Gun Control

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Syphon the Sun
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Sat Dec 15, 2012 1:41 pm

Nick Gillespie sums up my feelings pretty nicely:
Acknowledging the horror of what happened and mourning for innocent lives snuffed out and families destroyed by the incomprehensible act of a madman is precisely what the country should be doing right now. If it seems as if that is a passive non-reaction, that's because too many people understand what mourning entails. After that can come a policy battle that can be fought with passion but not with emotionalism and ignorance of relevant, basic facts standing in for rational analysis and honest debate.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby elfprince13 » Sat Dec 15, 2012 2:05 pm

Nick Gillespie sums up my feelings pretty nicely:
Acknowledging the horror of what happened and mourning for innocent lives snuffed out and families destroyed by the incomprehensible act of a madman is precisely what the country should be doing right now. If it seems as if that is a passive non-reaction, that's because too many people understand what mourning entails. After that can come a policy battle that can be fought with passion but not with emotionalism and ignorance of relevant, basic facts standing in for rational analysis and honest debate.
Yeah, I loved that article.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:01 pm

Buckshot--I don't think there is such a test. I was poking fun at the ridiculousness of the (paraphrased) statement re. "If only we had more guns in the hands of more heroes..."

Here's a test: What do you call a guy who thinks he's a hero, but accidentally shoots and kills an innocent person while trying to shoot the "bad guy"?

a) a well-intentioned individual

b) a murderer

c) an a$$hole

d) all of the above
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Re: Gun Control

Postby starlooker » Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:06 pm

Contrary to initial reports, the assault rifle, at close range, was the primary weapon. The children all had multiple gunshot wounds, the least three, the most eleven. First graders.

Please. Tell me ending the assault weapons ban was a good, necessary thing.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:13 pm

Elfprince,

In one of your links in one of the early pages, talking about how personal ownership of firearms kept other school shootings from becoming worse (The Appalachian Law School incident), the two "civilians" with guns were actually off-duty police officers.

You also talk about " Or do you not understand the implications of being able to manufacture working firearms in your bedroom?" and "Airport security doesn't actually prevent things from getting through. Even metal ones."

So...you're an anarchist? Why have rules, after all, if they can be broken?

Why ban abortion, if people will have abortions, anyhow?

Why ban theft, if people will steal things, anyhow?

Why ban murder, if people are going to be murdered?

Why have speed limits, if people are going to drive faster than them?

Shall I go on?

What a load of nonsense.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:19 pm

And with regard to "Legally Owned" guns...no, I got that right. You read it right.

Gun owners are going to have to have some of their "rights" curtailed. Tough Sh*t. They had their chance to "self-regulate" (the NRA), and they totally screwed it up. So now, the government DOES get to step in, and some of their precious/moronic rights are going to be taken away.

Get ready for an assault weapons ban. We used to have one, and we had a lot LESS of this massive gun violence. So expect that to come back.

If there are less guns available to people, there will be less gun violence. I'm sure that the Tea Party idiots will claim all sorts of oppression, UN involvement, and all manner of paranoid delusions. Wah Wah Wah.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby elfprince13 » Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:59 pm

Contrary to initial reports, the assault rifle, at close range, was the primary weapon. The children all had multiple gunshot wounds, the least three, the most eleven. First graders. Please. Tell me ending the assault weapons ban was a good, necessary thing.
Don't confuse Assault Rifles with "Assault Weapons" just because the media does so to be sensational. They're not at all the same thing.
And with regard to "Legally Owned" guns...no, I got that right. You read it right. ... If there are less guns available to people, there will be less gun violence.
No, there will be more gun volence, because
a) guns will become valuable far out of proportion to their true free-market value, making black market weapons dealing a highly profitable (and dangerous) business.
b) violent criminals can be confident in drawing a gun a not having to worry about getting shot in return.
c)
Only 13.9 percent of prison inmates who possessed firearms purchased them legally. That's not really surprising, given the fact that 84 percent of the prison inmates who possessed firearms were ineligible to legally purchase them.
We used to have one, and we had a lot LESS of this massive gun violence. So expect that to come back.
Wrong.
In 1992, for instance, the violent crime rate per 100,000 residents was 758. In 2012, it was 386. Between 2000 and 2009 (the latest year for which I could easily find data) use of firearms in violent crime had decreased from a rate of 2.4 per 1,000 to 1.4 per 1,000.
In one of your links in one of the early pages, talking about how personal ownership of firearms kept other school shootings from becoming worse (The Appalachian Law School incident), the two "civilians" with guns were actually off-duty police officers.
Remember that theater shooting that started this topic a few months ago? Off-duty police officers and military servicemen were prohibited from bringing their weapons into the theater. But if you want to pay attention to private ownership, let's compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw,_Georgia" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and anywhere with severe gun control.
You also talk about " Or do you not understand the implications of being able to manufacture working firearms in your bedroom?" and "Airport security doesn't actually prevent things from getting through. Even metal ones."

So...you're an anarchist? Why have rules, after all, if they can be broken? ...
I'm a minarchist, but I have to say that anarchists like Thoreau and Rothbard are essentially responsible for leading me there. None of the things you say seem to have any bearing to an argument for anarchism.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby buckshot » Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:40 pm

What a place PWEB is ! I should'nt be so suprised ! It is wild how I imagine people to be or act but in reality I nearly always get a wake up.

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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sat Dec 15, 2012 6:44 pm

A "Minarchist"?

Oh, good lord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had a room-mate once, who was an Objectivist (from the link: "Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, supports the establishment of a minarchist state responsible for a court system, police, and military."). I had to leave. He was a soul-less (this, coming from an atheist), compassionless, self-absorbed egoist. Hopefully, your mileage may vary.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby elfprince13 » Sat Dec 15, 2012 6:55 pm

A "Minarchist"?

Oh, good lord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had a room-mate once, who was an Objectivist (from the link: "Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, supports the establishment of a minarchist state responsible for a court system, police, and military."). I had to leave. He was a soul-less (this, coming from an atheist), compassionless, self-absorbed egoist. Hopefully, your mileage may vary.
If my only exposure to small-government was through Ayn Rand I'd be "Oh good lording" too. What a detestable old hag. Objectivism is kind of like Libertarianism-for-assholes. The big problem is that she claims to be pro-individual liberty, but rejects the rights of anyone whose ideas she views as primitive or inhibiting progress (any kind of rights-based philosophy that denies property rights for some class of people is bullsh*t). Also that she wants everyone to be self-centered egoists, and most libertarians are very pro-community as long as it's voluntary and free of coercion.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Sat Dec 15, 2012 7:54 pm

You folks talking about the expired "assault weapons" ban know the ban was based purely on cosmetic features, not on the actual functions of the firearms, right?
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:29 pm

EP13, Thank goodness, then!

Syphon: Let's mandate that all semi-automatic weapons must be PINK, with a "Hello Kitty" logo on the stock. Purely cosmetic, you know. Let's see how many get sold.

Crap, I think I just fed into an open demographic.....
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Claire » Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:33 pm

Can't wait to read through some of these responses and cite some sources of my own :D Three more days. For now I should go back to reading "Contract as Promise" though /sigh :grumble:

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Re: Gun Control

Postby elfprince13 » Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:37 pm

Syphon: Let's mandate that all semi-automatic weapons must be PINK, with a "Hello Kitty" logo on the stock. Purely cosmetic, you know. Let's see how many get sold.
I suspect they'd sell better with ponies, these days.
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Re: Things that I hate

Postby jotabe » Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:19 pm

Except that in this case (and in most of the cases in these mass shootings that capture media's attention) it wasn't a criminal. It was a law abiding citizen. Just a law abiding citizen with a personality disorder, according to the news (and it isn't strange, again, these mediatic shootings are almost always done by people who are going through a potentially dangerous mental disease).

This is exactly and precisely the kind of case that could be avoided with a gun ban. With an European-like restriction on firearms, his mother would have never been able to get a gun, living with a person with mental disease.
No, she wouldn't have been able to get a gun legally, there's a huge difference.
Aren't we talking about law abiding citizens? When guns are illegal, law abiding citizens don't own them. No, there are no people with secret stashes of gun. For law abiding citizens, having an illegal gun is just a double hazard. If you defend your house with an illegal gun, you are going to be doubly screwed, legally.
But if we want to talk about crime, we can consider this: the EU has a slightly higher rate of violent crime than the US. Still the intentional homicide rate is roughly 3 times lower.
Is this because of our gun restrictions?
As Syphon pointed out a few pages back, criminals are most concerned about their victims being armed, and as lots of us have pointed out, areas that institute gun control see a dramatic rise in crime. Areas that remove gun control or even make gun ownership mandatory see a dramatic drop in crime.
Creating areas with firearm restrictions within a country that doesn't have it, and without borders to enforce those restrictions is an utter waste of time, and i acknowledge it, probably counter-producing.
When there is a ban on firearms, they become much harder to obtain. Also, they become much scarcer. Scarcity increases price, which means that less criminals are going to be able to afford guns in the black market.
Are you familiar with the phrase "Bootleggers and Baptists"? It applies just as much here as it does to drug or alcohol prohibition. Take a look at the situation in Mexican with cartels. Fighting the "war on drugs" only makes the drug cartels more violent and their merchandise more profitable. Ending prohibition destroys their profits and their power.
You are using the analogy wrong. Yes, it's true that drug prohibition makes the crime related with drug trafficking much more dangerous. But it also makes drugs scarcer and more expensive. You can compare it with the alcohol prohibition: during prohibition, alcoholic drinks were a lot scarcer, a lot more expensive, and there were many less deaths related with the consumption of alcohol. Comparing it with guns, gun prohibition will make drugs scarcer, more expensive, and the deaths related with gun use will go down (of course, you will have a lot of violent crime related with gun trafficking... but at least in Europe that isn't much of a problem: as guns are expensive, and largely useless because would-be victims don't have guns, the demand of guns by run-of-the-mill criminals is very low).
On the other hand, a gun ban makes victims less weaponized. If all potential victims were to be armed, all criminals would "need" a gun to be able to intimidate/coerce them. But if victims are de-weaponized, the intimidation effect can be obtained without a gun, and it doesn't justify the investment required. This makes the confrontations criminal-victim less lethal in average, because the weapons used will be much lethal.
An interesting argument, but again, read back a few pages and take a look at the numbers. Chicago is a direct counterexample to this argument. So is Vermont. So is Kennesaw, GA, who haven't had a murder since they made gun ownership mandatory.
See above: without having actual borders, without having a blanket ban on guns, having isolated cities banning guns is probably not the best idea. In fact i'd go as far as to say that the US is too far gone to actually be able to stablish a gun ban and get it working. It might take 2 generations of small, gradual increase of restrictions to get to the point where Europe is. After all, in Europe we got here because of our continent becoming a battlefield... after that, removing weapons from people was quite easy.
The only argument that holds water to allow guns, as i see it, is that it gives the potential victim an actual chance to not become a victim. But even this isn't really strong, in my opinion: a criminal will have a greater expertise in the use of the gun, as it's his "trade tool". His quality of life literally depends on how good he is using weapons for intimidation or damage. The only potential victims that could realistically benefit from having guns are the gun hobbyists.
That's the incentive behind laws which mandate gun ownership and training for heads of households. As a libertarian I'm opposed to gun control OR mandatory gun ownership, but I think the latter is a much more intelligent policy. People who own guns for self defense are going to be motivated to know how to use it defensively and how to shoot well.
You are probably going with the example of Kennesaw. While mandatory ownership might be a factor, a decrease of 50% in crime rate over 20 years seem to be within the parameters of the US and the size of the city. How would you plan on enforcing gun ownership and gun training nation-wide? Telling everybody they must give up their free time and become gun-hobbyists is a bit extreme.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:25 pm

I should go back to reading "Contract as Promise"
When you're done with Fried, try out Barnett. I'm more of a contract as consent kind of guy.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby buckshot » Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:35 pm

Still trying to get my head around the "precious/moronic rights comment! WOW! :wave:

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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sun Dec 16, 2012 1:44 pm

As passed by the Congress:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

So, I'm confused: ARE we allowed to REGULATE guns? Must they be owned ONLY if you are a member of a regulated militia? Would any regulation be considered an INFRINGEMENT?


And, then: what arms are allowed? All? Fully-Automatic? Depleted Uranium munitions? Nuclear?
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Claire » Sun Dec 16, 2012 2:30 pm

I should go back to reading "Contract as Promise"
When you're done with Fried, try out Barnett. I'm more of a contract as consent kind of guy.
Hahaha I was totally hoping you'd respond to that! After reading Barnett's wikipedia page I must say I am not surprised you like him :P . Fried was my professor this semester, visiting my school... I felt like I got to hang out with a celebrity every day. I never thought contracts would be my favorite class!

/derail, back to guns, friends.

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Re: Gun Control

Postby elfprince13 » Sun Dec 16, 2012 4:40 pm

On the subject of guns: http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-a ... 93571.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'll respond to the longer posts in a while.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Boothby » Sun Dec 16, 2012 5:34 pm

So, this guy HAD a gun, and didn't get a chance to use it for (legitimate) fear that he might have struck an innocent bystander.

Whether or not the shooter saw this guy, or wound up shooting himself next as a direct cause of that is unknown. So, MAYBE this guy helped the situation. I'm glad he didn't make it any worse.

Allowing for this MAYBE also allowed for Newtown CT. Not so sure I'm buying into that.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Sun Dec 16, 2012 6:08 pm

Must they be owned ONLY if you are a member of a regulated militia?
This argument, which has been popular among gun-control advocates for decades, is pretty silly. It ignores what the text actually meant at the time of ratification (who was part of the militia, what did it mean to "regulate," etc.), it ignores the interaction with the Ninth Amendment and Tenth Amendment, and it completely contradicts the many rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States.

But despite all that, I'm glad I'm part of the 60+ million Americans legally belonging to the militia.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Sun Dec 16, 2012 6:12 pm

And yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

...

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Mon Dec 17, 2012 9:13 am

With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby jotabe » Tue Dec 18, 2012 3:07 am

And yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.
With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.
Two contradictory quotes. One says there is no pattern, the other says there is a pattern.

It's interesting how they increase in the 90s, when the sharpest decrease of the crime rate (violent and otherwise). I think that there are just too few mass shootings for any kind of statistical analysis to be of use. The noise is going to be just as big, or bigger as the signal.

In any case, there hasn't been many changes in the last few decades on the two "guilty parties" regarding mass shootings: gun proliferation and des-institutionalization. Btw, how did that begin? I understand it was a "bipartisan effort" during the 70s-80s, but it seems strange they would actually both embrace part of the libertarian program.

About your second quote, it makes sense it so happens. It seems many of the mass shootings happen in places where the shooters feel a certain degree of belonging (not really wanting to play the psychiatrist here, but it could be to make pay the community they felt in their mind that slighted them or rejected them?). In urban areas, the neighbourhood has become less and less "our community". Kids feel their community is the school, adults their workplace... consequently these places will harbor most of the shootings. It so happens schools and workplaces (?) often are off-limits for gun-carrying.
In Galicia, all the mass killings i have notice of happened in the villages (where some people actually own shotguns for hunting), almost always the excuse is either estate boundaries or family squabbles, and they happen in the village streets. Because that's where their community is.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:31 pm

Two contradictory quotes. One says there is no pattern, the other says there is a pattern.
They're not contradictory at all. The first is discussing whether or not there is a pattern in frequency. The second is discussing whether or not there is a pattern in location. Two different questions have two different answers, neither of which contradict the other.

On frequency:
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In any case, there hasn't been many changes in the last few decades on the two "guilty parties" regarding mass shootings: gun proliferation
I notice you limited your statement to mass shootings, not mass killings. Is it because guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass killing in the US during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects and bare hands, which killed 4.52 victims per mass killing? (By comparison, fire killed 6.82 victims per mass killing and explosives killed 20.82 victims per mass killing.) Also, gun ownership has been on the decline for decades.
Kids feel their community is the school, adults their workplace... consequently these places will harbor most of the shootings.
This is a nice bit of pop-psychology. Do you have any evidence to actually back it up? Just 28 percent of the mass killings in the US during the 20th century were in a public setting. Only 5 percent were done in the workplace.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby jotabe » Tue Dec 18, 2012 6:37 pm

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Yup, fairly constant. And the spread is about as large as the signal itself (so it's either a random process or there are not enough incidents to analyse statistically).
You say below gun ownership has been on the decline. How much in decline?

I notice you limited your statement to mass shootings, not mass killings. Is it because guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass killing in the US during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects and bare hands, which killed 4.52 victims per mass killing? (By comparison, fire killed 6.82 victims per mass killing and explosives killed 20.82 victims per mass killing.) Also, gun ownership has been on the decline for decades.
This is a nice bit of pop-psychology. Do you have any evidence to actually back it up? Just 28 percent of the mass killings in the US during the 20th century were in a public setting. Only 5 percent were done in the workplace.
So, what do you include within mass killings? When i read that 2nd paragraph, i was thinking "that's even physically impossible, you can't just go to the street and kill 5 people with a knife", but then you say that only 28% were done in a public setting... which is for me the staple of a mass killing.

And yes :mrgreen: that was totally pop-psy. To be fair, i gave a warning about it!

Edit: wait...
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you were leading me around there! The quote of yours i was commenting in my last paragraph referred to "mass shootings". And now when you comment on my last paragraph, you jump to mass killings, which wouldn't be relevant to the discussion of where "mass shootings" happen. In fact, both your quotes were about mass shootings, so that's why i restricted myself to mass shootings.

(i really wanted to ever use the "objection!" in these forums :stoned:)
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:33 pm

Mass killings are typically classified as those incidents in which four or more victims were killed within a 24-hour period.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby jotabe » Tue Dec 18, 2012 8:04 pm

Mass killings are typically classified as those incidents in which four or more victims were killed within a 24-hour period.
Even if it's just the members of the same household? (that's a situation i can see that could be done with bladed or blunt weapons).
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:05 pm

Even if it's just the members of the same household?
Yes. The threshold is the number of victims, not location of the act(s). This also includes someone going into a house and murdering an entire family. Or murdering a family in one house and then murdering the family next door. (A man with an axe did that.)
you can't just go to the street and kill 5 people with a knife.
Actually, you can. I've got a book of all kinds of examples of mass killings done with melee weapons (knives, axes, swords, spears, clubs, hammers, etc.). I'll get you some examples when I can dig it out. Until then, have you been following the past 2-3 years of school massacres in China? Plenty of examples of more than 4 or 5 victims (children and adults alike).
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Wed Dec 19, 2012 4:31 pm

Please. Tell me ending the assault weapons ban was a good, necessary thing.
Connecticut has its own "assault weapon" ban, based on the (expired) federal law. The firearm used was not an "assault weapon" under either law.
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Re: Gun Control

Postby jotabe » Wed Dec 19, 2012 7:09 pm

Until then, have you been following the past 2-3 years of school massacres in China? Plenty of examples of more than 4 or 5 victims (children and adults alike).
China is a strange strange place. With the lifestyle they have here, i don't understand how is that they are not all nutters... maybe they are, but they just don't tell me.
And firearms are not a cause here, that's for certain. I think not even the police carries firearms... which is surprising, given the kind of government we have. Of course, people has too little respect for the police, so it would be hazardous if you gave them weapons :mrgreen:
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Re: Gun Control

Postby Syphon the Sun » Wed Dec 19, 2012 8:15 pm

And firearms are not a cause here, that's for certain. I think not even the police carries firearms... which is surprising, given the kind of government we have. Of course, people has too little respect for the police, so it would be hazardous if you gave them weapons :mrgreen:
The school massacres in China have almost universally been done with knives, hammers, etc. (Which surprises absolutely no one who has followed the ugly history of gun control worldwide. Mao was a typical tyrant. He disarmed the Chinese people and then slaughtered them ruthlessly.)
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Re: Gun Control

Postby thoughtreader » Thu Dec 20, 2012 1:13 pm

I read this article today and I think it clearly states a lot of information about the assult weapons band and what assult weapons are. I found it very informative.

slight warning He wrote this article before the CT shooting, he refers to mass shootings as Statistically insignificant and a tiny problem, and is speaking about the amount of life lost in mass shootings compared to all other non natural causes deaths in the nation but I know this is a tender subject and could rub many people the wrong way (heck it rubbed me the wrong way) but read on and you will learn a lot about why they let the last ban expire (because it wasn't helping, because its didn't ban weapons that were usually used in crimes) and about how the government will always have to put a grandfather clause in for all the guns already owned that will now be illegal.

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Re: Gun Control

Postby jotabe » Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:03 am

and about how the government will always have to put a grandfather clause in for all the guns already owned that will now be illegal.
It would be amusing that the ban was renewed and that grandfather clause was not included :mrgreen:
Mao was a typical tyrant. He disarmed the Chinese people and then slaughtered them ruthlessly.
I dispute that having weapons would have done them any good. Being armed didn't help the Ukranian peasants who resisted collectivization. Didn't help Spaniards in the Republican side from being conquered during the Civil War. Didn't help the southerners to keep their independence in the American Civil War.

In the end, armed citizens can do very little against organized armies.
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