^ dude, how thick are you? even with one million gun owners, that's fucking ridiculous. The Taliban may number 35,000 but it's all in one CRAZY CONCENTRATED AREA. The US is fucking huge. 1 million spread across 3000 miles, versus, let's say, the average state size that is the Taliban coverage area, is ludicrous.

i'm drunk as fuck right now and won't bothered to look up how big their coverage is, versus the average state size, but I guaran-fucking-tee you that the US has less "militant gun owners" in one concentrated area than them. Now, if those one million people were all located in, let's say, Ohio, and all had the same agenda AND political background, it would pose a threat.

...and they were actually willing to die for their firearms even seeing their neighbors being bombed, machinegunned, or burned to death, sure, but they probably wouldn't after the first 500 were killed for their guns on TV. Afghans, on the other hand, are not bothered by the prospect of death.

This analogy is stupid. No matter how hard these little chartonhestons claim to die for their guns, there are probably a couple of hundreds of those willing to go all the way if the going gets tough, instead of nearly 100% of the Taliban.

PhilosophicalFrog, one million divided into 50 states would average 20 000 American Taliban per state, not that far away from the quoted Taliban concentration. The problem is that the number of such gun nuts is probably an overestimate with a factor of something between 1000 and 10 000.

Fair enough on the numbers, Nappy. So I'll agree with you there. But, as you say, to give the average American "gun nut" half the fighting willpower of a Taliban soldier is philosophically bunk, let alone the fact that his statistics seem largely made up.

I think mental health is a part of it but what are pharmaceuticals going to do about it? I wouldn't trust someone taking drugs for their condition with a gun in their hands. But I do think that a mental health/background check for gun ownership is a totally rational thing.

I don't think talking about who is more willing to go gun crazy - American gun nuts or the taliban - is useful or will get us anywhere. It's ridiculously arbitrary and impossible to test.

I just wanted to share this link which I read/watched...for those who missed it on CNN, here it is:
http://entertainment.time.com/2013/01/0 ... rs-morgan/

Prima facie, Alex Jones made himself out to be quite an idiot.

Just about to post that. Really embarrassing that he acted that way especially towards the end. I seriously cannot get people like him. Cannot have a proper debate and yet bring up irrelevant factoids that are generally useless. (Cannot stand people who live behind statistics)

That clip had that train wreck feel to it. It was incredibly uncomfortable and you really didn't want to watch it, but you're fixated on it.

The sad part is that there will still be people that claim that Jones doing that was Piers's fault and that Jones wasn't in the wrong at all. Idiots.

^ Agree with you that it was quite uncomfortable watching the show.

Piers has been known to take up such confrontations and I think he made a really smart move by getting Jones on his show. In a way, it makes him the 'bigger' person compared to Alex Jones. And Jones certainly didn't help himself much by spewing most of those so called FBI statistics, some of which were not so relevant.

Verdict - Jones had 100k odd people sign that petition to deport Piers, whereas Piers exposed Jones for the idiot that he is to millions and millions of viewers on the tv (and now on the internet). No brainer really. I am not particularly fond of Piers and his show, but good for him.

The argument that I cannot understand by second amendment activists is that we have guns to protect ourselves from the government not for fishing or hunting (because you had to fish/hunt back then to live). However they are saying "The government is stockpiling weapons and are trying to take them away from us". I think the US government has been stockpiling since the cold war and even if the US government didn't stockpile weapons, I don't think it would take much to take out the untrained and poorly equipped US citizen. You can have all the semi-automatic rifles you want but that isn't going to stop a tank.

I could be wrong.

I just want to state that Piers Morgan is British and his view towards guns is probably very influenced by that government's stance on gun control and gun rights.

Alex Jones came off like an idiot in this video.

...

Don't quite agree with you there, Orion. Anywho, people are all over the news about this...mocking it of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm7dZi_DFZQ

Those who oppose stricter gun control are quick to point out that when harsher gun laws are set in place across then gun-related crimes increase. But America already has much higher rates of gun related homicides and suicides than other developed countries. I'm wondering that the reason gun crimes go up is because we already have such a high gun ownership rate here than any other developed countries. For example, when making DC a gun free zone, it makes law-abiding citizens not carry guns while criminals still have easy access to guns and carry them into these zones regardless of the laws. While in say, England, criminals have a much harder time even obtaining guns because there aren't so many in houses or for sale in stores.

That is to say, making stricter gun laws NOW makes crime go up, but in countries where there aren't guns laying around it's perfectly fine cause there's no access to them anyway. Just a thought.

X related crimes increase when X related actions become a crime. Mind blown.

Alex Jones comes off like an idiot everywhere. Him shouting at Piers Morgan and then challenging Morgan to a brawl shines more light on his universal idiocy and that he's a monumental piece of trash. You don't win a debate by screaming at your opponent for ten minutes and not letting them respond, silly Jonesy.

Outlawing a legitimate means to protect oneself such as carrying a concealed weapon is not an effective solution when there are more guns than people in the country, and illegal handguns are very easy for criminals to acquire. Certainly one can't equate what works for England to what could work in the US - the UK doesn't have a problem like the US-Mexico border, where various estimates guess that between 20 and 30 million pounds of marijuana are smuggled across every year - any teenager in any town in America can acquire marijuana with ease, they can't be far from illegally acquiring a gun. A significant part of sustaining American gun culture is a desire to protect oneself from the widespread crime in the country - violence less often reaches the suburbs, but is very common in urban/poor areas, where law enforcement are unable to effectively handle it. It's a violent culture, that's why our solutions to these problems are the "war on drugs" and the "war on poverty". Not "a helping hand to those in need", we have a war on poverty - what are we going to do, shoot it? These problems both contribute to gun culture as well as violent crime, people want their guns to protect themselves where the government can't.

Unfortunately, it seems that several of the most notable spokesmen for the second amendment these days are raving lunatics, and they don't exactly appeal to reasoning, and they also bundle their views on guns with religious zealotry.

Regarding the DC handgun band, look at crime + murder rates in DC - it went into effect in late 1975 and was struck down in 2008. Crime rates fluctuated and even skyrocketed at points while it was in effect - factors other than the legality of one type of guns were much more significant.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm

I recently saw a youtube video which was set out to prove Piers Morgan wrong on his gun violence facts that he has been repeatedly bringing up. I'm not a huge fan of Piers and I think most of his facts are skewed, but part of this video really bothered me. Anyway, the people in the video found statistics that the United States is ranked 28th in the world in gun murders, and were somehow proud of that number. It was like proving to Piers that the US wasn't number 1 somehow made it better that we are ranked 28th. Regardless of the facts, I think it is pathetic that we are fine being 28th on that list. In a country that is supposedly one of the most developed, I think we should be much further down the list than 28th. I wouldn't say I myself know how we can change that, but sitting back and acting like 28th isn't all that bad is moronic.

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEeuMjG-94A

I don't think Piers Morgan has said the US has the highest gun murder rate but a very large one at about 12,000 people. In order to change it in my opinion we need to change our culture and how we deal with gangs, drug dealers, poverty, etc. since this plays a huge part in it. How we fix this is beyond me since we would have to destroy the demand rather then cut off the supply (which so many people do not understand). We are just a violent nation and I don't see much change happening in the next few years as far as murders goes.

If you'll reread my post I was far from stating we should just ban all guns. I felt it was nonpartisan. And I was indeed referring to the DC handgun ban, acknowledging its results, leading to my point.

What I'm mostly stating is that for countries with much stricter gun control it is perfectly fine for them to have strict gun control, since guns are naturally much more difficult to acquire. Banning guns in a country like the United States is harder because guns are simply everywhere, and still fairly easy to acquire legally. If the ban somehow made a ton of guns magically vanish across the country, that would be a different story, but enforcing magic is pretty difficult to legislate.

Right. You'd think he'd have figured that out by now. Seems he just wants to rattle cages as opposed to .. I dunno .. actually being productive/teaching people something other than reasons to either get pissed or piss themselves.

Alex Jones isn't trying to win a debate, he's trying to mobilize the lunatic fringe by being the human equivalent of a garbage can fire.

Well said Zod. No one gains validity by metaphorically lighting themselves on fire on TV... Jones should have taken a lesson from the Tibetans and physically lit himself on fire to validate his point of view.

Alex Jones doesn't seek validity, he seeks customers in his media business much like every mouthpiece in the information industry.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

WE the people are the well regulated militia. The framers believed that the last check and balance to the government, as well as to fight invasion or insurgency, was to keep the people armed. There are more gun laws in effect than there were 40 years ago but gun violence is up. No ban on guns will keep criminals from getting and using guns....since they usually use illegally acquired weapons anyway.

And....around the same time as the Newtown shooting, a guy went into a school in China and hacked up some students. Shall we ban kitchen knives unless you have a culinary degree?

Kitchen knives weren't designed with the primary purpose to maim and kill. Guns and assault weapons are.

That's a lame argument. PEOPLE kill...not the gun.

Thats a totally legit argument you disposed with a cheap line thats not even yours.

Also, newsflash for you....NONE of the children in China actually died. How many would be dead if the maniac had an assault weapon?

This is an ideological mantra that people keep repeating, with no real basis on any real, credible argument. I wrote earlier on this thread that a change would take a decade or two, but certainly a decision and laws meant to reduce the numbers of guns would have an effect in the longer run. It's just a matter of choice and politics.


Of course.

But most people will find killing a person much harder with a knife than with a gun, both for physical reasons AND for psychological reasons. And, as AM pointed out, the only purpose of guns is to kill and maim, while knives are actually useful for many things, such as cooking and woodworking. Completely banning guns would have little negative effects on the society, while banning knives would stop many industries and activities. Equating the two in this respect is a lame argument, not what AM wrote.

Actually it has much credibility. As said above, there was an absolute ban on ANY firearm within the city of Washington DC for about 3 decades and in that 3 decades the city became the most violent place in the country!



More rhetoric from those who do not understand that guns are a tool only. In a country of 315 million people, the odds that you will need to protect yourself are much greater than in a country less populated than New York City.

I worked in a maximum security state prison as a Corrections Officer for 16 years in Maryland. People will kill by any means necessary.

Well lets just kill those people then cause obviously banning guns doesn't work and they WILL kill so there isn't much we can do about it.



Man that shit was like 300 years ago. It doesn't apply today. Hand guns and assault rifles aren't going to really stop the US Army from just obliterating everyone. You would have to be a moron to say that is a reason to keep our guns.

I don't understand how people can acknowledge the fact that guns are a tool that makes killing easier, and then say that that fact somehow shows that working to eliminate such a tool is a bad idea.

One thing I saw recently was that the Second Amendment wasn't designed to protect the people from the government like most libertarian dreamers tend to believe, but actually the other way around, that it was written to protect the government from the people. The details escape me, but a few aspects I recall was that the government had the will to take away guns from the civilians if they were to become too rowdy and that the government were more afraid of a civilian uprising rather than foreign insurgence, thus leading them to write the Second Amendment into the constitution.

Actually, this was what I watched. There's a lot of good facts in here, but some parts are too leftist and condescending even for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MScVt21VyCQ

Simply trying to take away guns won't work to change the culture of violence in this country. American gun culture is a result of a violent society with an obsession in wielding power. Our drug laws are incredibly ineffective and despite massive, heavily-armed enforcement efforts, we have a drug trade that handles $300-400b per year. Our response is called the "war on drugs". We have massive income disparity, by far the worst in the first world, and low income areas are opportune places for low-level organized crime to take hold. These areas have poor education (since our quality of education is mosly based on local property taxes), disenfranchisement from the political/social system in many ways (incredibly understaffed voting stations so people need to take a full day to vote, while it takes me 5 mins in suburbia), high levels of political corruption and police abuse, and a lot of other things that help perpetuate the scary inner city criminal culture and a perception of it. We have a "war on poverty" too. Our ongoing response to terrorism is the "war on terror". Cultural problems of separation and fear are countered with wielding power and creating divides. People don't cling to their guns for no reason, they cling to their guns because we have mismanaged all of these problems for decades and there is enough of a threat to syndicate in media that people have something to be afraid of. Much like the motive for violence needs to be addressed, the fears that drive our gun culture need to be fixed for society in general to consider disarming.

This is pure awesome. Just swap out the word "gun" and the whole argument becomes ridiculous.

These were some thoughts during the ratification process of the Constitution of the United States....

Noah Webster: "Before a standing army can rule the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."

George Mason: "...to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them . . . by totally disusing and neglecting the militia." ""Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."

Patrick Henry: "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

At no time is this more needed than now in this so called "post 9/11 world" with our government giving themselves more power in the Patriot Act as well as warrantless wiretaps and the President authorizing the killing of American citizens abroad. Our framers were very much thinking about the people protecting themselves against tyranny.

So what has the militia done about it, exactly?

What did the brave militia do with their guns when George Bush pulled the Patriot Act out of his ass?

I'll tell you what most gun nuts did. They went and voted Republican again the next time. And then the next day they shot at a Budweiser can or a squirrel.

Actually, the Republican neo-cons kept voting republican because they believe in the War on Terror. The tea party that was created by the libertarians who are against the Military Industrial Complex, wars of aggression, the Patriot Act, etc. was highjacked by the talk show hosts and Sarah Palin. The American sheeple will believe anything media (Fox News included) tells them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/nyreg ... html?_r=1&

New York passed gun control with more extensive bans on assault weapons.

And the criminals will still get them. What a joke. This will do nothing to stop gun crimes!