The cost of the freedom to bear arms is the risk of mass shootings of civilians - not really.
If all guns were banned, a shooter could still get a gun on the black market and shoot a bunch of people.
Is New Zealand right to ban military style guns?
by ThomasCovenant 84 Replies latest jw friends
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LoveUniHateExams
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Abaddon
LoveUni
I appreciate you putting things in context: right-wing terrorism is a risk. Unfortunately, as it is a risk typically targetting minorities, even though it's rising and a far higher risk in recent years in the US (for example) than left-wing or Islamic terrorism, it's not considered by some to be the risk it statistically is.
WingCommander
You seem to have missed I covered what you are reacting to; that an army asked to target a majority population would likely refuse. But the fantastic thinking persists; you seem to think that before a town was targetted like that, that all retail outlets would not have been shut down.
Also, I know a shit tonne of Americans and neither view them as you think people do nor see their thinking reflected in yours. You are not a spokesperson for all of America.
Simon
Strange how a politician widely seen as being an example of how to react in a situation such as that after the Christchurch shootings can be spun as "petty token gimmicks to look good". I object to the actions of the right-wing Israeli government, but would never be negligent in showing respect for the victims of a shooting in a mosque.
Islam is practised in dreadfully culturally backwards ways, for example in the major Western ally Saudi Arabia that we buy oil from and sell arms to. But just as secularisation defanged Christianity from the racist, homophobic, sexist, religiously totalitarian entity it became in Western culture, so too Muslims in other countries are going through the painful process of defanging their religion.
I'll take your views about headscarves in mosques seriously when I see you pulling hats off old ladies in Roman Catholic churches in Northern Ireland terrorism and sexism are facts of life.
Until then, take it from me; telling a woman what to wear is not making them freer. Voting for political parties that will not support states that oppress women is making them freer. In fact, even if a woman's choice of headgear is constrained by their father/husband/mosque, forcing her not to wear it is not making her freer. Acting against the men constraining her free choice is making her freer.
I, personally, am very curious about how you came to your current political opinions. Or maybe back in this board's heyday when I was a regular poster (almost twenty years ago) you had the same opinions but didn't discuss them. Obviously, the change in the willingness of people to express reactionary opinions is linked to their perception of the consequences of doing it. Were you always this, for want of a better word, 'conservative'? If not, what made you shift to a more conservative and reactionary political opinion. I'm asking not to start a fight but because I am interested. It's far more productive understanding people's reasons for belief than simply disagreeing with them.
As I say to WingCommander above, I already said that "... most modern armies would not engage in mass killings of people like them. But the later is true whether the people have guns or not".
To make this explicit; Britsih Army are no more likely to serve a tyrannical government than the US Army, despite the lack of weapons in British civilian's hands. Do you agree?
If you do agree, then guns actually have no role in protecting us against tyranny. They're just a tool in making people feel free, buying votes, and getting political contributions, but are also actually a major public health issue.
For example, we would have to import terrorists into each European country (right-wing, left-wing, Islamists, doesn't matter what sort of deranged killer), arm them, train them, and then let them kill hundreds of people in each European country to match the firearm homicide rate in the United States
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Thomasdam
Well I am an American and am a NRA life member. I have been shooting and reloading for over 50 years. I can tell you when the left here says 90% of gun owners want this or that its a lie. Most all of the gun people are more to the right than I am. When they say the gun lobby its also a lie. Yes there is a gun lobby but the NRA is me. We gun owners are the NRA.
We saw how in the 80s the NRA leadership was pussying out and we voted them out. Yes for those who don't know we members vote for our NRA leaders. Not Ruger or S&W or Colt. Us.
We have a second amendment that will hold up as long as we have a SCOTUS to back it up. If we can get lucky and hit the trifecta and have Ruth Buzzy Ginsberg die already it will be safe for a generation.
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Thomasdam
The NZ ban is why I would never register my guns. If they know you have it they can force you to give it up. They can not take what they do not know you have. Anyone who wants to put some things away should look at the P80 and the AR15 Ghost guns with a jig. You can buy these and they are not considered a gun until you finish it. Before you finish it, you can sell it our just put it away. No serial no and it can be shipped to your door even in California the peoples republic. https://www.full30.com/watch/MDE2NjM5/fastest-polymer-80-build-speed-hack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9zio3k3eVk
It does cost more to set up with the jigs and if you don't have the tools but in the end you have a total legal and untraceable gun or guns the gov has no idea exist. I have no doubt the pussy gen. snowflakes will one day get the constitution over turned and ban them. Put them away now cheap and deep.
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Bungi Bill
The US Military the greatest in the world at the time lost to a group of Asians who had small arms little to no armor and very limited artillery.
A rather simplistic view of the Indo China Wars! Communist forces had firepower aplenty; where it counted.
- as the French found out to their cost at a place called Dien Bien Phu (an event which broke French resolve to continue the war).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG3mifrpGp0
- and when US forces received similar treatment a decade or so later at the Battle of Khe Sanh.
https://www.businessinsider.com/vietnam-war-battle-of-khe-sanh-us-2018-1
While guerrilla fighters played their part in both Indo China Wars, it took more than just a few bare footed peasants running around in the jungle with small arms to achieve final victory. This should come as no surprise to any serious student of military history - the architects of guerrilla warfare, such as Mao Zedong, predicted such a progression of events in a successful Communist insurrection.
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Coded Logic
You realize that if the governments succeed in taking away all semiautomatic guns . . .
I said we should make it more difficult to get these types of guns Not that we should take them away. There's a huge difference between the two.
cops, the military, and all terrorists, drug dealers, gang bangers, smugglers, thugs, and just general bad dudes will continue to have them, sell them, buy them, and use them, right?
Are you aware that the 10 states with the weakest gun laws have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than three times higher
than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws? And people who live in a home with a gun are twice as likely to be a victim of gun violence?
Almost all school shootings aren't carried out by terrorists or drug dealers. Rather, they're carried out by students who attend that school. And the vast majority of gun violence isn't perpetrated by random gang bangers shooting people up. The vast majority of people who are victims of gun violence are injured or killed by someone they know.
And in the event that bad guys cant get their hands on them, they'll resort to using other means, like pipe bombs, fertilizer bombs, vehicles, airplanes, poison gas, I mean the list goes on and on.
This is a Nirvana Fallacy. It's like saying there's no point to wearing a seat belt because it wont stop you from getting killed if you hit a deer. Such an argument reasons that if a solution isn't perfect it isn't worthwhile. This, of course, is entirely vacuous. The value of wearing a seat belt is decreases the likelihood of deaths in the majority of accidents and generally reduces the level of injuries.
The same is true when it comes to making assault rifles more difficult to get. It wont stop all gun violence. But it will help limit the number of mass shootings we see. And it will make it more difficult for police departments to justify running around in military gear and vehicles.
Please show me where police carry grenades. Flash bangs and smoke, maybe.
Hahaha, I don't think I've ever had to explain this to anyone before - but flash bangs and smoke grenades are grenades.
Do you understand that an "assault" rifle, more correctly termed a semi automatic, only fires as fast as you pull the trigger? Not to mention that you've got to aim.
As I've actually shot M-1s and AR-15s I know first hand that you can "pull the trigger" very quickly. And that aiming them is a breeze compared to hand guns.
The rate of fire combined with the accuracy and penetrating powers of these weapons put them in a class of their own. There's a reason the majority of mass shooters use them. In a single day of practice a novice can become 20 times more lethal with an assault weapon than a cop with a hand gun and 20 years of service. There's just no comparison.
You're focus is on the wrong part of the problem. Getting rid of guns, any gun, isn't going to stop a bad guy from killing people.
Yes it will. It will stop students from massacring their fellow students by the dozen. It will stop a lone wolf from walking into a gay night club and murdering 50 people wholesale. It'll stem the tide of mass shootings followed by mass funerals that leave entire communities ripped apart.
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Twitch
Fewer guns, fewer gun deaths.
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zeb
I was asked about the fires; Yes they were deliberately lit.
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Simon
I'll take your views about headscarves in mosques seriously when I see you pulling hats off old ladies in Roman Catholic churches in Northern Ireland terrorism and sexism are facts of life.
Why would I tear hats off anyone who choses to wear them? That's the sort of nutty nonsense that the leftists mobs do (or usually people do themselves when staging fake hate crims).
It has nothing todo with the fact that it's token symbolism and nothing more. If anything it's saying "Muslim women are really the hijab they wear".
I think they are more than that and they shouldn't be forced to wear religious garb and should be free from it - the difference with the Catholic Church is that nuns who wear it volunteer whereas regular Muslim women are often forced to don such restrictive symbols of religious devotion.