in-a-lien-a-ble: The End of the Gun Debate

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

have you ever heard of someone protected by a gun?
i'm sure you haven't because a gun can only do two things: wound or kill

we shouldn't need weapons in this day and age. we should have grown out of such idiotic primitive behavior by now.

and there is clearly an alternative to such idiocy, as we can see with nations like norway and sweden, which have lower crime rates and lower gun ownership rates...

*snip*
Mod Edit: Please Review the Following Link: Courtesy Is Mandatory

[edit on 4-12-2007 by Jbird]

Originally posted by slackerwire
Wow, what is wrong with you? Seriously. I mean is it retardation or a healthy drug habit?

clearly the problem lies in the person that can't muster up anything save for a personal attack instead of any sort of argument.

Madness, you realize the Switzerland folks have most guns per person and lowest crime rate in the world. On the other hand guns have been banned in Aussieland and Tealand yet the crime rate skyrockted out of control.

Also, businesses that have signs declaring concealed weapons are not allowed inside are robbed more often then stores that don't have those signs.

Madness doesn't want to justify a gun ban. He wants everyone to stop being hostile or violent to anyone else. And he honestly (apparently) thinks this is going to happen.

Harping on firearms is just a symptom for him. He's lashing out an any concrete, tangible article that could even remotely be connected to mans violence against man.

Like before the invention of the modern cartridge rifle there was no human violence or crime? Before the discovery of black powder even? Before the stone age? Before when exactly?

Madness has fanciful and impossible desires for the world and like nearly all who think like him do he lashes out at guns.

Because, like I said before, if we were to wake up tomorrow and all semblance of firearms and their existence were to disappear there would be no more burglaries, rapes, murders etc....?

Madness doesn't think so. No reasonably intelligent person does. But what they want is so far out of the realm of reality and possibility that they will grasp at any and all straws they can.

In short, he knows what he wants, he has not come to terms with the impossibility of what he wants so he's like a cornered kitten scared and confused. To ease the fear and confusion you look for a lighthouse, a beacon, a scapegoat. His is guns.

If what I said is not true Madness, then please, enlighten me as to what steps must be taken to shape your "utopia" or at the very least tell me how the complete and absolute eradication of all firearms will make the robberies and murders and rapes go away?

This is your vision of the perfect world. Shape it for me. Make it all stop Madness. Save us all.

HHH, I think you've missed the point of the OP.

It doesnt matter how wide a scope of resistance Madness declares against our inalienable rights. He can, and I suspect often does, yell about the injustices he perceives of the world till the cows come home, but it doesn't matter.

This is NOT a debate. If Madness, or anyone like him, tries to take the legally owned weapons of any citizen, they'll get killed. They will be killed in defense of the document that they tell us they love as much as anyone, then do their best to get around it.

Recap- Inalienable = non-debatable

reply to post by Gatordone


but the right to gun ownership IS debatable. it's not inalienable. nowhere in our governing document does it say it is.... hell, there's a procedure we could use to eliminate the right (it's called a further amendment)

and i love that you'd kill me over your second amendment right.. which i'm disputing by using my FIRST amendment right...

nice job, killing people over the right to own weapons that the founding fathers couldn't imagine the monstrosity of

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


you assume far too much.

i'm leaving this argument because i'm seeing to many strawmen being created in my likeness to actually get my own argument in.

reply to post by HHH Is King


...but there's no causation there between gun ownership and crime rate, only correlation

norway has a sensationally low crime rate... yet the police don't even carry guns.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


What strawmen? I've asked you straight up to tell me exactly how you plan or how you expect society to plan on becoming the utopia you expect it to be?

Shape it for me. Tell me how to stop the theft, rape, murder...

This is what you want isn't it? Not the simple eradication of guns (which if completed would still leave you with the same complaints you currently have).

Tell me how you would "fix" it? You must have plans to go along with your grand ideas, no?

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


The Declaration of Independence is written in the same spirit and, mostly, by the same people who later etched out the Constitution.

Really, our rights boil down this. In America you can do anything, ANYTHING, as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others.

If you extend that principle to gun right's you have that anyone can possess ANY type of weapon as long as they can own it without the mere fact that they possess it infringing on someone's rights.

Example:
Owning a gun doesn't threaten anyone's rights. Unjustly shooting someone does. There is a clear difference between possession and unlawful use.

Owning weapons such as chemical and nuclear weapons, artillery, tanks, etc. does threaten someone's rights just by their being possessed by someone who lacks the capacity to possess them safely.

It doesn't matter what the founding fathers intended, or what it was like at the time. They wrote it, and every single state ratified it and every single citizen including those in power have an obligation to uphold them in anyway they can.

People are dazed not dumb. They will eventually snap out of their stupor and find themselves trapped by those who strive to pervert and mangle the very principles this country is based on.

"Every generation needs a new revolution." -Thomas Jefferson

Unfortunately, our generation's revolution will be with guns.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by thisguyrighthere

 

you missed my point... you can't protect with a gun
it harms
that's all it does.
someone has to either be injured severely or die (which is not that uncommon with the use of guns in self-defense)

the problem isn't overcrowding in prisons, the problem is that our culture is corrosive.
we need a society without guns, not because they aren't available, but because nobody sees a need for them.

madness is indeed in your soul. You can protect with a gun.
pro·tect
–verb (used with object)
1. to defend or guard from attack, invasion, loss, annoyance, insult, etc.; cover or shield from injury or danger.

I can protect (or guard from attack, invastion, loss, annoyance, insult, or shield from injury or danger) my property, myself, my family, my friends, my rights, and my FREEDOM. Yes gun's do harm others, that's how they protect, but if the person hadn't wanted to get shot, then he could have not broken into my house, tried to rob me, threatened my with a weapon, etc.

Our culture is broken and flawed, but so are all cultures and so all cultures have been since the beginning of time. Don't delude yourself. There will always be someone who wants to harm you, your property, your rights, or those around you and when they come around, it is your right to stop them.

p.s. People will always see a need for guns. if not for protection then for hunting. If not for anything else than just because they are the weapons of our time and it is foolish to be entirely ignorant of them.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul


clearly the problem lies in the person that can't muster up anything save for a personal attack instead of any sort of argument.

It's obvious facts, intelligence and common sense dont work with you, so I was curious to see if there was a problem of some sort.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


i do have plans... yet you assume so many things about my position. i said guns SHOULD be available, i never said otherwise (though i disagree with certain arms such as howitzers, tanks, ICBMs, etc etc being available and would like to restrict the definition of "arms" to a degree) yet you immediately went into an argument ad absurdium about guns being removed... you created a strawman. two logical fallacies for the price of one.

we need to alter our society and how we think, we need to stop glorifying gun violence. instead of being absolutely happy that a gun was used to stop one person and save another, we should look in to why that person needed to be stopped in the first place. we should also be seeing a bit of remorse if the criminal in this situation died, as that is still a human being buried... yet we dehumanize the criminals in our society and turn them into mindless animals that just deserve death.

work for prevention. that's what we need.
we'll never eliminate crime 100%, that's obvious, but increasing the number of guns doesn't stop crime, it stops crime from succeeding.
how about we look to norway, they've done quite a good job with their crime levels...
oo, how about this one. i bet if we had better education and an increased emphasis on personal responsibility in our society, there'd be less crime.

or we could look at a startling phenomenon, the general lack of atheists/agnostics/and nonreligious persons in prison. the percentage of this group behind bars is far lower than the percentage of them in general society... why? what is it about this group?

Originally posted by slackerwire
It's obvious facts, intelligence and common sense dont work with you, so I was curious to see if there was a problem of some sort.

two personal attacks in one thread...
looks like you didn't get the message with that warn
when people have no argument, they always go for a personal attack.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Looking at what causes crime? Because nobody has ever done that or is currently doing that or will continue to do that? The answer to what is causing crime is widely varied from case to case, victim to victim and perpetrator to perpetrator that there is no one answer. There is no neat summary listing a few steps to follow. There is a whole world out there and no one case is exactly like another.

Why are there more religious persons in prison than non? Well, for one, nothing says "I'm good for early release" like turning to "god." For two, you need to group up if you expect to fair well in prison. What are organized faiths if not simple ways to group up? For three, I'm sure the cases who are honestly remorseful for their actions seek some sort of guilt-relief or reassurance that somebody somewhere will forgive them and hence find "religion." For four, joining a fringe religion can help you justify your behavior by claiming disenfranchisement. For five, there are many militant "religious" tangents in the prison system. What better way to satisfy the urge of revenge against your captors than to join, if only symbolically, a movement of "resistance?"

There are plenty of reasons.

I agree that better education and personal responsibility would do greatly to reduce crime. For starters we can abolish government education, government handouts that ease the fall of failure, any and all excuses from race to orientation to one's physical weight and height. We have a million excuses floating around why people don't have to be personally responsible for their actions.

Hey! You might like this:

Norway, with the highest gun ownership rate in Western Europe, has the lowest murder rate—far below England's. Source

Well, that's both Norway and Sweden with high rates of gun ownership. Any more countries you want to throw out there?

Here's more about Norway, Sweden and guns if you care:

Harvard Journal Study

The complete study

[edit on 5-12-2007 by thisguyrighthere]

[edit on 5-12-2007 by thisguyrighthere]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

two personal attacks in one thread...
looks like you didn't get the message with that warn
when people have no argument, they always go for a personal attack.

I could drown you in facts,stats, and historical precedent, but what would it change? Nothing. You already dislike firearms.

Fact: The 2nd Amendment as well as other writings from the Founding Fathers show that they wanted the PEOPLE to be armed with whatever would be necessary to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Fact: The 2nd Amendment's first part (the well regulated militia clause) is DEPENDENT upon the following phrase: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

Fact: Even the Dept of Justice recognizes that the 2nd confers an individual right, not a collective one.

Fact: States with little or no gun restrictions have lower crime rates than those with strict gun control laws on the books.

Need I go on?

Originally posted by slackerwire
I could drown you in facts,stats, and historical precedent, but what would it change? Nothing. You already dislike firearms.

Fact: The 2nd Amendment as well as other writings from the Founding Fathers show that they wanted the PEOPLE to be armed with whatever would be necessary to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Fact: The 2nd Amendment's first part (the well regulated militia clause) is DEPENDENT upon the following phrase: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

Fact: Even the Dept of Justice recognizes that the 2nd confers an individual right, not a collective one.

fact: this is a strawman. you're not arguing against me. i never said that we should abolish guns.

Fact: States with little or no gun restrictions have lower crime rates than those with strict gun control laws on the books.

question: why are you only looking at the USA?

what about nations like my perennial example of norway?
edit to add: and why are you only looking at a single factor?

Need I go on?

no, no need to further attack the helpless strawman

[edit on 12/5/07 by madnessinmysoul]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

what about nations like my perennial example of norway?

Look back 3 posts. Answered and then some.

[edit on 5-12-2007 by thisguyrighthere]

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
Looking at what causes crime? Because nobody has ever done that or is currently doing that or will continue to do that? The answer to what is causing crime is widely varied from case to case, victim to victim and perpetrator to perpetrator that there is no one answer. There is no neat summary listing a few steps to follow. There is a whole world out there and no one case is exactly like another.

true, but there are trends that we can follow.
and i never said that we aren't...

Why are there more religious persons in prison than non? Well, for one, nothing says "I'm good for early release" like turning to "god."

true, another example of the institutional bigotry towards atheists in this country (but that's just a separate discussion entirely)

For two, you need to group up if you expect to fair well in prison. What are organized faiths if not simple ways to group up?

possible.

For three, I'm sure the cases who are honestly remorseful for their actions seek some sort of guilt-relief or reassurance that somebody somewhere will forgive them and hence find "religion."

i'll disagree with this until we can see numbers to suggest it's true.
atheists and the nonreligious can be just as remorseful....
religion doesn't equal remorse.

For four, joining a fringe religion can help you justify your behavior by claiming disenfranchisement.

weak argument, there's a lack of fringe religions.

For five, there are many militant "religious" tangents in the prison system. What better way to satisfy the urge of revenge against your captors than to join, if only symbolically, a movement of "resistance?"

oh... but this doesn't account for the lack of these fringe religious elements in the mainstream prison population

There are plenty of reasons.

but they don't account for why there aren't many atheists going IN to prisons. sure, more atheists go in to prison than come out... but less atheists go in to begin with.

I agree that better education and personal responsibility would do greatly to reduce crime. For starters we can abolish government education, government handouts that ease the fall of failure, any and all excuses from race to orientation to one's physical weight and height. We have a million excuses floating around why people don't have to be personally responsible for their actions.

and then you post something about Norway and Sweden two democratic socialist paradises?
contradictory arguments will get you nowhere...

government education can be something marvelous, the problem is in how the system is set up as opposed to the fact that it's governmental.

Hey! You might like this:

Norway, with the highest gun ownership rate in Western Europe, has the lowest murder rate—far below England's. Source

Well, that's both Norway and Sweden with high rates of gun ownership. Any more countries you want to throw out there?

Here's more about Norway, Sweden and guns if you care:

Harvard Journal Study

The complete study

interesting
however, correlation isn't causation
i could bring up that the two nations also have the highest rates of atheism in the continent (Sweden is also #1 in the world and Norway #3)
hmm...

i'll disagree with this until we can see numbers to suggest it's true.
atheists and the nonreligious can be just as remorseful....
religion doesn't equal remorse.

I never said atheists aren't remorseful. There is always a chaplain or some other "religious" leader in the prison system to offer up "god" to the remorseful who are looking for some sort of guidance. You could start volunteering at prisons if you'd like to offer an atheist alternative.

weak argument, there's a lack of fringe religions.

What lack? I'm sure your stats break down the big three no further than Christian, Jewish, Muslim. Within those three exist dozens of little fringe groups all with their own flavors. I seriously doubt any survey has gone so far as to get numbers for "lost tribes of Israel" members or miscellaneous white-supremacists identifying themselves as "Christian" or those wacky cultists from Detroit who follow some drug-lord in a bastardized form of Rastafarianism.

oh... but this doesn't account for the lack of these fringe religious elements in the mainstream prison population

You're ignoring that they exist at all.

but they don't account for why there aren't many atheists going IN to prisons. sure, more atheists go in to prison than come out... but less atheists go in to begin with.

I don't have numbers for offenders going in to prisons. Do you? Do you have numbers of the conversion rates while in prison? I'd like to see them.

and then you post something about Norway and Sweden two democratic socialist paradises?
contradictory arguments will get you nowhere...

There's no contradiction. I stated what I think is wrong with American schools. Seperately I used studies and facts to disprove the "more guns = more crime" hypothesis you tried to reinforce by pointing to Norway and Sweded. Unrelated.

government education can be something marvelous, the problem is in how the system is set up as opposed to the fact that it's governmental.

If you want we can start another thread about government education and do the same thing there as we're doing here.

interesting
however, correlation isn't causation
i could bring up that the two nations also have the highest rates of atheism in the continent (Sweden is also #1 in the world and Norway #3)
hmm...

If you read the study you will see simple correlation is not used and is in fact dismissed as a poor method of study for other reports.

Keep the "religion" in threads on that topic. You're obviously obsessed for one reason or another and it must be effecting your reasoning on the subject of the thread.

BTW, is this the study you're referring to?:
www.holysmoke.org...
www.skepticfiles.org...

If it is is does NOT take into account the various subdivisions of the major religions NOR does it mention conversion rates. I'm inclined to believe that many "atheists" once incarcerated will fall back on some sort of "religion" for comfort. I trust you have better numbers/stats?



[edit on 5-12-2007 by thisguyrighthere]

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

what about nations like my perennial example of norway?

Look back 3 posts. Answered and then some.

[edit on 5-12-2007 by thisguyrighthere]

ah, my edit was too tardy..

anyway, you're looking at a SINGLE correlation as opposed to the total causation of all factors.

there's nothing to show that it's gun ownership keeping the violence down.