On 1/29/2011 12:14 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 29/01/2011 6:54 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 11:04:09 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>>
>
>>> Hmm! I forgot that, that word changes its meaning as it crosses the
>>> pond.
>>
>> Well, not really a change, but there are nuances (in terms of political
>> usage of the word) that perhaps aren't common over there.
>>
>
> Yes, nuances is a better word. "Liberal" changes its meaning here
> depending on whether it is spelt with a capital "L" or not.
>
And, even more so when it happens to be attached to another word, with a 
D on it, and depending on who exactly is using 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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On 1/29/2011 1:06 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> That's because a hundred or more years ago they a) fought duels in
>> public,
>
> I think the number of deaths by duel where both sides agree to shoot at
> each other is nominal, unless you have some evidence that it was common.
>
I would argue that the mere fact that it took a long time to load the 
damn things tended to either result in you being real clear you wanted 
to shoot someone, or having lots more time to change your mind. Sure, 
they where used a lot to kill people for various reasons, other than 
duels, but there was usually an "accepted" justification for it, or some 
sort.

>> b) didn't have a lot of rules about when it was and wasn't justified
>> to shoot someone,
>
> Of course they did.
>
Depends on what you define as rules. I would, again, argue that rules 
which operated on a) societal justifications, i.e., the person shot was 
*obviously* deserving of it, due to race, religion, nationality, etc., 
b) talking fast enough to convince people you had a reason, especially 
since it might not be possible to prove otherwise, and c) legal means to 
handily do away with any possibility of being arrested for shooting 
someone, all constitute a lack of effective rules. You literally just 
needed to find the right loopholes/claims and you could shoot damn near 
anyone.

>> and c) you didn't have whole organizations dedicated to BS like, "Guns
>> don't kill people, people do!",
>
> Because nobody was stupid enough to think otherwise. Guns were tools
> just like knives were.
>
Knives tend to have the trait that, unless you throw them, and even, in 
many cases *if* you throw them, they don't tend to kill people that 
where not involved in the altercation in the first place. Guns.. if you 
don't hit the intended target, and even, in some rare cases, if you do, 
you have no certainty they won't hit someone else instead. Kind of a 
damn stupid "tool". Its like complaining that people would like you to 
stop dropping matches every place, and saying, "But I never intended for 
all those buildings to catch fire!" The matches have a place and 
purpose, which doesn't involve improperly using them, and no one much 
cares if you have a pack in your pocket, since they don't tend to 
randomly light things one fire. Someone that carries them around for the 
*sole* purpose of, "I might need to light a fire.", tend to justifiably 
be presumed to be possible arsonists, especially if they tend to never 
*be* any place where they plausibly could *ever* need to do that, not 
law abiding citizens. Say that you, "may need to shoot someone.", even 
if you add in, "in self defense"... Well, lets just say its not what I 
would call a "compelling" argument either. lol

>> makes about as much sense as saying, "cars without working brakes
>> don't kill people, the people that drive them do.", oh.. and the crazy
>> idea that guns represent someone *other* than a very clear, specific,
>> and intentional, way to kill things.
>
> Guns are not likened to cars without brakes. How many policemen carry
> guns? How many policemen would drive a car without brakes?
>
Cars without breaks = guns in places most reasonable people wouldn't 
bring them, with more ammo than reasonable, semi-auto, when this is 
overkill just by itself, and a whole host of other issues, not the least 
being that we are ***not*** talking about a police officer, or anyone 
else that one might presume actually has the training, at least in 
principle, if not actuality, to know when, and how, to use one properly. 
So, no, a cop wouldn't drive a car without brakes. Half the people I 
know wouldn't even notice they didn't have any, until they tried to 
stop. They simply wouldn't bother to notice that a problem existed (and, 
by the same token, they wouldn't see anything odd with having an 
overdone gun, in the hands of a badly/untrained person, shooting 
inaccurately, at someone that might not even be an appropriate target). 
And that is just the non-criminals. The criminals, I would have some 
presumption, might have fired the thing often enough to know who they 
where shooting at, ironically.

-- 
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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On 1/29/2011 3:37 PM, Darren New wrote:
>>> Because I think we're
>>> still ahead on that one, barely. ;-)
>>
>> In total killed more enemy soldiers than civilians and allies?
>
> Saved more civilians than killed, I'm thinking. :-)
>
Which war, and in *whose* hands? Just saying..

-- 
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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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.

> 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. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/29/2011 1:06 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> That's because a hundred or more years ago they a) fought duels in
>>> public,
>>
>> I think the number of deaths by duel where both sides agree to shoot at
>> each other is nominal, unless you have some evidence that it was common.
>>
> I would argue that the mere fact that it took a long time to load the 

I have no idea what that has to do with duels. And nobody that carried a gun 
carried it unloaded when it takes a minute or more to load.

>>> b) didn't have a lot of rules about when it was and wasn't justified
>>> to shoot someone,
>>
>> Of course they did.
>>
> Depends on what you define as rules.

Laws. Same as we have now. Nobody went around saying "He's italian, so I get 
to shoot him."

> I would, again, argue that rules 
> which operated on a) societal justifications, i.e., the person shot was 
> *obviously* deserving of it, due to race, religion, nationality, etc., 
> b) talking fast enough to convince people you had a reason, especially 
> since it might not be possible to prove otherwise, and c) legal means to 
> handily do away with any possibility of being arrested for shooting 
> someone, all constitute a lack of effective rules. You literally just 
> needed to find the right loopholes/claims and you could shoot damn near 
> anyone.

Do you have any evidence at all for this?

>>> and c) you didn't have whole organizations dedicated to BS like, "Guns
>>> don't kill people, people do!",
>>
>> Because nobody was stupid enough to think otherwise. Guns were tools
>> just like knives were.
>>
> Knives tend to have the trait that, unless you throw them, and even, in 
> many cases *if* you throw them, they don't tend to kill people that 
> where not involved in the altercation in the first place. Guns.. if you 
> don't hit the intended target, and even, in some rare cases, if you do, 
> you have no certainty they won't hit someone else instead. 

Gun control means hitting your target. :-)

Note that automobiles are much more dangerous than firearms in that respect. 
Heck, last I looked, swimming pools were more dangerous than firearms in tht 
respect.

 > The matches have a place and purpose, which doesn't involve improperly 
using them, and no one much
> cares if you have a pack in your pocket, since they don't tend to 
> randomly light things one fire. 

And a gun in your pocket doesn't tend to randomly shoot people.

> Someone that carries them around for the 
> *sole* purpose of, "I might need to light a fire.", tend to justifiably 
> be presumed to be possible arsonists, 

Wow, really? And I guess anyone who carried a pocket knife on the grounds 
it's useful for opening packages ought be arrested for assault if they 
didn't get any fedex deliveries that day?

>> Guns are not likened to cars without brakes. How many policemen carry
>> guns? How many policemen would drive a car without brakes?
>>
> Cars without breaks = guns in places most reasonable people wouldn't 
> bring them,

I don't follow. What normal places would reasonable people not bring guns?

Nevermind. Your analogy is just too tortured to communicate anything.

Indeed, I think your entire screed is too tortured to communicate anything 
worth responding to, since you're not actually making any points except "I 
don't think people should have guns because they're all stupid, even tho I 
have no actual evidence for this."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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(while trying to answer this my power supply broke down :( had to go and 
buy a new one).

On 30-1-2011 2:18, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> BTW from what I have heard guns (if you know where to get them) are
>> not outside the budget of a 15 YO.
>
> A 15YO drug dealer, maybe. It's not hard to see what the price of a gun
> is. The price *you* pay for them over there? Not so much.

IIRC from a newspaper article it was in the order of €150-€200. Within 
reach of any paper-boy. Availability is mainly via Belgium, with its 
broader fire arm laws. I don't know who made them.

> I.e., I doubt there's much traffic of inexpensive stolen firearms
> between the USA and the UK.

I don't think they need to be stolen.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Economic_class
>
> Then, if you can't actually import them, you can do this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_gun
>
>> BTW I was not blaming anyone. I was just pointing out that also people
>> abroad may die as a result of a US policy on guns. In the Netherlands
>> they are mainly foreigners involved in drugs who get shot here, but
>> still.
>
> While I understand your concern, blaming firearm deaths on other
> countries having a big market for firearms is like blaming automobile
> deaths on other countries having a big market for automobiles. It
> basically doesn't really make much sense. The link between "americans
> are allowed to have guns" to "fred shot sam in the UK" is tremendously
> tenuous, methinks.

Proving it in a particular case is rather useless. And I am not blaming 
anyone. There was a discussion on whether the net effect of the US gun 
laws is more or less victims. My point was that you might need to look 
further than your own country. What I proposed was to compare two 
situations 1) the current one where the NRA is the main direct and 
indirect factor in gun control and 2) the fictitious USA where gun 
control is comparable with e.g. the Netherlands (which is where I live 
BTW). In the latter situation not only would the market be smaller, 
there would be less choice and not being legal would have an additional 
effect on the price. All these factors would mean that the number of 
guns in other countries would also be smaller. At least that is what I 
think. That is not a moral judgement however.
Probably the gun manufacturers and dealers would move to Canada or 
Mexico, still reducing the legal market would have an effect.


>> Ok, you are blaming the EU for a decision in Africa by leaders that
>> are more concerned about themselves than their people?
>
> The same as you're blaming America for a decision made by criminals in
> your country.

Again, I am not blaming anyone.

>>> http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/08/Bettertostarve.shtml
>> That sounds not so objective.
>
> I gave you the link to the newspaper, too. Of course it's not objective
> - it's a blog.
>
>>> Honestly, Mexico is worse. They have just as many guns, if not more.
>> Yes for exactly that reason.
>
> Mexico has many guns for exactly *what* reason? Because Americans can
> own guns? They're not especially regulated in Mexico either, you know.

Sorry, that was meant for the sentence before. Mexico is worse because 
of it's own mixture of drugs and availability of fire arms.

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On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:58:01 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> On 29/01/2011 7:32 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>>> Yes, nuances is a better word. "Liberal" changes its meaning here
>>> depending on whether it is spelt with a capital "L" or not.
>>
>> Interesting - so which meaning were you using?
>>
>>
> With a small "l", Liberal is a political party. They used to be called
> Whigs now they are just little "c"s

Ah, I see. :-)

Jim

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andrel wrote:
>> I.e., I doubt there's much traffic of inexpensive stolen firearms
>> between the USA and the UK.
> 
> I don't think they need to be stolen.

Why are you blaming the USA if you can pass import restriction laws to solve 
your problem, then?  I assumed you were talking about *illegal* firearms, 
because otherwise all you have to do is pass a law making the legal firearms 
illegal to solve *that* problem.

> Proving it in a particular case is rather useless. And I am not blaming 
> anyone. There was a discussion on whether the net effect of the US gun 
> laws is more or less victims. My point was that you might need to look 
> further than your own country.

That's fair, certainly.

> What I proposed was to compare two 
> situations 1) the current one where the NRA is the main direct and 
> indirect factor in gun control 

I think a lot of people in this country are in favor of being able to have 
their own guns. It's not like the NRA has taken over or something. There are 
a whole bunch of states where getting a gun legally is extremely difficult, 
and a whole bunch where it's really trivially easy, because people like it 
that way. And it's mainly historical situations that dictate that.

>>> Ok, you are blaming the EU for a decision in Africa by leaders that
>>> are more concerned about themselves than their people?
>>
>> The same as you're blaming America for a decision made by criminals in
>> your country.
> 
> Again, I am not blaming anyone.

OK. Read "blame" as metaphorical, then. :-)

> Sorry, that was meant for the sentence before. Mexico is worse because 
> of it's own mixture of drugs and availability of fire arms.

Yep. But it's mainly worse because the organized crime has taken over from 
the "legitimate" government. Government, really, is just the biggest 
protection racket. If you lose control to local criminals, all the laws in 
the world won't keep them from making their own firearms pretty easily.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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On 30/01/2011 6:56 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> With a small "l", Liberal is a political party. They used to be called
>> >  Whigs now they are just little "c"s
> Ah, I see.:-)

You "c", is that conservative with a large or small "c"?

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:36:47 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> On 30/01/2011 6:56 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> With a small "l", Liberal is a political party. They used to be called
>>> >  Whigs now they are just little "c"s
>> Ah, I see.:-)
> 
> You "c", is that conservative with a large or small "c"?

LOL, I'm no Tory. ;-)  That'd be about as crazy as me joining the BNP and 
still wanting to live in the UK. ;-)

Jim

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