02-26-2004, 05:21 PM | #41 | ||
Senior Member
|
Quote:
Quote:
mag |
||
02-26-2004, 05:50 PM | #42 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 8
|
Ok so a burglar appears in your home, he is after the family silver. You get your gun, sneak up behind him, pull the trigger and bam his dead. Wohoo ! The silver is safe oh boy good thing you had that gun...
|
02-26-2004, 05:54 PM | #43 | |
Friendly Server Admin
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Marin County, CA
Posts: 4,087
|
Quote:
|
|
02-26-2004, 05:55 PM | #44 | |
Liver of Life
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 1,317
|
Quote:
Nothing like that ever came across my blackboards... |
|
02-26-2004, 05:58 PM | #45 | |
Liver of Life
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 1,317
|
Quote:
|
|
02-26-2004, 06:16 PM | #46 | ||||||||
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
Quote:
I do agree that politicians try to keep people afraid. But like I already mentioned, it's easier to keep people afraid of guns than to admit their own failures. Fear and anger translate directly into votes, and steel can't talk back! Perfect scapegoat. Bonus points awarded for confusing symbols with real things. Quote:
The other big contributing factor is the drug war. Our government spends $20 BILLION per year What we have in this country is a situation where the rich people living in nice neighborhoods with plenty of guns and police to protect them are legislating gun control that prevents people in poor inner-city neighborhoods/ghettos from being able to get, carry, and afford the guns they need to defend their own lives. Quote:
What if the attacker DOES have a gun? Don't assume people who carry guns are stupid, because they're not. If an attacker is pointing a gun at you, you're not going to pull yours out and get shot! But what if they intend to rape or kill you? At least a gun gives you a *chance* to defend yourself. The chances of a person who don't have a gun are close to ZERO. http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm (Notice the footnotes and credits all throughout this site. You won't find those on anti-gun sites.) Quote:
Statistics used by anti-gun people about people shooting themselves and accidental shootings are greatly exaggerated. Remember how I mentioned gang members are responsible for so many murders in this country (around half)? Well, for instance, Handguns-Inc., and anti-gun lobby, includes 17-19 year old gang members in childhood accidental gun death rates! In fact, those licensed to carry guns have a performance record that indicates the utmost responsibility. They actually outperform police by a factor of 20 to 1 when it comes to shooting actual criminals instead of innocent victims. That's because police get on the scene too late if they get there at all, and have to come in shooting since they're all dressed up in blue uniforms. Law abiding citizens are already on site to see what's going on. If a life is threatened, they solve the problem on the spot. There's *nothing* worse about being a criminal than a law-abiding citizens with gun, and studies show it's a criminal's #1 fear. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
[Continued...] |
||||||||
02-26-2004, 06:16 PM | #47 | |||||||||||||
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
Quote:
Quote:
People can play whatever games they want. Symbolic violence is not real violence. Only real violence can be made illegal. Quote:
As for guns in schools, look at the example in Israel. They had a problem with terrorists taking over classrooms and shooting innocent children. Quite a problem, you have to admit! Their solution wasn't to require teachers to carry guns. It was to allow teachers to carry guns. Since then, there has never been another such event something like 30 years now, save one. There was a case where a girls' school took a field trip to a site were guns were banned, and 7 young girls were killed. Quote:
Quote:
_______________________________ Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
We don't need an extra homeland security federal organization to defend us. What we need is for the FBI and CIA to do their jobs. On 9/11 when planes were crashing into buildings, CIA agents in N.Y. were busy cracking down on prostitution, and Bush was in some other state reading to children for publicity. The U.S. Constitution carefully spells out the powers and responsibilities of the federal government. Things like healthcare and education are not present. The job of the president and federal government is to protect the rights of the people of the U.S., not to nurse us and teach us. We can do that ourselves much better, as long as we are safe. Homeland Security a typical big-government solution: make people *feel* safe, not *be* safe. How does it grow and get more money from taxpayers? Not by solving problems! It grows by failing. The more it fails, the more power we give it, and the more money people in it make. It's the same with government health care and education. But I'm not *afraid* of terrorists or any government programs. I'm only ticked off because their wasting my money. Quote:
That may be because I don't use public restrooms or airports. (Hmm, I wonder if I saw you at E3?) _______________________________ Quote:
Quote:
In Japan guns have been totally outlawed. Only police and the military can have them, and must lock them in safes when not on duty. Violators get sentenced to 15 years in prison. Yet gun violence there is increasing! That means more people are using them now that they're totally outlawed. Why? Because it's safe to do so. As long as you don't see a police officer, you can safely victimize anyone you want. Kill them, and there are no whitnesses. Quote:
_______________________________ Quote:
|
|||||||||||||
02-26-2004, 06:24 PM | #48 | |
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
Quote:
But in countries where people have guns in their homes, criminals are more afraid to break in lest their intentions be *mis-interpreted*. |
|
02-26-2004, 06:32 PM | #49 |
Liver of Life
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 1,317
|
If one can guarantee the removal of every single gun in the United States apart from those held by Policemen and Military men, I would agree that gun-related violence would dwindle. Fast.
But unless every single gun is guaranteed confiscation, no current gun-owner will feel safe about giving up his gun. I don't blame them for their stance as different as it is from mine. |
02-26-2004, 06:33 PM | #50 | |
Liver of Life
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 1,317
|
Quote:
I mean, he is trying to rob you...what is one to do? Inform the robber that he's around, have the robber attack first and then kill him? Hopefully he'll run away, but you can never be sure... Oh well, this is another discussion altogether. Just felt like pointing out its outrageousness. |
|
02-26-2004, 06:52 PM | #51 | |
Umbilicus Mundi
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Stonia
Posts: 1,266
|
Quote:
I'm not against anyones right to have a gun BTW, I just think it is good not to always exercise that right. I've only seen one gun in my entire life so far, when one was being pointed at me. I was about 14-15 and was at a "friends" (who was maybe 1-2 years younger) and he wanted to show off, opened the bar and pulled out his fathers gun and pointed it at me. Let me say I didn't feel great at that moment. That guy was a jerk anyway, and I never saw or heard of him again.
__________________
|
|
02-26-2004, 07:16 PM | #52 | |
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
Quote:
(And remember the Simpson's episode with the board with a nail through it? LOL.) Plus, if you noticed what I wrote about Japan, you would see that they HAVE removed guns from everyone but the police and military, and yet gun violence is STILL increasing. That's because the people are sitting ducks. By removing guns you increase potency of criminals with (and without) guns. Last edited by Todd; 02-26-2004 at 07:42 PM. |
|
02-26-2004, 07:19 PM | #53 | ||
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
02-26-2004, 07:36 PM | #54 | |||
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
Quote:
Also, these Columbine kids were pretty screwed up. They might have used poison, fire, or explosives all of which could have been even more deadly than guns. Quote:
Quote:
|
|||
02-26-2004, 07:58 PM | #55 | |
Tactlessly understated
|
Quote:
|
|
02-26-2004, 09:20 PM | #56 | ||||||||
Senior Member
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
I'm not trying to accuse you of racism at all. But there's a little bit of truth in every stereotype. Numbers like those you present are quite true, and that's what feeds the fear that a lot of people have of black people. In reality, of course, most black people you meet aren't going to shoot you. But we use race, along with a number of other traits, as a means of quickly identifying who could be a potential threat because it's not like we can go over their entire psychological and socioeconomic history. So the good part is that it allows us to make judgments quickly. The down side is that such judgments are very often wrong. And then when people see that black people commit more crimes than whites they think, "Those darn blacks are causing trouble again." So it just reinforces that bias. We need to realize, though, that it has nothing to do with race. Quote:
Quote:
mag |
||||||||
02-26-2004, 09:52 PM | #57 | |
A search for a crazy man!
|
Quote:
__________________
Chris "News Editor" Remo Some sort of Writer or Editor or Something, Idle Thumbs "Some comparisons are a little less obvious. I always think of Grim Fandango as Casablanca on acid." - Will Wright |
|
02-26-2004, 10:13 PM | #58 |
Liver of Life
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 1,317
|
I'm not first in class! Here I go the death pit!
I just found out I got into UT Austin! |
02-26-2004, 11:24 PM | #59 | |
comfortably numb
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Helsinki
Posts: 541
|
Quote:
As far as my knowledge of history goes (I may be wrong), people in Germany were not forced to form the Nazi Germany, they willingly followed their charismatic leader. Of course, there were those who didn't embrace the change but they got along or moved out of the country - I don't see a university professor making it his duty to use a handgun to destroy the Nazi agenda? |
|
02-27-2004, 12:38 AM | #60 | |
Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 61
|
>> Actually, that's kind of what I've been trying to say. The vast majority of Americans have no reason to worry about being shot. The problem, though, is you can't just take out the gang members and the drug dealers and leave everything else.
Hmm. Well actually it is the government's job to take out the gang members and drug dealers from society But they're not. They're too busy wasting and spending that 42% of our income on programs that create more poor and also give welfare to the rich. The government is not supposed to provide educations, loans, welfare (especially since the rich collect 5 times as much welfare as the poor), medical care, insurance, or any of that. Why? It's not very good at those things, and it was not designed to do them. A free government can't do those things, because many of them cost the freedom our government was designed to protect. >> Those types of people are a product of the society they were raised in. Yet they're also responsible for their own conduct. Welfare and failing public education are what's creating the problem, not TV news. Public schools aren't giving children the one thing they need: the realization that hard work pays off. Anyone who's willing to get an education and a job in this country succeeds. To steal a line from Ahnold, there's no two ways about it. But instead we're sending a message to children that they need to become the next great celeb or basketball star, or else they're failures. >> So until we seriously start looking at the way our society is run we're going to continue having violent crimes. I am seriously looking at the way our society is run. We traded certain freedoms for government programs that are failing us. Government programs are inefficient and wasteful, because (1) politicians only have an incentive to present the illusion of success, (2) the millions of government employees don't have any opportunity to get raises if they save money and do their jobs efficiently so they don't care as much (3) government forces people to spend money on failing programs whether they work or not thereby circumventing free choice, and there are plenty more reasons. Our government was not founded to run programs and insurance schemes, but to police free people who do, and to ensure that our ability to live freely and conduct business is protected. But our government isn't doing it's job. It's taken over our rights and responsibilities to do what free people can do better ourselves by exercising free choice. If you really want to solve problems we need to be willing to do what it takes. I'm very much in agreement with Larry Elder about these steps: Quote:
|
|