Topic: Gun free zone - page 21. (Read 21968 times)

So China (a nation that brutally represses protests) has about 0.016 school massacre deaths per million people.  So if we use your mathematics, if America bans and forcefully removes all of its 310 million nonmilitary firearms in its country it will have about 5 school rampage deaths per year due to knives, clubs, cleavers, hammers, based on the rate in China.

I think a more interesting statistic is how many gun deaths per million nonmilitary firearms in a country, but this statistic is hard to quantify as many nations ban guns, and the guns available in places such as China are hand made or stolen from the military or police.

Massacres are not a phenomena that only occur where people have access to firearms.  The people that do these attacks are the anomalies of society.  Having a mental health problem is not a predictable sign that an attack like this will happen.  Nothing is going to stop a person that has made up their mind to do this kind of attack.  The only possibility may be in reducing the number of victims per attack by restricting the ability of the rest of the population to defend their life.  In exchange for that reduction we are talking about the possibility of the state increasing the suppression of its own population.

Hum, I'm willing to be proven wrong but why is it necessary for me to pay $10 for it on this point? Shouldn't statistics as crucial as those proving it be public knowledge and verifiable? Why are all public European statistics on gun crimes disagreing with the title of this $10 book?


Isn't it implicit if you link gun control with population "control" instead of "protection"? You are assuming a motivation that isn't linked to the welfare of the population, isn't it oppression?

IceT ultimate argument is that guns are the last protection against tyranny and the police. I've read and heard this argument many times. The fact that many people say that doesn't mean it's automatically true. People without guns have fought tyranny (see Gandhi) so in at least some circumstances it can be done and costs less lives and suffering than the alternative. People with guns have fought tyranny and lost too (numerous resistance cells have been wiped out in my country during the last world war in Europe for example).

Guns might have been a good protection against tyranny when the constitution of the US was written. Today oppressive governments are more and more using information control and warfare to oppress people because it's more effective to detect rebellious activity early and deal with it in a quiet manner framing the person for something if needed to avoid people coming to his/her rescue. If you want to resist an oppressive government today you don't need guns, you need access to reliable information and means to communicate it to other people reliably and without eavesdropping. If you want to protect yourself make it written in your constitution.

If it were political suicide then Barack Obama wouldn't be president. When elections are decided by corpses and incarcerated felons consistently (and with impunity) in favor of tyranny remaining in power (Democrats and Republicans), there's no such thing as political suicide, unless you actually protect children by repealing the very gun control that enables their massacres.

Don't worry America, nobody's going to take your guns away from you. Everybody knows how much you love them. It would be political suicide for any of your leaders to attempt to push through a gun control law. So your guns are safe, unfortunately your children are not.

Either these Chinese criminals have retard-level knife skills, or they aren't intent on killing, just maiming the hell out of everyone. That a silent weapon hasn't racked up a body count many times more than the LOUD, "HEY EVERYONE YOU CAN'T NOT HEAR THIS AND NOT KNOW IT'S TIME TO GET BEHIND DEFENSIBLE COVER AND USE ANYTHING AS A WEAPON" weapon speaks to intent, not the lethality of the weapon.

P.S. Criminals do not use "silencers", because there is NOTHING silent about a "silencer". Exit fantasy world, stage right.

From this account there are 21 known death over 2 years in a country with more than 4 times the population of the US. So in a single rampage in a school guns made the equivalent damage of 8 years worth of knife attacks in school in China.


Depends on the way they do it. I think you'll agree that sometimes they are quite heavy handed about it and don't limit themselves to an exchange of opinions.

Hey, Americans are only 310+ millions and the rest of the world accounts for nearly 7 billion, they should expect to meet some grumpy people among them

Gun violence always goes up after a removal of guns from the hands of the law-abiding. I shudder to think of the consequences should that happen here.


Well, for one thing, I never agreed to anything of the sort. Secondly...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GwIbyp4xBU

This happened yesterday.  Luckily no one died.
http://hiphopwired.com/2012/12/14/22-children-stabbed-in-chinese-primary-school-photos/

There were some more heavily reported accounts this year as well.

Here is a list from 2010 to 2011 of school attacks in China with hammers, knives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%932011%29

When Americans get into other country's politics they are told to stay out, but the whole world feels the need to inform Americans of their barbaric, non-compassionate nature, backward culture, and archaic politics.

I for one would feel very stupid if I was dying because someone shot/stabbed/hit me when I have the freedom to defend myself easily with a firearm unlike most other people of the world.

How many deaths per 1 million people? "Lots" for China doesn't mean much if you don't speak relatively, it's a huge country.

There are a lot of elementary school stabbings in China but no one talks about how more violent and morally corrupt Chinese people are compared to other nationalities and how knives need to be banned.

That's what you assume will happen. This is not what happens in other countries with gun control. I don't see why the US is different. Maybe it is, let's say we disagree on that. There's a heavy consequence for the US: if we agree that the US are indeed different the logical conclusion is that American people are inherently more violent than most of the rest of the civilized world. I'm OK with that conclusion not being American myself but as a nation that's quite a hit on your pride.

[...]
Now I understand. This isn't about the best way of protecting people. You are mixing your fear of the government over-reaching its powers and oppressing you with this subject. If you can't trust the government you agreed to gave power to protect you you've already lost and nothing can be done. Even guns in every hands isn't a solution in your case. There are two possibilities :

• Your government is actively trying to oppress you and you should make working to overthrow it your top priority. I should add that guns aren't always the solution in this case, most of the time they bring another oppressor in its place who managed to control most of the gun bearers. What seemed to have worked in recent history is massive peaceful protests paired with establishing links with the military and supporters-to-be in the current establishment.
• Your perception of oppression is exaggerated and you are mistaking trade-offs made for the greater good with oppression

In reality this is more complex as most governments mix beneficial trade-offs and various levels of oppression which blurs the line. You'll have to educate yourself on every regulation presented as a beneficial trade-off to make your own opinion. Then if you are convinced that your government is oppressive, share your knowledge of the facts as wide as you can.

Edit: I should add to come back to the main subject that if you are convinced that your government is oppressive it makes perfect sense to refuse any kind of gun control. This is one of the reasons why I'm not for gun control in principle but see it as a desirable target.

Teachers and whoever else that are restricted by laws to carry their personal defense weapons need to ignore those laws.  They are easy to conceal and if used in such a situation, the public support would nullify any chance of conviction for carrying a weapon in such a location.

Myrkul, that got me right in the feels.  I know exactly what you mean, so I won't say anything else about that.

Please do realize, though:

Yes, there exist people who want violence inflicted on others for their beliefs ("'cos my community / God / politician X said so, or plain 'cos bitch was asking for it").  Yes, it's an evil.  It afflicts most people in society.  You just saw someone admitting to being like that, openly.  Yes, it's no less shocking today than it was the first time I asked the "against me" question.  Yes, there's no real response to a man who wants you murdered or caged for what you believe / for what you are.

But this, too, shall pass.

gyverlb (and many other evil people) will eventually die / be killed.  They will be replaced by people who are being raised better, in a less anti-social environment.  In sum, they will be replaced by non-sociopathic people.  The nature of moral progress is such that it doesn't get settled by political debate -- it gets settled by generations dying, taking their malevolent beliefs with them.

And, hey, you and I may not live to see that.  But our grandchildren most likely will.

Myrkul, you should seriously stop discussing the topic with gyverlb.  He's already decided that he's willing to support violence against you, and he openly stated it not two comments ago.  The "conversation" was over when he admitted to his true wishes, which have nothing to do with persuading anyone with reason.

How does it make any sense to reason with a person who wants to assault you / wants you to get assaulted?  It does not.  Do you seriously think facts will change his mind?  They won't.  How do you figure that reasoning works on a man who considers that "or else" is a valid argument to get you to do what he says?  It doesn't.

Why do you even try?  I'm struggling to understand that, because you clearly are a smart person.  You're trying to prove him wrong?  On the topic of weapong-making, you can't prove him wronger than he already proved himself by admitting "Yes, I want your integrity to be violated for making a weapon".

You don't grovel to snakes for your life.  You don't reason with snakes to avoid getting bitten.  It's futile -- snakes will bite you either way.  You just keep your eyes peeled for snakes, pointing them out as you see them, so others don't get bitten by them.

Well, it's clearly not, is it? The other 99% keep getting slaughtered by those outliers. You'll note, always in locations where guns are not allowed. Except when they don't.

Now, that, mon ami, is a good question. Because very often, these people show clear signs long before anything actually happens.

Fixed that for ya.
By removing the means to defend themselves from those outliers, not only do you lay them bare to their aggression, but you also lay them bare to external threats, and the oppression of a dictator. There's a reason this organization exists.

Yes, well, drop in a bucket, and I'm not exactly distressed over the idiots weeding themselves out.

So you ask a question of several paragraphs including several steps in an argument and I'm not allowed to say that some of your reasoning is not completely valid leading to a false yes/no question?

Do you really want to insult the intelligence of every reader of this thread like that?

Edit: for people that don't spot this easily this is a common fallacy called a "loaded question", by answering yes or no to the question asked by Rudd-O I would be forced to agree to the whole argument leading to the question even if I disagree with it. If Rudd-O persists to use such tactics, I'll ignore further posts.

Why not if it's a good trade-off for the whole population?


That's not relevant to the subject: you can easily remove one sour grape. If you could easily spot would be rampage-killers, why isn't it done?


Because the behavior of these 1% now becomes indistinguishable from law-abiding citizens when everyone has guns. This is a common problem when you try to protect a population. For example when our government decided to go after file-sharing, yours (assuming you are from the US) complained that it would encourage common citizens to use encryption for communication and prevent your anti-terrorist services to focus their efforts on a small population to find terrorists.


As I said we didn't find any way to make it more safe and the problem isn't large enough for us to ban hunting so nothing is done. I didn't complain: it was just an illustration that there are quite a few morons around (only a very small part of the population actually hunts with guns so these only 20 deaths demonstrate my point).

Edited to remove me asking the question again, because the question was indeed answered, which I noticed on a second closer reading of gyverlb's post.

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I love when my comments get confirmed minutes after I've made them.

Here we go.


Ah.

So gyverlb stated, quite openly, that he supports me being violently punished, if "his community" (whatever that is) decides to order me not to make weapons, and I (in accordance with my beliefs) make a weapon anyway.

gyverlb supports violence against me.  And quite a few of you.

That was all you and I needed to know that this person is my enemy (and your enemy too) who wants me and others dead, brutalized, caged, or ruined for acting in accordance with our beliefs.

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You now bore witness to conclusive proof that this whole conversation, allegedly about "pros and cons of guns", is actually about the or else threat, which gyverlb quite openly wielded here -- "If I get my way, you will be violently punished, and I will support that".  Straight from the horse's mouth, doesn't get any clearer than that.

This goes exactly to what Stef said a few days ago -- "How many people recoil in horror when they realize that they participate in evil, and how many do they stare at you, smiling wryly, licking the blood off their fingers?"

Remember how I said political conversations are mostly about using filler to hide the or else substance?  Yeah, I think I called it, only a few minutes ago.  Well, gyverlb just proved my point.  The rest in his very lengthy wall-of-text reply was but mealy-mouthed rationalizations.  Excuses to make his already-made decision (to use / support violence against me and others) sound less evil than it really is. the standard "bitch was asking for it" / "you didn't pay your protection money" / "we gave you an order" boilerplate that malevolent people tack onto their evil choices, to later say that their aggression against you was "your own damn fault".  Excuses as old as the roads themselves.

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Needless to say, gyverlb is now on my ignore list.  I prefer not to read what sociopaths write in my spare time.  I suggest you all do the same, but I guarantee you I won't use violence against you if you don't.

i think everyone should be required to carry a gun at all times. that way criminals will be on the same playing field as everyone else.