Citizens and Weapons

[Kulindahr]

PS. I wonder what on earth insecure people did prior to the relatively recent invention of fire-arms? Shout loudly and carry a big stick perhaps?

Probably the same thing they do now -- whine and cry to people with brute force to come take care of them.

 

[Kulindahr]

To put it respectfully, that is pure fucking insane horse shit.

I don't think I need the help of some item to make me feel like that. Letting some equipment control our entire psychological standing is the most dangerous thing you can do to yourself. And if you do, you need help.

1. F for reading comprehension -- you repeat what I said, as your position, and disagree with it.

2. What you're talking about is exactly what anti-gun people do: they "let some equipment control [their] entire psychological standing'. That's why our society has a crime problem: criminals know that a large portion is very insecure and can be intimidated.

It's the ones who won't be intimidated who are willing to take the measures necessary to stand up to the bad guys, rather than surrender a little freedom for the illusion of security.

 

[Ram]

Well, at least F is a grade and technically it's better than no grade.

 

[Kulindahr]

There are many, many pro-gun liberals, they just don't get any press.

America has a sheep mentality, more or less. One Englishman who came to study at Harvard bemoaned the fact that the constant, vigorous testing fuels this sheep mentality, while at Oxford, he was tested vigorously only once (at the end of term), giving the student time to ponder each topic from each and every angle.

We all know Republicans are a bunch of sheep, but the Democrats do it too, and this topic is a good example of it.

Which is tragic, since we used to be known for our individualism.

This is a country that of all others should have a multi-party system. That we have demanded conformity to just two, or forget about being represented, is a travesty.

 

[Lefty]

To put it respectfully, that is pure fucking insane horse shit.

I don't think I need the help of some item to make me feel like that. Letting some equipment control our entire psychological standing is the most dangerous thing you can do to yourself. And if you do, you need help.

Rammy old dear,

With all due respect 尊敬的朋友...STFU.

Sentosa Island is a micro-cosym. The equipment is a tool. Very effective but still
a tool. One uses tools to maintain their environment. Tools and their forebears
precluded jails and prisons and trial by jury and ACLU's and all those things.

Unlike some people here, I am a Bleeding heart fucking liberal with guns. People who
behave in a seriously anti-social manner to me, my family or friends will
experience my perturbation. In a close quarters confrontation if a less than
socially acceptable person or group is threatening bodily harm to me or 'mine'
I will allow my neanderthal DNA emerge and use the tool/s at hand to resolve the issue.
Yes, that means shoot the bastard/s if necessary and I pray that others would
do the same...cops tend to be after the fact and after the victimization.

My friend, guns are not the REAL issue here...
good versus evil and the right to protect ones self and community are....

 

[Kulindahr]

Rammy old dear,
. . . .

My friend, guns are not the REAL issue here...
good versus evil and the right to protect ones self and community are....

Rights are always the issue. We need to get that enshrined in government, in a way that says that any time a conflict at law involves individual rights, that position which better defends or enhances those rights is to prevail.

Pragmatics aside, this is about human dignity: if there is any human dignity, then each individual has the right to choose for his- or herself the means for defense of self and others, and to employ it according to his or her judgment.

And of course there is human dignity, arising from the truth of self-ownership: that I own myself gives me equal dignity with every other self-owning entity. And since I own myself, it's no one else's business what means of personal defense I choose or implement. The ONLY thing that is anyone else's business is what impinges on their self-ownership. So while they can flap their lips all they want, that being an aspect of self ownership, any attempt to impose other behavior on me by coercion is immoral, because it's a denial of my self-ownership -- a denial of my freedom and liberty.

Now, should the output of my chosen means of self-defense stray into your personal space, that's a new and different matter, because I'll have infringed on your self-ownership.

But passing laws to make it difficult or impossible for me to arm myself and defend myself as I please is just the Bush Doctrine writ small -- a pre-emptive war on the innocent for specious reasons.

 

[Kulindahr]

There are tons of us, but our voices get drowned out in a sheep mentality that prevails in a two-party system.

There's a point at which NineOfClubs is right about liberal conformity: if the Democrats gain sufficient power, there will be more legislative persecution of law-abiding gun owners, even if a vast number of Democrats actually disagree. In too many ways, both parties are about an agenda that is shared by candidates, and what their party members or constituents want can go to hell.

 

[JayHawk]

Oh I knew the source wasnt all that apt but it does draw out a odd bit of opinion.

Opinion from Wiki and Keeland is that the UK is way over reactionary nanny state which i would tend to agree based on the number of cameras watching your every expelled flatulence.

As far as the graph. i would say that NO organization puts together data in display form or does research simply to benefit knowledge or humanity. (at least from an American point of political view). It all has a bent of some sort. I unfortunately didnt have time this morning to dig deep as humanly possible and find whatever biased source is located on the internet to substantiate my claims.

Odd that both the maligned conservative daily mail article clearly points out that America is much more likely to get you dead. In the graphic I displayed it is simply the 13th in murder which to a skeptical viewer will allow for 12 other spots.

SO I guess until we can actually get a police force in the UK that only processes crimes and not just pumps up their activity with 10 yo slap fight violent crimes then comparison between either country for either argument is mute.

 

[star-warrior]

Opinion from Wiki and Keeland is that the UK is way over reactionary nanny state which i would tend to agree based on the number of cameras watching your every expelled flatulence.

This article might be illuminating

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8004224.stm

 

[JayHawk]

The process here in the US has gotten quite arduous for both passports and local drivers license. Which in a spread out country of the automobile I have found a license is necessary for existence.

I do enjoy a rapid process for my passport but I have a few passports from this country and typically one is valid while I am applying for another so it makes things much more expeditious.

 

[JayHawk]

This article might be illuminating

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8004224.stm

This is the same as the patriot act allowing unprecedented snooping in America. President Obama was elected in part to dismantle that security tool. He has not. I said he would not once he was privileged to the information contained. Somehow the left stop screaming about it one Barack Obama was looking through the microscope at the American People.

It makes no sense to me.

 

[Ram]

Rammy old dear,

With all due respect 尊敬的朋友...STFU.

Sentosa Island is a micro-cosym. The equipment is a tool. Very effective but still
a tool. One uses tools to maintain their environment. Tools and their forebears
precluded jails and prisons and trial by jury and ACLU's and all those things.

Unlike some people here, I am a Bleeding heart fucking liberal with guns. People who
behave in a seriously anti-social manner to me, my family or friends will
experience my perturbation. In a close quarters confrontation if a less than
socially acceptable person or group is threatening bodily harm to me or 'mine'
I will allow my neanderthal DNA emerge and use the tool/s at hand to resolve the issue.
Yes, that means shoot the bastard/s if necessary and I pray that others would
do the same...cops tend to be after the fact and after the victimization.

My friend, guns are not the REAL issue here...
good versus evil and the right to protect ones self and community are....

Lefty, babe you never fail to make laugh.

I'm fine with firearms of any kind and I take them up as a hobby. I like using the air rifle at the local rifle range. It's like archery except with technology. I just don't understand how one could feel like that^ about firearms. Different cultures..

 

[Lefty]

A trifle over the top. Or do you carry an AK-47 and a suitcase nuke for when the bullets run out?

He don't need 'em. He gots friends who may not agree with him much but we

still got his back...oh yeah, and he gots Bammer too. Why? Is you gonna stalk

or send in an ambush party.

 

[alfaPA]

It is a worrisome combination. What I don't grasp is why liberals have become such cowards as to fear inanimate objects. JFK, Hubert Humphrey, indeed most of the old greats, were grade-A gun enthusiasts, and thought it was a mark of a free people, that they should love the means of their freedom and security.

Oh please.. ....They liked to shoot guns.

I don't understand the Sarah Palin attitude, either, that seems to drool over the possibility of armed conflict -- she, with many fundamentalists who love guns, doesn't operate out of fear, but out of a lust for power, even for predation. They seem to salivate at the thought of being in public sometime and getting the chance to shoot a criminal; they really don't get the attitude of the guy at the top of the stairs protecting his family, who regretted the need to eliminate the threat "with extreme prejudice" -- they want to shoot someone (me? the only time I actually thought I might have to shoot someone, I got ill afterward). The only time I feel an itch in that direction is when I read about another gay person killed or nearly killed out of hate -- because I despise oppression.

This is a commendable attitude, K< along with you thinking it "freaky" that the gun lobby is pushing for the "freedom" to bring loaded guns into bars.

I live in Singapore where holding a spike in a threatening manner can land you in jail. Absolutely no firearms of any sort. And we are one of the safest countries in the world. ........

I choose everyday safety over a threat that might not come.

I don't understand America's gun culture. It looks like it based mainly on misplaced fear and insecurity rather than understanding the need of defend oneself.

Didn't our last president use "misplaced fear and insecurity" to get us into a needless and expensive war?? An unregulated firearms industry is no different than any other. Profits over sense. They could care less whose hands their products get into.

......

Kulindahr I don't know anything about any "culture". I know that a human being who is not permitted his or her own choice of means of self-protection and/or is restricted from the use thereof, is not a citizen, but property.

No offence, seriously, but this sounds like claptrap. You could make the same argument beginning and apply anything after it. A person who is restricted from driving down the freeway at their own speed is property, that anyone who pays taxes is property, there is no such thing as absolute freedom to do whatever you want, but it seems that you feel owning a weapon makes you more free, i think you're under a false impression.
If your gun makes you feel more secure, imagine what it does to the mind of a psychopath...
...............

. . ^ what M said.

Originally Posted by FanofFiction
Never going to a JUB meeting in the USA...

I don't like guns and I wouldn't feel safe sitting with someone who had one on their person.

I am so happy I wasn't drinking something when I read that. It would have ended up all over my laptop.

Surely, you can't be serious.

And here I thought you a sensitive and a guy with empathy..... Of course he's serious.

..... if the Democrats gain sufficient power, there will be more legislative persecution of law-abiding gun owners, even if a vast number of Democrats actually disagree. .....

I still don't know how effective and enforceable ways to control and monitor the sale of firearms and ammunition "persecutes" law-abiding gun owners. Laws that insure gun owners are being responsible for what happens with their guns protects gun owners and their families too. See stuff below:


Two toddlers shoot siblings in US

……No charges have been filed in relation to either case.

The two incidents come less than a week after a five-year-old boy died after shooting himself in the head. He had found a handgun inside his father's vehicle outside a Las Vegas pharmacy.

The father in that case has been charged with child endangerment….

S.F. gun laws under fire

Griffin Dix also showed up City Hall to testify in favor of San Francisco's safe-storage gun law. In 1994, his 15-year-old son, Kenzo, was accidentally shot and killed at a friend's house in Berkeley. The friend found his father's unlocked handgun and, thinking the chamber was empty, pointed the gun at Kenzo and fired the deadly bullet.

"You don't want to get a phone call that says your son has been killed," Dix said.

The laws under fire might have prevented this. But all that concerns the NRA?:

But C.D. "Chuck" Michel, the lawyer who sued San Francisco on behalf of the National Rifle Association, said the regulations won't withstand constitutional scrutiny.

"These are the types of regulations that infringe on the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms,....

What more can I say

plus I've spent too much time here already




...

 

[Lefty]

I am inclined to agree you may have spent to much time here already. I

direct you to the opening lines of this thread......

At the behest of another JUBBER or two, the following is submitted for your
intellectual review and expressions of thought, not political or rhetorical
response...........This could be interesting and all serious points of view will
be welcomed as fuel for thought not for adding to the fire.

It appears that you are more adept at throwing faggots on the fire
than respecting the statement of intent. Thank you for your interest.

 

[Kulindahr]

I am curious, in what way exactly does the government generate most of the violence?

The so-called "War on Drugs" is responsible for over four-fifths of all violent crime in the U.S., and high proportions elsewhere.

That holds true all over the world, it doesn't have the populace calling for firearms to be permitted for self defence. No Handguns here because they don't change anything to a substance where the pro's outweigh the cons. Guns are dangerous, however responsible a law abiding citizen is, there will be someone without a sense of responsibility who won't care and will use that weapon for lethal purpose. Sure, if a crook wants one he could make one if he sought out how to do so, but at least the aquisition of such weapons are not made simpler by having a government that accepts having them so readily available to the public.

So you prefer to require everyone to be a defenseless victim for criminals in order to keep a few hypothetical irresponsible people from having things you're afraid of.

No offence, seriously, but this sounds like claptrap. You could make the same argument beginning and apply anything after it. A person who is restricted from driving down the freeway at their own speed is property, that anyone who pays taxes is property, there is no such thing as absolute freedom to do whatever you want, but it seems that you feel owning a weapon makes you more free, i think you're under a false impression.
If your gun makes you feel more secure, imagine what it does to the mind of a psychopath...

Driving? Please derive that as an inherent right, from first principles.

I know for a fact that owning and bearing a weapon makes me more free. Your position amounts to, "I'd rather you were dead, because I'd feel safer".

Being punished is justice, we don't have to lower ourselves to the level of those who truly deserve to die by becoming like them, placing less value on human life. There are plenty of cases that come along once in a while that are so evil and abhorrent that yea, it makes me wish the death penalty existed just for them, but its good to know that humanity has the compassion and the tolerance to show leniency even to the most undeserving of people, and that nobody will be put to death by mistake, and that the punishment doesn't exist to be abused by the authority.

If they deserve to die, then we lower ourselves by not killing them.

Not that government has any business applying the death penalty, except perhaps in cases of mass slaughter that climbs to the level of a crime against the people -- and then only with multiple witnesses and more. In general, the only legitimate death penalty is at the hands of the well-armed intended victim, or a rescuer.

Excellent idea. Lets see the devastation of war without armies fighting them. The world would be a much improved place, but one step at a time eh, we need to disarm america first... (gets ready for the furore)

Disarm the militaries, first -- all of them. Disarming a populace has always been an opening move of a dictator.

Morally, that's the proper order anyway: the authority for a government to have a military derives from the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh please.. ....They liked to shoot guns.

So you think they were liars. Whatever.

I still don't know how effective and enforceable ways to control and monitor the sale of firearms and ammunition "persecutes" law-abiding gun owners. Laws that insure gun owners are being responsible for what happens with their guns protects gun owners and their families too.

They turn the exercise of an inherent right into an obstacle course, which criminals are permitted to bypass.

And those laws have killed people, too, by locking away the means of defense so that murderers have walked in and just killed people.


As for laws to require people to do things safely, there's no end to that road. And especially so long as the government continues to keep laws that generate violence, there shouldn't be any laws at all restricting citizens' access and use.

Sometimes I think the solution would be that of a few other countries, one recommended by some of the Founding Fathers: to require everyone to not just own a firearm, but to be a member of an organized militia with regular training, especially in safety and defense. But it is correctly said that if something is required, it is no longer a right, for the freedom to do a thing requires the freedom to not do it.

 

[Kulindahr]

Of course, when people do respond with a dissenting argument or opinion, you label their input as "trash" and continue to spout your own brand of rhetoric in favour of your own self-serving opinion. You have NOT welcomed all serious points of view; you have welcomed only the ones that support you and labelled all dissent as "political or rhetorical", but then that is the NRA way. Your way or the highway, and in a heartbeat you would use your firearms to enforce your opinion. Thanks for resorting to a personal attack for expressing my thoughts.

There are so many ways that is messed up and far off I don't even know where to start....

 

[Kulindahr]

Ok, but you can't seriously be suggesting that the governments attempts to crack down on drugs is the root cause of crime, seriously?

Yes, it is.

Prohibition drives up prices. Any time a highly desired commodity is prohibited, the prices rise high enough that the product becomes worth fighting for, the territory in which to sell the product becomes worth fighting for, and attacks on other people ion order to acquire funds to purchase the product occurs. This is just a standard principle of economics.

Prohibition of alcohol caused the greatest surge of violent crime in U.S. history. The end of Prohibition saw the most abrupt and precipitous decline in crime in history. The second greatest rise in crime in U.S. history came from the so-called "War on Drugs"... (the conclusion is obvious).

Ergo, the government is spending billions of dollars a year to cause crime -- violent crime. The only mitigating factor is that the majority of that violence occurs between those trafficking in the product(s).

When those things, are things that don't give me a fighting chance to survive an attack, yes, too right.
And furthermore, so long as i'm being attacked, and i have the power to clench my fists, i'm not defenceless. I might not be a fighter, i may lose in the attempt to defend myself, but i won't be afraid to try if my life depended on it.

This is called being prey -- voluntarily.

Seal pups can try to fight a polar bear, too....

Having the right to defend yourself is not a right, its more than that is'nt it, its human nature. How is it only applicable if you are allowed to carry a weapon? It's not any more applicable.
Guns don't make enough of a difference unless you are the one with the gun against the criminal without one, if the crook also has a gun, the odds are no different than if both had just their fists for weapons. The only real difference is, that with guns involved, there is more likely to be death, and there is a 50/50 that the death will be that of an innocent. Either way, a death of somebody's loved one.

Of course it's a right -- you own yourself.
Having a right entails choosing how to exercise it. If you aren't allowed to choose your means of self-defense, then you're being denied the right, just as if you had to pay a government fee to write a letter to the editor, which then had to be approved by a government 'editor', you wouldn't actually have free speech. A right restricted is a right denied.

Guns make a huge difference. Statistically, even if the criminal is also armed, he will decide to go where business is easier.
And 50/50 with a gun is an improvement: very few people are as practiced and easy about doing violence to other people as criminals are. That gives the criminal an advantage.

If the criminal dies, it's called "justice". That individual declared by engaging in criminal actions that he had rejected the social contract, i.e. the honoring of one another's rights. He thus became, as Icelandic law nicelyt described it, an "outlaw" -- outside the law, beyond it protections.
If his loved ones have a problem with that, they should have helped him not become criminal in the first place.

The authority for a government to have a military everywhere else derives from the need to defend the nation. (and when necessary to maintain law and order)
Nations this side of the pond are old, and the militaries were doing the job of the police, long before there was such a body of people.

If need is a justification and source of authority, then a large amount of crime is morally legitimate.

Nations are artificial entities, existing only because people let them. Artificial entities have no authority of themselves, but only that which is assigned to them by those who compose them. So the authority to have armed entities of government derives from the people, and nowhere else.
At that point we note that all authority of government is nothing but the rights of citizens assigned to the government to carry out, so the question becomes, which right of the people is being assigned to the government? There is only one which entails armed force, and that is the right of self-defense, which entails the right to keep and bear arms.

Militaries were doing the job of the police because the concept of government was that the ruler owned everything, including the people. The concept of government having authority in and of itself is a continuation of that tyrannical view of things. Until it is gone, mankind will never be truly free.

 

[Lefty]

Mitchy,

If Europe et cetera was doing such a good job,

how come they kept crying to America for help

and money and food and so on during their

altercations and misfortunes. If America is

so scary why do we have the horrendous illegal

alien and immigration problem. Why are so many

other country females timing and arranging their

delivery dates to insure their git get USA citizenship?

We didn't use guillotines or stonings or locking

people in filthy keeps to starve or ship them in boat

loads away for the crime of being poor.

Okay, we don't have the 'blue blood and sophistry of

the old world. Our aristocracy had to start from scratch

not inherit from the labouring backs of the common man.

The war on drugs here is a farce and it is terrifying how

much of our crime and violence are related. No criticism

of your point of from England, each country has their needs.

Just in case you didn't catch it, post 117 and 129 were injected

to lighten up things a bit.....RAM figured it out.,

Still friends I hope.