Yes, exactly like that. So let them keep busy with the guns, and keep the status quo and maintain the dynamic equilibrium.
Because things rarely change for the better.
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You should be pro-paedophilia in case someone decides to ban marital sex, then.
Nobody is trying to claim that these regulations are easy to get exactly right, and the lockable blade knife law is an interesting one in the UK, because many people think that they are completely banned. They arenât illegal, but to be in possession of one you have to have a sensible reason - just like with a fixed-blade knife. Now I used to think that UK law on the matter was draconian, but actually many countries restrict all knives (including non-locking) similarly - that is, you need to be able to say why you are carrying it and the police officer has to determine whether they think that is true. It seems on the face of it unreasonable to have this restriction for law-abiding people, but unless you have some kind of rule like this, the police might stop a gang-member on their way to commit a violent crime, discover that they have a weapon, but they would have no legal basis upon which to take that weapon away. That many people in the UK have ended up in legal trouble when they had no criminal intent is a problem of enforcement and interpretation, in that police and judges have tended towards being overly conservative, for the understandable fear of being âthe guy that let that knife murderer have his knife backâ.
Incidentally, I was on my way to jury service once (and no knife is permitted in court) when I realised I had left a locking knife in my pocket from working on my allotment until late the previous evening. I then almost immediately bumped into a police officer. I explained my situation intending that it made sense to surrender the knife to a police officer (not having time to return home) and he took the knife off me and then took it to my home whilst doing his beat - which I didnât expect. However I am known in my community as a âdo-gooderâ, so I guess I merit the benefit of the doubt despite having inadvertently broken the law.
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Reason my ass. I canât even start counting how many times such tool was helpful when I did not initially expect that Iâll need it. âCould be handyâ (and high âcould be handyâ vs âvolumetric weighâ ratio) is a good enough reason.
Which, given the average brains of the average cop, is rather precarious.
The police might⌠Meh. They can also stop somebody like me and get them in trouble Just Because They Can.
See? The cure is worse than the disease.
The place does not have a site for temporary storage of âdangerousâ things?
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This is precisely why it is unreasonable, because it inconveniences the masses who are not engaging in illegal activity, and tailors interactions with the legal system for those few who might be doing something illegal. Something a judge - not a policeman - is supposed to decide. The average person who might be willing to bend their rights for the convenience of police protection might be unaware of one of the fundamental truisms of police psychology - that ânobody is innocentâ. If they decide you are a problem, they have something to pin upon you. I have personally surveilled police, and I have heard many of them discuss precisely this. So, no, I donât trust them. Laws need to be as unambiguous as possible, and the powers of judicial/investigative/law-enforcement groups need to be be unambiguously defined.
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A true oppressive government is one where you donât have a choice. North Korea is the most extreme example. Not only do you have NO say in the government, you cannot even leave. The best test of an oppressive government is âdo you feel the need to leave.â As to the religious persecution, that is not uncommon in the Muslim world. In Islam countries, religious freedom is the exception rather than the rule. Since around 97% of Pakistan is Muslim, 97% feel NO religious persecution. From what I understand, the other 3% are free to leave if they wish.
Is it the job of the NRA to comment on each an every shooting? As to Mike Brown, there IS NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED! I am not a supporter of racism in ANY form. However, I doubt that race was even a factor when the incident happened, and was only added to the mix. The word went out that Mike Brown was shot in the back, which was later proven by the autopsy to be not true.
As as to the US being an oppressive government, that is LAUGHABLE! The US is one of the most (if not THE most) free country in the world. You donât believe me? You criticize the government. God bless you, that is your right. Are you worried about guys breaking into your house and making you simply disappear for saying bad things about the government? In many countries, that HAPPENS! I am not saying that things are perfect, or that changes do not need to me made. But, you have a SAY in the government. Things can change at the grass roots level. In many countries, they have NO say in what happens. They just have to accept the word from on high and have no recourse at all. Do you live in such a country? Remember âOccupy Wall Street?â In many places, those people would have been thrown in prison for 10 years or even shot.
The fact that you can even NAME some instances of people that you never knew prove that this is the exception rather than the rule. When it gets to the point that this sort of thing just happens and the news does not even bother to report it, you may have a problem When the names that you can recall that this sort of thing happened to are friends or relatives of yours, you have a problem.
Thatâs specious reasoning on a number of levels. For one, it assumes that all Muslims are part of a unified block and all enjoy the same brand of religious extremism. Anyone with any knowledge of Islam whatsoever and Pakistan in particular knows this isnât the case. Second, âit doesnât count as oppression if you are theoretically allowed to flee the country?â WTF!? Besides, countless refugees are fleeing Pakistanâthey have been for years. Some are so desperate that theyâve been fleeing to Afghanistan. Yay, freedom!
But back to the larger question of âare there any oppressive governments which allow the right to bear armsâ: Yemen is another prime example. Itâs basically a Kleptocracy run by a combination of warlords and religious extremists, but you can buy almost any weapon short of a tank at street markets. Yay freedom!
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I donât believe you. Yes, there are many places that crack down harder on dissent, but claiming the US is even in the running for the most free country tells me you donât know about many others. The country youâre talking about has the largest population of imprisoned people in the world. And no, the injustices reflected in that figure are not so rare that they all make the news.
It amazes me how so many gun freedom proponents who tell us not to assume high access to guns lead to high levels of gun deaths - you know, wading through all sorts of selected stats on categories of deaths, pool drownings, and so on - are then content to take it as given that gun control surely leads to fascism. No need to consider how most democracies do have some level of gun control or do any kind of risk evaluation on that, some things are just obvious.
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I get the impression that @Kevin_Harrelson is just stuck in a circular logic loop, because in his opinion private firearm ownership is the primary measure of how free or oppressive a country is. For example, I suspect heâd have no problem whatsoever classifying Pakistan or Yemen as âoppressiveâ governments if they were especially restrictive on gun rights instead of especially permissive.
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This is NOT the result of guns (see âknife crimeâ discussion above for countries that almost completely banned guns and had to go to the next bogeyman). This is mostly attributable to the war on drugs, and the prevalence of poverty in certain locations. Period. Take a gun away from a criminal, and he will use a knife. He might hurt less people, but he will still hurt people and wind up in prison. Deny access of a gun to a drug dealer, and he will still be a drug dealer.
Once again, focusing on GUN deaths means that people STABBED or BEATEN to death simply do not even matter enough to count. If we banned all cars, it is OBVIOUS that vehicle deaths would drop to zero.
Guns do NOT just kill people. The vast majority do nothing! Less than one out of every THIRTY THOUSAND guns is used in a homicide each year. Also, lots of honest people use guns to defend themselves each year. So, if you could ban ALL guns, one murder would be denied his gun, but over thirty thousand would be taken out of the hands of people who have done NOTHING wrong. Check out this page: http://gunssavelives.net/ This page consists of links to real local news articles where people used their honest-owned guns to save their lives and prevent crime. Honest people far outnumber criminals, so gun restrictions do far more to stop honest people that they do to stop criminals. What is the definition of a criminal? A person either willing or eager to break the law. What makes you think that guns laws are any different. Even if gun law COULD keep them out of the hands of criminals, the rights takes away from the honest people more than make up for it.
So, go to http://gunssavelives.net/ and tell me how much better those people would be without guns. Guns are used approximately 800,000 times each year by normal, honest people in a defensive manner each year.
Yep, thatâs the general idea. See @teapotâs chart of intentional homicide rate by country.
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Yes, but how many freedoms are you willing to take away to save a few lives? If we banned all cars, we could save approximately 20,000 lives per year! More than are murdered by any weapon in a year. Ready to give up your car yet?
OK. Banning cars in unrealistic, but I did it to make a point. How about something MUCH more realistic. Letâs abolish the 4th Amendment. Let the police search you on a hunch. This would save a LOT more lives than just banning guns. Some police KNOW where bad things are happening (drug dealing, etc.), but they need enough evidence to get a warrant. If the police could bypass the whole warrant things, they could put away a LOT more criminals. This seems like a sensible idea, right? You certainly have nothing to hide, so why would you oppose this?
It is easy to take away the rights of others, rights that you do not really care about, but not so easy to give up rights that you happen to enjoy.
Your âlogicâ does not include the INCREASE in crime due to criminals knowing that their victims are defenseless. An 80 year old man can defend himself with a gun. Take away his gun, and he is practically helpless (well, most 80 year old men are, some are still in great shape, but they are the exception). If you are a 20-something guy in good shape with a knife, it is not hard to find weaker female or elderly targets.
Explain to me why Australia has seen their violent crime rate go UP over the past 20 years while it has fallen here in the USA.
I never said it was. I said the US was not the acme of freedom you claim, despite its plentiful access to guns. Brainspore has pointed out examples of still-more oppressive countries with lots of guns, while like I said most of the relatively free democracies do have some level of gun control.
The point, in other words, is that for as much as you pretend to care about evidence when talking about gun deaths, the relationship youâre assuming between gun control and lack of freedom in any other respect is completely unsupported fiction. Your reply is long, but only served to dodge that point.
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I would say that it mattered a LOT a little over 200 years ago. Try studying the history of this nation â it proves my point adequately enough.
A little over 200 years ago, America was a slave-trading nation. Taking that as your sole example of a âfreeâ country, and ignoring all the modern democracies that actually have things like rights or universal suffrage, is going to give you some very garbage-in-garbage-out conclusions.
Again, it suggests you donât know much about many other countries. You should consider looking into them, beyond the talking point of Australia you keep bringing up; otherwise youâll just have to take our word for it, they completely contradict your assumptions about gun control and tyranny.
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We give up freedoms to save lives all the time. Itâs a really quite a big hassle for honest people to buy things like cyanide or dynamite or plutonium even though the vast majority of the time those things are used for (arguably) peaceful and constructive purposes.
At the end of the day itâs a judgement call. For example, it appears that you believe the difficult-to-quantify benefits of being able to easily obtain a high-capacity semi-automatic rifle outweigh the downsides (such as the ability of would-be mass murderers to do the same). Thatâs a value judgement. Itâs one I donât share, but itâs a valid position.
Really? Wow. I guess if Australiaâs murder rate has increased since the gun ban then Iâd better reevaluate my WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND NO IT HASNâT.
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Why Sweden has so few road deaths
LAST year 264 people died in road crashes in Sweden, a record low. Although the number of cars in circulation and the number of miles driven have both doubled since 1970, the number of road deaths has fallen by four-fifths during the same period. With only three of every 100,000 Swedes dying on the roads each year, compared with 5.5 per 100,000 across the European Union, 11.4 in America and 40 in the Dominican Republic, which has the worldâs deadliest traffic, Swedenâs roads have become the worldâs safest. Other places such as New York City are now trying to copy its success. How has Sweden done it?
(Sweden also has a homicide rate of 0.7/100.000â68 persons in 2012)
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What Shuck said. In general, âwatching copsâ is not a bad thing. But doing it with a camera is absolutely guaranteed to be more effective (and less likely to result in casualties) than doing it with a gun. I actually think itâs pretty safe to assume this particular flavor of cop watcher - the kind that shows up where cops are to engage/provoke them with guns of their own - is just a bunch of NRA nutters.
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The number of people actually murdered by true âmass shootingsâ which I define as a person in a public place shooting large numbers of strangers, is surprisingly low â on the order of the number of people struck by lightning in the US. Is it acceptable public policy to restrict the rights of 300,000,000 to stop such a statistically rare occurance? You are right, it is a value call. However, banning some magazines will save FAR fewer lives than you might think, since well under 5% of all firearm murders even use a rifle. The vast, vast majority of murders involve on two or three shots total. So banning certain types of weapons and magazines would feel good, but accomplish almost nothing.
Ummm, I said âviolent crime,â and NOT homicide. Please read CAREFULLY! Yes, their murder rate has gone down, but it has gone down MORE here in the USA over the same time period. And while their overall violent crime rate has gone UP, ours over here has gone DOWN.
Me, the big âpro gunâ guy actually almost completely agree with you on this one. I do, however, diasgree with the phrase âNRA nutters.â Canât people disagree without getting insulting? How do you feel about the phrase âLibretards?â Same thing, just the shoe is on the other foot.
Honestly, the idea of following the cops around while openly carrying IS rather nuts, to be honest. I can understand open carry in a rural area. If you go around on your farm with a revolver on your hip, and you want to stop by McDonalds to get a sandwich and donât want to leave it in the truck â that I can understand, and most people who live in such areas will understand also. Open-carry in the city always baffled me. I support their RIGHT to do so, but I look at them and wonder âWhy, what are you trying to prove?â
Still, what is the problem? The general consensus on here is âFuck the police,â so if these guys take out a bad cop who shoots an unarmed black guy, will anybody around here feel sorry the cop?
