As school shootings become much, much more common that fires, it makes sense to consider putting as much effort into putting emergency equipment in place in the event of a shooting as you would for a fire.
Can't put a bunch of guns around obviously but you could easily have small racks of stun guns placed at various locations.
When somebody started shooting, you'd break the glass which would start the automatic alarm and notify the police that a shooting situation was in progress. There would be say, 5 taser pistols for people to grab before running and, or, taking cover.
These shootings are in close quarters, in rooms and hallways. A shooter walking into a room with several people hiding armed with taser pistols has a very good chance of being tased by one of them. Once tased, there's a good chance that somebody could run up to him and grab his weapon. These things actually do work, there's a reason police carry and use them all the time.
But here's the main thing. The relatively cheap deterrent effect of this might be what would make it worth while. The odds are very different between one mad man with a gun and hundreds of un-armed people vs one man and dozens of people around every corner armed with tasers.
We have fire extinguisher training, add to that taser training. It's basically the same thing. In case of last resort, aim and pull the trigger. Then when the person goes down, grab his gun.
Have it right next to those electric defibrillator stations you see all over these days. I don't think there's a shooter in the world who would pick a target location so equipped.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 10 2015 Wikipedia https://en.wikipedi...-related_death_rate [hippo, Oct 12 2015] I think it's the kids who need the tasers. https://www.youtube...edded&v=lebczVnFLTUIf this is the way that you treat kids in US schools is it any wonder that they end up going on homicidal shooting sprees*?*Ha! Take that, Mr Tindale! [DrBob, Oct 27 2015] Debating made easy. Part 1 https://www.youtube...watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c [doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2015] Debating made easy. Part 2 https://www.youtube...watch?v=XNkjDuSVXiE [doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2015] George Takei: Why I love a country that once betrayed me https://www.ted.com...ayed_me?language=en [Loris, Dec 03 2015] Idiocracy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/This movie pretty much sums it up. Bottom line: We used to be able to be trusted with guns. As we get dumber, no laws will help with this, or any other problem. [doctorremulac3, Dec 05 2015] Might add some comedy relief to a tense situation.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 10 2015 I don't think someone with a taser would stand a chance in a gunfight, even in close quarters. Have you seen a video of the police tasing someone? All the incidents I've seen have been in a relatively controlled situation with multiple cops surrounding the tase-ee and others training real guns on them.
It's a one-shot weapon with very low accuracy and requires two metal prongs to both penetrate the target close together and stick. I think a big old can of bear spray would be more effective because even if you miss you can flood the hallway and anybody who walks through will be incapacitated. Maybe schools could have a sprinkler system to deploy mace or tear gas in an emergency.-- DIYMatt, Oct 11 2015 It would be a disaster. For a start, in a situation like that when shots are being fired, unless you're accustomed to being in the middle of gunfire, you can't think because of all the adrenaline pumping through you and you won't know which end of the taser to hold, let alone be able to work out who to point it at ("Wait, that guy with the gun - is he the bad guy or a member of the SWAT team?"). Then, as [DIYMatt] says, it's a very inaccurate weapon. I've handled a taser and seen one being fired up close and it's pretty unsophisticated. Finally, what you're asking people to do is to gamble that their reaction times and accuracy with a one-shot weapon they've never fired before are better than the bad guy's reaction times and accuracy with a (probably multi-shot, much more powerful) weapon he's (probably) fired several many times before.-- hippo, Oct 11 2015 I think the first thing the shooter would do, before starting shooting, is break the glass and get the taser(s).-- Vernon, Oct 11 2015 //I don't think someone with a taser would stand a chance in a gunfight//
Standing apart at 20 paces while somebody counts to three? Probably not. But even then, a person can get shot and still shoot their taser. A bullet doesn't necessarily put the person down immediately. But there are many people hiding with these. A person with a gun comes into a room, the person hiding in wait has the advantage. He knows where the person with the gun is, the person with the gun doesn't know where the person with the taser is. The person with the taser in hiding wins this match every time. And no, you're not going to be a good shot after getting hit with 50,000 volts.
//you won't know which end of the taser to hold//
There's not a human being on planet earth that doesn't know which direction to aim a pistol.
//I think the first thing the shooter would do, before starting shooting, is break the glass and get the taser(s).//
So you'd start your killing spree by grabbing one of the taser stations, therefore calling the police notifying them your rampage is about to start and setting off the alarm causing everybody in the facility to run for the remaining taser stations to arm themselves and then take cover?
Well, then thank you for doing this great service for your potential victims. Arming them, telling them to take cover and calling the police.
Fire extinguishers, seat belts, airbags, heart defibrillators and other emergency devices don't always work perfectly 100 percent of the time, but I'd argue that this would probably work saving many lives the vast majority of the time.
Look, for one thing, nobody could argue that this would slow the guy down. You just walk boldly into a room after these things have been dispersed your rampage might be over, so at least the gunman would be in a self defensive slow moving mode, he'd have to be. That's a great help to people trying to get away right there.
Let me put it this way DIYMatt, hippo and Vernon. You're going to be put into a public facility with a crazed gunman. You get your choice of being put in a place equipped with emergency taser stations or a place without these. Now honestly, tell me you'd rather be in the place without them.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 11 2015 I think the only viable solution is to figure out why you have a country where there's one mass shooting per day, and you're discussing the best way to manage the arms race in schools.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 11 2015 Well, what is the solution? You have the floor.
But be forewarned, as somebody who's proposed ideas to mitigate the problem, nothing but an absolutely flawless solution that will completely work 100% of the time, make everybody happy, be absolutely free and have no bad consequences whatsoever will be excepted.
So you've got your work cut out for you. But for whatever it's worth, you've got at least one person rooting for you and hoping you succeed.
But barring some pretty darn clever idea slinging coming along to fix everything, I personally would like to attempt something that slows the cancer rather than holding off while we find the cure. Not saying this is it but if we can put a man on the moon we can do something about shootings in schools.
As a starting point, I'd explore places where there's never a problem with people running amok with a gun. Let me put it this way. Congress would laugh if you told them that they were removing the armed guards in the Capital Building and putting up "Gun Free Zone" plaques on the entrances.
Just sayin'.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 11 2015 It would up the electricity bill by a bit, but would it not be possible to construct or retrofit the threshold doorways between halls in schools to become powerful electromagnets during an emergency situation.
Firearms, knives, and metal fasteners would be violently removed from an assailant. It won't stop grenades, gas, or ceramic pistols, but those things are probably hard to use while the fillings are being ripped from ones teeth.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 11 2015 Tasers seem to be to guns what guns are to a well-armed government. For those strange few who think that they need guns to protect themselves from governments, the BBC points out that the Warsaw uprising killed 20 Nazis and 13,000 civilians.-- 4and20, Oct 11 2015 //Well, what is the solution?//
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Until you know what the problem is, working on the solution doesn't help much.
The problem we have currently is that people hate each other. There is no trick of high tech weaponry, selective apportionment, or applied psychiatry that can get past that simple fact.
So, you have a school full of adolescents who hate each other. What's the proper method of determining which hater should be armed and which should be defenseless?-- lurch, Oct 11 2015 //Well, what is the solution? You have the floor.//
Actually I have a trench. Just finished laying water to a new building and I appear to have reconstructed a scene from the Somme around 1917. But I digress.
There will always be shootings - we even have them in the UK, just not often enough to suggest arming schools. No solution will be 100%.
Howevertheless, the most effective solution (by which I mean one where people will not worry about school shootings any more than they do in the UK, i.e. not much) is one which is unacceptable to the American people. It is simply to reduce the level of gun ownership, and to decide that there is no good reason for the average person to own a handgun or rifle.
As I said, this solution is effective but unacceptable - almost unthinkable - to the American people. And that is fair enough. The cost is that you have to accept a high rate of gun crime as being part of your national scenery.
Attempts to arm schools or teachers will not solve the problem. If a school is a hard target, just go to the local park on a busy day with an assault rifle. Or a cinema. Or a little-league game. Or just drive round a residential area on a sunny Sunday. Or whatever.
It's fine that Americans love their guns. But they have to be grown up enough to accept an inevitably high level of gun crime.
I sometimes wonder if America knows (or cares) how it looks from overseas, when the NRA's response to the latest school shooting is "if only the teachers had been armed".-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 11 2015 //I sometimes wonder if America knows (or cares) how it looks from overseas//
Ok, I'll take that as "Shame America until they do things our way." (writes it on blackboard)
Ok, any other ideas?-- doctorremulac3, Oct 11 2015 //I sometimes wonder if America knows (or cares) how it looks from overseas// Knows, yep. Cares, no; "overseas" reinforces, in every single comment, how little they understand the situation.
//It's fine that Americans love their guns. But they have to be grown up enough to accept an inevitably high level of gun crime.// Case in point; and I hope you can understand. I know you're reasonably intelligent, but I fear your blinders won't let you see or understand this: I am from what you city slickers call the "wild west". Butch Cassidy was from a town near my home; and the Robber's Roost / Hole in the Rock access routes were along the same path I used to go to high school. The fraction of the population who weren't armed in those days, in that area, was vanishingly small - mainly widows who could no longer see well enough to shoot, and had given their guns to their kids. Your "inevitably high level of gun crime" logic would indicate a pretty high incidence of shootings, right? Well, there wasn't; your logic is simply incorrect. The first shooting in that county occurred in 1981 - the shooter drove about 450 miles from Las Vegas to take a shot at his father-in-law. Fortunately, he was a very bad shot, and he only perforated the door of a pickup truck.
Now we have about a 40% reduction in households with firearms. How much has that helped the gun crime level? Well, we're up to about 2 a year.
The guns didn't change. The people changed. They don't like each other, can't tolerate each other like they used to.
You'll say, "but the guns are the problem because they're so much easier to massacre people with." Well, that also suffers the same problem of not fitting the data. Almost everyone in that county was a criminal at one time, being that they belonged to a religion the U.S. Government didn't like; but when you get to violent crime - well, there was the time that Ike Wax threw acid in rival shopkeeper Nick Sheffield's face - I believe that was in 1910 or '11, and then D. Taylor hit W. Taylor over the head with a shovel in 1972 (even water rights squabbles didn't usually get violent, but W. had managed to - accidently, as was the norm for W. - re-direct the entire Highline canal through D.'s basement). And my Dad's cousin Quincy hung himself with a belt and bootlaces in '73. All three cases where the person doing the violence had access to a gun, but didn't choose to use one.
The easy answers are wrong.-- lurch, Oct 11 2015 //Ok, I'll take that as "Shame America until they do things our way."// - actually no, not really, I don't think that's what people are thinking. Mostly people are just mystified as to why you tolerate such a high level of unnecessary deaths from guns.-- hippo, Oct 11 2015 //Ok, any other ideas? // I think I've already had my idea for this one.
As for "shame on America" - my point was that you have an absurd situation there, as viewed from the rest of the world, and I don't think most Americans realise that.
As for "until they do things our way" - no, that's not my point, and perhaps I wasn't clear enough. It is absolutely fine by me (and, I imagine, by most people in the UK) for America to continue as it does. Mass shootings in the US don't bother us unduly, and we find them exotic and interesting. I also think that the citizens of the US are lucky to have effectively unrestricted access to firearms - I would enjoy owning one if I lived there, I really would.
You asked me to suggest a solution to the problem, and I suggested the blindingly obvious one - either accept the gun problem or have fewer guns: it's entirely up to you folk how you choose to run your country. Wingeing about losing a few kids in school shootfests while insisting that guns should remain unrestricted just looks dumb, though.
Adding extra weapons and defensive measures to tackle the situation is like some really fat French guy looking for a slimming pill that will enable him to keep eating as much as he likes.
You have lots of guns, and hence lots of gun crimes; as we say in England "Well, derr."-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 11 2015 A lot of it has to do with how spread out many people in North America were until not that long ago. We weren't all crammed into cities and the continent was anything but tame. Farmers needed to pick off predators. It was a long hike to your neighbours place, and there's still lots of critters mauling people out there even today. You were a bit stupid to go on a walk-about without a firearm.There is response time of help arriving in life-and-death situations to consider. It is much better to be armed and not need it than to bring fingernails to a claw and fang fight.Then there's the psycho factor.
Guns aren't going anywhere anytime soon here.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 11 2015 //Guns aren't going anywhere anytime soon here//
That's true and that's fine. Guns are part of American culture, and I don't think that should change.
But your first paragraph reads a bit like "It's only my glands that make me 200lb overweight. What I need is a diet pill."-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 11 2015 My money's on pamphlets entitled "So you've just seen your teacher and half the class blown away by some jackass", stocked body bags, compulsory preparedness courses for teachers, and a random school-related group of low-level workers (bus drivers, cafeteria, janitorial staff) run through grueling security checks.-- FlyingToaster, Oct 11 2015 Maybe Hallmark will come out with a new line of cards.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 11 2015 //I suggested the blindingly obvious one - either accept the gun problem or have fewer guns//
A bit like saying "Let the patient die or cure him." Well, yea...
But how do you have fewer guns? Who gets the ones you do allow? I don't think anybody would disagree with having fewer guns in the hands of crazy people, but how do you get there? Police only? Maybe. But criminals would have them too. How do you deal with that?
These aren't "argument" or "loaded" questions. I'm genuinely asking.
And the other direction, having more guns in the hands of more trained people, while sparking outrage, is an option. It may be wrong, but it is an option. I don't know if it would work, but I don't think anybody knows that it wouldn't work either.
I know they used to have armed guards in banks. I wouldn't mind seeing more armed guards at schools. I say more because they already do it in certain schools.
Hey, this isn't a discussion about the taser idea. Ignore everything I wrote above that.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 11 2015 It doesn't seem possible for Americans to have a rational discussion about guns these days. It's certainly not possible to have that discussion with non-Americans.
I'm not sure there's wisdom in posting an idea to solve gun violence in an international forum such as this [doctorremulac3], as [MaxwellBuchanan] indicates, the rest of the globe thinks the USA is in deep denial about its gun addiction problem, so you shouldn't be surprised at the response.-- tatterdemalion, Oct 11 2015 It's ok, I'm pretty tough. I can take the heat.
I am American after all. ;)
Max, what do you think of the way Australia does it?-- doctorremulac3, Oct 11 2015 I'm afraid teachers would get tazed far too often. How many times did your school's fire alarm get pulled by the local wag?
Perhaps the teacher only could be given secret access?
I rather think that our problem isn't guns so much as it is depression and such. Economic pressure relief valve needed. Vote Bernie!-- RayfordSteele, Oct 11 2015 //Guns are part of American culture, and I don't think that should change.But your first paragraph reads a bit like "It's only my glands that make me 200lb overweight. What I need is a diet pill."//
Fixed that. When I said "people mauling critters", I meant "people-mauling" critters.
You just don't go into the back country for any length of time on this continent without a gun, period, and nobody feels that our government has the right to tell them that they must put themselves in harms way unless they jump through their hoops and pay their fees first.If they care to provide me with a free armed escort every time I feel like spending a couple of days alone in the bush, then fine. Otherwise they can keep their money-grubbing incompetent fingers out of my roughing-it kit, and concentrate on fixing the societal problems leading up to psychos opening fire on children.
Guns don't kill people.I'm not an NRA member, and I've never even killed an animal, but I stick to my guns,...and if the shit hits the fan, like it seems to do every so often under our benevolent governance, then you'll see the good guys stepping up with more than just pitch-forks.
You can't blame psychotic behaviour on le weapon du jour.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 11 2015 You can see how well it works when everyone has all of the guns they want to sort out every problem they have, then brings in even more. It's called Syria.-- xenzag, Oct 12 2015 Strict gun control wouldn't unarm the professional criminals or the police. It would only affect the 'normal' people. Which is precisely the group responsible of school shootings and such. Put through some really bad times, psychotic behaviour can occur in everyone of us. Perhaps there's something in American society that will make the losers feel really lost?
As for the defence against critters, which of the following most deadly US animals it is best to use the gun on? Tick, wasp, deer, horse, dog, cat, cow, ant. I have been fortunate to spend two months in the beautiful american backcountry and managed to see one bear that ran away. Didn't have time to shoot my camera.-- AK-74, Oct 12 2015 //You just don't go into the back country for any length of time on this continent without a gun// - that always seems to me to be analogous to farmers in the UK being allowed to keep guns. A farmer in the UK might be given a shotgun licence, after undergoing police criminality and character checks and allowing the police to come and inspect their lockable gun and ammunition storage. This is a very particular need for a gun however, and shouldn't be used to justify people keeping 'automatic' weapons.-- hippo, Oct 12 2015 //But how do you have fewer guns? Who gets the ones you do allow?//
I can only speak for the UK (I don't know about Australia, which you asked about.) We just don't let people own guns, with some exceptions. You can own a shotgun for hunting or pest control fairly easily - although there are checks which involve the police. You have to show reasonable cause for owning a shotgun, provide character references, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
It's much, much harder to get a permit for any other type of gun. You can get permits for rifles for certain types of hunting, and for handguns if you're a competition shooter, but they're both extremely difficult to get.
Basically, the attitude in the UK is that owning a gun of any kind is exceptional, and requires exceptional justification.
The downside of this is that law-abiding citizens who want a gun for sport, defence or just for fun generally can't get one. The upside is that gun crime in the UK is minuscule compared to the US, and our schools generally don't even think to worry about it. Of course there are exceptions: there was a school shooting recently, but it's the only one I can remember. And criminals do, of course, occasionally use guns (it's easier to obtain an illegal gun for crime than a legal one for defence), but again that's much less common than in the US - burglaries and muggings almost never involve guns.
Ultimately, it comes down to the culture: do you see guns as a normal part of life like cars (in which case gun crimes will be common, like car crime); or as exotic and exceptional killing machines which are far outside day to day life?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 [limp] - is Northern Africa really only half as dangerous as North America??
It's also worth noting that, within Western Europe, the UK has about 1/3rd the gun-death rate of the average (about 0.26 per 100,000 per year, as opposed to the Western Europe average of 0.73).-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 [Limp] There is a Wikipedia page which covers gun deaths (see link)-- hippo, Oct 12 2015 //is Northern Africa really only half as dangerous as North America??//
Makes you wonder why nobody in America, including former North Africans, would ever want to move from America to North Africa.
It's important to remember that pretty much all our crime is in certain areas and among certain people. Plano Texas, where everybody has a gun and it's legal to keep one in your car or indeed to walk the streets with one has a murder rate of 0.4 compared to Western Europe's whopping 0.73.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 12 2015 //I have been fortunate to spend two months in the beautiful american backcountry and managed to see one bear that ran away//Come a little farther north. The deer on the front lawn won't attack unless you try to pet them, but the cougars will try to play with you and the moose charge as a matter of principal it seems. You can probably get the bears to lick honey off of your hands but when they're angry they don't run anywhere but at you.
// A farmer in the UK might be given a shotgun licence, after undergoing police criminality and character checks and allowing the police to come and inspect their lockable gun and ammunition storage. This is a very particular need for a gun however, and shouldn't be used to justify people keeping 'automatic' weapons//
Agreed. That's the way it is here, other than the inspection part.I'm thinking that folks in the UK forget that the ban on weapons stems from keeping the peasants down and unable to threaten the monarchy.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 12 2015 Actually, most of the laws affecting guns were introduced after WWI; there have been a few tightenings since then, often in response to shootings.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 Well of course it started with swords not guns, and, given the German heritage of the house of Windsor, members of the monarchy were well into the transition from holding the reins to being figure heads by WW1.You've never been allowed to threaten your government there. I'm sure it feels natural to those that stayed, but I bet that it was a major reason why many left for more hostile yet less restrictive shores.
Guns don't kill.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 12 2015 Yes, all good points - and a neat swipe at the British royal family gets you the bonus point.
You're right - we generally haven't risen up against our government with weapons in a very long time. We decided that elections were less trouble, to be honest.
I know that the pretext for general gun entitlement in the States is to be able to rise up against the government. But, joking aside, can you honestly imagine that happening this side of 1900? Has it, in fact, ever happened this side of 1900? And if so, did it end well and achieve the desired result?
Look, I'm not out to take away any American't right to own a gun. But there's no need to justify it with unlikely or historical scenarios. Have all the guns you want, but have them because you want them and are able to admit that. Then it's fine.
The only thing that is irritating (well, not really irritating, but amusing) is when, after this week's American school shooting, Americans run around wringing their hands and saying "why oh why?" and "this wouldn't happen if we had more guns!" You'd look a lot less dumb if you manned up and said "Well, these things are bound to happen and, on balance, we'd prefer to keep our guns."
If you want a solution that works fine for at least a few other countries, it's very simple and obvious - derr. If you don't want that solution, that's also fine - just quit whinging about it.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 [marked-for-deletion] let's all-- calum, Oct 12 2015 //But, joking aside, can you honestly imagine that happening this side of 1900?//
What happening? People rising up against their governments or governments rising up against their people?
For the latter, here's a couple of post 1900 naughty governments that probably should have been met at the door with guns a-blazin' when they came around with their great plans to fix things:
Cambodia/Communists: 1 to 3 million murdered
Congo/Colonial monarchy: 3 to 10 million murdered
Armenia/Ottoman Empire: up to 1.5 million murdered
German Occupied Europe/Nazis: 5 to 11,000 million murdered
Soviet Russia/Communists: 20 to 60 million by some estimates
China/Communists: 78 million by some estimates
I'm not sure a free and armed population was the problem here.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 12 2015 //[marked-for-deletion] let's all//
Please read the rules and regulations calum. The idea is for a specific invention, racks of tazers deployed around a facility, attached to an alarm system and a method of their use. "Let's all" would be "Let's all buy tasers."-- doctorremulac3, Oct 12 2015 Wait a minute, stop the bus...
I have stayed out of this one, but I just now noticed - It's in other: [general] !
This point of parliamentary procedure precedes all argument.
If this idea is to be taken seriously ( and it should ), then the poster must change the category. We can then debate whether to admit all the previous arguments, or if the whole thing should be conducted over again.-- normzone, Oct 12 2015 Changed it to "Architectural Features".
There's probably a better category but it is an emergency feature mounted in buildings and wired into their security system so, close enough.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 12 2015 Thank you.
The chair will now entertain arguments regarding acknowledging the previous exchanges as they stand, requiring their re-establishment, or the validity of my position as chair. You may proceed.-- normzone, Oct 12 2015 //here's a couple of post 1900 naughty governments that probably should have been met at the door with guns a- blazin'//
Sorry - I should have been clearer. I meant in the USA.
Whatever you may think of politics and politicians there, you've had a democracy for quite a while. I'm just saying that it's hugely unlikely that a bunch of guys toting guns are going to storm the Whitehouse. It's even more unlikely that they'd succeed. If the people want the power to defend themselves against the government by means other than supposedly free elections, they will need to own more than handguns.
So by all means keep your guns - just move on from the idea that you have them in order to defeat the elected government.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 //Sorry - I should have been clearer. I meant in the USA.//
I thought we were less sophisticated and intelligent than Europeans, shouldn't we be more susceptible to an evil government taking over than say, Germany? Those guys had everything. Democracy, technology, sophisticated university system, lots and lots and lots of intellectuals, still they went bad.
There are other threats to safety besides bad governments. Ask the Koreans who defended their neighborhoods during the LA riots when the police were told to stay off the streets what they think about having their weapons taken away. It was a real life war, right here in the USA. People going into neighborhoods to kill, maim and destroy and getting shot by the armed defenders of those neighborhoods.
But the most likely way a weapon might be used is if you get robbed or otherwise attacked in your home or on the street. Yes, there are risks to this line of defense but as you pointed out, it's a risk we're willing to take. But that doesn't mean we should not try to mitigate that risk like, "Oh, those dumb Americans, they want their guns, then they deserve what comes with it." which is just silly.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 12 2015 //I thought we were less sophisticated and intelligent than Europeans// Agreed, but it's still a pretty long stretch to justify guns for that reason.
//There are other threats to safety besides bad governments.// Of course! In which case why cling to the idea that you have guns in order to overthrow the government?
//But the most likely way a weapon might be used is if you get robbed or otherwise attacked in your home or on the street.// Yes, of course again. The downside is that the robber or attacker is likely to have a gun. In the UK we don't (generally) have firearms for personal protection, but on the other hand robbers and attackers don't often tend to use them either. Either situation is fine, as I believe I have been at pains to point out hithertofore.
//Oh, those dumb Americans, they want their guns, then they deserve what comes with it// [Doc], I don't think I have said any such thing. What I _have_ said is that you choose to live in a society where guns are relatively common; and it is therefore inevitable that guns will be used in crimes. Adding more weapons, of any sort, won't really do a lot of good and might make things worse, overall.
I would guess that, *per gun owner*, the US probably has far fewer shootings than the UK. So, you're already doing pretty well when it comes to responsible gun ownership. If you want less gun crime, the logical solution is less guns.
There are probably worse ideas than having tasers in schools (and parks, and playgrounds, and cinemas, and at kids parties). [There - I gave you a bun as a gesture of goodwill.] But it's just astonishing (to us quaint old English folk) how creative people can when trying to avoid confronting the problem squarely.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 As an Englishman, I can say that if it were legal, practical and affordable to carry a laser gun capable of scything down everybody between me and the horizon, I would greatly enjoy doing so.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 //[There - I gave you a bun as a gesture of goodwill.]//
There you go, that wasn't so hard was it? I'm placated now.
Actually I'm not even sure where I stand on this. I'm finding myself defending storming the White House with muskets, something I don't even remember saying was a good idea.
Ok, I should probably get something done today. I find I'm more interested in solving un-solvable issues when I have a long list of things to do that day. Imagine that.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 12 2015 [doc] If you had had the good sense and good fortune to be born in the sceptered isle, your working day would already be over and you'd be on your third G&T. I know I am.
[Ian] - you grew up??? Who knew?
//when my wife goes back home to Jamaica// does she go of her own accord?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 //You just don't go into the back country for any length of time on this continent without a gun, period... If they care to provide me with a free armed escort every time I feel like spending a couple of days alone in the bush, then fine... I'm not an NRA member, and I've never even killed an animal, but...//
I'd like to point out a strange dichotomy here. Why is it necessary to go out into the bush with a gun if you've never had to kill anything? Just as a noise-maker? Any old pan and a rock can suffice for that.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 12 2015 //The results would have been different I think, if those people weren't armed.// Quite the opposite, I'd think. It would have been even political suicider if the heavily-armed Feds had fired on unarmed protestors.
But, perhaps you're right. My whole argument (a while ago, now) was that it's fine to be a culture with guns, and it's fine to be one [largely] without guns. Both seem to work OK, and both have their disadvantages: in the US, it's the occasional school shooting (though the numbers killed are quite small); in the UK, it's the inability to defend your cattle against government officials (but we're a smaller country, so we value our children more than our cattle).
No doubt we'll have similar discussions after each of the forthcoming school massacres, just like we did for the previous ones. You guys!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 //They would have seized the cattle and went on there marry way.//
Sheesh - cattle as dowry? Who knew?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 12 2015 First off, //American't right to own a gun.// should be [marked-for-tagline].
//But there's no need to justify it with unlikely or historical scenarios.//Sorry I wasn't justifying our right to own our guns, I just enjoy trying to cast my mind back to see if I can figure out the start of things.
I didn't mean to drag her majesty and family into this, it was terribly rude of me.I just wonder about the cultural differences leading up to the two opposing opinions on the subject and I think that might be it.From what little I know of other cultures it appears that throughout history the first act of a government about to subjugate its people is the removal of their ability to defend themselves.
I was given my first 22 rifle at fourteen and told to go play with it.We all used to leave our doors unlocked when we weren't home in case a stranger might need help.Nobody shot innocents on purpose.
What the hell happened?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 12 2015 The Brits seem very happy under their subjugation.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 12 2015 //What the hell happened?//
Well, I think part of what happened is false nostalgia. Violent crime has been on the decline for some time now. Reporting, and public fear of violent crime has been going up well out of proportion to this - giving an impression which is inverse of the reality.
To be honest, I think Australia and New Zealand gun laws are probably about the right balance, although this comes from the basis of both being relatively small nations. I live in Aus, and can get hunting and target style guns with a moderate amount of paperwork and permitting, with some action type, calibre, storage and ammunition capacity restrictions. I have a number of firearms and in general do not feel my freedoms are restricted, but at the same time, if I were a sociopath I'd be of limited utility conducting a massacre.
Some of the restrictions do seem unnecessarily arduous and more political than practical (see an example recently of a new firearm model being "banned" overnight despite functionally identical ones being available freely since the late 1800's). Our vocal anti-gun lobby consists of I think two individuals with a lot of time on their hands, the rest are just people who hit "like" on facebook. Their power is disporportionate to their number, but mostly they are ignored anyway.
Because (I think) of our restrictions, licensing, background checks etc - gun crime by licensed firearm owners in Australia is almost nonexistent.
I do think the debate around "gun crime" and "gun deaths" is generally disingenuous when certain factors are simply not discussed. Suicides should be a separate criteria in all measurements (and they are a huge proportion of total gun deaths). Demographics of who is committing the gun crime also seems to be ignored to some extent. Certainly the difference between "criminals killing each other and innocents with guns" and "otherwise law abiding citizens killing people with guns" get a miss. It seems not polite to dig in to some of these issues. We can't be honest with the debate unless we're honest with what the problems are.-- Custardguts, Oct 13 2015 //we value our children more than our cattle//
At what point does a society's survival strategy based on droll quips get tested? Is it when the clever chap is forced to say: "I value my children more than defending a woman's right to drive or walk in public with her hair uncovered?" or "I value my children more than my right to not be forced by the state to pray 5 times a day?" How about "I value my children more than being able to live here rather than being put into a freight car to go to a work camp?"
I love Europe, I love the European people. Europe is the homeland of my ancestors, but since we're being "comparative", (to put it politely) let's talk about the main difference between our cultures. While we Americans may be dull and brutish, eating too much ice cream or making too much noise at the football game (when we're not walking on the moon or inventing a pretty good percentage of, oh, everything that's ever been invented) we have survival in our blood. Europe I'm afraid does not and I fear for its existence.
Two pictures are burned into my mind's eye that sum up what I feel is Europe's biggest problem. There are drawings of Europeans walking obediently onto the guillotine dressed to the hilt, looking absolutely fabulous on their way to getting their heads chopped off. The other one is groups of beautiful, intelligent, well dressed, civilized, educated families who love their children, their country and who have great morals and values obediently getting onto railroad cars to be taken to death camps.
Now the civilized European might point out that we've got blood on our hands from our barbarian history, but I would counter that Europeans have their blood on the hands of barbarians and tend to pull out the quip when it's time to pull out a gun.
I don't believe there's enough animal aggression, the programming for survival itself within the European people to survive. In 200 to 300 years I fear that they'll be a small, out fought and out bred minority living under a very different set of rules laid down by a very different set of rulers.
I would much rather be part of a thriving barbarian lineage than an extinct "civilized" one. A footnote to history, worth only a few points on a test in history class. That is if they still have history classes.
Anyway, that's my opinion. I sure hope I'm totally wrong about all of this, but I'm afraid I'm not.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 13 2015 //drawings of Europeans walking obediently onto the guillotine dressed to the hilt//
Ah, but have you noticed that there are no videos? I find that suspicious.
Apologies for my drollth. In the UK, it's still legal to carry a concealed quip, or even a semi- automatic repartee. They almost introduced a ban on ripostes after the incidents of 1994, but since most of our politicians are in bed with the Rational Trifle Association, they came under pressure not to push forward with it. About the only restrictions that have been imposed in the last century are restrictions on the ownership and use of surface- to-air puns, and a ban on the use of land-mimes.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 13 2015 LOL,
You are one clever son-of-a-gun Max, I'll give you that.
I've said it before, you're probably smarter than me, that's why I find you interesting to talk to. I like being around intelligent people. I always strive to be the dumbest guy in the room.
(Some might say I've succeeded beyond my wildest expectations in that regard.)-- doctorremulac3, Oct 13 2015 Technically, I am the son of two guns (both parents being in the armed forces - US and UK respectively).
Not necessarily intelligent, but persistent...-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 13 2015 //I personally think all of England's military might could be nullified by pretending that you don't get the joke//
Now, THAT'S funny!
//Technically, I am the son of two guns (both parents being in the armed forces - US and UK respectively).//
Assuming that's not some over my head joke, are you really half American like Winston Churchill?
If it IS an over my head joke. LOL, I get it. Jolly good, well played!-- doctorremulac3, Oct 13 2015 //It's also worth noting that, within Western Europe, the UK has about 1/3rd the gun-death rate of the average (about 0.26 per 100,000 per year, as opposed to the Western Europe average of 0.73)//
Googling suggests the UK is in Northern Europe. Googling also suggests the UK is in Western Europe. I'd argue that Europe starts after the English moat. Either way, it's extraordinarily safe, I'm apparently 15 fold more at risk here in Philadelphia than in the UK. Is that true? hmm.-- bs0u0155, Oct 13 2015 //are you really half American like Winston Churchill? // I am. But cigars don't agree with me.
//I'd argue that Europe starts after the English moat.// I would almost agree. However, the very concept of "Europe" is ridiculous. It's obvious to even the most doltish Frenchman, for example, that France, Germany and the rest are simply part of an extensive island lying on the English continental shelf. It would be far more appropriate to call this agglomeration of offshore countries "Englasia", much as New Zealand, New Guinea and the Islets of Langerhans are part of Australasia.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 13 2015 Further Googling suggests that I don't need to be a citizen to get a gun. I'd always assumed otherwise. I was a pretty phenomenal shot when I was in competitions for the RAF cadets, it really helped having a resting heart rate in the 30s, then the legislation following Dunblane kicked in and it was no longer deemed prudent to let 16yo boys have L98 rifles with 5.56mm ammo.-- bs0u0155, Oct 13 2015 //a resting heart rate in the 30s//
You're lucky. I haven't had a resting heart rate since my mid 20s.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 13 2015 Well, how the Australians choose their nomenclature is frankly beyond my understanding and control. That does nothing to underminate my point.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 13 2015 Well, at least it was a rampage rather than a spree. Spree is never an appropriate word when more than three people die.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 24 2015 Good idea, the students can taser the violent teachers.-- not_morrison_rm, Oct 24 2015 How about Emergency Paul Michael Glasers in all schools?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Oct 25 2015 Every jail should have a case of beer bottles for emergency.-- pashute, Oct 26 2015 // If you want less gun crime, the logical solution is less guns// Or less laws.-- DrBob, Oct 27 2015 Is this really only a couple of months old? It feels enormously longer to me. Anyway, I'm not looking to restart an enormous argument or anything, but I'd like to to respond to doctorremulac3's comment above, and particularly this:
//Two pictures are burned into my mind's eye that sum up what I feel is Europe's biggest problem. There are drawings of Europeans walking obediently onto the guillotine dressed to the hilt, looking absolutely fabulous on their way to getting their heads chopped off. The other one is groups of beautiful, intelligent, well dressed, civilized, educated families who love their children, their country and who have great morals and values obediently getting onto railroad cars to be taken to death camps.//
I'm not sure there's an enormous difference in the way you're suggesting. At about the time European Jews were being carted off to concentration camps, Japanese-Americans were being carted off to concentration camps. (As an aside, there's a TED talk by George Takei which involves this subject.) The fact that only one group were going to their deaths is kind of immaterial - their fate wasn't known to them at the time. Great efforts were made to keep the death-camp's purpose a secret even on arrival. Now, you may argue that the Japanese-Americans wern't culturally American I suppose, but I doubt there's much milage in that. I think it's basically just that you can control large groups of people to a surprising degree by making the least-worst option at any point be to comply.
In regard to the other example of the French revolution, my inherent response is that it's from a time so long ago and a culture so different to the current one that it's basically entirely irrelevant. Maybe it's not - after all, people do still decide to die with dignity. I'm not sure though that it correlates with a lack of will to survive. Certainly people of different cultures have quite different priorities, and these can seem very strange. Wearing your finery to your execution seems strange to me, but then attending a public execution and baying for blood seems strange. (And for what it's worth, France is populated by descendents of the latter.) And furthermore, certainly people have different skill-sets, which may lead to more or less beneficial responses in an emergency. I fully concede that if you're trained in how to act in an event you'll probably do better.-- Loris, Dec 01 2015 Excuse my shaky knowledge of history (there has been an awful lot of it), but wasn't the point of the French revolution that the armed masses rose up against the powers-that-were?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 01 2015 //people do still decide to die with dignity.//
The most dignified way to die at the hands of evil people is to go down fighting and take as many of the bastards with you as you can.
One victim of the reign of terror impressed me though. I'm not sure if the story about the aftermath of Madame du Barry's execution is true or not, but I read someplace that her dropping to her knees sobbing for mercy rather than marching robot-like to her death had some influence on slowing down public beheadings. The story is that people started seeing the victims as human beings rather than unfeeling rich snobs who deserved it. If that's true (and again, I don't know if it is) she died not only with the dignity of not being ashamed of her humanity, but with purpose as well, having possibly saved countless other lives.
//I'm not sure though that it correlates with a lack of will to survive.//
Supposedly the aristocracy would wear red ribbons around their necks as an ironic statement. Maybe if they spend a little less time being cute and a little more time shooting and escaping things might have turned out better for them.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 01 2015 //I think [Loris] may want to revisit the last anno. I tried to read something into it more than its apparent "wear something nice when you die". And for an extremely long anno that's very little content//
That's funny, because it didn't even say that.
//The most dignified way to die at the hands of evil people is to go down fighting and take as many of the bastards with you as you can.//
So what you're saying is that people who execute other people are evil? The American judicial system executes people pretty regularly. I advise against trying to overthrow them right now however, because most of your countrymen seem to be going along with it.
//One victim of the reign of terror impressed me though. I'm not sure if the story about the aftermath of Madame du Barry's execution is true or not, but I read someplace that her dropping to her knees sobbing for mercy rather than marching robot-like to her death had some influence on slowing down public beheadings. The story is that people started seeing the victims as human beings rather than unfeeling rich snobs who deserved it. If that's true (and again, I don't know if it is) she died not only with the dignity of not being ashamed of her humanity, but with purpose as well, having possibly saved countless other lives.//
Ah, yes. I'm impressed with your recall. I'd have brought that up myself if I'd been able to remember enough to track it down. The way I heard it she didn't try to hide her fear and fought and screamed. But this didn't help her any - in fact she presumably just prelonged her suffering. Nevertheless, if the nobility as a group had behaved as such, the appetite for it would probably have quickly dissipated, and fewer executions might have occurred. This isn't in dispute.
//Supposedly the aristocracy would wear red ribbons around their necks as an ironic statement. Maybe if they spend a little less time being cute and a little more time shooting and escaping things might have turned out better for them.//
I think the difference here is that I assume they tried that for as long as they could. But there just wern't enough scarlet pimpernels to go round, and perhaps they ran out of ammo and were overrun, or were caught unawares. And then when faced with an inescapable situation, they did what they thought was best. So that might not have been what you or I would do, but it was _such_ a different culture. I assume they mostly believed in an afterlife, for instance, which does seem to make people behave differently.
Anyway, I think thats enough on the example I was trying to discount as invalid - how about the one I actually put up a case for?
...
Going back up the thread, I found this:
//Let me put it this way DIYMatt, hippo and Vernon. You're going to be put into a public facility with a crazed gunman. You get your choice of being put in a place equipped with emergency taser stations or a place without these. Now honestly, tell me you'd rather be in the place without them.//
Although you didn't ask me - I can honestly tell you that I'd rather have the tazer. However. I think basically that's the wrong question to ask. To get that one useful tazer accessible in case of crazed gunman, you're going to have to keep tazers in every school, all the time. I imagine that even in America, entire days or even weeks can pass between shootings in any individual school[1]. So now it's your turn. Suppose you had to go to school every day because you're a teacher or a student or something. Would you honestly rather go to a school where the bullies and the local psycho all had ready access to a batch of tazers, or one without?
[1] Sorry.-- Loris, Dec 02 2015 How about building decoy schools? From the outside they would look like regular schools, and pre-recorded childsounds would emanate from them. However, on crashing through the classroom door, the would-be mass murderer actually finds himself sliding down a greased ramp into a deep pool of custard.
Once in the pool, the gunman can either:
(a) Thrash around angrily until he/she is too exhausted to resist arrest or
(b) Remain calm, thereby sinking slowly into the custard.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2015 Well Loris, my favorite part of your previous post was //it's basically entirely irrelevant. Maybe it's not//
There's a certain style of "debate" that Monty Python parodied in two brilliant skits many years ago. I've posted them for you to study.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2015 Best put the tasers in welfare centres, too.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2015 Best put the tasers in community centres, too.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2015 Are we still having gun control debates after Paris?-- doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2015 If all Parisians had had guns...-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2015 ...sooooo that's a big yes. Okie dokie.
Tell you what. If you can control guns, which you can't as witnessed by the Paris attacks, I'll support gun control. If it's only partial gun control, that is, keeping guns from law abiding citizens while allowing those who don't follow laws to have them, like we had in Paris, I'm gonna have to pass.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2015 I'm waiting for next year's spring collection of suicide vests myself.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2015 I'm just glad we all have cars, so when there's a bad driver, we can ram them.-- 4and20, Dec 03 2015 //are you really half American like Winston Churchill? // I am. But cigars don't agree with me.
What do cigars think your nationality is then?-- AusCan531, Dec 03 2015 // much as New Zealand, New Guinea and the Islets of Langerhans are part of Australasia. //
To the best of my knowledge the Islets of Langerhans are in fact part of South-Western Anatomia, bordering on the Histiocytic Sea.-- Toto Anders, Dec 03 2015 //my favorite part of your previous post was //it's basically entirely irrelevant. Maybe it's not// //
//There's a certain style of "debate" that Monty Python parodied in two brilliant skits many years ago. I've posted them for you to study.//
Heh. I was trying to meet your argument in the 'least convenient possible world' - that is, there are many reasons why I don't think your example (with which you characterise all Europeans) is relevant, but I'm going to try to debunk it anyway. (I haven't looked at those links yet - I'll do so when I'm not supposed to be working.)-- Loris, Dec 03 2015 Two things are missing from your "argument" Loris.
1- What it is that you disagree with me about and...
2- ...what your point is.
An example of a clear, concise argument might be:
"I don't agree that getting your head chopped off is a bad thing because if you wear cool clothes and stuff it's like, nice and whatever."-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 //1- What it is that you disagree with me about//
I disagree with your assessment of "the main difference between our cultures."
//2- ...what your point is.//
The two examples you gave are wrong. One because an essentially similar thing happened in America at the same time, and the other because it's from a long time ago and a culture not representive of the modern populace.-- Loris, Dec 03 2015 //One because an essentially similar thing happened in America at the same time//
This should be interesting.
What was that "similar thing"?-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 //What was that "similar thing"?//
The paragraph in my first anno which you totally ignored.-- Loris, Dec 03 2015 //The American judicial system executes people pretty regularly.//
So you don't see any difference between executing an individual for raping and murdering somebody and systematic genocide on a mass scale against people who haven't done anything wrong? Same thing?-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 Jesus wept.-- calum, Dec 03 2015 Not that[1]. This:
//[...] At about the time European Jews were being carted off to concentration camps, Japanese-Americans were being carted off to concentration camps. (As an aside, there's a TED talk by George Takei which involves this subject.) The fact that only one group were going to their deaths is kind of immaterial - their fate wasn't known to them at the time. Great efforts were made to keep the death-camp's purpose a secret even on arrival. Now, you may argue that the Japanese-Americans wern't culturally American I suppose, but I doubt there's much milage in that. I think it's basically just that you can control large groups of people to a surprising degree by making the least-worst option at any point be to comply.//
[1] That wasn't what I was getting at there, but we can talk about that later.-- Loris, Dec 03 2015 //So there's no difference between genocide and not genocide?//
Not one you can determine when you and your family get on the train.
Seriously, I recommend George Takai's talk (link). here's a little of the transcript: <<I was four years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941 by Japan, and overnight, the world was plunged into a world war. America suddenly was swept up by hysteria. Japanese-Americans, American citizens of Japanese ancestry, were looked on with suspicion and fear and with outright hatred simply because we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. And the hysteria grew and grew until in February 1942, the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ordered all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast of America to be summarily rounded up with no charges, with no trial, with no due process. Due process, this is a core pillar of our justice system. That all disappeared. We were to be rounded up and imprisoned in 10 barbed-wire prison camps in some of the most desolate places in America: the blistering hot desert of Arizona, the sultry swamps of Arkansas, the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and two of the most desolate places in California.>>-- Loris, Dec 03 2015 /The fact that only one group were going to their deaths is kind of immaterial.//
So there's no difference between genocide and not genocide?
Ok, I'm beginning to feel like a bully here. With all respect Loris, these aren't really arguments you're making because there's really no point. You're just sort of meandering through sort of random associated thoughts loosely linked with the subject. As far as I can tell you think there are no lessons to be learned from the genocide of the French Revolution and you can't see any difference between murdering millions of people and not murdering millions of people. Ok, well, there are a great many of lessons to be learned any time a group of people commits mass murder against another group of people and there is a very big difference between murdering millions of people and not murdering anybody.
Sorry.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 //You're just sort of meandering through sort of random associated thoughts loosely linked with the subject.//
I think I just added stuff to my last anno while you were writing that - could you have a look at that again and see if that's still what you think? Because I think I'm making a valid point which somehow you're ignoring in favour of misinterpreting the asides.
//... and there is a very big difference between murdering millions of people and not murdering anybody// Absolutely, but that's not what I'm trying to say. My point there is pretty well defined and specific, but you seem to be dragging in a lot of unneccessary connotations and inferences.
The European Jews thought they were being deported. (They were unlucky to be wrong.) Most of them didn't struggle to escape, because that seemed like it would increase their risk. The Japanese Americans thought they were being deported. (They were lucky to be right.) Most of them didn't struggle to escape, because that seemed like it would increase their risk.
You're judging them assuming they knew things they didn't. I'm claiming that there doesn't seem to be a big cultural difference[1] in how people behave under that sort of circumstance.
I would post something more about your comment on the french revolution, but I think it would be better to wait until you're parsed this, because it's more important.
[1] At least, at that point between Europeans and Americans, in that fundamental way. You might say these are weasel words, but I am just trying to concede the limited scope up-front. /Obviously/ there were and are some cultural differences.-- Loris, Dec 03 2015 Ok.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 This 'give gun to the good man for d-fens' has bothered me since I couldn't find that man. Then I turned around and saw a woman. Who almost never commits a gun crime. Give all the girls guns and training. Men can do without. Who's first to try?-- AK-74, Dec 03 2015 I'm all for arming all women only. Although this last mass shooting had a woman as one of the killers.
This is why we want to be careful not to put a Hal9000 style robot in charge. We tell him to reduce crime by 90% he'll just lock up every male aged 15 to 25, let them out when they turn 26. Problem is, it would probably work.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 //Problem is, it would probably work//
Problem is, you could lock up certain ethnicities as well, who have a statistical prevalence towards crime. Somehow, that would be *less* distasteful than segregating by gender...-- Custardguts, Dec 03 2015 Careful. Some people find facts offensive.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 " This 'give gun to the good man for d-fens' has bothered me since I couldn't find that man. Then I turned around and saw a woman. Who almost never commits a gun crime. Give all the girls guns and training. Men can do without. Who's first to try? — AK-74, Dec 03 2015 "
Beat you to it, [AK-74]. The women I keep company with know how to shoot.-- normzone, Dec 03 2015 //This 'give gun to the good man for d-fens' has bothered me since I couldn't find that man.//
You just had to look, I haven't been hard to find... so y'all can just leave this good man's guns out of legislation and public de-armament propaganda tactics m'kay.Thankyouverymuch.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 03 2015 It's a while since I checked this idea. Good to see that everything's been resolved.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 03 2015 Yea, almost done here. We're gonna iron out this whole religion controversy next.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 03 2015 // keeping guns from law abiding citizens while allowing those who don't follow laws to have them
Agreed, that doesn't work. We should also get rid of laws against murder too, since it only stops law abiding people from murdering.-- tatterdemalion, Dec 04 2015 That's not it. Criminals and militia groups don't give half-a-crap about restrictive laws.When the shit hits the fan, these groups take over in that in-between time that it takes the officials, responsible for the mess, to regain control and leave the rest of our cheeses in the wind... while unarmed.
That's not going to happen here.So far, the vast majority of us culturally disparate 'peoples' have been able to find middle ground here while retaining our heritage and sense of self, (don't really have a cultural sense of self so identifying this in others is second nature), so unless the sheeple give in to panic and allow all of this propaganda to sway us... which hopefully we are all smart enough not to fall for......we'll be keeping our guns up here in the great white north.
hosers-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 04 2015 //We should also get rid of laws against murder too, since it only stops law abiding people from murdering.//
Oh, we're being obnoxious now? Oh good.
How about if we copy those great gun control laws they have in Paris?
We've been a heavily armed country for over two centuries without this mass shooting epidemic. Maybe it's time to look at what has changed.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 04 2015 //We should also get rid of laws against murder too, since it only stops law abiding people from murdering.//
// Oh, we're being obnoxious now? Oh good.
It logically follows. You consider that obnoxious? You might need to adjust some settings. Statements like "How about if we copy those great gun control laws they have in Paris?", now that's obnoxious.
Of course laws against X only prevent law abiders from doing X. Gun advocates suggest that more guns laws are pointless because people who don't follow laws, well, don't follow them, so there's no need for them, and they only harm people who follow the laws. That's true of any law about anything. This is an absurd argument for anarchy.
There may be actual arguments in favor of the point, but this is not one of them and it's baffling that otherwise intelligent people insist of using it.-- tatterdemalion, Dec 04 2015 Try to resist the temptation to be stupid.
If there's a law against X, then having another law against breaking the law against X is not necessary, and the lack of that law is not anarchy.-- lurch, Dec 04 2015 Tatt, you totally misunderstood my point. Your searing wit was so clever I now see that you've got all the answers, I wasn't being sarcastic.
I totally agree with you. We need the exact same laws that they have in Paris because those laws they have in Paris worked so very very well.
Ok, can we turn the nasty off now?
I welcome intelligent commentary on this but I don't feel the need to do any more of this sarcasm b.s.
Hey, I'm open to ideas. If taking all the guns away would solve the problem then fine. Problem is, your gun control laws are in effect in Paris and guess what, there are lots of guns in Paris. There's also lots of heroin, cocaine, human trafficking etc.
I've suggested heavy, heavy restrictions on guns where you basically need to be a citizen cop, complete with all the background training and vetting that goes into being a police officer but that gets shot down, mostly by the left oddly enough.
That's right, the left hates the idea of the strictest gun regulation I've ever heard of. That fact alone might give you some insight into the weird nature of this debate. I was suggesting basically that ONLY COPS BE GIVEN GUNS! Just that there be a lot more cops, and the left despises that idea. (and me for proposing it)
I'm open to other ideas, but before I come to my decision on this, because I'm not as clever as some people who already know it all, I need a little more information. Again, can somebody for instance, tell me why we've been a heavily armed country for two centuries and only now are having this rash of shootings? I don't know, I'm asking. Even if the plan is to melt all the legal guns, somebody should still try to figure this one out.
And please, I know we're all frightfully clever but can we knock off the sarcastic bullshit? I can do it as well as anybody but I don't necessarily think it accomplishes anything more than pissing everybody off. It probably even turns people off to the sarcastic person's opinion.
I'm willing to listen to gun control ideas that actually control guns but saying it's a simple thing and ignoring glaring "glitches" in the program like Charlie Hebdo and the Paris massacre isn't doing much to sell the concept.
Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to look at places that have lots of legal guns and little gun violence, lots of legal guns and lots of gun violence, few legal guns and lots of gun violence, few legal guns and little gun violence.
Then I'm going to do the un-thinkable. I'm going to see what factors contribute to these numbers considering the possibility that government policies may NOT be the main factor determining crime rates. I understand I'm not supposed to do this but I don't really care how other people come to their conclusions. It's usually by needing to belong to a group, picking one and adhering to its tenets. I'm going into this on my own knowing some of my pre- conceptions might be wrong.
Feel free to help me but be open to the possibility that you might come to slightly different conclusions just as I might.
So to review:
1- Lots of legal guns and lots of violence 2- No legal guns and lots of violence 3- Lots of legal guns and little violence (even going back in time correcting for per capita gun ownership etc) 4- No legal guns and little violence
Then charts showing new gun laws, what they were and what effect they had. And here's the ugly part, other crime rates and how they were effected by these gun laws. If rape and robbery skyrockets after a stringent gun law is passed, that's not a great solution.
Hey man, like I said, I'm open to ideas. I'm the one who proposed the most stringent gun control I've ever heard of but if it's a law that's going to fix things it'll need to actually work.
I'll update as I find stuff, sarcasm and nastiness free, I promise. (sorry about the long post)-- doctorremulac3, Dec 04 2015 That sounds like a lot of work and I wish you well in the endeavour.
(Somehow this anno has gotten very large, and covers a lot of ground. I apologise. However, with the possible exeption of the following sentence, it's all written in earnest; please read it as such.)
I must admit that regarding the gun control debate, I'm basically now of the opinion that if Americans want to shoot each other in the privacy of their own continent, it is no business of mine. So while I may disagree with some of the theories raised and will contest them, please understand that I am actually supportive of your right as a country to choose.
But first:
***intermission***
For what it's worth... I've got something interesting on that french revolution thing. To recap, I think we had at least agreed that the nobility trying to be dignified at their executions meant they were easily seen as different and emotionless, and this prolonged the killing. Well, while reading up on that I found, on the wikipedia "Reign of Terror" page, a curious line which runs counter to that: <<One of the last groups to be executed during the terror were the Carmelite Nuns of Compiègne. The nuns were sentenced to death for refusing to give up their monastic vows. They were sent to the guillotine on 17 July 1794. The manner in which they approached their death, going freely up to the scaffold while singing the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, had a great impact on the public mood in Paris and helped to turn it against the terror.>> Now I have done no research other than to read that page and the one on the nuns linked there, so I don't know how good the evidence for that is. But I think I have to reappraise my previous position for a more nuanced one.
I think what we can say is that it's clear that how people carry themselves when executed is very important to how they are perceived afterwards. This can make it important to those executed, but that perception is very dependent on culture, and different classes within a society may interpret that behaviour very differently on even very subtle cues.
*** end of random interjection ***
So, regarding guns and tazers.
Doctorremulac3, when you say 'the left' didn't like your gun control proposal, who did you mean? Because if you are talking about your "Armed Civilian Deputization Program" then from a quick scan it looks like a very few people didn't like it, some more vehemently than others. Some of them if I had to guess were libertarian, or American liberal - all of which I'd call right-wing. And some left-wing, sure.
(And incidentally, I'm not actually sure whether I qualify as left-wing here, but I'm sure I would in America. However, I know I wasn't a part of that conversation, so I'm not feeling defensive.)
Regarding whether gun control works - it _clearly_ doesn't stop terrorists, or violent organised crime[1]. Nevertheless, I would argue that it may (and I believe does) reduce gun crime and murder rates overall, if it heavily reduces 'casual' or opportunist violent crime. This is clearly not the only factor in the equation, so unwinding the whole mess isn't an easy problem. I think the basic principle I'm going on is that if lots of people have guns, some of them are going to use them for nefarious purposes[2]. If guns are readily available, then yes, perhaps some people will be able to defend themselves. But the relationship of criminal and victim is not symmetric. In almost all interactions, the criminal has the advantage. For example, in a street mugging, the criminal will have their gun out and ready before the victim is aware. One thing gun control does do is let you really clamp down on carrying of guns, with serious jail-time for illegal possession or carriage. This means that only the really serious or insane criminal is likely to have a gun, and they won't carry it unless they're planning to use it[3]. A second example : in the USA, I hear you don't have burglaries, you have home invasions. This seems to me like the natural response of the low-grade criminal to the risk of being met with a gun by the occupants. It's a natural escalation.
[1] For what it's worth, I don't think *not* having gun control helps stop those either. America has had a few terrorist attacks in the last few years, in addition to the spree killings. [2] I disregard accidents involving guns for the sake of argument. [3] To a lesser extent, the same is true here of knives.-- Loris, Dec 04 2015 //The manner in which they approached their death, going freely up to the scaffold while singing the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, had a great impact on the public mood in Paris and helped to turn it against the terror.>>//
So it sounds like the stories got crossed, it wasn't the gal who screamed and cried as much as the nuns who were singing the hymns. I like the idea that something softened the hearts of these barbarians though, whether it happened or not. Jeez, cutting off nuns heads. These guys were every bit as bad as any modern terrorist group.
I'll check out the other stuff later L. As far at the question of life, the universe and gun control, I've done some research and so far I'm coming up with some answers I'm pretty sure nobody is going to like. On either side, including mine, whichever side that is.
But rest assured all who like a good gun control debate, from what I'm seeing so far, my findings are in no way going to pose a threat to the ongoing existence this favorite pastime.
Just a taste of the confusion to come: gun violence in the U.S. has been declining for 20 years. A lot. Here's some other facts from an article I found:
A few years ago, in response to national outcry, the government of Venezuela took steps to fix the incredible violence in their country. There was too much death, too much crime, so they imposed strict gun control laws to stop the murderers and thieves. The end result? Violent crime actually increased. And Caracas is now one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
But across the Andes is another city that used to be one of the most dangerous in the world– Bogota. Years ago, Bogota led the region in murder. And they imposed their own strict gun control laws trying to clean up the streets. It worked. Bogota became safer. There was less murder. Less crime. Less violence.
But how could the same policy engineer completely different results in two cities? This disparity becomes even more vexing when we look at other countries.
Honduras and Brazil both have very high homicide rates. Yet Brazil has highly restrictive gun laws, while Honduras has fairly lax gun laws.
Pakistan has some of the loosest gun laws in the world. Chile’s are fairly restrictive. Yet both have low homicide rates.
Bosnia has a very liberal gun laws. Belgium has very restrictive laws. Yet their homicide rates are similar.
Luxembourg has few privately-owned guns per capita, yet its murder rate is much higher than Germany’s, which has over twice as many.
Hawaii and Vermont have polar opposite gun laws yet nearly the same homicide rate.
Maryland and Virginia have vastly different gun laws, yet almost identical rates of gun-related deaths.
Confused? Good. So am I.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 04 2015 Thank you for that, [DrR3].
I would posit that it's the attitudes, not the armaments, that determine how people treat each other.
People who hate other people are more likely to kill them in large numbers than people who like other people. Things that affect people's attitudes toward other people have far more effect than rules about tools.
Terrorists are selling us hatred. We're buying it. The media is selling hatred. Our politicians are selling it. The general public is buying it so fast the suppliers are not able to keep up. It's gonna get worse, and gun laws, as you've shown, are not going to make any difference whatsoever.-- lurch, Dec 04 2015 Well said.
Maybe we all take a little break from this for the holidays now eh? I'm gonna spend time with my family and be thankful for the what I have. I may not be fabulously wealthy, I might not have THE good life but I've managed to scrape together A good life and that's good enough.
Merry Christmas and happy New Year everybody.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 05 2015 Hey Tat, you really need to read the case histories posted above. They pretty clearly show that it ain't that simple. I haven't even put up my conclusion because it's a bit dark and I want to happy up for the holidays.
I'll wrap it up though. Keep in mind, I'm just a dumb kid from East Palo Alto originally (a violent ghetto) so what do I know? This is just my opinion.
A society can be either a quality, good society where people adhere to values such as not killing each other, working hard and minding their own business and celebrating intellectual pursuits such as education and science or it can be a dysfunctional society where people value killing each other, looking for the easy way to get through life, blaming other groups for their lot in life and celebrating superstition and mysticicm over science and logic.
The quality of that society can be measured by the ratio of people from the first and the second group. If everybody in that society has an IQ of 145, you can allow that society to carry machine guns onto airplanes if they wish. "I see you're carrying a fully automatic AR-15 onboard today sir, have you remembered to make sure there's no round in the chamber should we hit any turbulence?" "Yes I did, thank you for reminding me though."
Now here's the fact: If a society is made up of primarily dumb people, there's no law you can pass to make them smart or to do smart people stuff. We don't like that answer but it's true. America is getting dumber because where we used to abhor stupidity, we now support and even celebrate it and it flourishes. As we get stupider, we'll have more of the things that stupid societies suffer from.
And by the way, while I point the finger at the growing dumb portion of America, we're in a lot slower decline than you Europe so don't get all high and mighty. I'm afraid your civilization is going to be ruled my violent, oppressive, totalitarian mystics in just a couple of generations. Sorry, just look at the numbers. If it's soothing to look at your cousins over here and gloat over our issues, well, if it makes your decline more comfortable, go for it.
Don't really want to get into it more, but we're in engaged in a of a sort of reverse eugenics in western society. Nit picking each problem that arises from such a society is a waste of time. A stroke of the pen on a government bill isn't going to do much.
Watch the movie "Idiocracy". It says it all. In the mean time, I'm going to enjoy the holidays.
I'm sort of tapping out of this discussion if you don't mind. Bottom line, want to fix this problem? Fix society. I know, a non answer but there you are. I'm not being negative, problems can be fixed, I'm just not going to hold my breath till this one's fixed. Perhaps civilizations are supposed to decline, like any other life form.
Told you you wouldn't like my answer.
Now if you don't mind, I'm going out to buy a Christmas tree today and celebrate the holidays with my family. Having a happy, secure strong family with loved, supported, educated, strong children is my solution. I control a very small portion of this planet and keeping my house in order is job 1.
Cheers.
P.S. LOL, this was a response to a long post that somebody put up but has since taken down.
Don't I look like the goofball? Oh well, guess I'll leave it up anyway. And didn't I just scold Loris for putting up long posts? New Year's resolution: "If I can't make my point in 50 words or less, edit, edit, edit."-- doctorremulac3, Dec 05 2015 Bump. This isn't a topic for shoulder-shrugging anymore. Any statistic you look at says Yanks shouldn't have weapons. Maybe everyone in Switzerland is armed without killing each other, but Yanks shouldn't have weapons. Their government shouldn't have weapons. If their government doesn't have weapons, why do Yanks need them? You're a Yank and you need a weapon after this weaponless utopia exists? Well, you'll have pass European-style sanity checks.
The excuse that criminals still subvert gun laws doesn't make the law unnecessary. No one wants a police state, top or bottom, so stop arming ANYONE. It's like the argument about drugs. You don't give dangerous drugs to broken human beings; the street drugs kill people but the legal ones coming from big pharma kill even more.-- 4and20, Dec 06 2015 Wow, LN, pretty amazing post, thank you.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 06 2015 // but we're in engaged in a of a sort of reverse eugenics in western society.//
I wouldn't worry about that too much - people have been concerned about that sort of thing since there's been western society. And probably before.
//So it sounds like the stories got crossed, it wasn't the gal who screamed and cried as much as the nuns who were singing the hymns. I like the idea that something softened the hearts of these barbarians though, whether it happened or not.//
I don't think it's an either/or case. I must admit that I find it hard to get my head around such a society.
I think a big issue with introducing gun control is that it's hard to bring in. This isn't an amazing revelation - it's a bulwark of the case against, and it ought to be acknowledged as an issue. And gun control will not stop every gun. There will be events where guns are used, and bystanders won't be able to immediately return fire. However, gun control can be pretty effective. My wife told me there had been a terrorist bombing attack in London on Saturday. My heart sank, but we looked at a news site to find out that it was a terrorist wannabee with a knife in a tube station[1]. He managed to seriously injure one person. If he'd been able to get hold of a gun, he could easily have killed several people. This is a kind of asymmetry in news reporting - you don't hear about the high-casualty attacks which don't happen. So what does that leave? Well, gun control is now obviously not a panacea. The data is all over the place, suggesting it's not even the most significant factor. Nevertheless, in a place where basically no- one untrustworthy has a gun, you're much less likely to get shot. The question is, for places which decide on attempting the transition, what is the optimal method? I can entirely imagine it's via something like an armed civilian deputization program.
[1] Kind of encouragingly, other passengers remonstrated with him and one reportedly shouted "You ain't no Muslim bruv".-- Loris, Dec 06 2015 //I can entirely imagine it's via something like an armed civilian deputization program.//
Good luck getting that by the left. You suggest that you get treated like you just proposed death camps for gay people of color.
I know. I've suggested expanding on EXISTING citizen deputization programs and I was a solid 5,000 percent on the "Worse Than Hitler" meter. Same training as police, same vetting, just being trained in one specialty: dealing with active shooter situations and violent assaults. No badges or markings so any given area could have any number of armed, highly trained defenders. No traffic tickets, no expectation of making arrests, didn't matter. Train citizens to protect themselves and others = Hitler.
But in defense of my detractors, I think anybody who says they've got a foolproof easy solution without any downside whatsoever is kidding themselves.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 06 2015 Why go with tasers when you can have a phaser?
My guess is that these tasers will be stolen by whatever wag wants one. My other guess is that most folks with one will simply hit some other person with one.-- RayfordSteele, Feb 04 2022 random, halfbakery