just because a person has studied does not exclude them from perception. The documentary I invoked is popular due to people feeding into it. Your saying that theres a higher promotion for gun advocacy than that which opposes. That is why I mentioned your perception being a bit off, it had nothing to do with Increases in crime or your experience in law enforcement.
Of course theres a higher promotion for gun advocacy within American society, there are more privately owned firearms in the US than in any other country in the world. Americans equate firearms with manhood, the only culture I know of which does so. Guess who is selling you all these weapons? Corporations, the same ones which fund the pro gun movements and political lobby. Its all about corporate manipulation and profit, they target the pro gun marketing at young children just the same as cigarette manufacturers do, its a well worn and proven tactic. Catch em while they are young and you got them for life.
OK help me out. I have never fired a gun and the only time I picked one up was a nasty looking big thing with a telescopic sight that an American friend kept in his clothes closet. Now I can understand that one might use a gun for hunting. That makes sense. I can even understand an argument for self defence, although I still have to point out that societies with no gun culture have significantly lower levels of violent crime and murder than those like the USA. The bit I can't undertsand is that you need guns to be free. I know that this is an "only Americans can understand" mystery that is revealed to you magically at some point in your adolescence, but try helping me to understand. Especially as you have implied somehwere that freedom was never invented and therefore is a UNIVERSAL value. When the FF introduced the concept of guns guaranteeing freedom this was in the time when they feared an armed standing army operated by a tyrannical superpower. They also feared that their own fledgling government might introduce such tyranny and it needed to face an armed insurrection if it ever did. Even that makes sense. Then. Now the USA is indeed a superpower. It has a massive army, and technology which can destroy any civilian uprising in hours. The State could impose tyranny any time it wished. The reason it doesn't is not because you've got a big gun in your pocket! There are other reasons. How can gun ownership today be any defence against the State? Today, the defences against state tyranny are the institutions of democracy, the law and a bill of rights. How can guns play any role at all? Now? Oh by the way is your avatar Bernie Ecclestone? Why?
But its part of this narrative that only the USA is a democracy which guarantees universal human rights and that beyond the US borders there are fire breathing dragons. Of course US democracy didn't come from the Englightenment or European philosophers, it was handed down magically by God to true Americans. Even in the USA there are dastardly fiends sent by the devil called liberals who want to turn back to the traditions of European tyranny and the communist, fascist, islamic, Nazi, death panel loving, euthanizing, homosexual regimes that run such dark and dismal places. Meanwhile the sun is shining at the city on the hill called America as the righteous ride out into battle against the Apocalyptic foes that harass them... Oh yeah, and that they saved our ungrateful arses in WW2...don't forget that little gem Yes, it's tedious bollocks I know, people like Tom Paine must be turning in his grave, but there it is O liberte, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
You missed what I said, a brief review of the prior post should suffice. There is not a higher degree of gun promotion than that which opposses guns. The U.S is not the country with the highest degree of gun ownership. One country which has more maintains a significantly lower level of gun related Crime than places with low gun ownership.
No they don't....Proove just one. Thus the reason debateing, and useless chit-chatting about owning guns with a person from any other country, is like argueing with their jelousey and envie. So do I, or should any American gun owner really care about their broken feelings.? Nahhhh.
See Felix, this is your support base. This is the sort of towering intellect that agrees with every word you say. This is who youre going to be sharing your bunker with. Youre gonna need that gun, and not to use on other people.
Is that the best you can do? I had the impression you wanted a serious debate. I made a serious point. You prefer not to debate. Disappointing, but not surprising. People who like guns aren't always too clever handling ideas.
Is that the best you can do? I had the impression you wanted a serious debate. I made a serious point. You prefer not to debate. Disappointing, but not surprising. People who like guns aren't always too clever handling ideas.
The Soviet Union had several constitutions. Does that make them more special and awesome? http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html A constitution is a piece of paper with no authority. You can attempt to hold your government to it, or not, but it does not have magical powers that binds government to it.
You're absolutely right. Look at how quickly the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan have been subdued. The State is made up of individuals. Those individuals must be sufficiently willing to enforce tyranny, to kill innocent people who may very likely be their family members or friends or neighbors or fans of their favorite football/baseball/basketball team. It's hard enough to take out resistance when it's people whose culture is completely alien to yours, but when the resistance is of the same culture, worships the same god, and appears to have good arguments, killing them starts to seem like murder. The only way the state can survive is by making sociopaths of its enforcers, breaking down the morals that are not conducive to state control and making the state the sole object of worship. This is the purpose of government education, but it's only been partially successful in the US. Democracy has never been a defense against tyranny. The bill of rights is paper, it has no authority. "Law" today is 80,000 pages of new statutes added each year and a system where only those trained in that system of statutes can possibly defend themselves or others. Your argument is that resistance is futile, therefore one should not resist. That is the argument of a slave, not a free person.
Perhaps I missed this major point. You said theres no reason for gun ownership in th U.S anymore and that the checks and balance system of democracy is how we are supposed to fight tyranny. That the U.S military was too mighty too repel anyway. You were a bit more verbose but that was pretty much it right? Low content posts seem to work much better with some people as a common practice here is to isolate quotes out of context and attempt to twist them around. Low content posts can nip this from the door. You have already resorted to insults? Do you feel you have been short changed in life?? ?? Anyway, there are serious threats in this world and I prefer to be armed, I am very responsible with firearms as are most people who own firearms legally. Explain switzerlands low gun crime in a land where everybody owns a gun? U.S is not the worlds leader in gun ownership. This means that the crime rate in the U.S is not attributed to gun ownership. The worst year for gun related homicide in the U.S was 92' since then legal gun ownership has increased yet we have observed a steady decrease in gun related homicide since that year, and never observed an equal rate.
What? Most all of those were written by a pure Facist, Socialist or Communist rulled goverments. With nothing to benifit the peoples full rights and freedoms in those countries.
What? Most all of those were written by a pure Facist, Socialist or Communist rulled goverments. With nothing to benifit the peoples full rights and freedoms in those countries.
sigh,.... It's odd that you "don't know why" even though I previously explained this to you, remember? I said; "The other poster mentioned TV as a component in this which you dutifully admitted to not watching. This is what made it worthy of noting." Even now you have made assumptions about what is on TV based solely on what some people have told you (accuracy be darned). Now this would NOT be noteworthy if you had not used the content of this medium as part of your flawed rebuttal. NOW do you get it? Incredible! You have now used THIS as the basis for your rebuttal even though he NEVER actually says this in the post in question. You know,..... the post that you still claim to have "debunked"??? What a load of contrived nonsense! Surely, you can do better than this.
I would argue that it has been a very GOOD "defense against tyranny" these two hundred and thirty five years. The results speak for themselves.
Yes, but their worldview is of a big bad world which is dark and evil and nasty blue states trying to bring that evil to the red state heartland. Get your guns boys, head for the hills, let's get a posse together (erm...no...sorry...that last bit is wrong...)... The facts are that individual rights and freedoms in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the USA and many parts of Latin America, are alive and well. There are no monarchs with any political power. There is taxation only WITH representation. Governments in these places can be replaced at the whim of the people. There is freedom of the press, religion and speech. Protests are allowed and part of the political culture. The judiciaries are largely independent of the executive and the judiciary.... All the principles of the American Revolution, which arose from the struggles in England against monarchy and the political philosophies that had been developing there since the Norman Conquest, are now established in these countries. Except the anachronistic gun bollocks...which, though right for its time, is completely redundant now. And when faced with rational objections that pointout that the conditions that made this a sensible demand by the FF, now no longer exist, and that other checks and balances introduced by the FF work well enough without guns, what do we get? We get grunting incoherence based on "why, grunt, talk to these unmerkin furners, grunt". It's funny to see the level of stupidity that a rational challenge from overseas can inspire...but it's also a little sad. The new Tories in the USA rally around a gun. Their unamerican-ness is striking: they hate science (evolution and climate control) and love superstition (the world was made in seven days); despite the fact that the FF were some of the most blasphemous anti-Christian freethinkers of their days, they want to establish religion in state institutions; where the Revolution's demands were for taxation with representation, their demands are for no taxation and no government; a movement that was "continental" and which Tom Paine called "the cause of all mankind" is now countered with narrow prejudiced xenophobia. Where the American revolution stood for modernity against the stale, feudal tyrannies that still operated then in Old Europe, our new Tories now stand fousquare against progress, vision, reason and hope. Where Franklin, Paine and Jefferson stood for science, the new zealots stand for Apocalypse. Tories have always been in America. Even in 1776 it was estimated that at least a third of the population supported the Crown. This new American Toryism is the politics of hatred, testosterone charged machismo, and despair. It offers no hope, vision or inspiration. When asked a simple question, as to how a population armed with a few guns could withstand the mighty military machine of the USA government, there is no reply. But we do get windy statements about how democracy hasn't safeguarded liberty and how the free world is nothing more than a tyranny. It's a juvenile and crude lie. But it's what passes for politics amongst an increasingly shrill, uneducated, shallow American Right that is waiting for the end of days, to fight the foes of Satan in the hills of Montana, North Carolina, Texas....
Sorry Ken, I missed your serious attempt to debate. But this is a good case. The people of Afghanistan are subdued by the US military. They are also subdued by their support for the democracy that the US has brought in these countries. Guns are not really relevant. In Northern Ireland there are armed gangs who could never beat the British State. This was because they accounted for only a tiny minority of people. If they were the majority they would not need guns as in democratic countries the majority prevails. Absolutely. It has nothing to do with guns. The army will not repress people who are its kith and kin. So on that basis, what is anyone afraid of when they talk about the potential tyranny of the State? That's your point...you concede my point. Again correct (apart from your silly point about "government education" where the brainwashing seems to have got the better of your clear innate common sense). As you have shown, it is not guns...but morals are the protectors of liberty. Exactly as you say. In Syria the government has made sociopaths of its enforcers and whether the opposition was armed or not it would still be getting wasted right now. Because Syria is a tyranny. In democracies where there is a culture that the state serves the people - because the government is regularly fired by the people - armies have a very low likelihood of supporting tyrants. Interestingly enough Marxists would disagree with this and argue for the people to be armed. Law and democracy are not exactly the same thing. But the rule of law is an undisputed principle of America's founding fathers. Even then the English law system they adopted was full of precedent and complexity. It's a bit of a victim mentality to complain that the law is too complex. It has always been complex. Even relatively recently SCOTUS cited English rebels who raised a manifesto for liberty against the King in the 17th Century, as a source of legal precedent for the USA. This was exactly the intention of the founding fathers. When you goto countries where the rule of law is a farce - such as China or Russia - you will start to understand that it is the rule of law which guarantees freedom and enables fairness in trade and business. Democracy on the other hand can only reasonably be deemed a failure where it has been overthrown (which has happened, in Weimar Germany for example). This doesn't apply to the USA as the people regularly fire their government, and therefore it can said to succeed on its own terms, that of protecting the people against absolutism and tyranny. Now you are twisting things. I made no such argument nor anything close. My argument is that resistance takes place in many ways and arms are rarely the key feature. There are many cases of unarmed peoples overthrowing tyrannies. In these cases it is reasonable to assume that - exactly due to the reasons you outline regarding the army - if the people had been armed there would have been more bloodshed. Armies will fire on unarmed civilians much less than on armed. In China in 1989 large parts of the army refused to fire on civilians. They would have had no qualms about shooting armed civilians. Indeed after the deaths that did take place, the government had to invent allegations of armed rebels to appease public anger at their actions. My argument is that arms have a very limited effect in detering tyranny. Going back to Iraq, the whole country was armed, but Saddam still fed people through mincemeat shredders feet first. In Egypt the people were not armed and they faced the army. The people won. Anyway, thank-you for desisting from anti foreigner bigotry and sneering and I look forward to your reply. If i have been a little sarcastic with you in any other posts, I apologize.
No, we have been focused on one post as the basis for this discusion. Now you say some other poster threw it in somewhere? So if you speak about anything you have never actually witnessed it must not be note worthy?
