Race Relations

[Aliantha]

You do make me laugh UG.

[Undertoad]

Ugh, such a depressing answer. But direct, I'll give you that.

THINK smrtboy, THINK! When faced with real-world evidence that directly contradicts your theory, what do you do next?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Does it contradict? Why would you think it does?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

An armed populace is no defence against genocide.

You might as well claim there is no defense whatsoever against genocide -- that we all owe our lives to the suffrance of our governments. Sounds untenable to me.

It's actually the sole known defense against genocide. The state is no bulwark against it, not when the state's power is needed to carry it out. I can't name a private genocide. Armed populaces also don't suffer genocides -- they only work that way when the targets can't shoot back. Civil wars don't amount to genocides, everything taken into consideration.

Three things need to line up before you can get a genocide going: gun control -- bans, that is; hatred, however rationalized, be it class, race, religion, whatever -- hatred must drive the egregious action; and governmental power, either to do the genocide directly or cover the activities of those who perform it. Of these three, gun control by law is the most efficient tool and the most vulnerable one -- you can repeal a law. Once that leg is off the stool, genocide becomes impracticable. Remove another, and it ends up unthinkable.

It may, theoretically, be a defence against governmental oppression, inasmuch as it may make the cost of success rise too high to be paid.

That approach has worked rather well in keeping our Republic a republic and politically stable. Arms keeping also did not affect the sociopolitical stability of the UK, either.

If the government wanted to conduct a war against its own people, and had military or vigilante support for that war, all the underground survival shelters and serried rows of tinned beans won't save them, and nor would hunting rifles, however loosely that term is applied.

This sort of remark is a reliable indicator that the speaker has never studied how guerrilla warfare works, and is ignorant of the principle that a lesser weapon may be used and directed to obtain a greater. I've never seen any of such people exhibit any understanding of guerrilla or unconventional strategy, either.

[Undertoad]

Iraq + every house has an AK-47 = Saddam Hussein's totalitarian dictatorship

Britain + almost no houses have firearm = Democratic Republic

Explain.

[Aliantha]

It might be worthwhile pointing out to UG that Great Britain is an ancient culture compared to that of the US who in comparison are but infants in the history of western culture. It is possible that GB has been through and grown out of all these noble ideas that UG holds so dearly.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

...Were you as intelligent as I...

Why would I want to cut my IQ in half?

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

...Go jack off on your big gun...

I think he likes long barrels stuck up his ass.

[piercehawkeye45]

Gun control and its benefits and dangers are directly related to culture and type of government.

For culture, compare, by generalizing, how guns are treated in rural versus urban areas of the United States. Note how guns are treated with much more respect in rural areas while guns are not treated with respect but objects of power in urban areas. This helps explain why guns can lead to a safer society in rural areas but not urban ones.

Also, rejection of laws must be taken into account as well. The reason why gun control laws can work in Britain but not the US is because the gun culture is so much different. Guns are looked at much differently in Britain as opposed to the US so if the US tried a gun control law using Britain's as its template, it would expected that a backlash from responsible and right-defending gun owners along with a deadly and very large black market would follow.

For government, just fucking think about it. Britain has no intention to commit genocide on its population because it does not try to physically control them. North Korea could intend to commit genocide on its population because it does try to physically control them.

For this reason I believe that the extent of gun control and the resistance to its laws should be dependent on culture, government, and obviously what types of guns are available.

The US, for example, does not have a uniform gun culture so it should be obvious that no single gun control law will prove to be the most effective at curbing gun violence. Also, it must be taken into account that the US does not have any intention at physically controlling its population and any attempt to control guns will result in massive outcry (partially dependent on location) and a massive black market because of the large gun culture already in place.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Britain + almost no houses have firearm = Democratic Republic

Constitutional Monarchy. NOT a republic.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Why would I want to cut my IQ in half?


I think he likes long barrels stuck up his ass.

Your math is in error, Spexx. I'm the antigenocide one here, you are visibly not. Your IQ would rise by fifty to seventy points, were you to shed your hoplophobia.

And your antigun/anti-civil liberties/nanny-state/pro-crime/pro-genocide prejudices show in your second comment, and they besmirch you, leaving upon you an ineradicable odor of death. Growing wrathful against anticrime and antigenocide measures does not bespeak intelligence, but instead, neurosis.

You have no conscious realization of how completely you are shamed by your own words. That doesn't, however, remain hidden from me. You certainly don't qualify to offer me any humiliation, however much you'd like to. I have your measure, and you are not exceeding it. This is what maladjustment does, Spexxvet. Mine is the ascendancy, for as long as I am what I am, and you are what you are.

Turning to some others:

Ali, for several reasons I don't think so. One of them is that the US is a republic, where the source of political power is manifestly the electorate, and that this is that power's proper repository. One aspect of this -- and a grim one to be sure -- is the power of killing. Without the electorate retaining that power, a republic decays into an oligarchy. Not the preferred choice, by a long chalk. A general distribution of killing power keeps power itself on a short leash with a force as relentless as gravity, and to prevent excesses of power, such leashing must never be compromised. We've all seen what happens when it is.

UT: one thing to consider -- as of when do Iraq's houses each have their AKs? During Saddam, or afterwards? I don't know, and I don't think you know either. During Saddam's time, revolts would, I think, have been more successful with an AK in every house, not so? This is why I haven't been much influenced by your example either time you've offered it.

When England had guns all through its society, it also had a crime rate so low that English policemen went about armed about equally with a nightstick and slightly stuffy virtue -- and were effective. It is now widely known that with arms sweep-ups, anyone willing to defy UK gun bans can now oppress hundreds at a stroke, and armed crime is steadily becoming increasingly popular. A highly socially stable place like England would use private arms to about the best possible effect in crime suppression. E.g.: "It isn't done, old fellow, and if you try doing it, we'll bloody well blow you in two." [Goofball Napoleonic reference: But we'll not quarter -- cuttin' ya in twa halves inteet will be enow. (Battle of Quatre Bras)]

Shawnee: you know what? Freud didn't say hardly anything about guns at all. It was something like one sentence in his work on interpreting dreams, mentioned among several other objects including fountain pens and umbrellas, and maybe Zeppelins. The sentence really doesn't bear the kind of interpretations loaded upon it in the decades since.

[Shawnee123]

Shawnee: you know what? Freud didn't say hardly anything about guns at all. It was something like one sentence in his work on interpreting dreams, mentioned among several other objects including fountain pens and umbrellas, and maybe Zeppelins. The sentence really doesn't bear the kind of interpretations loaded upon it in the decades since.

Oh well, then take your fountain pen and go...write something.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Here I am... :p

Meanwhile, see "Professor Gates, Harvard's Pride for a bit of an ego stroke.

[Shawnee123]

I just did.

Gun rights advocates who suggest reasonable gun control in the US, enacted through the legislative process and affirmed by an independent judiciary, is the first step down the slippery slope towards genocide comparable to the oppressive anti-democratic regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia....

...are "wing nuts" IMHO

[TheMercenary]

"Pot, meet Kettle." There is no animal known as "reasonable gun control" among the Demoncrats in this country.

Originally Posted by Redux

Gun rights advocates who suggest reasonable gun control in the US, enacted through the legislative process and affirmed by an independent judiciary, is the first step down the slippery slope towards genocide comparable to the oppressive anti-democratic regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Pol Pot's Cambodia....

...are "wing nuts" IMHO