actual data, or uses assumptions that are as unsupported as anything advanced by the gun-control people. You're not looking, then: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=231053&cid=187 55651
You'll see that the crime rate is, in fact, higher in urban areas where fewer people own guns, and the gun laws are more restrictive. Is this a causal connection? Maybe, maybe not... but in the VT case, there is an obvious causal connection. People who cannot defend themselves will be killed by armed violent madmen. And there is no reliable way to disarm such people.
There were a total of 765 homicides in England and Wales during the year 2005-2006, which have a combined population of around 54 million. This includes the 52 who were killed in the 7th July bombings. There are several US cities with populations that are a small fraction of this with significantly higher homicide figures for the same period. Ok, that's a homicide rate of 1.4 per 100,000. According to the FBI (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_02.html the homicide rate in the US for 2005 was 5.6 per 100,000. Yes, there is a difference, but it's not nearly as large as some people here suggest (mostly because they only compare homicides where guns are used).
I imagine part of the difference in the homicide rate is due to other social factors, too. (For example, violence is not as acceptable or common on TV in Europe.)
Your arguments are preposterous and irrational. First, yes... you have no evidence. Yes, the US appears to have more school shootings than Europe (though I am not particularly familiar with any crime statistics regarding Europe). And gun ownership is somewhat more prevalent in the US. However, that correlation does not mean that the higher rate of mass shootings in the US is due to higher gun ownership. Correlation is not causation.
Furthermore, some parts of Europe have high gun ownership... Switzerland, and I think Norway... and low incidence of shootings. That suggests that the presence of guns alone is not a predictor of the gun-related crime rate.
I never made the first assumption. Outlawing guns would simple mean there are less guns lying around for eight-year old kids and mentally unstable, AND for criminals. They can still get guns illegally, but at least it means HAVING a gun is illegal, not just shooting people with it. Why should it be illegal to possess a gun? Possession alone does no harm.
I think it's interesting that so many of the people with your position have no knowledge of firearms whatsoever. It's like the ignorant are trying to teach the educated.
Outlawing guns would prevent previously law-abiding citizens from becoming murderers. So, you're saying that guns cause people to become murderers? And that, with the absence of firearms, the murder rate would be zero?
In that case, I imagine you must be terrified of police.
I can't see why the elderly, people who are small, physically weak, or disabled should need firearms to protect themselves. If they're afraid (with reason) that something bad is going to happen, there are other means of protection that are probably less dangerous than possessing a gun. Why should people not have the means or right to protect themselves? No society is perfectly safe. The police can not protect everyone, and indeed have no duty to protect anyone. Look at the events at Virginia Tech... all these people died because school policy disarmed everyone... except someone who was willing to disregard that policy. The students and faculty had no means to protect themselves. Just like Columbine, the police were called yet the police did stop the violence... the shooter did that, by killing himself.
You envision a society where everyone is forced to be a victim. I do not wish to, and will not, live in such a society.
Again, you're demonstrably wrong. I've lived in several large cities in the US. None were particularly civil or nice places. And, correlation does not imply causation. Just because you lived in nice places where most people did not have guns does not mean that they were nice because people didn't have guns.
In colonial times, everyone did not have a gun. In fact, most people in the militia did not have personal firearms, especially poor people. There were community stores for militia purposes. This is well documented.
You'd be surprised at how many people have concealed carry permits where it's allowed. The truth is, you don't know if a person is carrying a gun, because they are small and easily concealed.
Slashdot Mirror
That's all well and good, but the ACLU only defends most of the freedoms protected in the Bill of Rights; they deride and ignore the 2nd amendment. And in regards to the 2nd amendment, Obama is very much anti-rights. I may vote for Obama anyway, with the hope that the Supreme Court will save the 2nd, and Obama as president may save the 4th...
You don't convince somebody to keep letting you tie them up by hurting them so badly they never want to do it again.
Certainly that's true for healthy individuals, but I suspect there are plenty of people with co-dependent personalities who would likely do just that. How many battered women keep going back to an abusive boyfriend or husband, even to the point of making excuses for his behavior?
During reentry the temperature would get so high that the hydrazine would boil
That's almost certainly not true. When meteors hit the ground they're cold, because atmospheric friction ablates them at a rate faster than thermal conduction can transfer heat to the interior.
In other words, the tank outer layers may not have survived re-entry, but it's still entirely plausible that a chunk of hydrazine ice would have hit the ground.
Redshift (z) is a unitless ratio. It used as a (nonlinear) measure of distance in extra-galactic astronomy and cosmology.
The quantity 1+z is the ratio of the scale of the universe now to the scale of the universe at that redshift. Our local area (Milky Way galaxy) corresponds to z=0. So, for example, the universe was 7 times smaller at z=6, and the density of intergalactic gas is proportional to (1+z)^3.
Artists, musicians, filmmakers and performers have a right to profit from their creations.
Be careful here... that's the kind of thinking that got the US into a mess with copyright laws. Copyright grants a limited monopoly, but that's not a right to a profit.
Habeas Corpus is fine, provided you're a citizen (arguably, if you're not a citizen, you're not entitled to said rights).
No, that's not even remotely arguable. In what civilized society is it acceptable for the government to have the power to detain or arrest someone -- even a non-citizen -- with no possible recourse to challenge the legitimacy of that arrest?
Habeas is a fundamental right of all people. Luckily, so far the Supreme Court seems to agree with me on this, though we'll soon see if that continues...
Wouldn't the criminal penalties for commercial copyright infringement apply here?
http://www.atf.treas.gov/firearms/faq/faq2.htm#r
The same has been held to be true of 4th amendment rights (albeit the search was in a foreign country... but read the decision): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._v._Verdugo-Urquidez
I'm a moderately experienced amateur astronomer, and a professional astrophysicist. I have a nice TMB 105 apochromatic refractor, and I would never recommend one to a beginner. Good apo refractors have impeccable quality, but they are not cost-effective, unlike a halfway decent 10" Newtonian (which will cost 1/4 as much, yet give far superior views).
Aperture is king. Aperture wins. You can never get enough aperture
My advice is to forget about astrophotography for the moment. Do not get a DSLR camera -- you will want a dedicated astro-camera with a cooled CCD sensor. You will also want a good equatorial mount (Losmandy, Astro-physics, or similar) which will cost at least ~$2000. Deep-sky astrophotography is expensive and for the moment, you're better served with a good visual instrument to get you started. (If you just want to take images of the moon and planets, you can get by with a webcam and a lower cost equatorial mount.)
With a $1k budget, you won't be able to do deep-sky astrophotography. Given your budget, the economics of astro-imaging, and the difficulty of putting a large telescope on a quality equatorial mount, your best bet is to forego imaging until you can save a substantially larger amount of money. In the meantime, get yourself a 10" or larger Dobsonian-mounted Newtonian. They may look cheap, but you will appreciate the aperture when viewing deep-sky objects.
Oh, and join a local astronomy club if you can.
What nonsense. The Prius battery is designed to last the lifetime of the car. It does not have to be replaced "every 2-5 years."
The on-board computer regulates the battery's charge, and never allows it to go below 40% or over 80%. So it is never deep-cycled. Toyota's testing showed no significant degradation after 150,000 miles. Prius have been driven over 200,000 miles in service with taxi fleets with no battery problems.
Now lithium batteries are a different story... which is why no current hybrid uses lithium batteries.
Nickel is a heavy metal
Ooooh, a dangerous heavy metal like Cadmium and Mercury? Not hardly; Ni has a lower atomic weight than copper and zinc. And it's not nearly as toxic as (for example) mercury.
Manufacturing the batteries and disposing of them when they wear out after five years or so is an ecological nightmare. Hardly... at least insofar as the Prius is concerned. Its batteries are recyclable, and NiMH isn't toxic or dangerous like lead-acid or lithium anyway. Furthermore, the batteries should last the life of the vehicle; testing showed no measurable degradation after 150,000 miles.
Your an idiot if you think ... You're really naive if you think ... Learn some history ... you used a stupid example ... It just sounds like you don't know what your talking about ...
First: lose the attitude. You don't even understand what I've written, yet you assume an extraordinarily arrogant tone. I might be more inclined to oblige you with a nice clarification if you don't call me an idiot every other sentence.
Unions during the Gilded Age? WTF?
I didn't specify a time period. I said those problems (low wages and poor working conditions) were solved by trade unions and legislation, and the solutions had essentially nothing to do with the presence of an income tax. You can have trade unions without an income tax.
The "[the Gilded Age] sounds good to me" comment is what I am aiming at.
I never said that, and this is the crux of our disagreement. You are assigning to me opinions which I do not hold. Just because there were certain aspects of 19th century America which I find desirable does not imply that I wish for a return to the 19th century. You are reading things into my posts which I did not, in fact, write; and then you insult my intelligence as a result of your imperfect reading comprehension. Please stop.
I am going to ask you to articulate your point again. As I understand, your comment on no social security implies that a small government is less restrictive in that it doesn't take your money away in form of taxes. Thus in effect you get more liberty. No how is an argument like that related to the American government at the turn of the century? Do you know anything about that time period?
I think the connection is rather obvious. This discussion was started by a comment about how taxes are necessary to the structure of society. I brought up the 19th century as an example of how the US went without income taxes for a protracted period of time. Since that time, liberty has been curtailed somewhat, though the standards of living have greatly increased. But I don't think there is a strongly causal relationship between the expanding economy and decreasing liberty in the US.
In short, I don't like our decades-long trend toward a more authoritarian federal government. (And I'm not a Libertarian, BTW... I tend toward the liberal-libertarian end of the political spectrum.)
Do you realize that for the vast majority of the population the income tax was a non-issue? The vast majority of the population was so dirt poor that there would be no liberation effect from not having to pay income taxes. The implications of having an income tax during that period where completely different then what they are now.
Well for one thing, the initial income tax in the US was 3% for annual income over $600 (about $10,000 in today's money). That would have minimal effect on rich and poor alike; it's a hell of a difference from the ~20% to 30% that most people pay today.
Thank you for stating a fact! Now how does this prove your theory that the military industrial-complex is solely a product of a large government. Have you considered why it expanded in the 20th century? Have you heard of communism? The cold war? WW1 and WW2? You think a nano-government would continue to pursue a isolationist policy with Hitler on the verge of destroying one of America's most crucial markets (let alone Hitler's dislike of international trade and pursuit of self sufficiency)? You think a nano-goverment would ignore communism, something that aims to destroy the American economic system? What about the rise imperialist policy? And you still haven't addressed technology. You do understand that the expenses involved in maintaining a few thousands soldiers on horseback differs developing a stealth fighter?
Ah, I see now... you're arguing against a political ideology, rather than my commen
The US military was rather small in the 1800's up until the Civil War... look at the Mexican-American war, where the US army had a few thousand soldiers (still sufficient for us to take Mexico City). The military and supporting industry expanded tremendously in the 20th century. You think there would be no war on drugs with limited government? Once upon a time, even cocaine was legal in this country. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good idea, mind you. My problem with the war on drugs isn't about socialism, or (strictly speaking) social conservatism -- it's about authoritarianism. The federal government seized the power to declare posession of a substance illegal... where did it get that power? A constitutional amendment was required for prohibition, but now the government conveniently ignores that fact thanks to a heinous misinterpretation of the interstate commerce clause. You're really naive if you think that the war of terror is simply product of an expanded bureaucracy. I never said that it was...
You're kidding, right? So I wonder, how could the federal government possibly have managed before 1913? Until the 16th amendment was ratified, the US federal government did not have the power to levy an income tax. (Of course, the federal government did collect an income tax from 1861 until 1894, when a court ruled the practice unconstitutional.)
This country operated without an income tax for many years. Of course, there was no social security, no giant military-industrial complex, and no "wars" on drugs or terror. Hm, actually that sounds pretty good to me...
Two comments on that abstract...
First, the sweetener was not aspartame (though this may well be irrelevant).
Second, the amount injected into the rats was 150 mg/kg, which roughly doubled the expressed insulin levels. That is roughly (to witin a factor of a few) the amount of sweetener in a typical 12-oz soft drink... and humans typically mass hundreds of kg. So it's not clear that there is a significant effect of diet soft drinks on insulin levels in humans.
I have a 2005 Prius, which is EPA rated at 51 hwy, 60 city.
In actual driving, I get lower mileage around town... but that is probably not a fair representation, since I live in a small town and my driving distances are typically very short. The engine never gets fully warmed up. When I lived in California, the heavy traffic and longer drives often left me with much higher mileage (70 mpg in heavy traffic!).
Mostly I do highway driving, where I often get 53 mpg if I drive 65 mph. If I slow down to 55 mph, I can get 63 mpg.
I love my Prius... and the EPA is nuts for downgrading the official mileage.
Welcome to Soviet America.
At VT, citizens are not permitted to carry weapons for self-defense. So when a madman starts shooting people, the students have to call the police for protection (and the police did not stop the shooter). Look carefully here: the students are disarmed, so for protection the have to call upon other armed people (police). Result: 32 people were killed by a single student with a handgun.
This happened in a place where guns are already illegal, and indeed there is an obvious causal connection between the inability of the students to defend themselves, and the large number of casualties. I don't see how further prohibitions will help. (And when has a prohibition ever actually worked? Alcohol prohibition didn't work. The "war on drugs" hasn't worked.) Wow. I haven't seen any cogent argument so far that supports the theory that more weapons in the population equals more safety. It's either "it's obvious, stupid!", uses anecdotes in place of actual data, or uses assumptions that are as unsupported as anything advanced by the gun-control people. You're not looking, then: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=231053&cid=18
Check out the FBI crime statistics here: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offenses/standard_l
You'll see that the crime rate is, in fact, higher in urban areas where fewer people own guns, and the gun laws are more restrictive. Is this a causal connection? Maybe, maybe not... but in the VT case, there is an obvious causal connection. People who cannot defend themselves will be killed by armed violent madmen. And there is no reliable way to disarm such people.
I imagine part of the difference in the homicide rate is due to other social factors, too. (For example, violence is not as acceptable or common on TV in Europe.)
Furthermore, some parts of Europe have high gun ownership... Switzerland, and I think Norway... and low incidence of shootings. That suggests that the presence of guns alone is not a predictor of the gun-related crime rate. I never made the first assumption. Outlawing guns would simple mean there are less guns lying around for eight-year old kids and mentally unstable, AND for criminals. They can still get guns illegally, but at least it means HAVING a gun is illegal, not just shooting people with it. Why should it be illegal to possess a gun? Possession alone does no harm.
I think it's interesting that so many of the people with your position have no knowledge of firearms whatsoever. It's like the ignorant are trying to teach the educated. Outlawing guns would prevent previously law-abiding citizens from becoming murderers. So, you're saying that guns cause people to become murderers? And that, with the absence of firearms, the murder rate would be zero?
In that case, I imagine you must be terrified of police.
I can't see why the elderly, people who are small, physically weak, or disabled should need firearms to protect themselves. If they're afraid (with reason) that something bad is going to happen, there are other means of protection that are probably less dangerous than possessing a gun. Why should people not have the means or right to protect themselves? No society is perfectly safe. The police can not protect everyone, and indeed have no duty to protect anyone. Look at the events at Virginia Tech... all these people died because school policy disarmed everyone... except someone who was willing to disregard that policy. The students and faculty had no means to protect themselves. Just like Columbine, the police were called yet the police did stop the violence... the shooter did that, by killing himself.
You envision a society where everyone is forced to be a victim. I do not wish to, and will not, live in such a society.
Again, you're demonstrably wrong. I've lived in several large cities in the US. None were particularly civil or nice places. And, correlation does not imply causation. Just because you lived in nice places where most people did not have guns does not mean that they were nice because people didn't have guns. In colonial times, everyone did not have a gun. In fact, most people in the militia did not have personal firearms, especially poor people. There were community stores for militia purposes. This is well documented. You'd be surprised at how many people have concealed carry permits where it's allowed. The truth is, you don't know if a person is carrying a gun, because they are small and easily concealed.