Quake3World

you're wasting your time. unless the research clearly shows that guns are forged by satan and baptised in the blood of infants, it's worthless and proves nothing

Turing wrote: There's some hard data for two states that had concealed carry laws that show an overall decrease in most violent crimes. Utah didn't even have the bump in property crimes that's usually seen. Let me know if this research is valid enough for you, or if you're just going to condescend without any evidence to back up your naysaying; I can always get more.

Denmark has about 6 guns and no violent crime, no school shootings, no armed holdups, no mass killings in the street or people "busting caps" for their shoes. It's a very chilled out place and the people living there aren't paranoid enough to even buy a gun, let alone feeling the need to carry one. I can go on and list a bunch of other countries that don't have everyone carrying weapons and aren't anywhere near as violent as America...while you say guns are "fairly ubiquitous" within the US.

Seriously...you are not proving your point that an "armed society is a polite society". Quite the opposite.

Ah, but that's the problem. The society is impolite because of a lack of willingness to embrace guns, not because of the guns that are there.

What I mean is that guns themselves are prolific within the US. That doesn't mean that everyone embraces the culture by any means, and many of those who do do so in a stupid and illegal way.

But the fact is that guns are ubiquitous ENOUGH that there would be no chance of getting rid of them at this stage, period. The right choice is for people to be armed enough that people with guns are no longer especially armed in comparison and therefore have no special power over others.

So then let's all buy Kevlar vests, RPGs, hide our money in our mattresses and be done with it.

WTF is your world view to come up with an idea like that?

Or perhaps this tidbit of info has swayed your world view: In 2007 there were 4 mass shootings in the US, while in the rest of the world...there was 1.

Come up for air, that toxic shit is rotting your brain.

Turing can make tidal waves

GONNAFISTYA wrote:Denmark has about 6 guns and no violent crime, no school shootings, no armed holdups, no mass killings in the street or people "busting caps" for their shoes.

yeah with a population of 5,475,791, about 300,000,000 less than the US, and approximately 2 black people, what do you expect?

Ah...so now it's "teh black people" and that violence is dependant on population, rather than world view?

Fuckin hell there are countless retards on the internets.

No...seriously...I can see your point of why we shouldn't compare a non-violent, relatively peaceful society to a rampant shithole bent on arming everyone to the teeth.

you know in Amerukkkkurah it's a felony to not own a gun? it's customary to get your first gun after your baptism, which is also federally mandated.

And?

i was just clarifying

I'm still wishing people would start looking at the reasons WHY people kill each other instead of birthing heifers over the WAY in which it's done.

Nightshade wrote:I'm still wishing people would start looking at the reasons WHY people kill each other instead of birthing heifers over the WAY in which it's done.

This is a good call... but what about the school shootings where the kids just go in and shoot whomever they feel like? There wasn't any rhyme or reason to the people that were slain at Virginia Tech...

I don't support the idea of being able to conceal weapons on campus. I do like the fact that students want to protect themselves and be knowledgeable about different situations.

Nightshade wrote:I'm still wishing people would start looking at the reasons WHY people kill each other instead of birthing heifers over the WAY in which it's done.

That's the point I was trying to make when I brought up Denmark.

I think the reason why there are no frank discussions about WHY people kill each other is the same reason why people don't talk about war crimes, torture, etc....it's too painful to talk about.

That's my 2 cents. I think it has been a very long time since America looked at itself in an honest fashion. I'm not talking about forum posts from scattered, angry Americans...but a prolonged, genuine discussion amongst the populance about "who we are". Like the never ending gossip about Britney Spears in the media, the topic must be discussed every day before anything will begin to change. That's true for all of humanity but the reasons why we don't is the same...it's too depressing.

Turing, just listen to seremtan, you're wasting your time with rational debate on this issue. I've tried to make some of the same points that you have, but the facts can't ever seem to rise above the rhetoric about what a nasty society we are for having any guns in the first place. Who cares that one of our most recent mass shootings was done with a long rifle - let's just lump it right in here with handguns and chalk it up to our bullet-toothed culture.

Lord knows we're all ammo nuts at heart and you obviously can't be gay, liberal or rational anymore because you happen to have a stance that overlaps with "the others."

GONNAFISTYA wrote:

Nightshade wrote:I'm still wishing people would start looking at the reasons WHY people kill each other instead of birthing heifers over the WAY in which it's done.

That's the point I was trying to make when I brought up Denmark.

lol, no it's not you fucker.

besides that, comparing us to a country like Denmark is throwing out pretty much any useful comparative data to begin with.

Now if you want something that nearly ALL of us can agree is pretty fucked up, I give you Florida (again):

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... rint.story

Let's get to the nitty gritty and forget guns for a second.

What is the problem in a society that feels that it needs to carry a weapon of any kind in their day-to-day business of going to work, stopping off at a convience/grocery store on the way home, greeting your family when you walk in, eating dinner, spending time with said family/posting on the internet and going to sleep.

What in there constitutes the core problem of people feeling they need to have a weapon on hand at an instant's notice?

Explain that and I'll understand why people think we all need guns or to be wearing hockey equipment 24/7 to get along.

Yes there is crime. Yes there is violent crime. Yes life sucks when people cut you off in traffic. But what is it that makes people utterly and unashamedly paranoid to need a weapon?

I'd be interested to see the stats on gun crimes committed by people with carry permits.

Nightshade wrote:I'm still wishing people would start looking at the reasons WHY people kill each other instead of birthing heifers over the WAY in which it's done.

I still can't hear anyone willing to take the challenge of this statement, because everyone is still yelling "OMFG, AMERICA IS A BUNCHA GUN CARRYING LUNATICS."

We are not. We care about life very much. If you judge America by just the Americans you see in the media, you have a scewed sense of who we are. You don't see normal America on CNN, it's not graphic enough for ratings.

they've seen too many John Wayne movies

GONNAFISTYA wrote:Let's get to the nitty gritty and forget guns for a second.

What is the problem in a society that feels that it needs to carry a weapon of any kind in their day-to-day business of going to work, stopping off at a convience/grocery store on the way home, greeting your family when you walk in, eating dinner, spending time with said family/posting on the internet and going to sleep.

What in there constitutes the core problem of people feeling they need to have a weapon on hand at an instant's notice?

Explain that and I'll understand why people think we all need guns or to be wearing hockey equipment 24/7 to get along.

Yes there is crime. Yes there is violent crime. Yes life sucks when people cut you off in traffic. But what is it that makes people utterly and unashamedly paranoid to need a weapon?

But it's not unashamed paranoia, it's simply preparedness. The world is a rather dangerous place. It is very rare that one would need to have a gun, but it is better, they say, to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

You don't have to be paranoid to be a boy scout. Being able to calm down a situation in which people are being criminally violent by being more armed than they are is a nice power to have, and I'm glad that it can be had by reasonable citizens who apply for a permit to do so. It's true there are some retards who are paranoid and feel they have to clutch at their guns, but I don't think that even constitutes the majority of American gun owners.

GONNAFISTYA wrote:Denmark has about 6 guns and no violent crime, no school shootings, no armed holdups, no mass killings in the street or people "busting caps" for their shoes. It's a very chilled out place and the people living there aren't paranoid enough to even buy a gun, let alone feeling the need to carry one. I can go on and list a bunch of other countries that don't have everyone carrying weapons and aren't anywhere near as violent as America...while you say guns are "fairly ubiquitous" within the US.

i think you may be making the same false inference that gun control people often make about britain, that 'few guns + few shootings' is the same as 'few guns THEREFORE few shootings'. i don't know about denmark, but that simply isn't the case in the UK. britain has always had very low rates of gun ownership, even prior to gun control laws, and generally we prefer to stab our enemies or stamp on their heads anyway, so the rate of gun homicides has always been low. however during the same period that control laws were introduced, the rate of gun homicides (though still tiny by international standards) has in fact risen to its highest ever

then again, every gun has a devil inside it that possesses its owner and turns them into a paranoid, slavering human bomb waiting to explode in a school yard, so clearly treating the cultural factors in violence as the subject of debate is totally the wrong approach and instead we should fetishise an inanimate object instead, because when the guns are gone THE DEVILS WILL BE GONE TOO RIGHT?

well, speaking of knee-jerk reactions, surely the desire for students to carry is a stupid knee-jerk reaction to a percieved danger which is far less likely to kill an individual than, say, running with scissors. Bear in mind that the "equality of power" argument is clearly nonsense as it's precisely the fact that those psycho kids had guns that "empowered" them to do more than give someone a nasty paper cut.

Out of curiosity - if concealed carry laws mean that someone loses the right to carry if they get their gun out, what's the point? As per the above argument on probability, the logical point at which to allow concealed carry is the point at which the (negligable) benefits of carrying outweigh the (pretty small) risks