Why legalize assault weapons?
#62
Posted 16 April 2008 - 01:25 AM
NO, like I said, Vermont has a largely middle class population, and most gun killings that are not accidents are related to drug crime or economic crime. Most criminal drug organizations establish themselves in impoverished areas where runners and soldiers can be recruited.
Vermont would have low gun deaths whether it had gun control or not. Areas with some gun control and middle class populations and limited racial diversity have similarly low crime rates. Folks like to hail Vermont as especially unique beause it has unlimited gun access and coincidentally a predominantly white middle class population. That's the fallacy of the undivided middle, the assumption that one factor must be responsible for all results, while ignoring all other factors.
If your belief that even the tiniest amount of gun crontrol is responsible for all the violence in the US, then other countries with limited gun access must be living hells. And that conclusion brings you to the interesting crime stat comparisons that make up the bulk of Moore's argument: why don't Canada, Germany, the UK etc have murder rates comparable to the murder rates in the US?
#64
Posted 16 April 2008 - 12:52 PM
You claim that no gun control IS the answer to high crime rates. You simplify situations that demand real answers down to the lowest understanding of them to the point when the only way to defend against the drug addicted negro hordes is to buy a fugging M16. Allow me to present my rebuttal. Ahem:
No.
This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 16 April 2008 - 12:54 PM
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#66
Posted 19 April 2008 - 06:36 PM
PS: That dude was committing his crime with a hammer, and noone was hurt. I suppose had he been armed with a handgun, he could have killed the person or people in the car before they had time to get to the gun in their glove box. So, gun unavailability in that case saved lives.
#67
Posted 19 April 2008 - 09:00 PM
This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 19 April 2008 - 09:00 PM
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#68
Posted 20 April 2008 - 08:18 AM
PS: That dude was committing his crime with a hammer, and noone was hurt. I suppose had he been armed with a handgun, he could have killed the person or people in the car before they had time to get to the gun in their glove box. So, gun unavailability in that case saved lives.
You've never seen a guy like that because you live in Canada. I live in Houston, Texas, and I have actually seen people like that. I try to stay out of the downtown area in case some insane crackhead tries to wail on my car with a crowbar, and then I have to resort to shooting him, and then I go to jail for committing a racist hate crime.
If guns were banned in this country, everyone would still have access to guns, just not legally. And the funny part is that banning the sale of handguns would eventually make gun crimes untraceable. Someone shoots you with a handgun purchased at a gun store, they can look at ballistic markings on the bullet and trace it back to the gun from whence it came, and find out who originally purchased that gun. If someone shoots you with a gun purchased on the black market, the gun has been in circulation between so many different people that its impossible to trace.
It really doesn't matter to me; I'm going to have a gun whether its legal or not. The law doesn't protect people, it simply punishes people who have already committed crimes. If someone breaks into my house, the cops aren't going to catch them until they've already shot me in the face and ran off with my TV.
I never understood liberals. They act like individual freedom is the most important goal. but they constantly want to remove individual freedoms, like the freedom to own guns.
#70
Posted 20 April 2008 - 11:22 PM
That's the point of my post, in case you hadn't read it all. Guns aren't illegal in Canada, and I have never seen have people like that. So the question again is what's different about the US?
You really think that way? The handgun crimes committed by street thugs are already being committed with illegal guns. Making hanguns illegal, which gun registry doesn't advocate, would mean that fewer folks who have no use for handguns would have them. And these folks, who have no training in use or storage of their legally-purchased handguns, would stop placing them loaded in top drawers, purses, or under their pillows, making it less likely that the guns might end up in the hands of their children. Or, as is pretty often the case, in the hands of break-in artists, whereupon they might wind up on the illegal market you warn us about.
That's a conservative misrepresentation of the idea of gun registry. Not too many folks are freaking out about hangun ownership. The usual effort is to register guns, which is another thing. This thread incidentally was about making assault weapons illegal, which is yet another thing altogether. Assault weapons aren't ever used for hunting or personal protection; their primary use is for shooting up street corners and schoolyards. But anyway, while we're talking about conservatives versus liberals, something I don't get about conservatives is how they want absolute freedom of gun ownership, but get wiggy all the time about censoring literature. Or how they believe it's cool to allow the government unfettered access to credit card records, business expenses, and telephone records, all in the name of homeland security, but they believe that registering guns would be a moral outrage.
Face it, it's just a case of some powerful lobby groups getting in the way of government. The business of personal freedom or security or whatever doesn't even enter into it.
#71
Posted 21 April 2008 - 03:33 AM
Canada has violence too. It may not be as serious as here, but where else is besides Mogadishu? Because there are people and class inequalities there, and thus violence, I don't think it's fair to just discount someone from a debate on gun violence based upon their status as a Canadian or suspected Canadian sympathizer (nother Michael Moore reference)
I have never actually witnessed violence in Canada, but I know people who have. What I do not know of is anyone who has seen a lot of gun violence comitted, or any for that matter. Your next argument will be about how Canada is an all white fantasy land, no doubt. Actually Canada seems less homogenous than where I live (rural virginia) and yet more harmonius. I ate at a Halal donair joint one day, and the next I went across the street to have a kosher meal. That's one thing I noticed there, at least in Edmonton, there doesnt seem to be any sort of sectioning going on.
So Canada has immigrants, guns, black people, and yes, drugs. But not nearly as much gun violence. Maybe the problem doesnt lie with any and or all of the first four common scapegoats (well, black people and immigrants are not quite as common but that popped up here so, hey, go for it)
The idea that Canada is a magical non violent beacon of light for the rest of the world is nonsense. Its a great country and I love the place, but that's no reason to excuse someone's experiences on violence simply because they come from Canada. These low statistics are not exclusively Canadian. Of industrialized nations the US stands alone in per-capita prisoners (about 1 out of 100 people is currently in jail) and in gun violence.
Are you refering to poor black folks (I've seen those too! scary eh?) or are you asking us to believe that you've seen a chap walking about with a hammer whose overtly stated goal was to pound the shit out of funky whitey's car.
I try to stay out of secret submarine bases because it is likely that someone will try to dump me into a tank of sharks, and that I will then be forced to activate my laser watch and rescue the captured nuclear warhead, and then, like, at the end, I'm in the escape pod right and I'm fucking this sweet CIA/KGB/NSA agent and my boss is all "Really Double Oh Seven!" like all exasperated and stuff.
Do police profess to be able to pop up wherever theres trouble and stop it? No. But often enough they capture criminals and put them away to prevent future crime by them and serve as an example. Deterrent is a more indirect form of prevention. For instance, organized crime in the US made rules against killing people who were not either magiosi or complicit with the mafia if at all avoidable. Do innocent people still have trouble with the mob? Sure, but if the police did not serve as a deterrent there would be a lot more trouble from them. And the assumption that, in a world where a well equipped and wide ranging local, state and national police force all fail utterly at preventing crime as you claim, that in this world the simple fact that people own guns will serve as a deterrent, is laughable.
Why would someone break into your house and steal your tv and then shoot you in the face? They just comitted capital murder just for a tv that will get them like, what, 25 dollars at the local no questions asked pawn shop? If youre going to break into a house you do it when no one is there. Most of your scenarios that justify gun ownership seem to be more rooted in hollywood than in any downtown part of Texas.
I dont think anyone's suggested banning all gun ownership. This thread is about whether or not to legalize assault and automatic weapons, a proposition which I am against. That is the kind of freedom whose benefits do not outweigh its risks. Guns are written in the constitution as rifles that took forever to reload. If Eric Harris had brought a flint lock musket to school he'd have been pounded silly before he even had the ramrod into the thing. Of course he probably got pounded silly every day to start with, hence his interest in murdering everyone, but that culture of random violence clearly has nothing to do with the prevalence of gun violence in America.
This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 21 April 2008 - 03:49 AM
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#72
Posted 21 April 2008 - 11:02 AM
Your sarcasm here honestly doesn't help your argument (though the rest of it is fine) because what you were responding to is a real problem in many cities. Maybe not where you live, but I have been in a few of these places. Atlanta, for instance - there are many parts of that city where you seriously don't want to be, because many people there are likely to try to start something with you or mug you or whatever. Sometimes there is a threat of getting beaten up just for not being the right kind of person - i.e. "average white guy" in the predominantly black "ghetto" projects.
#73
Posted 21 April 2008 - 12:40 PM
My argument is that, like the cliche of the submarine base, Hollywood has pumped out tons of movies showing the projects as some sort of foreign third world country where sane (white) people dare not venture for fear of being eaten by the strange cannibal tribes that exist therein. If you go anywhere shaking in your boots or clinging to a gun, someone is going to single you out as a mark for whatever nefarious activities they have up their sleeve.
Attitudes like this preclude any possibility of investment or interaction with the ghettoes and perpetuate the systems of economic disparity and a lack of education that encourage the very criminality that people seem to fear so much.
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#74
Posted 21 April 2008 - 02:42 PM
Well the guy I saw was using a bat, but it was basically the same scenario.
#75
Posted 21 April 2008 - 06:24 PM
Hollywood exaggerates and exploits, yes. But that place exists. In several cities. I've been there. I have friends that grew up there. I've seen the gang fights, I've seen people get in the way that didn't know not to, and what they got for it.
Please don't be so naive to think there aren't violent sectors of cities!