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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

#271

Post by nitrogen »

tome wrote: post #255
nitrogen wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This lack of fear is interesting, because Britain's violent crime rate is higher than the US. "Swann noted that in the UK, there are 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people. By contrast, there are 466 violent crimes per 100,000 here in America." - http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/01/10/fox-af... (I couldn't find a list of countries on Wikipedia sorted by violent crime, only by intentional homicide, so…

I would be interested to see a breakdown. The received wisdom we have over here is that the UK is far safer in terms of violent crime than the US, but perhaps this perception is wrong.

The number of intentional homicides that I found was higher for the US, so that may be where the perception arises. Unfortunately it appears that these statistics haven't been broken down in an easy to use format, or if they have, it's hidden in some corner of the web where Google and Wikipedia dare not tread.

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

#272

Post by rooshdi »

damoncali wrote: post #248
reader5000 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's totally irrational to seek the most obvious way to prevent recurrence of the shooting massacre of 20 children, which happens with a marked regularity. Only a New World Order could explain why people want to ban guns.

The snark is unnecessary. Gun control advocates have had these goals for decades - long before Newtown - and openly speak about them. There is no tinfoil hat, no new world order. Just a political agenda by a minority of the political spectrum that uses tragedy to their advantage without apology.

The same can be argued against the NRA:

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/16/behind_the_nras_money_...

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

#273

Post by tome »

mseebach wrote: post #258
tome wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nazis overran nation states with mobilized armies. A small segment of the populace with guns would have been irrelevant.

It's one sentence, please read it. I'm talking about the evacuation of jews from Germany, not the general war effort, which was gainst countries with armies .

I know. What I'm saying is that if armies couldn't stop Hitler from marching in, jews with weapons weren't going to stop Hitler from doing what he wanted to them either.

[EDIT: anyway, I actually agree with your main point that a lot of private guns will be useful as a deterrent and in practice against professional armies]

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

#274

Post by nitrogen »

rooshdi wrote: post #263
nitrogen wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yea, the pros of sem-automatic rifle regulation has to be weighed against the extent of tragedies they enable. Do the pros of another firearm really out-weigh the pain they enable?

We won't get anywhere if the debates continue to rely on shocking stories, sweeping positive firearm events under the rug, and emotionally laden rhetoric instead of conducting a rational analysis.

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

#275

Post by damoncali »

khuey wrote: post #159
sigzero wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government really has no jurisdiction to determine how I exercise my RIGHT to keep and bear arms. I don't need to explain to you or anyone else for that matter why I want or think I need an AR-15.

Would you apply that same logic to a strategic nuclear weapon? If not, where is the dividing line between a nuke and an AR-15, and who and what determines it?

At a minimum, you want to have available weapons which provide a significant deterrent to government abuse of power. You want such abuses to be at the risk of a protracted deadly fight that threatens the stability of the power of the abusive government. Anything beyond that is unnecessary, and too much beyond that threatens the security of the people as a whole.

Practically speaking, I would allow everything up to .50 caliber machine guns with minimal regulation.

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

#276

Post by bambax »

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…

> Here's a interesting video from a Sandy Hook father whose child was at Sandy Hook the day of the shooting

No. This so-called Sandy Hook father IS NOT a Sandy Hook father, and his daughter WAS NOT at Sandy Hook the day of the shooting, as documented many times by himself, and described in more detail in this Slate article:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/02/07/bill_steve...

So maybe you should start by getting your facts straight.

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

#277

Post by damoncali »

reader5000 wrote: post #268
damoncali wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The snark is unnecessary. Gun control advocates have had these goals for decades - long before Newtown - and openly speak about them. There is no tinfoil hat, no new world order. Just a political agenda by a minority of the political spectrum that uses tragedy to their advantage without apology.

That still doesnt make any sense. It's like say in nuclear energy. There are two camps: one side says it is safe the other says it isn't. However, if evidence of more and more nuclear tragedies accumulate, one side looks more and more correct than the other. That side isn't "using" a nuclear tragedy to "further their own agenda", they are simply using it to demonstrate they are correct.

I'm just responding to the claims that there is an orchestrated attempt to use Newtown emotion to further gun control and confiscation. There undeniably is, and it's not some crazy notion of the tinfoil hat crowd - but the admitted and public goals of some people in power.

They have stated that they need to act now or they will lose the emotion required to pass such laws. That is not demonstrating that they are correct - it's the equivalent of "act before we have time to calm down and think, because we know we are in the minority on this."

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by whyleyc »

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?

It's unclear from the data:

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

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdExS...

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook...

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

#280

Post by damoncali »

rooshdi wrote: post #272
damoncali wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The snark is unnecessary. Gun control advocates have had these goals for decades - long before Newtown - and openly speak about them. There is no tinfoil hat, no new world order. Just a political agenda by a minority of the political spectrum that uses tragedy to their advantage without apology.

The same can be argued against the NRA: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/16/behind_the_nras_money_...

Absolutely true. They use propaganda and emption as much as the anti gun crowd.

But that link is way off base. The NRA is as pure a grass roots organization as exists in American politics. The gun industry is tiny. The NRA's lobbying budget is no where near the top of the list of political spenders. But they have roughly 4 million members (give or take - it grows in times of need) who are extremely passionate. They open their wallets, they vote, they organize, and they have an uncanny political memory. They terrify politicians (as the citizens should) because they are a well organized, focused group of single issue voters without party affiliation.

When someone from the NRA sends a letter saying "don't vote for this or I won't vote for you" it really means something. They're not like the suburban housewife who demands that politicians "do something about guns" and then forgets about it a month later.

That is where the NRA gets it's power. The gun industry and their money is peanuts.

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