Ban every gun
- Thread starter Charlie Don't Surf
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That's what Porn without Porn taught me.The workers who use those guns are just engaging in murder practice. Obviously.
I agree with you in spirit, but the reality is that they do exist, and banning them is not going to happen. Ever.
Just remember to defrost the chickens first.
Today we learned that Charlie does not think that a person can be Evil. No, instead he believes that Evil can only be contained within inanimate objects...objects that, if left untouched by human hands, will do nothing but rust and sit inert, harming no-one.
For the moment, let's imagine one of the following two scenarios:
1) Someone succeeds in proving that being in the vicinity of a gun* coincidentally will give you AIDS, super-cancer, and MRSA simultaneously. As a result, all guns in the world are collected and destroyed. Teams of people with metal detectors and deep radar comb every inch of the world uprooting all hidden caches also. While they're at it, they also defuse every mine (they're digging up the world anyway, so why not?). Now there are no more guns. The world is saved!
...oh wait, it isn't. All firearms have been eliminated (including vehicle/ship-mounted), but we have also eliminated all lasers, particle accelerators, catapults, pitching machines, slingshots, atlatls, RADAR, and countless other legitimate/useful/critical devices used in daily life.
2) You somehow manage to invent a time machine and prevent guns from being invented (or reinvented) at any and all points in history ever. Nobody has ever seen a gun, nobody ever gets the idea for a gun, lasers/RADAR/etc all get invented without a problem, and any time someone ever stumbles onto the idea of a "slug-thrower," their notes get stolen, or they receive a mysterious blow to the head, or they are "accidentally" killed by a "malfunction" of the weapon (thereby furthering the notion that these things are too dangerous to exist). You have stuffed that genie back into the bottle. The world is saved!
...oh wait, that won't work, either. People have been killing each other with bows and arrows, swords, sticks, poisons, cars, even their bare hands for millennia, and their creativity in this regard is legendary. 13 people die in a bus station suicide blast during rush hour, some nut refilled the stuffing in his down parka with C4, blasting cord, and carpet tacks and now terminal A2 is done up in mostly type-O positive. During the Cannes showing of Silent But Deadly, some crazy fool gets the clever-but-misguided idea to bring in a couple of rechargeable aerosol cans each filled with 8oz of Sarin nerve agent and lets loose with it after sitting himself down close to the center. 20 people die immediately due to exposure, another 12 die after being trampled. Hundreds are injured, many permanently. A few months later, another three dozen or so of the survivors die and it is discovered that the handles of the exit doors had been painted with dimethylmercury, dooming those who fled the swiftest to a slow, lingering death. At a 40yr-old nightclub, someone casually lights the ancient polyester curtains on fire next to the only exit door. A hundred people die of smoke inhalation and trample-related injuries. And overshadowing everything, the atom remains split.
See, it's not the guns. You eliminate the guns, people just go for what's next. You could jump in your Oubliette2k time machine and eliminate swords, sticks/clubs, fire, mutate the human race to only have a single finger on each hand and gills (no more choking/drowning!) and when you were done THEY WOULD FUCKING KILL EACH OTHER WITH TIME MACHINES.
I realize you're set in your mind, Charlie Don't Surf . Guns have no redeeming qualities. Well, I feel the same way about mosquitoes, and significantly more people have invested significantly more time and energy trying to prevent significantly more deaths due to mosquitoes, but there are still significantly more mosquitoes than guns, and this is unlikely to change.
--Patrick
*For the sake of argument, "gun" will mean any sort of weapon which imparts massive kinetic energy to a particle/projectile which is then ejected from the apparatus.
For the moment, let's imagine one of the following two scenarios:
1) Someone succeeds in proving that being in the vicinity of a gun* coincidentally will give you AIDS, super-cancer, and MRSA simultaneously. As a result, all guns in the world are collected and destroyed. Teams of people with metal detectors and deep radar comb every inch of the world uprooting all hidden caches also. While they're at it, they also defuse every mine (they're digging up the world anyway, so why not?). Now there are no more guns. The world is saved!
...oh wait, it isn't. All firearms have been eliminated (including vehicle/ship-mounted), but we have also eliminated all lasers, particle accelerators, catapults, pitching machines, slingshots, atlatls, RADAR, and countless other legitimate/useful/critical devices used in daily life.
2) You somehow manage to invent a time machine and prevent guns from being invented (or reinvented) at any and all points in history ever. Nobody has ever seen a gun, nobody ever gets the idea for a gun, lasers/RADAR/etc all get invented without a problem, and any time someone ever stumbles onto the idea of a "slug-thrower," their notes get stolen, or they receive a mysterious blow to the head, or they are "accidentally" killed by a "malfunction" of the weapon (thereby furthering the notion that these things are too dangerous to exist). You have stuffed that genie back into the bottle. The world is saved!
...oh wait, that won't work, either. People have been killing each other with bows and arrows, swords, sticks, poisons, cars, even their bare hands for millennia, and their creativity in this regard is legendary. 13 people die in a bus station suicide blast during rush hour, some nut refilled the stuffing in his down parka with C4, blasting cord, and carpet tacks and now terminal A2 is done up in mostly type-O positive. During the Cannes showing of Silent But Deadly, some crazy fool gets the clever-but-misguided idea to bring in a couple of rechargeable aerosol cans each filled with 8oz of Sarin nerve agent and lets loose with it after sitting himself down close to the center. 20 people die immediately due to exposure, another 12 die after being trampled. Hundreds are injured, many permanently. A few months later, another three dozen or so of the survivors die and it is discovered that the handles of the exit doors had been painted with dimethylmercury, dooming those who fled the swiftest to a slow, lingering death. At a 40yr-old nightclub, someone casually lights the ancient polyester curtains on fire next to the only exit door. A hundred people die of smoke inhalation and trample-related injuries. And overshadowing everything, the atom remains split.
See, it's not the guns. You eliminate the guns, people just go for what's next. You could jump in your Oubliette2k time machine and eliminate swords, sticks/clubs, fire, mutate the human race to only have a single finger on each hand and gills (no more choking/drowning!) and when you were done THEY WOULD FUCKING KILL EACH OTHER WITH TIME MACHINES.
I realize you're set in your mind, Charlie Don't Surf . Guns have no redeeming qualities. Well, I feel the same way about mosquitoes, and significantly more people have invested significantly more time and energy trying to prevent significantly more deaths due to mosquitoes, but there are still significantly more mosquitoes than guns, and this is unlikely to change.
--Patrick
*For the sake of argument, "gun" will mean any sort of weapon which imparts massive kinetic energy to a particle/projectile which is then ejected from the apparatus.
I want one.
If it happens more often, then surely we'd see more stories of that. Perhaps you have an example?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.htm
According to the above article:
According to the above article:
Frank, do you recall a study that showed that studied the reaction time for people carrying guns in encounters with shooters? It was popular around the time of the Virginia Tech shootings, it basically showed that unless you made it your profession to carry and discharge a gun, you get killed trying to draw the weapon in a shooting situation.
Yep. Having a gun is not the same as knowing how to use it. Unless you are trained (self- or otherwise) and prepared to defend yourself with it, the biggest thing going for the defender who pulls in response is the surprise of having one, and that wears off pretty quickly.
It's one thing to have an ace in the hole. It's quite another to play with the full deck.
--Patrick
It's one thing to have an ace in the hole. It's quite another to play with the full deck.
--Patrick
That man is not a hero , he is an idiot.
Is it wrong that I now want to read a fanfic where the world's guns are all horcruxes of Voldemort?
And Charlie, if we banned guns...we would end up with Bunraku.
I don't know if I can deal with that in greater than two hour chunks and at least slightly drunk, man!
Molon labe.
That is all.
That is all.
that too.FTFY.
Dave
Staff member
Let's see what funnyman Jason Alexander has to say about it. This should be HILARIOUS!!
What? Holy shit. What a great argument against.
What? Holy shit. What a great argument against.
God damn!
Jason Alexander is a pretty good dude.
I must say I find myself in some disagreement with Jason Alexander about his conclusions. Taking a look at the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, it reads:
Second Amendment said:
It thus might seem that the 2nd Amendment is talking about a right of the people to bear arms. And the expression 'right of the people' does appear in several of the other amendments where it refers to the rights of all people, and not the rights of some smaller subset of the populace (such as those who might belong to a selective militia, as Jason seems to suggest is the case here). This interpretation is also consistent with english laws which served the americans a basis, and the british colonial defence system where every able-bodied man capable of bearing arms was subject to militia duty whenever the circumstances demanded.
I just hate that Jason Alexander stated the 100,000 Americans die to fire arms every year. He's only 91,000 off that number.
That kind of ignores his main point. He is in no way advocating banning firearms of all kinds. He's arguing against the right of availability of semi-automatic firearms and assault rifles. It's an interesting question. How do we even define "arms" by the second amendment. Does that include missles and bombs? They're armaments.
GasBandit
Staff member
You have to look at what the founders were trying to accomplish. First of all, as we've been over in every single other gun control thread, Alexander is using contemporary definitions for "regulated" and "militia" that do not match what they meant in the late 18th century. The meanings of words change over time and context. They considered "militia" to be something closer to his second definition - anybody and everybody who could be considered able to fight. The term "regulated" had nothing to do with government controlling something, it had to do with being regular - IE, there is a minimum level of equipment needed to be an effective soldier, and if you had at least that minimum level, you were considered to be regular. Well regulated.
The founding fathers were attempting to arm the general populace to be just as well armed as professional soldiers.
Once you've reached that logical conclusion, it's easy to see what we should and should not be allowing - whatever is issued to and can be carried by an individual soldier. That defuses the whole "well why don't we just let everybody have tanks and nukes and submarines then" bit of hyperbole - because those are not things that are in the possession of a soldier.
There's a common thread in every national debate these days. People seem to think that bad things only happen because the government allows people to be too free... excuse me, don't "take good enough care of people." Whether we're talking gun control or socialist health care, people seem to think that it is possible for bad things to not happen, ever. And that what's stopping the prevention of bad things happening is that we don't give government permission to stop them.
Bad things happen. Madmen gun down theaters. Bombers blow up federal buildings. Cancer claims millions from every country on the globe. These are all very bad, very sad things. But statistics show that governments have comparatively negligible ability to stop these things even when tyrannical. The reason the second amendment exists is because power corrupts, and Washington DC is the most powerful city on Earth. The reason the second amendment exists is because it has a very real impact in preventing another very bad thing from happening. That thing that happens in Syria, and in Iran. Those things that happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union. In Germany, in Italy. That thing that almost succeeded in America, in 1775. It is the final and most definitive line of defense against tyranny and oppression. It makes us those who watch the watchers, who keep the power players in the most powerful city in the world honest.
Many are in denial about how easy it is for tyranny to take root. You tell the people they are under attack. There's a state of emergency. Your least favorite president (of either flavor) suddenly suspends elections until "after the crisis has passed." His cohorts in the legislature go along with the power grab because they stand to gain as well - and really, watching how American politicians and elections have been handled, do you really doubt that the first and foremost priority of almost every politician is to stay in power for as long as possible, all else be damned?
Banning guns won't stop things like the Aurora tragedy from happening. Last year, a man walked into Fort Hood with a pistol and killed 13 people, wounding 29. A man who was known to be unstable and dangerous and yet nothing was done to even begin stopping the tragedy from unfolding because of concerns about political correctness. He didn't need the oh-so-feared AR-15. But America does need the AR-15. And whatever comes after it. It needs these weapons available to every son and daughter of Liberty who wants the future to be at least as free as his past. Because the world is a daily, constant tug of war between those in power, in their mind, a balancing act between how much they want to dictate your life to you regardless of your wishes, and how much they think you will let them. They want control over your wallet, they want control over what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom. They want to control who you can marry. They want to control what you worship and if you can do so publicly and if so to what degree. They want you to not care and to leave the big decisions to them while you watch Modern Family and eat your pizza and drink your beer. And when they no longer fear the gun that could be in your hands, that is the day America dies.
Ok, now I'm going to switch positions in this to respond to Gas. This might sound odd, since I'm usually pro 2nd ammendment, but my support only really applies to handguns, rifles, and shotguns (all tools that are common to find in rural areas) and with careful regulation.
Now imagine everyone at one of those is armed with an M-16.
Would anyone really feel like liberty was being done there? Or would you get the hell out of dodge before the crazy explodes?
Think about your average tea party rally. Here, I'll help you.GasBandit said:
Now imagine everyone at one of those is armed with an M-16.
Would anyone really feel like liberty was being done there? Or would you get the hell out of dodge before the crazy explodes?
I don't know about that, but I'll tell you what I think...there would be a lot fewer gun deaths (and homicides in general) if the general American populace felt they had a much more legitimate influence over their daily lives. If a person believes that the ability to control his own life rests firmly in that person's own hands, then he is probably significantly less likely to do something so spectacular.
--Patrick
GasBandit
Staff member
Remember that there's a disproportionate number of not-gun violent crime to make up for it the other direction. For example, compare the US to the UK, probably it's closest european analogue, and that which can be used as a test case for the banning of firearms. If we look at the tables supporting Chapter 5, on Violent Crime, (this is an Excel Workbook) we are told that there was a total of 2,420,000 violent crimes in the time-frame covered by the report. If we take the word of the CIA Factbook the UK had a population of 60,609,153 (July 2006 est.) This gives a rate of violent crime per 100,000 inhabitants as 3992.8. However in Chapter 7, (Table 7a) of the BCS, the total violent crime rate per 1000 inhabitants is listed as 23, which is equivalent to 2300 per 100,000 inhabitants. Even this lower number is an astonishing figure when compared to the US data. According to the FBI, in 2005 there were 469 violent crimes committed per 100,000 in the US. Ironically, one of the highest violent crime rates in the country is DC itself, approximately 1500 per 100k. Texas is around 500. Now, it's true that there are about 4 less murders per 100,000 in the UK as the US, but it's not for lack of trying. And the criminals still have guns. Bad things continue to happen. Even though England has a gun ownership rate of 6.2 guns per 100 people compared to the US's 88.8 per 100.
Given that it is by definition impossible to use laws to remove these already-existant guns from the hands of criminals and psychopaths who would use them to perpetrate tragedies like the one that spawned this thread, I assert that to outlaw the implements essential to the preservation of our liberty for a risk in not actually reducing violent crime at all (possibly even making it worse), the rational choice is obvious. Is it a necessary evil? That's a loaded question. Probably, it is the lesser of two evils. Is that cold comfort for those who have lost loved ones to the violence of a sick mind? Definitely. [DOUBLEPOST=1343024485][/DOUBLEPOST]
I can only hope washington was as scared, or more, of those signs as you were. If they weren't, maybe it's too late.
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