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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

#311

Post by giardini »

tome wrote: post #175
nnutter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the weapon that violates any of that it is the person using the weapon. Some weapons have purposes other than as a weapon but your argument would still imply that your right to life, liberty, and happiness would be violated so we should make forks, knives, bats, pans, cars, everything illegal. Slippery slope? Sure. There's a spectrum and everyone chooses where the line sits for them. I don't want easy access…

It is much, much harder to kill people with forks, knives, bats, and pans than it is with a gun. (I'm less certain about cars, but they have substantial non-murdering use).

Yet another reason to allow the use of firearms: the sheer labor of killing an assailant (or worse, the ignominy of having been killed) with a kitchen pan! But a merciful byebye by bullet beats bludgeoning by bat.

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

#312

Post by nitrogen »

nitrogen wrote: post #250
knowtheory wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so here's the point where it gets all "us vs them", eh? I have fired guns, enjoy shooting, and several (but not all) of my family members own guns. It's not that I don't believe safe gun ownership is impossible, it's that I don't trust other people, and I would like their failures with potentially lethal tools to have consequences. If you own firearms, you should know where they are, and you should secure them ag…

I agree with your final paragraph, but disagree that the vast majority of gun owners are worthy of distrust.

Too late to edit, so I also wanted to add that my intention with my previous comment is not to create an "us-vs-them" dichotomy, but to try to make the debate more inclusive by teaching everyone how to be safe around guns and how to recognize someone who is not being safe.

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

#313

Post by suresk »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #309
Turing_Machine wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tw…

Since we're using anecdotes - I know and go shooting with a lot of people, and I don't know a single person who only owns 1 gun, it is either 0 or 2 or more (I personally own 3).

The reason is that different guns have different uses. If someone is concerned about personal protection, they'll have a handgun. A big rifle is useful for hunting or just messing around, but the ammo might be expensive (ammo for my M1 Garand is over $1.25 per round!) so someone might have something like a .22 rifle (ammo has historically been less than 10 cents per round) that can be used inexpensively for fun. If you hunt birds a lot and/or like to shoot clay pigeons, you'll also have a shotgun.

3.3 seems pretty reasonable to me.

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

#314

Post by giardini »

curiousdannii wrote: post #167
monochromatic wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't say that banning guns leads to tyranny in absolutely every instance, but it sure makes it easier.

Got an example where guns which were allowed were then banned by a government which then turned tyrannical?

Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Uganda under Idi Amin for starters.

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

#315

Post by codesuela »

buster wrote: post #204
nnutter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the weapon that violates any of that it is the person using the weapon. Some weapons have purposes other than as a weapon but your argument would still imply that your right to life, liberty, and happiness would be violated so we should make forks, knives, bats, pans, cars, everything illegal. Slippery slope? Sure. There's a spectrum and everyone chooses where the line sits for them. I don't want easy access…

blah blah blablah, i can stop reading your comment right at " it is the person using the weapon", that's the stupid stuff people keep repeating over and over and over again, like it would make sooo much sense, it's hilarious. Do you honestly believe that less people will die if you distribute more weapons among people!? Honestly?! Like think-really-hard-about-it-and-be-honest-to-yourself honestly? If yes, you are suc…

>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Not American, but even I feel annoyed by your tone.

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

#316

Post by Turing_Machine »

suresk wrote: post #313
Turing_Machine wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tw…

Since we're using anecdotes - I know and go shooting with a lot of people, and I don't know a single person who only owns 1 gun, it is either 0 or 2 or more (I personally own 3). The reason is that different guns have different uses. If someone is concerned about personal protection, they'll have a handgun. A big rifle is useful for hunting or just messing around, but the ammo might be expensive (ammo for my M1 Garan…

Most gun owners live in urban areas (which makes them even less likely to answer telephone polls honestly, particularly if there are local restrictions) and don't "go shooting" or hunt.

If you hang around with woodworkers, the number of hammers owned is going to be more than one. If you're talking about random people, it's going to be much lower.

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

#317

Post by notdrunkatall »

tomkin wrote: post #290
notdrunkatall wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, benevol…

Do you think that people are fundamentally different than they were three centuries ago? Do people not still seek power? If the answer to the latter question is yes, then the right to bear arms is as relevant today as it has ever been.

You would throw away a peoples' right to defend themselves against an oppressive regime based on what, precisely? Your presumed ability to foretell the future? Your hunch that humanity has progressed beyond our base instincts?

If that is the case, then you are a fool, which would put you in good company with the rest of the anti-gun crowd.

Your argument is bad, and you should feel bad.

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

#318

Post by notdrunkatall »

Anechoic wrote: post #287
notdrunkatall wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Obviously armed resistance should never be one's first course of action, but the ability to revolt is an option that should neither be taken lightly nor easily forfeited.

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

#319

Post by Anechoic »

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.

there are no reliable sources in this area.

So you would agree that the 200 million number is also unreliable?

Another data point: the NRA-ILA puts the number of gun owners at 60-65 million http://www.knobcreekshoot.com/FirearmsFacts.htm

The figure of 270 million guns total is somewhat more reliable

Agreed, but that wasn't the statistic given.

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

#320

Post by notdrunkatall »

tome wrote: post #270
notdrunkatall wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left reddit to get away from those with facile arguments which relied on an appeals to emotion rather than logic and fact. Yours is one of the former. But I'll bite anyways: how many more children have died under oppressive regimes where the people were not able to defend themselves?

Mine was not an argument, more a suggestion that your argument needs clarification. Please note that while I admire your aversion to "appeals to emotion" bringing "what happens if the system collapses? ... Riots, destabilization, foreign invasion" to the discussion may violate this ideal.

That is not an appeal to emotion, that is an appeal to history.

The entire history of the human race has been that of oppression of the many by the few; only in the last few hundred years have we begun to cast off those chains, and though it is tempting to believe that we will never see them again, people still desire power, sociopaths still exist, and considering the history of our species, I think it unlikely that the world has seen the end of destabilization, riots, and war.

It has only been half a century since the end of the last 'War to End All Wars,' which happened just a couple of decades after the previous War to End All Wars, shortly after the second World War, the world fell under the shadow of the Cold War, a period where we came very close to all-out global nuclear war numerous times. I'm sure you're familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis. You may also want to google Stanislov Petrov.

Ask an economist just how close we came to all-out GLOBAL banking collapse just a few years ago; we were within a hair's breadth of a severe financial meltdown, and that is not an appeal to emotion - that is fact.

None of us can predict the future, but to assume that we have seen the end of destabilization and the unknowns that destabilization brings seems rather foolish.

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