• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

News Do Americans Wonder Why The World Makes Fun Of Them? Answer Here!

Status
Not open for further replies.
Fair point, @FridayJones. I still think we could probably narrow the options - you know guns far better than I do, but wouldn't something like an AR-15 with a fixed magazine handle most peoples' needs? Perhaps you apply for, are tested on, and granted the right to own and use more specialized firepower if you live in an unpopulated remote area (I'm thinking of alaska for sure, but I'd wager places in the mountains and along both borders would also qualify).

Those people who want to go out and play in the woods? Let them be required to test when they re-up their hunting license and hell, let them only be able to get ammo at the testing site, and provide proof of rounds fired. Something. The person living in a densely populated suburban area doesn't need anything resembling a rifle sitting in their closet just because once every two years they go out and try and hit some ducks. They want a gun in the home, let them have one that is more appropriate to home protection.

Dunno. It's a tough nut. But it's just ridiculously easy to get a gun in America, easier than getting (car analogy ahead) a drivers' license, in my opinion. It should be at least as annoying to do as that.
 
Joey,
When did the scum you'd least like to have a gun, ever let licensing or proficiency testing get in their way?


The honest people who are zero risk do the jumping through hoops, the scumbags just get on with their evil business of preying on them.
The homicide stats across the united state over the last 30 years or so, are pretty consistant, as states and counties have liberalised their gun laws, from ban or permit, to constitutional carry, homicide rates in those places have dropped, same for burglary and assaults including rapes.
The primary ref for that is research by John Lott, others have repeated his findings.
Looking internationally, there is a correlation between gun ownership rates and whatever fudge gets submitted as a homicide rate, but it is an extremely tenuous correlation. America has high gun ownership and high homicide along with a largish population. Republic of Ireland has a low gun ownership and low reported homicide rate, and a minuscule population (4m).

Remove just those two from a plot of gun ownership against homicide by nation, and the correlation ceases to be statistically significant. It really is that tenuous a relationship.

Even on a simple analysis within the united state; homicide is predominantly inner city, poor and (the pages showing perpetration and victimisation by race have been taken down from the usdoj website) and i should add, drug prohibition related.
whereas gun ownership is greatest amongst rural and suburban, middle and old aged, affluent whites.
No one is going to argue that it is those older affluent whites going into the 'hoods to hunt teenage or twenty something drug gang kids...

Within the united state it is an interesting exercise to take the Brady campaign' s scores for states and cities and plot them against the same years homicide stats from the uniform reporting of crime survey. If the Brady campaign thesis were correct, then states like Vermont and new Hampshire should have very high homicide rates due to the absence of state level gun laws (they still have the fe'ral restrictions), whereas the likes of Chicago and Boston, should have ultra low homicide rates.

On a wider libertarian point. While gun registration and the almost inevitable mass confiscation which seems to follow registration, is not sufficient to cause mass murder, it is a necessary precursor. The figures compiled by the late prof Rummel, at university of Hawaii for the 20th century are truly frightening, at least 220M disarmed people murdered outside of wartime by governments.
Far more than were killed by war in that most war torn century, and more than could have been killed by all private sector murder in all of history. The Solzhenitsyn quote beginning "how we burned in those camps..." Is particularly apt.
 
Last edited:
Nor do I think the Bible is open to interpretation in whatever way that works for an individual
Honestly? You don't think religious text is open to interpretation? Most high ranking religious type within such institutions would disagree with you on that. For example, I have seen numerous times high ranking officials of the Catholic faith state the text can be interpreted any number of ways, depending on the persons own values and beliefs, what that person is looking for.

The current Catholic bible is so far from original texts, interpretation is the only viable manner to read it. I think your faith is clouding your words and biasing you. Saying that, reading "do not kill" and interpreting "I can kill anyone according to god" is not grammatically correct interpretation. Come on now... the new bible is so thick compared to original texts, it is full of interpretation that doesn't exist in the original texts.

The original text of Satan: The original Hebrew term satan is a noun from a verb meaning primarily "to obstruct, oppose", as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, Psalms 109:6. Ha-Satan is traditionally translated as "the accuser" or "the adversary". The definite article ha- (English: "the") is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus, this being would be referred to as "the satan".

It was used to describe an adversary; now it is interpreted to describe a fictional demonic being.

And you think the bible can't be interpreted? That is just one of the thousands of interpretations. Again, the entire new testament is an interpretation of the original writing, most of it seriously flawed and saying very different things. Religion is a belief system... you believe what aspects you choose, nothing more, nothing less. You choose to follow what aspects you believe, the rest you discard. This is present in all religion nowadays.
 
When did the scum you'd least like to have a gun, ever let licensing or proficiency testing get in their way?
No, of course not. But there's a whole chunk of our population that lives in various suburban areas with semi-automatic weapons in their closets and really no idea how to shoot them. People who want guns so they can commit crimes - they will get those guns even if we tried to melt every last one down. The father who shoots and kills his kid as they are trying to get back into the house late at night without being caught...that guy probably should have been taught something about when and when not to use a gun. And maybe he shouldn't own it. That particular accident has happened a number of times.

I just have to believe that part of what happened with Tamir Rice - the 12-year-old shot and killed for carrying and 'brandishing' (playing with, it would have been called 50 years ago) a toy gun - there were a ton of things that went wrong in that unbelievably tragic event, I'm not making an attempt to dissect it. But if our gun culture was legislated with more restraint, more restriction - I believe it would have been less likely for the dispatcher to forget what the 911 caller said twice - that the gun was "probably a fake".

And I do believe, personally, that it would have been less likely for the police to have shot him after they told him, at gunpoint, to drop the weapon and raise his hands. He reached into his pants to pull the gun out and was shot before he had a chance to drop it.

No law can completely legislate culture, but laws contribute to the culture. We have been steadily heading towards a culture where it is your legal right to own and carry a firearm in an open or concealed fashion. If our legislation had been pushing towards giving firearms the significance they frankly deserve, I believe there might have been less gun exposure in the culture overall - including first-person shooter games, accidental deaths, and defensive tragedies like the Rice case.

Now, that's all in the past - we've gotten to where we are. it won't be a fast solution to get anywhere better - but it doesn't really even seem like we are arguing about the right things, most of the time, in this country of mine.

I grew up with guns, I learned how to hunt when i was six, seven years old. I'm not anti-gun or anti-gun ownership. Just, I wish there was a way to make this situation better.
 
I am aware of a great many doctrines and theologians of the Bible Anthony... Christians are like barbeque sauce... but they are not governed by self... they have denominations, doctrines, and theologians who spend lifetimes ... I am a laywoman, not a theologian, however I would not call faith interpreted from any holy book by an INDIVIDUAL a wise course... I would call it agnosticism.

If you would like to have this discussion perhaps open another thread.
 
Hmm, my brother in law had guns galore. No DV charges, he was too smart to be caught. And he was a fine upstanding citizen because he was a lawyer. He had a slew of guns. But let me tell you he and husband threatened many times that there would be a 'robber' in the house to meet me one day if I didn't get out. They threatened to burn down the house while I was in it. They threatened to tamper with my car (and they did). Yep, they looked great on paper but were freaking nuts. There are tons of ways to kill without guns.

It is possible that what some might be missing here is that if a human wants something badly enough, they will figure out a way to get what they want. The people we are speaking of here WANT to kill. Personally, if the ex had gotten to me I would have preferred to have been shot. I can't imagine him with a knife killing me - the anger. The rage. Pull a trigger on me any day. And burning alive? Perhaps not.

If I had been licensed and owned my own gun? Perhaps that would have been a deterrent to them. The police were certainly no help to me.

People like this prey on the weak (those who have less firepower or a smaller knife for instance). Home invasions at one time were rampant here in Toronto. I am guessing that home invasions would have been WAY less likely if the perps knew that every home had a gun, owned by people who knew how to use them.

Legislate them all you want - just like drugs. They won't go away. That thought is very Pollyanna.
 
Legislate them all you want - just like drugs. They won't go away. That thought is very Pollyanna.
I actually have a lot of respect for Pollyanna. If you have an optimistic outlook then just maybe you can make a difference in this world and make it a better place.

Drugs may kill many people, but generally it is the people who are making a choice to take them that die from them. Guns kill *other people*. In large numbers - like schools etc.

We have burglar alarms to prevent household breakins and they seem to be pretty effective here.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top