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Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

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Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#621

Post by CompanionCuuube »

close04 wrote: post #289
Clubber wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically military people at a US base are not armed. MP's are but not regular military.

The point I was making is that we aren't just talking about people with guns (the ones who had them) but people with guns and training . But judging from the downvotes most people assume the only thing they need to effectively stop a mass shooter or fight a war is a gun.

No, the problem with your comment was that it is based upon a faulty assumption regarding the presence of armed and trained personnel being abundant on a military base. The comment in response to your point was correcting you on that incorrect assumption: an overwhelming majority of base personnel were not armed, because they weren't MPs.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#622

Post by rjf72 »

slg wrote: post #509
rjf72 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the instances you mention, the government tended to pass gun control or confiscation before engaging in widescale tyranny. In 1938 Nazi Germany passed a gun control law that effectively gave 'true Germans' vastly more gun rights (which had been compulsory rescinded at the end of WW1) yet, they it simultaneously prohibited Jews from owning any weapon - even knives. [1] The holocaust began in 1941. In 1924 in the So…

Directly from the Wikipedia article you linked: >The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German po…

Let's take a single eccentric artist and vegetarian of no meaningful background, wealth, or power. By his 30th birthday our artist was no better off and his life's greatest achievement was working as a low ranking courier during WW1. What are the odds that this arist would go on to become one of the most important and powerful individuals in history and one who would come to within a hair's breadth of dominating the entire modern world? It's never wise to speak in certainties in regards to alternate histories.

One of the few things we can say for certain is that tyrants don't like having their targets armed. Would having arms have saved the Jews, the Soviets, the Chinese, etc? That's impossible to answer. But it'd certainly have given them more options and opportunities, rather than fewer.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#623

Post by filoleg »

admax88q wrote: post #596
filoleg wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>guns have one purpose - shoot things There is another one you are missing: deterring people from violence against other people, given the knowledge they might be carrying a gun. In a similar way to how nukes are actually used in 21st century.

Doesn't make the comparison between cars and guns any less stupid.

That one, I can definitely agree with.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#624

Post by sixothree »

philliphaydon wrote: post #219
program_whiz wrote: post #13

Sure, the kid was swinging at the officer, and I suppose that warrants the officer acting in self-defense. But another question is, what are the protesters supposed to do? The government has all the power, and can simply snuff out any resistence. If you just stand in the streets, they really don't care, they are going to take your freedom. Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator that just decided they were going to…

The full video shows a officer on the ground being beaten with sticks. So it wasn’t just a kid swinging at the officer.

Could you imagine what would happen in America if an officer was on the ground being beaten?

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#625

Post by mattnewton »

program_whiz wrote: post #13

Sure, the kid was swinging at the officer, and I suppose that warrants the officer acting in self-defense. But another question is, what are the protesters supposed to do? The government has all the power, and can simply snuff out any resistence. If you just stand in the streets, they really don't care, they are going to take your freedom. Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator that just decided they were going to…

There is another angle that shows the cop charging in with a gun drawn before the shot. https://mobile.twitter.com/antielabhk/status/117897105163343...

Also, further muddying things, it shows a moltov cocktail nearly miss a cop right afterwards, and a cop tackle and arrest someone who is on the ground trying to attend to the protestor who was shot. It looks like total chaos on both sides and is way more complicated than someone swinging at someone else.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#626

Post by [deleted] »

sixothree wrote: post #624
philliphaydon wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full video shows a officer on the ground being beaten with sticks. So it wasn’t just a kid swinging at the officer.

Could you imagine what would happen in America if an officer was on the ground being beaten?

[deleted]

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#627

Post by xfs »

YayamiOmate wrote: post #529
braindead_in wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yanis Varoufakis has an interesting take on Chinese economic imperialism. According to him, the Chinese are a benevolent imprealist, trying to achieve the same dominance but with loans rather than guns.

It's interesting to consider it benevolent from his perspective, since he called German financial institutions malevolent when it played out very similar in Greece. Except geopolitical influence expansion was not a main goal. Maybe he said something like "it looks like benevolent, because they use finance instead of guns" or that compared to using military force it's relatively benevolent, but after watching some of…

Varoufakis' comment on China isn't about China per se but rather an extension of his economic criticism of financial capitalism. He views China as patient investors looking for long term returns from infrastructure projects instead of short term returns from financial speculation, and he believes the former is "far more humanistic" than the latter. He even gave an example when he was the finance minister: He renegotiated a better deal for the port with China, but the deal was blocked by the Troika. It's not a comparison between finance vs guns, as we all learned after 2008 that finance can be as destructive as guns.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#628

Post by sixothree »

sergiotapia wrote: post #206
program_whiz wrote: post #13

Sure, the kid was swinging at the officer, and I suppose that warrants the officer acting in self-defense. But another question is, what are the protesters supposed to do? The government has all the power, and can simply snuff out any resistence. If you just stand in the streets, they really don't care, they are going to take your freedom. Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator that just decided they were going to…

> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator God bless the 2nd amendment dude. This is one of the greatest gifts the founding fathers gave the US.

Imagine for a minute what would happen to protesters in America if they acted like those in Hong Kong. Any amount of guns would have been met with overwhelming force and put down with absolute prejudice.

We even have laws in more than a handful of states that allows people to run over protesters with their cars and enjoy legal protection.

Keep kidding yourself.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#629

Post by behringer »

bdowling wrote: post #567
sjwright wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being serious. I don’t have a problem with responsible gun ownership. Switzerland is a good model. The NRA loves to point at rates of Swiss gun ownership. If the USA implemented all of Switzerland’s gun laws I think you’d be okay.

If the USA implemented all of Switzerland’s gun laws, a citizen who passes a background check would be able to buy a newly-made full-automatic machine gun that is not allowed in the US outside of law enforcement or military. I’m not sure that is what you’re implying that you’d want.

He's saying he wants to have the 2nd amendment while simultaneously having sane gun laws that are also enforced.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#630

Post by MS90 »

jacobush wrote: post #614
MS90 wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez that's crazy. 14 rounds in a leg...how was that thing even still attached? Do the police there have tasers? That could be a good tool for this type of thing.

Small caliber rounds. Tasers may come in the future. But back when that incident happened, tasers were not a thing. Edit: I am torn on tasers. It’s a viable tool. I am just very pessimistic. I fully expect them to used VERY liberally in all sorts of situations where we got along very fine without them. It’s yet another way of dehumanising an encounter

Yeah, they do seem like they get used a lot here in the US. That said, I'd much rather be dehumanized with a taser than with a gun.
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