Is it time to talk about guns?

All governments use threats of violence to control, "obey this law or else we force you to pay us (extortion or imprisonment) or use violence if you try to escape". They want a monopoly on government violence in order for the people to have to obey every bulls--t law the government makes, the people have no say whatsoever. Gun banning is just another on their agenda to domesticate the sheeple.

 

Toe

I‘m beginning to think you are nothing but a troll who is not going to debate honestly which is a pity and so disappointing given what you claim your job is.

 

Darth

Thank you for backing up what I said.

 

Jen

My reply would be – if you began reading it as an opponent of gun control – why hasn’t it changed your mind.

I mean as I pointed out earlier the thread just highlights the fact that the pro gun lobby do not seem to have any sensible arguments for their stance.

It is like having some scales and on the gun control side is heaped rational and reasonable argument, evidence, comparison, research and statistics and on the pro gun side there is a petulant teenager stamping its foot and screaming no.

At this point there is no equivalence of argument.

 

Jen

LOL why is it ‘ridiculously offensive’ when you don’t even claim it isn’t true?

Those that are opposed to gun control have been allowed their say but it’s not my fault that they clearly can’t defend it from criticism.

I’m sorry but if you find you can’t defend you view then the most rational thing to do is change your mind –not just keep repeating the same things over and over or post pictures of the American flag.

Learning is only a waste of time if you refuse to be open to it.

We can only lead the opponents of gun control to water we cannot make them drink.

 

Dogma is defending an idea in the face of overwhelming evidence the idea is false. If medicine had taken such a stance we would have leech stores instead of pharmacies. The best analogy is the cigarette lobby which continued to sell a product that killed people (including both of my parents) despite an avalanche of information that showed the impact of smoking on both the smokers and innocent people in their vicinity.

 

Now it’s name calling, wasn’t it bad enough with bated questions, it appears if anyone posting a question or information that is not following in line with your ideas is automatically attacked and ridiculed .

I send you a PM with personal information and you attempt to use this information to bate me on a open forum, very unprofessional of a Moderator here, or any other forum.

 

Jen

You throw out accusations of stupidity yet this is the reply you are going with?

 

Toe

If you mean gun control supporters answer questions and correct misleading or incorrect information and post criticisms of irrational arguments – you are correct.

But rather than complain you could answer the questions put to you (that you haven’t) and address the criticisms of your information and your arguments (that remain outstanding)

The fact that you don’t and instead reply with rather childishly huffy replies speaks volumes about yourself and your stance.

 

Toe and Jen

LOL don’t you realise that your replies just back up what I said earlier about the balance of the scales on this issue that on the gun control side is heaped rational and reasonable argument, evidence, comparison, research and statistics and on the pro gun side there is a petulant teenager stamping its foot and screaming no.

I mean come on you are making it all too obvious you have nothing with your faux righteous indignation but lack of any actual substantive argument.

I mean hell Jen you are still pushing an argument that died a death several pages ago while you Toe are reduced to posting pictures of the American flag

 

Granite

It is the strategy used by all those that know they have actually lost the rational and reasonable argument and fall back on propaganda and misdirection, you can see it also in the fossil fuels denial of climate change, it is a dishonesty that is taken up by many in the pro-gun lobby and it ruins constructive public discourse.

 

Post 133 and Post 375

The Defensive Gun Use arguement - is actually very bad for the pro-gun lobby if you just think about it for a minute

The argument is that guns are good at tackling crime

But it has already been established that the general crime rates of the US are not that different than other comparable countries with much lower levels of gun ownership or eaase of access to guns.

But if guns are good at tackling crime - then the US with its much much higher rates of gun ownership and ease of access to firearms should have much lower rates of crime than places witthout.

But it doesn't - in other words ease of access to guns doesn’t seem to relate to lower general crime rates.

Some gun people argue that these crimes stopped by DGU are not reported - but if that's the case then the US has higher crime rates than comparable countries that don’t have guns so actually they are doing a lot better at tackling crime than the US with guns.

But the US has vastly greater gun related deaths and injuries compared to those countries where ease of access to guns is lower.

So ease of access to guns doesn’t seem to tackle crime but does increase the likelihood of people getting killed or injured by a gun.

Any rational and reasonable person would conclude that it would be better to take ease of access to guns out of the equation when tackling crime, for both law enforces and citizenry

 

I live in London it has a population of around 7.5 million and it only had 175 homicides between Apr-2005 to Apr-2006. In fact in 2009 there were only 651 murders in the whole of England and Wales with a population of around 55 million.

But let us take an American city – Philadelphia* – it I believe has a population of around 6.1 million yet it had 406 homicides in that same year. So two Philadelphia’s with only 12.2 million people would create 812 murders, more than what is produced by 55 million Brits.

So the question is are Americans more murderous or is it just that Americans have easier access to much more lethal weapons?

*I was comparing a couple of urban areas of roughly the same size and population density

Philadelphia - population density of 11,457 people per square mile
London - population density of 11,760 people per square mile

New research (New York University's Brennan Center for Justice)

Homicide rates per 100,000 population 2017

Philadelphia – 20.1

London – 1.6

 

You must visit Boxpark for me. Or buy sidewalk treats near the Victoria and Albert; assuming the vendors are still there in CoViD... hmm. Maybe not, huh.


ANyway... with the repeal of the Dickey amendment it's really only a matter of time before science has issued a recommendation. I don't care what the 2nd says, we're dying and the cause is apparent.

 

Crime

If people really wished to reduce the number of gun related deaths in the US, why wouldn’t they support gun control measures to try and lessen the possibility of firearms falling into the hands of the criminally inclined or the irresponsible?

Politics

If people wished to curtail the possibility of political change then in a democracy should that not be done through political persuasion and reasoned debate not through armed intimidation by a minority?

 

If you feel the need for a semi-automatic weapon with multiple high capacity magazines for self defense, you need to stop cooking meth in your kitchen.