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On 1/29/2011 10:30 PM, Darren New wrote:
> 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.
>
Sure, and buying fuel oil and fertilizer doesn't mean you *plan* to make
a bomb. Its still considered sufficiently suspicious to require a lot
bloody more strict rules that for a gun. Hell, you can buy a box of
bullets, one of those extra big clips, and the gun, with less trouble
than you could ***Cold medicine***. Why? Because you have a "right" to
the gun, and the presumption is, "They don't plan to shoot at other
people." The automatic presumption of anyone buying more than one
package of something with Amphedamine in it -> drug manufacturing.
That is the thing I find so stupid about this. By all rights, in any
sane world, buying cold medicine should be "normal". Everyone feeling
they need to carry around something that can kill you dead, they might
keep firing, even if they hit their target, and where ***no one*** can
predict that being trained to a) hit, or b) properly use, the damn thing
will actually result in either... That's insane. I don't know if, in a
situation like that, I would a) actually hit what I intended, b) not
panic and shoot myself in the foot instead, etc. Anyone that does is
either lying, delusional, or has experience *in* those situations in the
first place. And, last I checked, the minimum gun training that people
need to own one **does not include that kind of experience**.
Hell, if you get right down to it, half the people I see driving I can't
imagine how they passed the damn driving test (its like a frakking
disease here, no one knows how to use turn signals in the entire damn
city (well, 90% anyway), and that is just the first thing off the top of
my head I find mad about how they drive). You think I should trust the
same people with learning proper gun handling, especially when the moron
that nearly runs me over having failed to use a turn signal gets out and
had a side arm on is belt, and brags about his "carry permit"? He can't
operate a car while following the rules, why the hell would I trust him
to shoot the guy trying to rob me, instead of accidentally shooting me?
Just saying...
>> 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?
>
Yeah, ignore the rest of my explanation of what I meant by that, and
just pick on the one detail you could reject..
And, yeah, I would think, "Most people are not as smart as they imagine
they are, including me, which is why I wouldn't trust them to get it
right.", is a perfectly valid bloody argument.
--
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 1/30/2011 3:27 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> 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.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
>
>>> 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.
>
> Sure it does. Combined with soldiers (for example) taking an oath to the
> constitution instead of the leaders, it helps. But I'm not going to
> argue that with you.
>
The oath has a lot to do with it. The average person having a weapon.. I
am highly skeptical of.
>> Assuming you could get the military to act against the people it
>> protects, the general citizenry would be out gunned,
>
> Yes, because, you know, Afghanistan hasn't had any success in such a
> situation.
>
Oh, yes, because the average Afghani government official has access to
entire arms manufacturing plants, giant armies, dozens of airports, and
whole military bases... Try using an example where there is a tangible
disparity between what the people fighting the government and the people
in the government have to fight with, and there are *no* outside sources
either a) providing them with support, or b) trying to avoid casualties.
If the government had the means, and was willing, or *we* as the outside
help, didn't care about casualties, a few main cities could be kept, and
the rest of the country smashed to pieces, and the result would kind of
leave a) no one willing to keep fighting back in the places left, and b)
no one left outside of those places to fight. Its like the Nam argument.
If you where willing to win by *any means*, you could have just killed
everyone that got in the way, indiscriminately. As a rule, dictators,
fascists, etc., tend to take that tactic *especially* when resistance is
actually possible, since they don't give a damn about the people they
are going to rule, only about their own vision. Places like Afghanistan
they are successful because those that help from outside *want* an
intact country, for one reason or another, and the ones in the
government being fought both want something left *after*, and often,
without outside help, are no better armed than the rebels.
Hardly a useful example... Try every other point in history, where both
sides where armed, but one of them had **no problem** just simply wiping
out everyone that didn't accept their rule. You can't win against a
superior force, if the superior force wants to keep most of the people
fighting them alive. The problem with fascists and the like is, they
generally don't give a shit if anyone they define as, "dangerous to the
new order", survive at all.
--
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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Try using an example where there is a tangible
> disparity between what the people fighting the government and the people
> in the government have to fight with,
You mean, like, Afghanistan when the Russians or Americans invaded? You
seemed to completely miss my point.
--
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:
> Hell, you can buy a box of
> bullets, one of those extra big clips, and the gun, with less trouble
> than you could ***Cold medicine***.
Depends where you live. In NJ, you have to have your fingerprints run thru
the FBI to buy a box of bullets. You don't get a gun at all, unless you can
prove you need one for work. Oh, and "I carry around tens of thousands of
dollars of cash as part of my job" doesn't count as a good reason.
Yet, I don't see anyone talking about how much safer New Jersey is than,
say, Texas.
> Yeah, ignore the rest of my explanation of what I meant by that, and
> just pick on the one detail you could reject..
Honestly, you write such long rambling posts full of unsupported assertions
that I couldn't possibly actually answer your entire post, even if I wanted to.
--
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 1/30/2011 5:46 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Try using an example where there is a tangible disparity between what
>> the people fighting the government and the people in the government
>> have to fight with,
>
> You mean, like, Afghanistan when the Russians or Americans invaded? You
> seemed to completely miss my point.
>
And you are missing mine. Russia didn't want to wipe out everything and
start over, neither did the US. When you enemy is unwilling to kill
everyone they come across to win, and/or are intent of making allies,
you have some means, even if limited, to resist. When this isn't the
case... you get things like WWII, where being a "freedom fighter" isn't
going to get you any place.
And, even if you are in that sort of position.. the point of fighting a
war against an aggressor is to eventually win. If it takes you 20, 30,
50, etc. years to do that, there may not be enough of your own
principles left to restore anything you where fighting to protect in the
first place. If you want to defend yourself from corruption, you need to
do it in a *short* time, not over decades. Otherwise, you are not
fighting to protect/restore anything, you are fighting to replace what
ever you had with something else, and it will never be the same thing
you started with (it might not even be what you where fighting to
defend/protect, by the time you are done).
--
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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 1/30/2011 5:49 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Hell, you can buy a box of bullets, one of those extra big clips, and
>> the gun, with less trouble than you could ***Cold medicine***.
>
> Depends where you live. In NJ, you have to have your fingerprints run
> thru the FBI to buy a box of bullets. You don't get a gun at all, unless
> you can prove you need one for work. Oh, and "I carry around tens of
> thousands of dollars of cash as part of my job" doesn't count as a good
> reason.
>
> Yet, I don't see anyone talking about how much safer New Jersey is than,
> say, Texas.
>
Course, the problem there is, NJ is hardly isolated from any place else,
any more than Texas is. And, frankly, I wouldn't trust Texas to give
valid statistics. One thing I have noticed is a tendency of places,
cities, states, etc., to deflate, via careful fudging of numbers, or
failure to accurately report things in the first place, any statistic
that might actually represent the opposite of what they wish to be true.
Its only when an outside audit can show the real numbers that you get
any clear picture, and crime rate reports are *never* audited in that
fashion (kind of hard to, when the one doing the original reporting is
the people being audited in the first place). Given all the other stupid
shit I see Texas doing, it would hardly surprise me is whole subsets of
"violent crime", where being categorized as lesser offenses, and not
thus included.
There is nothing like people that want to be seen as the nations elites,
but are quite obviously not, misrepresenting the facts, to make
themselves look less screwed up than they actually are. Evidence.. No,
just suspicions, and a few half remembered cases of this actually
happening, in places that later got caught out on it, but only after
someone *important*, (i.e. movie star, or government official, or the
like), became the victim of the things the locals where sweeping under a
rug and calling, "Just normal stuff, so we didn't put it in the report."
--
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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 1/31/2011 10:05 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/30/2011 5:46 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> Try using an example where there is a tangible disparity between what
>>> the people fighting the government and the people in the government
>>> have to fight with,
>>
>> You mean, like, Afghanistan when the Russians or Americans invaded? You
>> seemed to completely miss my point.
>>
> And you are missing mine. Russia didn't want to wipe out everything and
> start over, neither did the US. When you enemy is unwilling to kill
> everyone they come across to win, and/or are intent of making allies,
> you have some means, even if limited, to resist. When this isn't the
> case... you get things like WWII, where being a "freedom fighter" isn't
> going to get you any place.
>
Mind, not any place if someone else doesn't help out, to be clear.
--
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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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> And you are missing mine. Russia didn't want to wipe out everything and
> start over, neither did the US.
And if there's a revolution in the USA, you think the US government will
want to wipe out every US citizen and city and start over?
--
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."
Post a reply to this message
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Course, the problem there is, NJ is hardly isolated from any place else,
Yep, that's certainly part of the problem, yes.
BTW, it would be easy to enforce whatever gun control you want in the USA.
Amend the constitution to overrule the second amendment. We have a legal
process to do this. The problem with the people favoring gun control is that
they *are* in enough of a minority that they can't get this to happen. Not
unlike abortion, where no legislator is actually going to *vote* to outlaw
it, but everyone wants the courts to decide their way. The only reason
people argue about the meaning of the second amendment and to whom it
applies is because enough voters like it how it is that the legislature
can't get rid of it.
> rug and calling, "Just normal stuff, so we didn't put it in the report."
You can go on speculating all you like. None of it actually means much until
you show the extent to which anything like that actually happens. You can
speculate that if the US changed our gun laws, Norway would have less
violent crime, and you can speculate that if the US bought fewer violent
video games, then Norway would have less violent crime, and you'd have about
equal amounts of support for either stance.
--
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."
Post a reply to this message
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On 1/31/2011 11:58 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> And you are missing mine. Russia didn't want to wipe out everything
>> and start over, neither did the US.
>
> And if there's a revolution in the USA, you think the US government will
> want to wipe out every US citizen and city and start over?
>
I think, if such a thing where to happen its going to be a stupidly
small number starting it, and they will get their asses kicked so damn
fast all the people with guns won't even have a chance to find
ammunition for them. Which means, any *real* threat, where having lots
of people armed, isn't going to be something that internal.
I am also pretty sure of two other things 1) If there is need of a
revolution, it will be because things changed slowly, without people
paying attention, and 2) the sort of people that, right now, actually
keep talking about one are the ones that we would have to revolt
against, if they ever successfully pushed a revolution. And, even people
stupid enough to allow someone to erase their freedoms over a few
hundred years are probably **not** stupid enough to follow the wackos
that keep yapping about one right now.
In short, it will either be too late, by the time someone decides we
need one, or it will be entirely the sort of people the government would
be justified in doing something about, in neither case is it going to be
either in my life time, nor anyone I would give a shit about being armed
enough to fight the government. And, purely from the practical
standpoint, despite our willingness to give crazies a voice, the US has,
in general, rarely backslid into a state any worse than we previously
found our way out of. Even some of the recent infringements (like some
of the wire tap laws) are neither as bad as those already implemented in
the past 200 years, nor have, when those things have existed, they ever
*lasted* past the next period of relative peace, when people started
asking, "Why are we still doing this?"
I might not trust many of the fools in government, but I do trust the
system, in as much as it lends itself to progressing, far more than
regressing. With revolutions... you don't have a damn clue what you will
end up with. And, that should scare rational people.
--
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();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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