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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

#281

Post by giardini »

tome wrote: post #207
BryanB55 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in hearing your thought on this in more detail. Can you explain how the police in the UK are able to get to your house fast enough in the middle of the night when someone breaks in? It takes hardly even 30 seconds to kick in a door or break a window and enter a home. Are you really capable of calling the police, having them respond, enter and clear your own home before that person does harm to you and…

(I'll answer in the most crude general terms without aiming for nuance just to give you an idea of the culture here. Of course the reality is much more detailed than I can describe in a few paragraphs and what I say is only true to the coarsest approximation.) UK residents are simply not afraid of being shot, because there are so few firearms. Armed robberies (with guns and with other weapons) do happen and as I unde…

"UK residents are simply not afraid of being shot, because there are so few firearms."

Perhaps because they're more concerned with getting stabbed! I see that some British doctors are calling for kitchen knife control:

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/british-doctors-cal...

"the generally accepted procedure is that you give the robber the material goods that he wants and then he goes away."

How do you instruct your wife or children to respond to rapists or pedophiles? Indeed, how would you respond?

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

#282

Post by damoncali »

kevincennis wrote: post #260
whyleyc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That has to be 88 guns per 100 people, not 88 gun owners per 100 people - right?

That's correct. http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#ownership

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

#283

Post by nitrogen »

89vision wrote: post #82
paulhauggis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel safe when I see or smell Marijuana. Is that a reason to not legalize it? If we were discussing the legalizing of MJ, I have a feeling your attitude would abruptly change.

I support reasonable drug legalization in the same way I support reasonable gun ownership. I'm from Utah, where gun owners are far from reasonable. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55649700-78/yorgason-carry... . There was a very vocal percentage of the population that thought this stunt was a good idea and cheered this guy on.

That's one person. Everyone cheering the guy on was probably saying that they're glad he did it, not that they would do it. I'm from Utah, where the vast majority of gun owners are more than reasonable.

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

#284

Post by damoncali »

curiousdannii wrote: post #203
BSousa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not american here so this is just a supposition. I think the main issue with it is related to the constitution. While the idea as far as I understand, was for citizens to bear arms and form a militia to protect against a foreign power, many of the people that defend the right to bear arms do so based on a limited knowledge of it (i.e.: 'The right to bear arms is in the constitution' but have no idea what comes next).…

So a silly question: does the constitution protect the right to own ammunition as well as weapons?

yes.

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

#285

Post by aero142 »

knowtheory wrote: post #157
aero142 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this argument. There are not numerous cases in the US where people were trying defend themselves with good intentions, but due to their lack of government approved firearms training, they injured someone else. Do you feel threatened by your neighbor's lack of gun training? They are just going to start shooting randomly at the darkness and hit you?

Really? Because I can think of two off hand that made the news since Newtown. http://cjonline.com/news/2013-01-08/man-accidentally-shoots-... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/boy-3-killed-playin...

Exactly. Your original statement was about laws and training programs that the government should require that will prevent these things from happening. In your two stories, you have a person with a concealed carry permit, and a state trooper. How much more training can you have than as a state trooper. I don't know what policy or training that we can mandate as policy that will prevent this.

Gun deaths are from suicide, gang/drug related shooting, and homicide primarily. Accidental gun deaths are mostly hunting related, and still are much smaller than the above three. I don't see what your government training for "safe gun ownership" really accomplishes except feel good hopefulness and annoying people into not wanting to own guns.

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

#286

Post by giardini »

whyleyc wrote: post #182
BryanB55 wrote: post #173

I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed peopl…

"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.

Most know cultures through history have allowed the carrying of arms, especially for self-defense. So I suppose most cultures are broken?

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

#287

Post by Anechoic »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #238
Anechoic wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

And yet another Jefferson quote: "Happy for us, that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions."

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

#288

Post by damoncali »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #9
cbau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple-- As an American, I have a right to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I don't want to give up any rights I don't have to. That includes the freedom to buy and carry a gun.

But I DO have to give up the right to travel without being strip-searched. A nation of paradoxes.

I like to think that this is a state of temporary insanity for our nation. One day, I pray, we will all be able to look back and laugh about the days when we had to take our shoes off at the airport like we do at those duck and cover PSAs.

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

#289

Post by damoncali »

bediger4000 wrote: post #31
cbau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple-- As an American, I have a right to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I don't want to give up any rights I don't have to. That includes the freedom to buy and carry a gun.

As another American, I don't think that's quite it, as we (Americans) have essentially given up some of your other rights: we don't really have a right to be secure against arbitrary search and seizure any more, and we don't have much of a right to due process any more. We're shaving our freedom of speech thinner too. So: why is the 4th Amendment right to keep and bear arms defended so zealously, and interpreted so l…

Because power, as Mao said, comes from the barrel of a gun. Without the 2nd, the other amendments may as well be suggestions.

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

#290

Post by tomkin »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #269
tomkin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really poor argument. First, what's "tyrannical" to you? There are various degrees of "tyrannical", just as there are various degrees of terrorism. Can you expect the entire country of gun owners to react all at once? Because I have some evidence that suggests otherwise. You're hoping for some "flipped switch" type of tyranny that never happens. Even Hitler's madness took place in phases and wasn't universa…

You're arguing that because people might not suddenly decide to revolt en masse that... what, exactly? That a revolution is therefore not possible, and that we should then give up the right to bear arms? How ironic that you would accuse him of making a really poor argument when yours is about as poor as they come. I hope no one upvoted that drivel.

Your right to bear arms is silly. Incredibly silly and archaic. You live in 2013, not in colonial times. While the amendment made perfect sense then, it makes no sense now.

The pro-gun movement seems to be completely ignorant to the staggering evidence that guns in citizen's hands are unnecessary at the least and dangerous at the worst.

Society: an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

As the above dictionary definition suggests, a society is based on a collective set of ideas, rules and order so that all within the society can live peacefully. Remove the guns and the strange associated chest-thumping, less people die. It's really that simple.

You used to be able to drink and drive, until we all realized it was for the betterment of the society to change that. You lost that right, too. Guns are no different.

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