http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/09/christina-taylor-green_n_806314.html
Born on Sept 11 2001, dies at the hands of an allegedly "mentally imbalanced" man with a gun.
There isn't a God. And everyone pro-gun is responsible.
Yes. i mean you. Bring your argument.
IF you could be the "bigger" person and could give up your guns, then the people who are so far behind you on the evolutionary scale, the rational scale and whatever other scale you think makes a difference, could not make the error of judgement, the mistake, the whatever it takes to kill the wrong person who does not deserve it.
I don't argue with the death penalty - in sensible countries who offer death penalties for multiple murders, rapes and other heinous acts (death for drug trafficking is b/s btw - same with treason - exile should be enough).
If you live in a city, where you do not have to habitually shoot rampaging coyotes, bears, pumas, lions, elephants, tigers or 'roos (DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THOSE BASTARDS) then the only need you have for a gun is for killing someone as self defense. That's the theory, right?
Imagine if they also didn't have a gun. You have home court advantage, you have God's righteousness on your side, and you have more at stake.
Killing someone with a gun is easy. Yeah. I said it. I haven't. God help me, i won't ever have to. But squeezing a trigger either by design or complete accident is way too easy, and a life can be destroyed and forever ended by mistake.
I defy anyone to tell me another method of accidentally killing someone that is easier.
For as long as i have paid attention to the news, i hear of someone who had no business getting shot, dying at the hands of someone who had no interest in shooting anyone. Over and over, through the years - same story over, a kid finds a gun in the house and triggers it, yes, a grown up's fault, someone is cleaning a weapon and they are an idiot and have not cleared the chamber and the loaded weapon goes off and through three walls and kills someone's grandmother next door, pick a story you've heard it.
However, no one has managed to actually throw a knife through three walls and kill someone, outside of an American Ninja movie.
Guns make killing people too easy. A tiny muscle spasm, a shot nerve, an over eagerness and someone dies for no damn good reason.
Why is heroin illegal? Because of the risk to the user? To those around them?
Heroin has killed less people than guns.
The junkie up the road od'd and died. Sad, but he posed no risk to the neighbors.
...
"I need guns because the bad guys have guns" is a retarded argument, because if only the bad guys have guns, then the legal and properly (in theory) trained law enforcement representative who also have guns can work out who to shoot at, because when it's all said and done it's all about the BANG!POW!BOOM!
if you are scared of your government coming to get you, then perhaps you should try to change your government, most are elected democracies throughout the world now. And your 1-50 assorted firearms does not match up to a company or more of anyone's trained army.
Seriously, with guns, no one wins and someone dies.
Born on Sept 11 2001, dies at the hands of an allegedly "mentally imbalanced" man with a gun.
There isn't a God. And everyone pro-gun is responsible.
Yes. i mean you. Bring your argument.
IF you could be the "bigger" person and could give up your guns, then the people who are so far behind you on the evolutionary scale, the rational scale and whatever other scale you think makes a difference, could not make the error of judgement, the mistake, the whatever it takes to kill the wrong person who does not deserve it.
I don't argue with the death penalty - in sensible countries who offer death penalties for multiple murders, rapes and other heinous acts (death for drug trafficking is b/s btw - same with treason - exile should be enough).
If you live in a city, where you do not have to habitually shoot rampaging coyotes, bears, pumas, lions, elephants, tigers or 'roos (DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THOSE BASTARDS) then the only need you have for a gun is for killing someone as self defense. That's the theory, right?
Imagine if they also didn't have a gun. You have home court advantage, you have God's righteousness on your side, and you have more at stake.
Killing someone with a gun is easy. Yeah. I said it. I haven't. God help me, i won't ever have to. But squeezing a trigger either by design or complete accident is way too easy, and a life can be destroyed and forever ended by mistake.
I defy anyone to tell me another method of accidentally killing someone that is easier.
For as long as i have paid attention to the news, i hear of someone who had no business getting shot, dying at the hands of someone who had no interest in shooting anyone. Over and over, through the years - same story over, a kid finds a gun in the house and triggers it, yes, a grown up's fault, someone is cleaning a weapon and they are an idiot and have not cleared the chamber and the loaded weapon goes off and through three walls and kills someone's grandmother next door, pick a story you've heard it.
However, no one has managed to actually throw a knife through three walls and kill someone, outside of an American Ninja movie.
Guns make killing people too easy. A tiny muscle spasm, a shot nerve, an over eagerness and someone dies for no damn good reason.
Why is heroin illegal? Because of the risk to the user? To those around them?
Heroin has killed less people than guns.
The junkie up the road od'd and died. Sad, but he posed no risk to the neighbors.
...
"I need guns because the bad guys have guns" is a retarded argument, because if only the bad guys have guns, then the legal and properly (in theory) trained law enforcement representative who also have guns can work out who to shoot at, because when it's all said and done it's all about the BANG!POW!BOOM!
if you are scared of your government coming to get you, then perhaps you should try to change your government, most are elected democracies throughout the world now. And your 1-50 assorted firearms does not match up to a company or more of anyone's trained army.
Seriously, with guns, no one wins and someone dies.
Comments
That's not to mention the reality of things. Even if guns were deemed totally illegal tomorrow, what do you think would happen to the millions of guns that already exist in America? Do you really believe they would all be turned in and melted down? Is the fact that guns are now illegal going to stop someone who is already intent on committing a crime with a gun? Or is the crime going to be that much easier since they know that law-abiding citizens are totally unarmed? "Those who turn their swords to plowshares will plow for those who don't."
Many people aren't willing to surrender their potential safety into the hands of "the legal and properly (in theory) trained law enforcement representative" who is most likely multiple minutes and miles away from them in their moment of need. Despite the creeping Nanny-state, America is still a nation of individualists who prefer to do for themselves than allow the government to do for them.
At the end of the day, you're correct. We are responsible. Freedom also equates to responsibility. Though it's a damn shame that babies, women, puppies and unicorns occasionally get killed by guns, in all honesty, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
Edited at 2011-01-21 05:34 pm (UTC)
All i needed to know. Thanks Kel, nice to hear from you again.
and unicorns deserve no sympathy.
will plow for those who don't.""
it's not the sixteenth century anymore.
Gun ownership hasn't stopped you from plowing for anyone - still paying off phone/ps3/car/house or anything like that?
And no i don't believe that magically america will become a safe haven for puppies, babies and unicorns, if y'all put the guns down, but the chances of someone taking a bullet in a bar, or a shopping mall, or somewhere where a gun would be inappropriate would sure go down a hell of a lot.
I really do hope you never have to fire your weapon in your house.
Those chances would also go down if one never left the house, never opened the windows, never got out from underneath the covers in bed, but that's not life. The world is an inherently dangerous place and spending your time and energy to try and put foam all on the sharp corners is futile at best and self-destructive/defeating at worst.
I certainly never want to have cause to fire a weapon. I don't own a gun and have no desire to have one, but I also recognize that the right to do so is fundamental freedom of this nation, which should be tenaciously defended.
Edited at 2011-01-22 01:53 am (UTC)
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2003.htm#table-2
From memory, the current rate for murder with a firearm in Arizona was quoted as about 2.99 per 100,000 per year.
Death by idiot with a car is running at 20 per 100,000 per year in Arizona, even worse than it is in Greece and more than three times the rate here in the UK. With our lower rate of 6.1 per 100,000 per year, we've lost more 5-16-year-olds on the roads than there were people killed in plane crashes, fires and building collapses on 11/09/2001.
Overall for the USA: 42815 fatalities on the roads in 2002.
It seems to me that there is at least one other thing made of steel and powered by combustion with which it is very easy indeed to accidentally kill someone or yourself.
If that's what you want, I'd have to go with cluster bomb sub-munitions or landmines, both of while have the rather peculiar property of being things with which it's very easy to accidentally kill yourself.
Cars, on the other hand, would hurt, because they're damnably heavy.
Cars, meanwhile, are things with which it's a lot easier to accidentally kill other people because they're designed, redesigned, updated, upgraded, modified and enhanced to be really good at protecting the incompetent, impatient tosser at the wheel so he can get away with driving ridiculously fast without due care and attention, and marketed as such.
I'm not disagreeing that people in the USA die of having a gun more often than they die of not having a gun or that the firearm murder and overall murder rates over here where they're a lot harder to get are much lower (despite the fact you're actually more likely to be physically attacked in the UK) or that the odds of the Second Amendment's biggest fans using their arms to oppose tyranny with any success are negligible.
You do have to wonde what they'd take up arms to oppose.
Warrantless wiretaps (in breach of the Fourth Amendment) didn't do it. Retroactively making laws (also in breach of the US Constitution) to allow those wiretaps didn't do it. Retroactively criminalising actions in order to be able to punish people for doing legal things that annoyed the government (against the US Constitution and that of any decent country) didn't do it. Appointing an oil company executive who was helping Saddam Hussein get military funding past the UN in exchange for lucrative oil contracts to the role of Secretary Of State didn't do it. Sending that same woman to the UN to tell them their Oil For Food Programme wasn't containing Saddam didn't do it. Lying to the world about WMD to create a pretext to take over those oilfields and pose under a "Mission Accomplished" banner at the start of an election campaign didn't do it. Allowing corporations to blatantly buy political parties didn't do it. Years of giving the rich and powerful rights the poor and hard-working don't have haven't done it. Taxing the poor to enrich the rich hasn't done it. Lying about the fact US forces had orphaned, gang-raped and murdered a 14-yr-old girl didn't do it.
By the looks of things, the people who want to defend the people against Evil Big Government object to none of those things, are happy to buy toxic children's toys and pet food produced by child slave labour, live in constant terror of The Rest Of The World and are unlikely to stir themselves to action against anything except an attempt to make the population a lot healthier at half the cost without all the medical copayment bankruptcies.
WEIRD people, when you think about it, but then I've met English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Arabs, East Europeans, New Zealanders, Australians, Germans, French, Catalans and Austrians too ...
And just because you may not agree with some governmental decisions seems rather sketchy reasoning to say that the citizens of that country should have rebelled. Not to mention that equating the importance of the Second Amendment to maintaining the ability to overthrow the government is kind of myopic.
Side note: shot two squirrels dead this morning. The world is a very slightly better place for that, although I don't suppose the lead pollution's doing it much good.