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Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

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Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#231

Post by reader5000 »

Yver wrote: post #154
giardini wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories." Me too. But it won't end soon. Currently every shooting in every city is a candidate for promotion to a national media campaign that is focused on gaining additional restrictions on firearms, especially at the federal level (but also state level: Colorado is at this moment passing new highly-restrictive state firearms laws). Every opportu…

> orchestrated attempt to [...] confiscate all firearms Are there people out there who can read this and not think that this person is mental? I can't see a difference between this conspiracy theory and all the others: chemtrails, fluoride, mind control, FEMA camps, Time Cube.

I mean, fluoride does reduce IQ in children: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-childrens...

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#232

Post by jivatmanx »

tome wrote: post #210
jivatmanx wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hundreds of thousands of innocents killed in the "Shock and Awe" of Iraqi cities somehow doesn't count? More tyrannical U.S Government = More "Shock and Awe" abroad.

I find it very hard to understand what you're saying.

The number of innocent deaths caused by overly powerful government greatly dwarfs those caused by the freedom of firearm ownership.

So if your goal is to reduce death of innocents, it would be best to side with greater freedom rather than greater government power.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#233

Post by JoeAltmaier »

citricsquid wrote: post #152
TDL wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when you include stabbings and beatings?

A popular misconception is that England has just as much violent crime as America but it's redistributed across other weapons, the reality is that every country counts violent crime differently. If someone were to break into my apartment in England while I was out that is a counted as a violent crime, whereas in America it wouldn't be counted. The only fair way to compare countries is to compare specific crimes (eg:…

Wait - your numbers come out to something far less than 28X. 28x the homicides divided by 5x the people = 5.6x the rate?

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#234

Post by citricsquid »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #233
citricsquid wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A popular misconception is that England has just as much violent crime as America but it's redistributed across other weapons, the reality is that every country counts violent crime differently. If someone were to break into my apartment in England while I was out that is a counted as a violent crime, whereas in America it wouldn't be counted. The only fair way to compare countries is to compare specific crimes (eg:…

Wait - your numbers come out to something far less than 28X. 28x the homicides divided by 5x the people = 5.6x the rate?

28x is based on the raw figures (500 vs. 14,000) not adjusted for the differences in population.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#235

Post by notdrunkatall »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #144
hemancuso wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the massive mismatch of firepower, training and numbers between the government and the very best armed/trained groups within the civilian population I have trouble believing that anyone can still make this argument at any intellectual level.

How do revolutions happen even in countries without mass individual gun ownership then? Remember that we're not talking about merely an insurgency here, we're talking about an insurgency with massive popular support, against a government that has turned tyrannical. In such a situation there is no technological or firepower advantage that guarantees victory to the state, even nuclear weapons. There are always points o…

Obviously the absence of guns do not make it impossible to stage a revolt; they do, however, make it much more difficult.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#236

Post by reader5000 »

nitrogen wrote: post #230
citricsquid wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws? Criminals do not follow the law, that much is true, however a large amount of crime is due to opportunity and removing opportunity does help reduce crime. If guns didn't exist and everything else were the same and these evil people still had intent to do harm do you really believe that they would just give up because they had no other way to harm people? If t…

Societies must make the decision whether the opportunities lost by the vast majority of law-abiding people are worth denying opportunities to the very few criminals. Is the cure more damaging than the poison? Is a gun-free society forcing its will on those who want to own guns better or worse than a society in which criminals have slightly easier access to guns by stealing them from law-abiding owners?

You mean the opportunity to increase your probability of violent death? http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#237

Post by whyleyc »

BryanB55 wrote: post #205
whyleyc wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem" You have a culture problem, not a people problem. A culture whereby you are so fearful of violence that you have to carry a gun on your person every day is a broken one.

I can tell you without a doubt that I do not live in fear. Carrying a gun simply lets me go about my day knowing that I am equipped to handle an unpleasant or potentially deadly situation should I have to. Where do you live that you believe you will never fall victim to a crime? Are there no bad people where you live? There are a lot of great people where I live in a very affluent and safe environment but I'm not nai…

I live in a country where less than 7 people in every 100 owns a gun and where there are less than 50 homicides per year due to firearms.

You live in a country where 88 out of every 100 citizens owns a gun and with less than 5% of the world's population, you are home to roughly 35–50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns. [1]

You have a cultural problem that other countries simply do not have - more guns do not make you collectively "safer".

[1] http://m.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homici...

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#238

Post by notdrunkatall »

Anechoic wrote: post #158
notdrunkatall wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I still don't understand that how can guns be allowed in such a manner when they don't let you handle a gas cylinder at a public place or a take a metallic fork on an air-plane. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -Thomas Jefferson You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and ga…

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Apocryphal? From http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/strongest-reason-pe... : "This quotation has not been found in any of the writings of Thomas Jefferson."

Whoops, I missed the line at the bottom of that page which says that this quote has not been found in any of Jefferson's writings. They should really make it more prominent.

How about a substitute?

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."

And:

"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#239

Post by tome »

drone wrote: post #224
tome wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody should (and probably already does) know that the United States was essentially formed out of that exact type of rebellion. The arms that won us the war of Independence were all provided by private citizens, just as the cannons were, the ships that formed our navy, etc. If we hadn't had private weapons, we wouldn't have had anywhere remotely enough arms to have won the war. Do US Americans really think it wo…

Do US Americans really think it would have been terrible if the British Empire had remained in control and their country turned out like Canada, Australia or New Zealand? Absolutely. We didn't then want to bow before your King then, and we do not wish to bow before your Queen today. We did not wish to put down as poor and malnourished servants as you did with Ireland, nor did we wish to be slaughtered en masse, or di…

I appreciate your response, and I also appreciate the wonderful spirit of freedom embodied in American culture. However, I can't help but find it ironic that the United States' celebration of freedom harks back so strongly to a war with a country that has been its closest ally for the best part of a century.

Re: Person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT

#240

Post by reader5000 »

Tangaroa wrote: post #181
giardini wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I just want to say as an American, I am so fed up with all these gun stories." Me too. But it won't end soon. Currently every shooting in every city is a candidate for promotion to a national media campaign that is focused on gaining additional restrictions on firearms, especially at the federal level (but also state level: Colorado is at this moment passing new highly-restrictive state firearms laws). Every opportu…

True, there was no national dialogue on guns until the Democratic Party-controlled press fabricated one. The Newton shooting was going to be another crime story to be largely forgotten in a month except that the Democratic press made it the top headline of every party-run newspaper for over a week. (Meanwhile, where the hell are the news articles about Benghazi and the second September 11 attacks? Our "nearly defeate…

Yeah dude the gun slaughter of 20 children in an elementary school wasn't even going to make national news until "the Democrats" and their "near-monopoly control of the media" got a hold of it. Good thing there are people like you who can pierce through the bullshit with the Eye of Truth.
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