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Invisible wrote:
> Because if guns are illegal, it makes it that much harder to get hold of
> them. Not impossible, surely, but very much harder.
If guns were illegal for everyone to own, that would likely be true.
However, there's lots of stuff that's illegal in one place and legal others,
and lots of large locked shipping containers moving from one place to another.
Plus, this isn't nuclear weapons. People were making really excellent
firearms by hand 200 years ago. Ever hear of a "zip gun"?
> Certainly there have always been a small minority of armed police. You
> don't see them very often, however. (Even back when it was legal to have
> guns in this country.)
I think it's more that police in the UK don't need guns because of the
culture there, than it is the police lacking guns makes the crime less violent.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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> You can't fix stupid.
If "stupid" can pass the training requirements to own a gun, then that makes
the training requirements stupid.
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Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> He merely replied "In Texas people want guns, and they CAN get
> them. Texans will ALWAYS be free."
I have a friend who was at a business meeting over dinner in France. He
wanted some ice tea. The waiter doesn't understand. "Tea, cold, with ice in
it." "We don't have that." "Well, bring me a pot of tea and a glass of
ice." "What do you want in the ice?" "Nothing." "We don't do that."
At that point, his host muttered something in french to the waiter, who ran
off, brought ice tea, and in general acted like my friend was royalty the
rest of the night.
The friend asked "What did you say to him?"
The host said "My guest here is American. You should do what he asks, as he
*may* have a gun!"
* * * *
I was also amused to be watching a cop show with french subtitles, and the
one cop says "who's that?" The other cop says "A big name in the organized
crime department. A real gang-buster." And the subtitles said
Un vrai cowboy.
I realized that the stereotype other countries have of Americans probably is
close to the Wild West. It never hit me how often someone talks about gun
ownership in modern america like we're all walking down dusty streets with
guns on our hips.
> and in the back of the Sierra they had 12 gauge shotguns,
Cops here usually have a Glock 9mm semi-automatic, a backup gun (like a
small revolver in a leg holster or something), and a shotgun in the trunk of
the car. Lots of paperwork if you actually take one out of the holster, in
theory.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> In the United States, this base is that there are millions and millions of
> guns in private hands that can conceivably be used against an unjust or
> oppressive state or federal government in an insurrection or secession.
My brother is a career cop, and he laughs at that idea, given the firepower
cops have let alone soldiers.
The other real difference is that soldiers swear to uphold the Constitution,
not some random leader. Someone did a survey that asked several hundred
enlisted soldiers (i.e., not officers) if they'd obey an order to go out
into civilian areas and confiscate the firearms, and something like 60%-70%
said they wouldn't.
We do have a constitution that's written down and fairly clear and succinct.
You can argue over the details, but it's pretty easy to see that there's no
provision for (say) the president to stay in office past his term just
because there's an emergency. Indeed, I'm pretty impressed we even had
general presidential elections during our civil war.
> Armed citizens give a government (or an invader) pause. Or a corrupt police
> force.
Unfortunately, corrupt police in the USA really don't expect to get shot
back at, and if a copy breaks in, fails to identify himself, shoots your
dog, shoots a hole in your door, and has a warrant illegally obtained for a
house on a different street, and you shoot him, chances are you're going
down for murder. If the cops got in trouble more often for doing things
wrong, we'd much safer from our own corrupt police here.
> True. But the mere presence of weapons can often times defuse a situation to
> such a degree that actually firing a shot is not needed.
The FBI reports here show that the presence of a gun without firing stops
more violent crimes than the presence of a gun that does get fired.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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clipka wrote:
> In "Wild West" times, the situation was possibly somewhat similar in the
> US. Nowadays, they appear to have a working law enforcement system,
> which should reduce the need for personal firearms. (After all, that's
> exactly their job, isn't it?)
In Wild West times, the USA had a working law enforcement system. The
citizens were the law enforcement when firearms were needed. Look up
"Posse". :-)
And yes, the need for personal firearms is reduced. It's rather rare to see
someone blatantly wearing a firearm, and I'd suspect most people don't even
carry them concealed.
> Here in Germany, we live quite safe, despite(?) private gun ownership
> being subject to severe restrictions, and being far from common.
I think it's a culture thing. First you have to make it safe even when
firearms are around. Then you can start removing the firearms.
> But is the US such a country?
I'd expect so. Too many people already have firearms here.
> American society does not have such a common enemy,
We're working on it! Watch out, towel-heads! ;-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> I think the
> result is quite good on a global level, and worked out well for them.
I think the fact that the rules *are* in writing and that most educated
people know what they are is one of the biggest helps. If something starts
getting abusive, one can always say "Hey, that's not right at all."
Not just the 2nd amendment, but all the limits on powers, who has
responsibility for what, limits on what you can change with how many votes
in what timeframe, and so on. People talk about Bush "stealing the
election", but really, the courts decided how it had to go based on the
writings, and that's how it came out.
> Additionally, you have to define what is "successful enforcement"
It's not hard to define. It's just hard to measure.
> See above. You may have a large element of truth here. I did not think about
> it like that.
See the "Black Panthers" in the USA.
Funny enough, I think you need to have most of the population thinking that
that sort of discrimination is reasonable. I don't think we're quite there
yet in the USA with muslims or those of middle-eastern descent. We're not
quite there with atheists either. But in some areas, for sure.
> This, to me at least, is being "more free" than
Free as in beer, or free as in speech?
Oh, sorry, wrong topic.
> go and kill blacks because you "could" - if you tried it you'd get arrested
> and processed, and hung (we still had the death penalty then) like any
> other murderer.
Wind back about 150 years in the USA. :-) Slaves were property. Read Huck
Finn. "Electric pole fell in the stream." "Was anyone hurt?" "No, but a
couple niggers got killed." I'm glad the US finally moved away from that
mindset.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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SharkD wrote:
> This is still a lot more than the average office complex or neighborhood
> school.
How do you know?
Grade school, sure, I'll grant you. But the last office I worked in, at
least two people carried, and that was about 40 or 50 people in the company.
Indeed, I've never worked at a company of >10 people that I didn't know at
least one person who carried.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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clipka wrote:
> If /everyone/ is carrying a gun around,
Did you read where it happened? How many people in a hospital in the USA do
you think are carrying weapons with them? How many doctors are ready to use
lethal force even to defend themselves? How many psychiatric patients do you
leave with firearms? How many people getting a cast put on are holding their
rifle?
This wasn't on patrol, or someone breaking in in a foreign country. Chances
are nobody had firearms in the immediate vicinity other than the military
police, who shot him.
> then the first reaction to
> someone drawing one is probably "gee, what's happening here? Is there
> any danger? Damn, this is serious - he's having a real firefight with
> those guys over there! Man, if only I knew who's the good guys here!",
> rather than "*OH SHIT, HE'S GOT A GUN! HE'S GONNA KILL US ALL! DUCK AND
> COVER! RUN! GET THE FREAKIN' HELL OUTTA HERE!!*"
Uh, on a military base? I think not.
You think if a cop pulls you over for a traffic stop and you pick up a
firearm, he's not going to draw on you, but rather run away? No.
Not to try to claim that fiction reflects reality, but did you ever see
Lethal Weapon? The undercover cop all scruffy and dirty comes in to meet
his partner. While waiting, he takes out his weapon to check it over.
Someone yells "GUN!" and tackles him and handcuffs him, to much
embarrassment when they find out he's a cop.
> Which is probably just why that guy had time to kill 13 people before
> anyone came to wits, identified him as an aggressor, and managed to take
> him out.
No, I'm pretty sure they teach soldiers how to shoot someone who is killing
people in the same color uniform. If he wasn't shot immediately, I'm pretty
sure it wasn't because it was "OH SHIT, HE HAS A GUN!"
I mean, what army could possibly be the least effective if its tactics is to
shit themselves when someone shoots at them?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:
>> If your police force is corrupt, then yeah, you probably need guns...
>
> That's the whole point. There is no guarantee that in any given country in
> the world, this kind of situation cannot come into being, by whatever
> means. If it comes into being while citizens are armed, they at least have
> recourse to arms to protect their lives and freedoms from a blatantly
> unjust and / or corrupt oppressor.
I don't believe this argumentation.
> What would the recourse be of British citizens, for example, if your
> government slowly, by degrees, enacted new, oppressive laws (take a look at
> the BNP, for example...!) so that at the end of the process it is illegal
> for a British Citizen of Pakistani descent (or those who even LOOK
> Pakistani!) to live in certain areas (for a start), and maybe later not
> being allowed to work, or own his own business...? And later being expelled
> from the UK or interned, or eventually put into a gas chamber?
>
> It happened in Germany, Italy, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Argentina,
> Rwanda, the Congo... and its called ethnic cleansing.
You can't prevent that by putting the right to bear arms into a
constitution.
If a government (or, let's rather say: society) wants to go for ethnical
cleansing, first thing they'll do is cut down the rights of bearing arms
/for that group of people/.
And the rifle enthusiasts will scream "Hooray" because /they/ will be
allowed to keep their rifles, while there will be /some/ reason why "the
others" shouldn't have them.
They may even happily come to the aid of the governmental forces, so
that you'll have the majority of the personally-owned firepower
/against/ the oppressed.
No, the individual's right to bear arms doesn't protect minorities
against a corrupt government. The world isn't as simple as that.
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Darren New wrote:
>> True. But the mere presence of weapons can often times defuse a
>> situation to
>> such a degree that actually firing a shot is not needed.
>
> The FBI reports here show that the presence of a gun without firing
> stops more violent crimes than the presence of a gun that does get fired.
>
Yeah. Its one of those interesting catch-22s. If everyone in a room is
armed, and someone fires, not everyone is going to be looking to *see*
who fired, so what you get its a room full of armed corpses. If, on the
other hand, someone guy walks in, and notices that people have guns,
unless he is mentally unstable, he won't try pulling his. The problem
being, some people ***are*** mentally unstable.
Its a complex mess, but what it comes down to is that the less you have,
the less likely you are to be "in" a situation that you would have
needed one, but the more likely you are to get shot, having not had one.
So, the question is, how do you balance that? Is the risk that you might
have a run in with the one idiot that is mentally unstable, and got hold
of a gun of some sort, worth 99% of the time not having to worry about
such a person? Or is it better to live in the world of people defending
the questionable value of a, "right to bear arms", who think that having
every single person in sight armed is a good idea, on the entirely
imaginary position that no one is mentally unstable enough to pull one
in such a situation? How about if you have a crowd of 100,000, three of
which are unstable, but only one of which could "get" a gun? Would you
rather be in the group closest to the two that don't have them, or the
one closest to the one that does? If you where armed, would that really
change things? How about completely unarmed, without even a pocket
knife? What is the risk that the 50 other people around you, if you, and
they, are armed, will see "you" holding your gun, and assume, based on
people dropping to the ground, that you shot someone?
The only "safe" world is one which doesn't include guns. All else is an
exercise in making people feel safe, when they might not be. And the
only real difference between pro and anti gun people is which situation
they "think" is safer, the one where they might be shot by accident, or
the one where they might, by shear misfortune, actually run into a guy
that got hold of one. The constitution does not even **try** to address
this issue, and that makes arguing from its authority on the matter,
when the guy you are running into might have a damn 100 round machine
gun, instead of a muzzle loaded musket, problematic at best.
--
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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