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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

#301

Post by giardini »

89vision wrote: post #68
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…

> You can't fight tyranny in government with metallic forks and gas cylinders. or with AR-15's

That's true. The AR-15's predecessor jammed so badly in Vietnam that it was likely a significant cause of losing that conflict.

The AK-47 is far, far less likely to jam than even the best AR-15's, which still has a reputation for jamming.

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

#302

Post by Anechoic »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #295
Anechoic wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and ~200 million gun owners Where are you getting this number from? 200 million gun owners means that nearly 2 in 3 US citizens owns a gun which doesn't sound close to correct. http://rense.com/general62/gns.htm says 80 million gun owners. http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp says 70-80 million adult gun owners. I can't find any better numbers, but 80 million sounds more reasonable. (still an order of magnitude mo…

1) You're assuming that everyone who owns a gun will say so when polled. That turns out not to be the case. 2) Even using your number, it's still 80 million compared to 2 million (and not all of those two million are going to go along with it anyway).

1) I'm not assuming anything, I asked for a source for the 200 million number and then provided other sources with lower numbers, If you have a source with different numbers, I'd love to see it.

2) "still an order of magnitude more than police/military"

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

#303

Post by mindcrime »

tome wrote: post #221
mindcrime wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And is the average response time of a police officer to your home, less than a minute, everywhere in the UK, any time of day or night, regardless of any other circumstance? If not, maybe you lot should reconsider your irrational fear of guns. FWIW, the USA is much larger than England, and some of our rural areas are very rural, so it's hardly an apples to apples comparison... but just to illustrate a bit: I was a 911…

I think you're responding to a point of view I didn't express (and don't hold) but thank you for sharing your experience. In any case, what "police exist" to do depends very much on the jurisdiction they serve in. The situation outside the US is very different from the one inside the US. Please bear that in mind before asserting that your interlocutor has an "irrational fear of guns".

In any case, what "police exist" to do depends very much on the jurisdiction they serve in.

Perhaps, but I bet you'll be hard pressed to find any jurisdiction (in reality) where police actually serve to respond to - and stop - in progress crimes on a routine basis. And I guess you'd be even harder pressed to find one of those where they actually live up to that standard.

Please bear that in mind before asserting that your interlocutor has an "irrational fear of guns".

I'm generalizing, of course, which is somewhat intellectually lazy, but in the absence of other evidence, it's a reasonable shortcut in the conversation. My experience has been that when someone identifies themselves as being from the UK, and takes a largely "anti gun" position, they usually have some pretty whacked out beliefs about guns and gun ownership. If that's not the case here, you have my apologies.

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

#304

Post by BryanB55 »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #215
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'm always really interested in the straw man 'home invasion' fantasy that the pro-gun lobby brings out. Why would someone invade your home with a weapon? For financial gain? Just for jollies[1]? The thing about giving everyone a gun is that it makes every crime that much more likely to be fatal. In Canada, for example, if I break into your house for your TV and you catch me, we're sort of at an impasse. Maybe I have…

Fair enough, so you would assume that the burglar would run away. What if they don't? A few years back in one of the wealthiest areas of Florida, I had 3 people enter my home one night while I was asleep and take computers, tvs, etc.. At the time I never owned a gun and didn't wake up to notice there were people in my home.

They were later caught by police and found to be over 6 feet tall with baseball bats, crowbars and a history of violent crime. Had I gotten up that night and walked into something unexpected I would prefer to have something to help me through the situation... Just my opinion though.

To me, a gun will help level the playing field. I have some empty hand combat skills but I surely wouldn't bet my life that I could take on 3 large men armed with baseball bats who didn't want to get caught and were clearly displaying reckless disregard for other people.

I just really don't think bad people are some imaginary "boogey men".

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

#305

Post by _quasimodo »

giardini wrote: post #291
_quasimodo wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in Germany someone breaks into your house, he will most probably not shoot you or even harm you. He will not even be carrying a gun. You know why? Because he knows that you do not have a gun. Or at least he can be pretty certain about it. Nobody likes to kill people (except a few lunatics), so nobody will kill you unless you give them a very good reason to. Drawing a gun, for example, is such a reason. By giving…

" Nobody likes to kill people (except a few lunatics), so nobody will kill you unless you give them a very good reason to." " Nobody likes to kill people (except a few lunatics), so nobody will kill you unless you give them a very good reason to or unless they're a lunatic." FTFY BTW how many lunatics in Germany?

Ah, if you want to nitpick, a lunatic might also have a good (at least for him) reason for killing you, be it that you catch his gaze at the wrong time or that it is just his way of having fun.

But thats beside the point.

As for how many lunatics we have, does it matter? What i wanted to imply is that its far from normal to enjoy killing. Not that this is the case for every lunatic. How many of those people we have and how many of them are actual criminals i don't know.

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

#306

Post by Turing_Machine »

Anechoic wrote: post #302
Turing_Machine wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) You're assuming that everyone who owns a gun will say so when polled. That turns out not to be the case. 2) Even using your number, it's still 80 million compared to 2 million (and not all of those two million are going to go along with it anyway).

1) I'm not assuming anything, I asked for a source for the 200 million number and then provided other sources with lower numbers, If you have a source with different numbers, I'd love to see it. 2) "still an order of magnitude more than police/military"

And I pointed out why your source is utterly unreliable. I'm not going to provide another source, because there are no reliable sources in this area.

The figure of 270 million guns total is somewhat more reliable because there's at least some idea of how many have been manufactured.

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

#307

Post by tome »

mindcrime wrote: post #303
tome wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're responding to a point of view I didn't express (and don't hold) but thank you for sharing your experience. In any case, what "police exist" to do depends very much on the jurisdiction they serve in. The situation outside the US is very different from the one inside the US. Please bear that in mind before asserting that your interlocutor has an "irrational fear of guns".

In any case, what "police exist" to do depends very much on the jurisdiction they serve in. Perhaps, but I bet you'll be hard pressed to find any jurisdiction (in reality) where police actually serve to respond to - and stop - in progress crimes on a routine basis. And I guess you'd be even harder pressed to find one of those where they actually live up to that standard. Please bear that in mind before asserting that…

I think you'll find that beliefs about guns and gun ownership in the UK are fairly commensurate with the western world as a whole. It's the US that bucks the trend on this issue (as it does with many others). "Whacked out" seems like an unfair description; "inappropriate for application to the reality of the US" seems more reasonable.

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

#308

Post by giardini »

knowtheory wrote: post #33
kiba wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this just doesn't add up. There's some reason you have police, military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this aspect of security. The poor latency of police response means that rampage killers(or anybody bent on harming anybody, really) can get away with killing several unarmed civilians before they can be stopped. In theory, concealed carry individuals can put a stop t…

You know what else works? Locked doors. More guns is not the only, nor necessarily the most effective, solution.

We can't be indoors all the time. Perhaps a locking endoskeleton, like knights-in-armour would suit your taste? I've read of such in sci-fi.

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

#309

Post by Turing_Machine »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #306
Anechoic wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I'm not assuming anything, I asked for a source for the 200 million number and then provided other sources with lower numbers, If you have a source with different numbers, I'd love to see it. 2) "still an order of magnitude more than police/military"

And I pointed out why your source is utterly unreliable. I'm not going to provide another source, because there are no reliable sources in this area. The figure of 270 million guns total is somewhat more reliable because there's at least some idea of how many have been manufactured.

Think about it for a minute. How likely is the average gun owner to answer truthfully when a stranger calls them up and asks if they own a gun? Hint: not very.

We could try using the Fermi estimation technique ("how many piano tuners are there in Chicago?").

270 million guns / claimed 80 million gun owners -> mean number of guns owned per owner is ~3.3. That seems high. Most gun owners I know own one gun. Some own two. Some own more, but I would bet money that the mean number is closer to one than it is to three.

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

#310

Post by Turing_Machine »

giardini wrote: post #300
Turing_Machine wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) You're assuming that everyone who owns a gun will say so when polled. That turns out not to be the case. 2) Even using your number, it's still 80 million compared to 2 million (and not all of those two million are going to go along with it anyway).

"1) You're assuming that everyone who owns a gun will say so when polled. That turns out not to be the case." So true. My favorite: "Busted: Gun Control Legislator Dianne Feinstein Discusses Why She Concealed Carried Firearms" http://www.ijreview.com/2013/01/32591-busted-gun-control-leg...

Also: Carl Rowan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rowan#Gun_Control_Controve...

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