Those are arguments. Very lame arguments, but I'll oblige. Here: Hunting rifles are in question. The AR-15, the rifle that's at the core of the debate since Sandy Hook, is a hunting rifle. Self defense: You don't get to decide what I do or do not need to defend myself. Gun owners who are licensed and follow the legal proscriptions are trained, know how to handle their guns, and if they are complying with the law those guns are properly secured, in most states, in a gun safe. Resisting tyrannical government: You forget how the United States won its independence. It wasn't by engaging the British out in the open where their superior numbers and training could prevail. It was by picking them off in the trees, sniping, guerilla tactics and the like. You act like a TANK is going to be much use in an urban environment. You can't stay in the tank forever, and they don't have to come out into the open to hit you. A tyrannical government needs a population so that they have an income stream in the form of high levels of taxation. They're not going to do wholesale slaughters with high-impact weaponry. In that capacity, an armed population, where the majority are armed and trained, is going to put a HUGE brake on what a government with tyrannical aspirations can actually do. Further, tyrannical governments throughout history started off seemingly quite kind. Communist China, Russia's Stalin, and your very own Hitler, started with disarming the population they were preparing themselves to persecute. Jews were banned from owning weapons, and their existing weapons confiscated in the years leading up to their mass extermination. If the Jews had been armed, the holocaust would have gone very differently. Now reply to mine: If not, why not? Britain has a big problem with knife violence in the wake of their gun control efforts. Criminals can and will find ways to inflict harm, and taking away the legal means for citizens to defend themselves from these criminals, and not just the existential threat of a corrupt and tyrannical government, only makes legal citizens vulnerable and weak to the criminal aims of those who are inclined to inflict harm. In Switzerland gun ownership is practically compulsory, why aren't you railing against them?
If I had my way there would be no humans. Didn't we already talk about control in the gay marriage topic where you completely ignored the control argument and its perfectly fine to force your beliefs onto others if it says so in a book? I can hate everyone and still wish for their well being. Since I can't have things my way.
If you're actually lumping the PRC in with the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, then you are most likely, like most people, pretty clueless about international politics, regardless of what you may think. All three are authoritarian, yes, but the PRC works drastically differently. There are reasons why we can trade and deal with them in ways not remotely possible with the other two. But that's OK, because you thankfully aren't head of the State Department or a columnist at a respectable publication, and so your words and thoughts mean nothing. Nor do my words, but at least I know what I know and know what I don't.
I can get a concealed carry license with $45 and 3 hours of my time. I can also buy a gun and walk out with it. I guess Drones and missiles do not exist. Do you think we fire on Al-Qaeda targets with tanks or with laser guided rockets in an urban environment. hehe .....
K: Just because some criminal breaks the law and kills someone doesn't mean you should therefore be allowed to disarm the 200m+ Americans who own a gun just to keep them "from killing someone". M: If it could save a couple lifes, yes, take away the big guns (not all guns like you said...) Those who want to cause harm, will find a way to cause harm. The Sandy Hook event took place the same week as an event in China, where a man with a knife killed 22 people. With a knife. M: Still, save a couple of lifes and i'm happy. Why don't you want to save these lifes? Should we lock you away in a cell for the rest of your life so that you can't cause anyone any harm? Like the guns you so despise? M: No. You're actually more harming than i am.
... "You're clueless, I'm ignoring you." You're a brilliant coder SK, but why post here if all you're going to do is claim I'm ignorant? Historical events in history. China is a curious hybrid of capitalism and communism, but under Mao Zedong the idea that China didn't disarm and then brutally suppress its citizenry is outrageous. It does that TODAY, in more subtle ways. Why the big guns? Predominantly gun crime is committed with HANDGUNS. Save a couple lives, take away the guns and the right to self defense of millions of people. I'm not okay with that trade. Nevermind that what you think will happen is not demonstrated anywhere in life. Taking away guns does not reduce crime nor homicide. I am? According to whom? To what reliable, objective metric?
I hoped for anyone to rise and insert any sheet explaining consequences of the 2nd amendment through numbers based on ratio and adptation of the numbers between countries instead of saying, for example (true example) that there was only 10 murders from guns in Austria, against 6000 in the USA... It's mainely because: In Austria, there are too few guns, and too few people compared to the total population of the USA -_- What I want is the total number of murders between USA and other examples. So I searched for such numbers... And found that: This shows many things: the total homicids, detailed into categories! Here, we can clearly see that most of the murders are caused by guns: over 60%... But If we look at the ratio: (total victims)/(total population) We find: 10996/307745538 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And this is the same thing with europe (but we don't have a detailed graph of the causes of death, only the comparaision between countries of europe, the graph also uses numbers from 2010, as the graph above): -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So now, we need to do the math to know where the USA would be (per 100,000 inhabitants):So to convert the total kills over total population, to average kills over 100 000 inhabitants,we need to divide: (total kills) / ((total USA inhabitants)/100000) = 3.573081862approximately: 3.6 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So finally, compared to Europe, USA would be just over Romania, still far away from Estonia and Lithuania!There's better than USA, but there are also worth countries! (compared to the scale of the earth, the United States are really not the worth). But to come back to the debate, about the 2nd amendment: Here, I only proofed that USA has more murders than most of the European countries. I also proofed that 60% of murders in the USA are caused by weapons (hand guns). But looking over the numbers, guns aren't protecting people from being killed by guns... But they are preventing people from being killed through other ways (most of the time). So here is the last things:Could we say that the "actual usage" (to protect people) of the 2nd amendment is respected ? Mostly, but against what I thought before, guns are causing more problems than in other countries! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Numbers proofed, now it's your choice!
Do it then, if it's so easy. And the entire military of the United States would side with a tyrannical government, right? Further, there are any number of citizens who stockpile weaponry that can handle that sort of thing. There are privately owned tanks. So?
Taking people's guns away isn't going to save any lives. Guns don't hurt people, people hurt people. Criminals can and will always find ways to get what they want. If you take away guns to save lives, then you also have to take away knives, hammers, baseball bats, pillows, heavy pipes, forks, pencils, frozen fish, saws, sticks, spray paint, lighters, rocks, and people's hands and feet.
I do ignore you. I like debating with people who genuinely know a lot about what they talk about, which is unfortunately not you. Every debate I've seen you involve yourself, you quite clearly overstretch your knowledge. There are your crazy assertions, and when you are challenged by a fact, you automatically discount the source because it clearly invalid as it must have done something wrong in order to not agree with your belief. Then you actually believe in things like anecdotal evidence, like when you supported Tiffy because of some personal story regarding marijuana and a police officer. Then you actually utilize slippery slopes to support your argument -- "do this and soon W, X, Y and Z will happen!" Of course there's also the random unfounded statements that you don't even know you make, like "everyone hates TSA" even though at the time, it was quite clear that neither of us had hard statistics, but you automatically sided on one side because you always have a nice pool of unjustified preconceptions to pull from. The wonderful thing here is that I have almost expressed zero opinion on at all on most of my debates here, simply because I just point out facts or logical fallacies, but I am pretty sure that you have not realized this. Now that's not to say that others here don't do the exact same things. Many of the other arguments on the other side are equally bad, but they have less self-inflated views of their opinions on matters. Other people are more conductive to persuasion through logical reasoning, whereas, from my experience, nothing can change your mind and nothing ever will, because you've fundamentally locked yourself in to believe one thing, possibly for forever. For example, I would never actually be able to convince you that you were bad at this logical argument thing. I used to debate to you about the actual topic when you were involved, but I started to only argue the side things on here, because it was clearly futile to try to get anywhere with you. It doesn't matter even if I had the most correct and accurate argument in the world, because you'd still say that there was something wrong with it, even if there wasn't anything wrong at all.
Please madness, do not curse and/or insult other members, this was meant to be a peaceful debate. If anyone is feeling angry or frustrated, please take a step back from this thread and cool off. Otherwise please refrain from posting negative or demeaning comments directed to others.
Not ignore, but dismiss. Which is fine, I concur with your own assessment. Thanks for your comments. An inaccurate assumption. I would disagree with your assertion that I am the most set in my views. I would suggest Madness for that, who froths at the mouth and offers violence on people who disagree with him. Frankly no one here has offered a "persuasive logical argument" that is sufficiently persuasive or sourced to persuade me to change my mind. It's possible to persuade me, but honestly not from something like this (or this section, for that matter). It's casual. We have here a bunch of people, myself included, who come with their own preconceptions, running web searches to back up their information. In essence, no one is here to be persuaded. I personally think that an objective, studies-based approach to this topic would show that gun control is in fact a negative modifier to crime, but no such study has been done with that as a specific area of investigation. There are trends that hint at this conclusion, but nothing hard or concrete. Correct and accurate, when concerning matters that are moral in nature, is a matter of subjectivity.
I might be a bit quick with my mouth but i'm not as set in my mind as you are. The arrogance and coldness of your posts let me rage too quick. I know that. But i can still argue, follow logic and keep empathy while you just claim to have all the facts and know how it'd be best. What's really funny is that your opinions and facts are the same as the republican media - coincidence? Sounds more like indoctrination.
Oh no. I share viewpoints and opinions similar to those espoused by other people with whom you disagree (fanatically). I must be indoctrinated. As to empathy, arrogance, and coldness... all true. I don't care about you, nor ultimately your opinions. Until such time as you care even slightly about mine, why would I care about yours? You think me an indoctrinated, brainless little zealot. And then behave like a rabid Eurotard who can't fathom why anyone wouldn't want to emulate Europe. You dismiss with the broadest brush possible me, my country, and those who live here as "the fucking worst" and that we "do everything fucking wrong". And then wonder why I think little of you?
Let me set this straight. I am not a conservative. I am not a liberal. The closest I get to a party affiliation is libertarian, but that is a shaky connection at best. I do not identify with any political organization, least of all those fallacious scumbags running the NRA. Do not compare me to them. My arguments are not their arguments. A simple Ad Hominum attack on my person, calling me a psycho, a parrot or an idiot is not an argument. The quality of my person does not affect the points I make. Making a violent threat against me only exposes your lack of an argument. When I make a point and you do not refute it, then my point stands. You are free to say whatever you like, but that does not make what you say any less moronic. Personally, I will never stoop to the level of making an Ad Hominum attack. I will not yell at my opponent. I will not try to shout them down with meaningless noise. I will attempt to find holes in their argument, breaks in reasoning and fallacies. If I ever make use of a fallacy or a break in reasoning, then I hope that my opponent will call me out so that I can correct my error and accurately represent my view. I will not argue against a strawman of my opponents argument, and if my opponent constructs a strawman of mine, I will call them out and allow them to correct their error. An argument should not need fallacies to support themselves, and a claim must back itself with an argument. For example: Madness, in a reply to kira's statement "P.S. Punch him in the face? Where are your arguments, where are your objective, reality-based suggestions and analysis? You can't handle him, so you threaten him with physical violence? Should we lock you away in a cell for the rest of your life so that you can't cause anyone any harm? Like the guns you so despise?" said: "No. You're actually more harming than i am." That is a claim. Despite being dismissive, it was not an argument. To be fair, kira's statement was a little short, and a little confusing, but it followed a line of logic- 1) Opponent is threatening physical violence. 2) Opponent is arguing locking up violence causing tools. 3) Point out the irony, hopefully show the fallacy. Madness's response was that Kira was causing harm. He offered no logic or evidence that kira was causing harm, only claimed so. Thus the burden of proof was on him, and his claim is invalidated. What madness seemed to mean, however was that kira's argument was wrong, therefore, kira was causing harm, therefore, kira's argument was wrong. That is based on the assumption that kira was wrong, which Madness has not yet shown, thus him claim is invalid. In response to SK's claim that the PRC is different from Stalinist Russia and Hitlers Germany, yes it is different. The PRC is not the same as either the USSR or the Third Reich. But current PRC leadership is as far from Chairman Mao as Stalin was from Gorbachev. And the Great Leap Forward is still the worlds largest genocide. Ever. By far. And Chairman Mao still did it. I was not arguing that the current PRC is like Hitlers Germany, just that they had ghost in their past. I meant in no way, shape or form to accuse modern china of anything, I have the same ghosts in my past (slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, the extermination of the native Americans by the federal government). My point was that everyone has ghosts, and thus a justification for the distrust of a political system.
So here we are again: we gone onto a debate about the liberty. Little facts: More liberty is less administrations and more death. Extreme example:Everyone has total power to do everything, people drives people; and people can kill people as they want... So they mostly do it! Any administration, like even a mailing system, would just stop working and people would need to transport their mails themselves.Everyone has a chance to die, no matter where he tries to hide, but everyone has every liberties. Less Liberty is more administrations and less death. Extreme example:Everyone is in a box with no light, fed through sanguine transfusion, his arms and legs are attached to a wall of the box. There is totally pure air, with no bacteries/viruses/mushrooms; renewed automatically. No one never dies; no one has no liberty. All of this to show how bad are the extremes, but it depends on what you want: You want less death and to feel safe ? Remove some liberties (important liberties). You want to get free but you know you'll have more death ? Add liberties. I don't know about you, but I'm glad to remove some of the liberties, as long as it stays fun to live, and as long as we don't wanna suicide because of too less liberty.
Chaeris, since you are making the claim that less liberties in exchange for more security magically results in less deaths, please demonstrate where in history a society has sacrificed liberty in the name of security, by means of disarmament, and resulted in less deaths? I am curious.
It's not about you dismissing me, it's about you not having the slightest bit of empathy to those who get shot by assault rifles. Or those who love each other and want to marry (gay marriage). Also, i'm not saying europe is perfect, just that our gun regulations happen to keep the gun nuts from having guns and i don't hear about a shooting every month so yea, i think you should adapt that. I can't believe how hard it is to get that less guns in the world would mean less people get shot by guns. It's a simple equation everyone should understand - and if you care about people, you would say that giving up a bit of your "freedom" to save these would be cool.
