"sheeple"

That phrase might as well translate to "slavery wasn't so bad" for all the amazing argument-disqualifying power it has.

Are you serious?? Let me ask you this, what would you call a person who actually believes that the two parties on control actually have ideals other than the talking points that they spew to get elected? What would you call people that actually believe that the republicans only pander to the rich or they really care about security and democrats are the party of the little guy or that their weak on terror?

Which means, the greatest weapon in a democracy is information, education, knowledge.

Not stupid guns held by poorly trained, dumbfounded hacks.

You post education but yet you say that gun owners are dumbfounded and poorly trained. Maybe you should educate yourself. If you did, you would know that most firearm owners are very well trained and that SAFETY is the most important factor in firearms training.

As long as you have human beings....you will have violent human beings. It is a person's natural right to defend themselves. And if you read my earlier posts, you will see that our framers DID believe that an armed citizenry is key to maintaining liberty.

Not all of them are very well trained though. Not all of them know how to be safe with a gun.

I'm not for the idea that EVERY gun owner is some idiot redneck that'll shoot somebody for looking at them wrong (I in fact know quite a few very responsible gun owners), but making an absolute out of something without the empirical evidence to prove that all 100% of that something is that absolute is stupid. Goes for both pro-gun people and anti-gun people.

Education rates are lowest in the South. Gun ownership is highest in the South. These two may not correlate, but I know that it is not difficult at all to legally own a gun and I know many idiotic people who do own them legally.

I still don't understand how a teacher armed with a gun will be effective if an entire group of trained police officers took 30 minutes to get into the school.

It won't be. At all. The idea of putting a gun in a school for any reason, especially if it's with the misguided notion that it'll prevent further mass shootings from happening, is so irresponsible and just plain stupid that it's incomprehensible to me how anyone can sanely recommend it.

I think you don't understand the difference between firearms training so you can shoot at squirrels, pretending you are an actual badass while stuffing your face in fried food that you had delivered to your door and trained military personnel that's not just excellently trained in firearms safety but also in actually blowing people and shit up with surgical precision, backed not only by an almost unlimited supply of weaponry but technology that is so advanced, half the NRA membership who can't even program a fucking TV remote cannot comprehend it even exists. Let me show you your militia. Ready?



The US military is the most powerful military force that ever existed. They don't just own guns and clean them. They receive extensive training and education. They have an established chain of command. People who like to *pretend* they are badass militia stay home. People who are actually doing what's necessary to be a rained soldier join the army. NRA clowns like those above couldn't even jog 5 miles without dying, much less fight the #1 world power.

America has the highest rate of obesity in the world. Over a THIRD of all adults are obese. Not overweight. Actually OBESE. How are you going to assemble a militia exactly?



What a tired argument. Where does that stop? Should your personal right to defend yourself extend to tanks? fighter aircrafts? Atomic bombs?

But I see that you avoided by main point. On one hand, you're clamoring for the right to bear arms for your fictitious militia while on the other, you concede the American people get fucked by the Patriot Act and a lot of your militia didn't take their guns to stop this but instead turned around, bent over and begged for more!

You say yourself that the people get sidetracked and manipulated, and yet you still think guns are what's going to protect the citizens from the government.

Dude....you have no fucking clue as to what you are talking about. I live here. What you're saying is the same as saying that all Canadians are like the fucking Trailer Park Boys or that all blacks are criminals! Seriously?? And what is wrong with that picture? So you can tell by the look of those people that they are mindless rednecks? The signs they hold are quotes by the founders of this nation! Most of the people I know (and I know a good many people) own firearms and are well trained and well versed in their weapons and the safe use of such weapons.



Once again...are we going to make this a dump on Americans argument? And if the US military is so fucking powerful, why is it that we've been in Afghanistan for over 10 fucking years and can't keep control??



Because those "fatasses pretending to be badasses" are smart enough to realize that we are far from actual tyranny and have the good sense to know that an armed uprising is the last resort to anything. And more and more people are starting to wake up and realize that the two parties "in control" of this country are leading it down the toilet! Once again....people are educating themselves! But they also know that an unarmed citizenry is dangerous to a free people!

Think about this....with ALL the news stories here every day about gun violence, how many were committed people that were actual NRA members or 2nd Amendment supporters?? How many used legally purchased firearms??

I waited for a long time to weigh in on this thread, but I think that time has come. Mjollnir, thank you for being a voice of reason here.

You want to know why gun control is ethically and practically wrong? Here's a simple answer: Fuck you, you have no individual or collective right to tell me what I can or cannot own. You want to disarm me? Come take my gun yourself instead of delegating your government to do so, you fucking pussies.

However, the answer is not that simple when addressing the ethical question of gun ownership. For starters, it's widely propagandized that Australia and Britain(which will be two prime examples) have seen a decrease in violent crime since the enactment of gun control laws. However, a simple check of the CIA World Factbook proves this isn't the case. Not only is violent crime steadily increasing in these countries, but it is several times higher than the rate in the US.

Secondly, gun control is advocating a band-aid solution to a problem that should warrant much deeper investigation. Instead of "DERP SHOOTINGS SO LET'S TAKE GUNS FROM LAW ABIDING PEOPLE", why not take a look at WHY these people are shooting up schools. What is going on in their head? What is motivating them? Is there a psychological root to this problem? Is it too hard to think about these things? I may not understand the psychology behind the drive to murder, but I can understand the psychology of the gun-control nuts perfectly. "DERP guns are scary and it's too difficult for me to think of the world in anything other than black and white absolutes so BAN ALL GUNS!"

Finally, even though it's been said before, it warrants reiteration. Banning guns will not take them out of the hands of criminals. It's quite simple, really. Criminals don't follow laws to begin with, so what will make them start now? A ban on guns will never take them off the street. It will only cause the market to become more lucrative. Look how that's working out for the Sinaloa cartel, for instance!

There is no cut and paste, black and white answer. Some countries with no guns have decently low crime rates, some with guns have high crime rates. There are way, way too many factors at play to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of gun ownership. Both sides are guilty of this, but the gun control crowd is more so.

And remember, when every second counts, the police are only minutes away!

Suggestion: word filter "derp" to "please stop reading my post".

...and that's why no one (except your friend mjollnir) will take you seriously!

I don't care how many people you claim to know. I don't care if they can safely use their weapon for sports. Most US citizens who are not in the army are not combat ready. Because there is a world of difference between knowing how to use a firearm and being a trained combatant. And to answer your question, there's nothing wrong with the picture, until people actually fantasize that such folks could war against the US army.



Saying that the US army is the most powerful in the world and that its ordinary citizens don't stand a chance against it doesn't sound like dumping on Americans to me. It's a statistical fact that over a third of Americans are obese. Do you know what that means? It means you automatically have a lower ratio of people fit for ordinary, daily activities than any other country in the world.

And you expect them to be ready for actual combat? Not to mention, against the US military?

Crazy talk.

Obesity doesn't really matter in today's kind of warfare. There's no trench hopping. A fat guy can dig a hole and leave a mine in it. He can feed phoney info to some schlub soldier who thinks he's awesome at getting local contacts and have him call in an airstrike on his annoying neighbor. In guerrilla war, asymmetrical war, primitive war, peoples' war, etc etc etc, it's all about psychology. Who wants the ground the most gets it and they demonstrate that want with casualties. Americans are not even remotely into dying at all for anything! US soldiers are slightly more willing but still not comparable to your average 5 year old Indian kid.

Anyway, my point is that this talk about American citizenry fighting anyone for anything is all pointless because Americans won't fight anyone for anything. They have too much stuff for dying to be worth it.

I thought you of all people could catch the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm there.

It's just safer to assume you mean whatever you say since you radically change your political stances so often.

It's also safe to assume that when people say something without thinking first they will retroactively declare it sarcastic.

See the situation?

I change my political views quickly because I read books, interact with people, and entertain ideas outside of my own logical framework. Why hold on to an idea you find to be false? Also, I doubt you could accurately pinpoint me on any political spectrum. I've begun to shun it all.

I also find it funny that you can discuss the merits of the first paragraph of my post(which I would have deleted in an edit if I found it unsatisfactory and not sarcastic) but willingly ignore the rest. Isn't it time you stepped out of your comfort zone and entertained some new ideas?

Laughing because that's the most easily verifiable of the points I made? I know that facts are inconvenient when you're trying to push an agenda, but please try to stick to them.

[citation needed]

Okay, that's all well and good, but do you see how this could make pretty much anything you say hold almost no weight? Three months from now you could have completely opposite ideas and state that your old ideas were bunk and the statistics you quoted faulty. It's not that you change a lot, it's that you change so extremely and so flimsily so often.

This is why I'm presenting a purely practical argument, rather than an ideological one.

I guess the sarcastic part was when you said you read the thread. You missed all the people making the arguments you made, the refutations, my posts about gun fanaticism's role in political neutralization of gun fanatics, and Nappo's posts about the long term cultural benefits of gun control. (those points work in tandem pretty well)

Isn't it also possible that changing the basic precepts of your world view every time you read another perspective implies that you aren't thinking deeply enough about any of them for any of them to have ever really made more than a transient impression on you?

Okay, fella.
1) That's all about the UK, not Australia, which you also included in your statement.
2) The Daily Mail is the Fox News of the UK. Definitely not a reliable source.

I'll never understand why most gun nuts bulk up and talk tough when it comes to even mentioning gun control. Calling someone a pussy and threatening them makes you look like a badass. In Bizarro world.

Fuck, I meant to clarify that the statement about crime rates in comparison to the US pertained only to Great Britain. My mistake. I'll leave the original post be to prevent confusion for any future readers. Sorry about that, I'm posting from an iPhone and can't see what I've already written until after I post it.

Regardless of the political slant of the news source in question, the point I was trying to make involved the numbers. It's one of the few things that can be used as concrete evidence for or against gun control(if correlation necessarily equals causation in this case). If the numbers in that article are wrong, certainly there is another news source/secondary source that shows that the opposite is true.

I guess in the end, a practical argument can only go so far in this particular case. I'd prefer not to delve into the ideological aspect of the debate, either.

I don't even own a gun. Again, I was being sarcastic. It does say a lot that that's the only part of the post most of you are focusing on.

Where did I mention your name in my post? I'm talking about the general pro-gun crowd, not anyone in particular. But now that you mention it, adding that tuff-guy banter be it sarcastic or not was pretty goddamn stupid, and something tells me it became sarcastic ex post facto, if you get my drift.

I'm sorry, but I really have to reply to this haemorrhage of a post.

I've never gotten this American mentality of a new "liberal" government knocking on peoples' doors and personally and forcibly taking their guns, which may or may not be registered and be much more powerful than is required. There's no way they'd do that as the seizing of private property would be seen as communist, or in the current language of political slurs 'socialist', and make the government extremely unpopular. Not even Obama would do it, not only because he isn't a socialist of any sort but also because he'd become a target for the gun-touting population. So much for the land of the free.

You also quote Britain and Australia for having increased violent crime rates than America. It sounds like you're the one spouting propaganda. I checked the CIA World Factbook to see if your claim was right, but there was one problem: There is no section for crime, so it seems like you pulled those figures out of your arse. I can't speak for Britain, though I'm sure that it has a lower crime rate than America, but your view of Australia is very ill-informed. Ever since assault weapons were banned after a mass shooting in 1996, there haven't been any mass shootings since. Let me make that clear: no rampage shootings have happened in all of Australia since 1996. Zero. None. Compared to the 16 or so that's happened in the US since 1996. And why has gun control worked so well in Australia? Because of the success of the government-funded gun refund program where hundreds of thousands of people across the country voluntarily gave up their guns because they felt they didn't need them. But this only shows how deeply embedded guns and violence are in the American psyche and how stubborn the conservative American populace is towards giving up guns in the paranoid delusions that the the citizens will rise against a bloated, oppressive government, and that most laws in American Congress have never heard of a transition stage. You need a gradual transition into an end result before you can reach it. That's why you had a civil war, you didn't give the citizens the chance to adjust to the new laws and all it did was anger the slave owners of the South to the point of seceding and starting a damned war. It's like going cold turkey on cigarettes, you can't have a successful quit without having some gradual decline in nicotine. The Australian form of gun control is actually a very good model for what could happen to America, but the NRA-loving population is just too stubborn and ill-informed to know what's right.

Another problem is that you say that the rate of violent crime is higher in Australia than it is in America. It is if you read the numbers as numbers and not statistics or percentages. Maybe you forget that the population of Australia sits at around 21 million compared to America's 315 million or so. If you crunch the numbers, then you end up having more incidents of violent crime than in America. It's like comparing the rate of obesity between Australia and America. Australia may have a higher rate of obesity per capita, but if you get the American rate of obesity and take that for the American population you end up having more obese people in America than there are people in Australia. It's all relative and how you frame it can be used by anyone for their own ideology.

I see you're using the typical 'blame people, not guns' mode of attack. I do agree that there has to be something done about the state of mental health, but throwing some money at it isn't going to fix the problem. Not only do you have to increase spending in public health, you also have to inform people about the dangers of guns and in the process wean people off the use of guns by implementing gradual gun control policies. Aside from that, you're not fixing the problem by simply telling people that guns are safe tools that can be use to kill criminals, small animals and anything with a bloodstream. That's another thing I don't like about the American mindset, thinking "Well, criminals are going to get guns anyway so we might we well not do anything to stop them obtaining weapons". Of course the bloodshed isn't going to end if you can buy a gun on sale at the local Walmart and use it to open fire on a funeral, but isn't a little restriction to lower the rate of crimes used with guns better than not doing anything and letting people shoot each other in the face?

EDIT: Minor proofread.

See what I was saying before about posting faster than one thinks and saying it was sarcastic later on? Not that it's never sarcastic in the original intent, but it is suspiciously convenient cover either way.

Also, note that even if those statistics are true and violent crime rate is genuinely higher, the homicide rate per capita in the US is four times higher, so you know, violent people not having guns may mean that less people die... maybe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... By_country

Also, everyone ignored the link I posted earlier about New York passing gun control laws, so I'll restate here: New York passed gun control laws tightening and expanding bans on assault weapons in direct response to Sandy Hook.

Thanks, Roger. I was hoping someone would respond to the actual content of my post rather than sniping on petty details.

First things first... Wow, you are right about the CIA World Factbook having no section on crime. Gun control is not something I usually debate about anymore, and a lot of times my sources on things get foggy and mixed up. Chalk it up to my own stupidity, I guess. I'll see if I can find sources that actually support that assertion, and if not I'll concede that point.

I'm going to try to respond paragraph by paragraph, and hope I don't repeat myself too much.

First off, you're oversimplifying modern political philosophy by calling it "liberal" and "conservative". Those terms are outdated, outmoded, and not specific enough to work in most situations. Modern American "liberalism" and "conservatism" are really just authoritarian centrist. To accurately debate someone about something like this, you've got to drop the left/right paradigm.

Today in New York, a law went into effect banning firearms with more than seven bullets per magazine. Now, unless I've been misinformed, there is no "grandfathering", no grace period, nothing. Even when speaking pragmatically about a democratic system, it's just a shoddily constructed law altogether. It makes law-abiding citizens into criminals overnight. This is an indicator of how future laws will pan out, I fear. To top it off, the President implied in today's press conference(and Joe Biden earlier this week) that he would potentially bypass normal rule of law and the lawmaking process and sign an executive order related to gun control as soon as tomorrow. The "liberal" government scenario that you say won't pan out? There's some serious indicators it's going to happen, and happen soon.

I'll leave the numbers and statistics thing alone until I can get some sources for my assertions.

Now, to address the "people, not guns" point you raised: For starters, I never said we should "just throw money around" to find a solution, and specifically advised AGAINST a Band-Aid solution. "Blaming people" is a much more complex approach. People are sentient; guns are tools. As for "criminals not following laws means we should have no laws at all" strawman: There are two main kinds of laws. There are laws which provide justice for something that has already occurred, and there are laws to prevent crime from occurring. Look at drug laws and "bedroom laws" for instance. See how effective they are? Need I say more?

If gun control really did work in Australia, as you say, I'd love to investigate some other factors as to why that's the case, because I suspect it's a little more complicated than guns magically disappearing.

How is it sarcasm when it fits the rest of your post? I smell backpedalling when you realized you came across as a redneck douche...

And that makes person number three who won't respond to the actual substance of my post! Jesus Christ.

What part of "I do not own a gun" did you miss/misunderstand?

Other people already addressed the substance of your post. I'm merely calling you out on your suspicious behaviour.

How about ex-service personnel, don't many of these groups scattered across the states contain knowledge from people who have fought overseas from the 1960's?


http://www.youtube.com/v/eyU6iGjfK1c
They're not all like this

Going on youtube I am suprised what people are firing off in their "backyards" though


Since the 1990's crime has been steadily rising here in the Uk. Some reports were censored to keep the extent from the press, it has been revealed.

Something that did catch my attention was the fact that Australia and Britain both have higher rates of "violent crime" than the US. I would be interested to read into each nations definition of "violent crime".

Take a look at gun control legislation in Britain and how it affected the murder rate and violent crime.

Despite a downward trend in crime in the UK, the murder rate rose in the years following the 1997 gun ban, peaking in 2003 (due to Harold Shipman's murders being revealed to law enforcement, while 2003 was actually around the same level as 02/04) and declining from there. Comparing the rate from 1996, the year before the UK's gun ban, and 2012, the US and the UK have had their murder rates drop by a nearly identical margin - the rate in the US steadily declined, while in the UK it went up, then down.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18900384
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... allen.html

Violent crime and knife crime have become a larger problem though. Take away the guns and violent criminals use knives. The motive is still there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6960431.stm
http://www.examiner.com/article/now-a-g ... of-control