On 1/29/2011 10:23 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> "What if they where not available to the criminals either
>
> That's completely unrealistic, tho. It's almost trivial to make a simple
> firearm. Even when you're in a country under martial law being invaded
> by an attacking country, it's not all that hard to get guns.
>
> Now, if you *also* disarmed the police and military, maybe that would
> happen.
>
> Or, you can look at countries where *everyone* has guns and knows how to
> use them, and see a tremendously low violent crime rate, and consider
> that maybe the guns aren't the biggest problem to address, even if
> reducing them would help.
>
Not seeing a lot of those. Most places, everyone having one isn't a good 
thing. It certainly wasn't in the US past.

>> We know we could reduce, or remove, the number of guns out there.
>
> Yeah, because that worked *so* well with drugs. And with alcohol before
> that.
>
>> We *don't* know if training will do any good. You get a lot of idiots,
>
> Sure. Because only the brightest people go into the military, and people
> accidentally shoot each other every day there.
>
>> We do not know if everyone having one is a good thing, though that was
>> *precisely* the way things where in the old west, and you could,
>> often, only tell the bad guys from the good guys by whether or not the
>> locals/courts decided you belonged on the end of, or rigging, the
>> rope, hardly a prime example of the "good" that every idiot in sight
>> being armed would produce.
>
> Sure. But that was also at a time when the only police force was the
> general population. Disarm them, and watch what the bad guys do.
>
>> And so on. And, the claims that "studies" say you are better off armed
>> take as little, or less, of *any* of the stuff into account that
>> studies saying guns are not a good thing do.
>
> No it doesn't. It's a simple statistic: People with guns got hurt in
> violent crimes less than people without guns. Admittedly it didn't look
> at things like accidental shootings, but then this was the FBI unified
> crime statistics, not the FBI unified accident statistics.
>
> Saying you can't tell whether it works is like saying you can't tell
> whether changing the speed limit state-wide reduces accidents.
>
>> Pick what can predictably work
>
> Does it work? How do you know?
>
>> Doesn't imply a real big certainty about all those "other" studies
>> saying its a good thing to have them around imo.
>
> Understand that the reason the guns are around in the USA are for when
> the shit hits the fan. We haven't had a whole lot of revolutions in this
> country, in part because of the second amendment. Before you disarm
> everyone, take into account the effect that has on how corrupt the
> government can get, before you loudly proclaim the benefits of being
> just as disarmed as the general population of, say, China. :-)
>
Imho, the second amendment doesn't have **jack** to do with it. If we 
had the government try to do something, the populace *had* risen up, and 
the result wasn't a lot of dead people, and the government winning, you 
would have a point. Otherwise, this is bloody idiocy, founded on a fairy 
tale. Everyone having a gun wouldn't help us fight the government 
successfully today, nor would it have done so at any time in the last 
century. Assuming you could get the military to act against the people 
it protects, the general citizenry would be out gunned, by so massive a 
level, it wouldn't be like freedom fighters doing sneak attacks, armed 
with a few guns, it would be more like a primitive tribe attempting to 
stop a tank, using sticks.

What keeps the government in line is a) so far we haven't had anyone 
sufficiently crazy as to believe they need to *fix* things by 
overthrowing the constitution (even if we do have a few stupid enough to 
not have a damn clue what it says), and b) the people who would have to 
enforce any such overthrow wouldn't allow it, regardless of who was 
pushing them. The general populous being able to wave a hand gun around, 
when facing a Mach-2 aircraft with frakking cluster bombs, is 
meaningless. It gets more and more meaningless as things progress.

Its also imho, a dangerous and stupid way of solving problems. The nuts 
we have right now, who *could* very easily cross that line, if not for 
the fact that less than 10% of the population would even pretend at 
following them, babble about using guns, force, and the second amendment 
to overthrow people the other 90+% of the country elected. The sane 
people are going to use every method possible to solve the problem 
without violence. The crazy people will do anything at all they must, to 
win, and shooting at things is like item 3 on every damn one of their lists.

Overthrowing governments by guns a) doesn't work, b) gets a lot of 
people dead, and c) makes no guarantee that the ones that shoot last are 
going to be the ones *defending* democratic ideals. On the contrary, the 
ones most likely to do it don't really believe in them (even if they 
play lip service to all of them, while cherry picking only the ones that 
they find helpful). The reason it doesn't work is that its the law, and 
the constitution, and the ideals, that define whether or not the damn 
thing is fair, just and/or free, not how many people got shot getting 
there. If you can't curtail the nuts, and stop violence with words, you 
have **already bloody lost**.

That is the reason why so much of the idiot rhetoric you see now is so 
disheartening. We have stopped fighting with facts, evidence and sense, 
and have instead seen one side drift more and more to the other, while 
the other side keeps getting more and more absurd. And, **they** are the 
ones suggesting that more guns is a good thing, and that we erase 
virtually every progressive law, rights, constitutional amendment, or 
principle we have, which doesn't *fit* their world view. Their answer on 
how to do this? Get a gun, in case terrorism (i.e., fear and lies) 
doesn't work, and we can't just legislate our view on everyone!

What is standing in their way is the military, not the general 
population. That is why **part** of the BS they have been pulling is to 
try to evangelize the military, to make them side with them, instead of 
the rest of the country, who are not evangelicals, literalists, etc. If 
the military is not on their side, they can't violently overthrow the 
"liberal atheist communist government". If they where, they know, quite 
well, that the general populace would be no more able to defend 
themselves against the resulting, "corrupt government", than anyone else 
has been, in countries where everyone has bloody guns, but the result is 
genocide, by whom ever has the bigger set/number of guns.

The second amendment, if directed at "preventing government corruption", 
is a fantasy. If you fail, or even if you manage to shoot the "corrupt 
official(s)", you are a terrorist, or a traitor, or a madman. You can't 
win. And no one claiming you can is talking about the next bloody Hitler 
taking over the country, they are talking about someone, "letting gays 
marry", or, "using spy satellites to read their location via their tooth 
fillings". In short, they are talking about overthrowing the country 
over something only a fraction agree with, or they are completely insane.

The fall of this country, if it comes from within, isn't going to be 
undone/prevented by a handful of people with guns. Given the kinds of 
people that tend to be most obsessed with the damn things, most of them 
are going to be *welcoming* the new order, not fighting against it.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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