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Old 02-08-2007, 05:22 AM   #181
Aliantha
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Oh...that last post was for you btw Maggie, just in case you couldn't figure that out.
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Old 02-08-2007, 08:45 AM   #182
Spexxvet
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MaggieL View Post
Well, I know your belief is sincerely held, but to be convincing you'll need better reasons, because the ones you have suck pretty badly.
Some people still believe the earth is flat, too.

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Originally Posted by MaggieL View Post
Furthermore, "the world would be a better place without handguns" is a misplaced argument, because--beyond being untrue--
That's your opinion, not fact.

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Originally Posted by MaggieL View Post
it's not a possible part of any solution set.
Anything is possible. People in Philadelphia don't drink directly from the Delaware River anymore, do they?

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Originally Posted by MaggieL View Post
Prohibitionism doesn't work in the real world.
Have I endorsed prohibitionism? No, just rational thought.

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All such laws can possibly do is disarm the law-abiding.
While I don't endorse this, that would make it easier for gun-using criminals to be erradicated. The pro-gun contingency seems to want to have a gun to protect them from potential attacks, right? If only criminals had handguns, they would esily be identified as potential attackers, and can be shot on sight. You'd like that, wouldn't you? You could change carreers, get into law enforcement, and finally get to kill someone - use that handgun you so intensely *need* to carry.
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Old 02-08-2007, 09:59 AM   #183
Clodfobble
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Spexxvet
If only criminals had handguns, they would esily be identified as potential attackers, and can be shot on sight.
Do you acknowledge that this would require exponentially more police officers than we have right now?
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Old 02-08-2007, 11:31 AM   #184
lisa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Spexxvet View Post
If only criminals had handguns, they would esily be identified as potential attackers, and can be shot on sight. You'd like that, wouldn't you? You could change carreers, get into law enforcement, and finally get to kill someone - use that handgun you so intensely *need* to carry.
Oh, come on! Talk about resorting to personal attacks!

If you're gonna argue the point, use reasoned points, not personal slurs against someone.

"Finally get to kill someone..." Sheesh!
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Old 02-08-2007, 11:37 AM   #185
Shawnee123
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Eh, it was just a little tongue in cheek. I've heard much worse.
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Old 02-08-2007, 02:49 PM   #186
Spexxvet
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Originally Posted by Clodfobble View Post
Do you acknowledge that this would require exponentially more police officers than we have right now?
Naw, just wait them out. As they're identified, they're dead. It'll be a hunt of attrition.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:40 AM   #187
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There's a biiiig difference between "my idea can't persuade you, for you've got the better one." and "my idea can't persuade you, for you've convinced yourself far past rational arguments can"...
Indeed there is. I know it, and you are yet not big enough a man, being but fifteen, to credit me with knowing it -- simply because I annoy you. That's all-important to you right now.

This is the difference between adolescence and, oh, about twenty-two... been there, done that. You'll probably do about the same.

Rational arguments are indeed the only kind that do convince. I am, quite rationally, persuaded that gun banners' efforts, if successful, will help kill my descendants -- but if unsuccessful, my descendants will not die in pogroms.

Don't seek for evil where it is not, laddie. You'll get laughed at, and head-wagged, and get derisive fingers pointed in your direction.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:55 AM   #188
Urbane Guerrilla
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Spexxvet may actually have read Raging Against Self Defense on JPFO's website. He exhibits every one of the symptomatic patterns of thought as if he'd read the page and is now going down a checklist.

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You'd like that, wouldn't you? You could change carreers, get into law enforcement, and finally get to kill someone - use that handgun you so intensely *need* to carry.
What will help Spexx become psychologically well adjusted? Precisely the thing he fears doing most -- and fears it so much he keeps it totally repressed: he must embrace the savagery that burns in his own heart, radiating through these fantasies of his (see above) about the gun and the gun people, and then find nondestructive outlets to express it. I can say from experience martial arts are one excellent way, as is SCA-type fighting/fencing with rattan swords; there is something so elemental about beating on somebody with a big ol' stick that it utterly satisfies any killer-ape urge you have. Thanks to the good armor the SCA wears, you can thrash the hell outta somebody and not hurt him, hardly a bruise. Meanwhile, and entirely in fairness, he's trying the same with you.

It's a rough and martial game, but in the process of exercising these killer faculties, the necessity of balancing them with civilized restraint becomes not only clear, but intensely desired by the practitioners of these violent arts also. The SCA, like the knights of old, speak of this simply as "chivalry," and this is clearly where all the ideals and ramifications of chivalry spring from.

Good soldiers in the combat arms, in particular the highly-trained SpecWar types, also find this balance.

Hunting game animals will also give outlet to this. Some, like the late Jeff Cooper, say that something life-and-death like hunting becomes through its seriousness something that is quite a sacrament -- Cooper has used that word -- and I suppose they have reason to. Personally, I'd have to shoot a few critters and get back to you.

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But I would really like to convince handgun owners, and only handgun owners, that the world would be a better place without handguns.
Still subscribing to the Theory of the Evil Gun, I see. That subscription is how I know you're not rational on this topic. You've been getting the truth dinned into you from three different people who know each other only through the Cellar, and yet nothing do you learn. An anti-handgun view, Spexx, facilitates handgun crime, for the reason that the very same features of a handgun that make it attractive to commit crimes with also adapt the handgun as an efficacious defense against those very crimes. It then becomes a matter of who has a gun and who doesn't. You're asking me to be helpless in the face of a crime. That, Spexx, is pure, immoral, reprehensible and atrocious barbarism, and it is a barbarism I would not ever inflict upon you, yet you would afflict me with this atrocity?

Civilized? You? No. Not at bottom. But salvation is nonetheless at hand: see above.
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Last edited by Urbane Guerrilla; 02-09-2007 at 01:09 AM.
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Old 02-09-2007, 04:09 AM   #189
xoxoxoBruce
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Thank heavens London has become civilized and outlawed those evil guns.
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Replacing rows of rundown high-rise flats and maisonettes are 2,000 new homes, a new sports centre, a new leisure centre and award-winning library, thanks to a £290m regeneration investment.

Peckham, which has tried much to shake off its mean streets image in the last decade, has once again hit the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Not too far from where Damilola bled to death, three people were killed and one seriously wounded in three separate attacks between last Saturday and Tuesday.
WHEN YOU OUTLAW GUNS, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS.
Trite? Yes. Cliché? Yes. But it's still true.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:18 AM   #190
Spexxvet
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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce View Post
Thank heavens London has become civilized and outlawed those evil guns. WHEN YOU OUTLAW GUNS, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS.
Trite? Yes. Cliché? Yes. But it's still true.
From here:

Murders with firearms (per capita) by country

(1998-2000). Does not include accidental deaths by firearms.

#8 United States: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people

#32 United Kingdom: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people

Good of you to pluck one incident to point out. But big picture facts indicate that the US has 27 times more firearm murders than the UK, where firearms are illegal. Coincidence? I think not.

Reduce the number of firearms in a society, and reduce the number of firearms deaths.

In fact, from here:

Murders (per capita) by country

(1998-2000). Total murders by all means.

#24 United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people

#46 United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people

All those would-be gun-using killers did not convert to stabbers, beaters, stranglers, or whatever – the murder rate in the US is still 3 times UK’s murder rate.

Quote:
WHEN YOU OUTLAW GUNS, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS.
Trite? Yes. Cliché? Yes. But it's still true.
The question really is this: is it worth giving up firearms to reduce the murder rate by two-thirds? Notice, I said giving up, not have them taken from you.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:50 AM   #191
monster
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce View Post
Thank heavens London has become civilized and outlawed those evil guns. WHEN YOU OUTLAW GUNS, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS.
Trite? Yes. Cliché? Yes. But it's still true.

But would those three people still be alive if there was more legal gun ownership?

Would they guy in bed have woken up in time to defend himself? He was attacked while he was asleep -clearly the attackers had already planned to get him when he was unable to fight back -with or without a gun.

And the guy at the icerink -if the gun used to shoot him were legal, the killers might have been able to argue self defence.....
....and imagine if some of those onlookers had been legally armed and decided to bring down the attackers. Could've been a whole lot more dead..... Would they still have shot him if there was a higher chance that he was armed? well they picked a crowded ice arena in the first place, so it doesn't seem like consequences for themselves were something they were considering.

An awful lot of speculation is required to arrive at the conclusion that these three deaths would have been prevented by legal gun ownership. But a little easier for me to imagine that more guns could have led to more deaths.
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Old 02-09-2007, 12:27 PM   #192
Spexxvet
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Monster has a good point. In terms of the number of deaths, there would be a wash, at best. For instance, if Bruce was in a fender bender with Maggie, and got out of his car and approached Maggie, and she was the only one armed, she might feel threatened and shoot Bruce. Or if Bruce was the only one armed, he might shoot her. Either way, there's only one dead body. The shooter would have all the time in the world to shoot, and probably wouldn't miss. If both were armed, they could rush their shots, and shoot innocent bystanders, or they could both hit their targets and kill each other. It's much more likely to have a higher body count.
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Old 02-09-2007, 02:43 PM   #193
rkzenrage
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While I don't endorse this, that would make it easier for gun-using criminals to be erradicated. The pro-gun contingency seems to want to have a gun to protect them from potential attacks, right? If only criminals had handguns, they would esily be identified as potential attackers, and can be shot on sight. You'd like that, wouldn't you? You could change carreers, get into law enforcement, and finally get to kill someone - use that handgun you so intensely *need* to carry.
I keep bringing this up, I wonder if you read all the posts or don't think of it yourself.
Making a gun of your own, or for others is quite simple.
I get the impression that you think that if you outlaw something it will just go away.
Many of the guns that are used by gangs in the US come from China along with their drugs. The laws would only harm those who are law abiding citizens, making them criminals... they would accomplish nothing else.

BTW, Canada and a few other nations have as many guns per household as the US and lower murder and violent crime rates than the US and the UK. Guns are not the problem, it is a social consciousness/attitude problem.
My personal feeling is we have lost our commitment to the family.

Places in the US with more liberal carry laws like Texas have lower violent crime rates.
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Old 02-09-2007, 09:53 PM   #194
Jordan
Sibling of the Commonweal
 
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Interesting debate going on and if you don't mind, I'm going to jump in for a bit. I own two guns and both are for home defense, a 9mm and a pump action shotgun. They're kept in plain sight at the end of the hallway, locked in a glass case. Once every 3-4 weeks I'll take them to the range so I don't get rusty. Only the ruger has ever been fired anywhere but the range but I was quite happy that I had it at the time.

I dislike the idea of needing them, I don't mind the fact that I have them. It's a right under our constitution, and they're to be used strictly for personal security reasons. I think many people may go overboard with their love for firearms, but then they may say the same about my love for computers.
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Old 02-09-2007, 10:59 PM   #195
xoxoxoBruce
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Welcome to the Cellar, Jordan.
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