| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/6/2009 8:13:03 PM |
do you like the idea of every pedestrian packing a burner, or does that bother you?
Doesn't bother me in the slightest; in fact, I wish it were so.
statistical data on its own cannot be used to support any hypothesis, that correlation does not infer causation.
Nevertheless, the statistical data supports my logical thesis that everyone carrying weapons makes for a significant deterrent to violent crime. It should therefore be encouraged, not discouraged. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/6/2009 11:37:20 PM | I tend to resist the temptation to comment on gun issues.
There is probably no issue filled with so much myth, fantasy, and daydreaming than the issue of guns (even more than religion ) .
The whole idea of mandating that all households have a gun is fantasy and self serving.
I've known people who were former professional burglars. No burglar with any brains ever breaks into a house when somebody's at home. Having a gun there only makes for one more thing of value they can steal, when you're not there .
There is an infinite number of ways to protect your home from burglary that are cheaper, safer, and more effective than having a gun. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 9:17:45 AM |
The whole idea of mandating that all households have a gun is fantasy and self serving.
No less so than the whole idea of mandating that they don't.
Who has the right to tell you what you can or can't do if you are a free man? | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 9:54:56 AM |
I'd say that came about as a matter of societal conditioning. However, if what you say is generally true, how do you explain Kennesaw? Maybe given the chance and a few courses in responsible use, most people are quite capable of handling firearms safely.
I lived near Kennesaw about 15 years ago.
IMHO (and I think that people that reside in or near Atlanta might agree) Kennesaw is shielded from a lot the "big city" crime issues that plague Atlanta primarily because it has a suburban populace and it is distant from the high crime areas of Atlanta.
Most criminals (especially violent ones) are too lazy to commute to commit criminal acts and,, as such are primarily dangerous to people in their own neighborhoods and surrounding communities.
Kennesaw passed a law that for its citizenz (as of yet) has been mostly non-threatening,if somewhat ineefective.
According to people I know that still live in Marietta and Acworth, there's still plenty of property crime in Kennesaw.
And dealing w/ that w/ a firearm is,at best, a dubious proposition.
IMHO,Kennesaw is an abberation and nothing more. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 11:47:27 AM |
Kennesaw is shielded from a lot the "big city" crime issues that plague Atlanta primarily because it has a suburban populace and it is distant from the high crime areas of Atlanta.
Be that as it may, it doesn't explaing the precipitous DROP in crime in Kennesaw after the law mandating firearms came into place.
The "Wild West" was nowhere near as wild as the writers & producers of "westerns" would have us believe. To spite the fact that many settlements were "lawless" in today's terms, the people made their own law and lived by it. It seems then that all the fears of a lawless anarchy where people wouldn't know how to survive, or how to take care of themselves, or to abide by some sort of law, are only the result of programming by our modern governments, who want us to think that (and therefore propagate the myth of anarchy), so they can "take care of us" in the manner to which we have become accustomed (addicted?), presumably so they can continue to treat us like a resource (human resource - cattle?) that can be exploited for profit. The history of frontier settlements pretty well disproves that hypothesis of lawlessness & anarchy. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 1:16:35 PM | Most crimes dont take place in the home anyway so having a gun at home is of little deterent value to the average crime. would a criminal be detered by a higher incidence of gun ownership and carrying. perhaps. they might also simply shoot first and ask questions later. why try and pull a gun on a guy who has a gun. shoot him then simply rob the dead body and add to your gun collection. also how many times do people get mad at each other and throw things and hit each other in a home. what if every gun had a gun or too so that janie, granny and little teddy all had ready access to a shootin iron? what would happen to the gun related crime in such cases. i really have no actual opinion on gun control as such. its a right wing wedge issue used to inflame people who have very little clue of the political landscape. some actually believe the possession of guns would allow them to resist a government gone mad and using the army against them. give me a break. the army has the firepower to ignore hand guns and even high powered rifels. they call in air strikes. if owning a gun would have solved the crime problem guns would be passed out long ago. it would be cheaper to arm every person over 18 than lock up the number of criminals we do today (or execute em, even more expensive) so i would think long and hard before buying into what the gun lobby is selling. they have something to gain. do you? | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 4:23:22 PM |
why try and pull a gun on a guy who has a gun. shoot him then simply rob the dead body and add to your gun collection.
Well, for one thing, instead of armed robbery, the charge would now be 1st degree murder, which (presumably) carries a much stiffer sentence, if not the death penalty in some jurisdictions.
how many times do people get mad at each other and throw things and hit each other in a home. what if every gun had a gun or too so that janie, granny and little teddy all had ready access to a shootin iron?
People have been having arguments, getting mad and even killing one another over it since the dawn of time. Back when most every home had firearms in it, I don't seem to recall much fuss being made about all the gun homicides. But even if it were so, obviously if a gun isn't handy, a big butcher knife will do. What are we going to do; register steak knives as lethal weapons (lots of tax revenue there), or ban them altogether & make people eat with their hands? What's outlawed after that, blunt instruments & rocks?
some actually believe the possession of guns would allow them to resist a government gone mad
Isn't that the very reason why the founding fathers included the right to keep & bear arms in the Constitution? Was Jefferson a wingnut; or just prophetic?
if owning a gun would have solved the crime problem guns would be passed out long ago
It seems to have solved a lot of the crime problem in Kennesaw, so why aren't they passing similar laws all over the country? I suspect it's because the government doesn't want the people armed when they bring down some draconian laws.
they have something to gain. do you?
You bet I do! I stand to gain by fulfilling my duty to my fellow man in ensuring his rights remain intact. There can be no higher service to Man. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 4:37:17 PM |
If everyone (or more people) carried a gun,
Wouldn't it make the jobs of police officers easier?
Imagine this scenario....everyone is carrying a gun. A crime occurs, maybe a robbery and the police are called. The police arrive and along with the criminals several passers by have their guns drawn and are perhaps even blasting away. They are all wearing civilian clothing. Who do the police shoot, how do they know who the criminals are?
This is like the old argument that there was little crime in the old west because everyone carried a gun. The truth is that by the turn of the century most towns were banning guns within town limits due to the large number of rage shootings. Just visit the Birdcage Saloon and look at all the bullet holes that remain to this day. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 5:51:27 PM |
Nevertheless, the statistical data supports my logical thesis that everyone carrying weapons makes for a significant deterrent to violent crime. It should therefore be encouraged, not discouraged.
Under the rules of scientific process your hypothesis is wild and unsupported by testable results of reproducible experimentation and observation in nature. Statistical data does not qualify as observation in nature. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 7:13:14 PM | Are we basically talking about gun control here ? No idea what this has to do with science or philosophy but since this thread somehow managed to survive deletion I might as well contribute.
One need only take a quick glance at global statistics to understand the folly of unlimited rights to guns. It's plain as day : countries with stricter gun control have lower murder rates. We can argue the "What if ... ?" scenario forever but it's pretty clear that fewer guns equals fewer murders. All that's different is that while people may still be more than willing to kill each other , without the tools to do the job effectively , fewer people are murdered. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 7:59:45 PM | Under the rules of scientific process your hypothesis is wild and unsupported by testable results of reproducible experimentation and observation in nature.
Under those rules, it is neither wild nor unsupported. It is also testable simply by altering the gun laws in other jurisdictions and observing the changes in the statistics of crime in those jurisdictions. I made the hypothesis long before I heard of Kennesaw, the stats of which only serve as scientific evidence that supports it, which made the "anomaly" of Kennesaw a prediction of the hypothesis and thus the so-called "anomaly" lends great credence to it, scientifically speaking.
countries with stricter gun control have lower murder rates.
That may be strictly correlational, though I suspect the rationale for your hypothesis is sound. However the risk/benefit ratio of gun laws must be considered. It is a simple fact that an unarmed population is at the mercy of its leadership; it may not find it so easy to rebel against tyranny. (Can you imagine what would have happened if the Thirteen Colonies had not been able to own guns by law? Would Hitler have come to power, or would there have been an insurrection at his 1st election? Would he have been able to waltz through Poland if every peasant along the way had been able to shoot back? Where did the guns come from for the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion? I'm pretty sure they were outlawed. Did that make the Jewish rebels criminals?)What about the assumption of competence? Is it unreasonable to think that people are innocent until proven guilty of incompetence? If so, is it not an infringement on their right to acquire & own anything they want so long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights? How is owning a gun harming anyone else? If it is not, then is it not tyranny to deny someone that right? This paragraph is getting long, but it can be summed up with a question: Isn't a slight increase in gun accidents and the murder rate a relatively small price to pay to ensure the preservation of human rights and prevention of tyranny? After all, freedom has always been bought with blood; why are we so quick to give away, that which was bought at such a high price? | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/7/2009 10:03:17 PM | "countries with stricter gun control have lower murder rates."
Switzerland has relaxed gun control compared to the US.Gun ownership is also a lot higher.
"Gun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe. The personal weapon of militia personnel is kept at home as part of the military obligations. This, in addition to liberal gun laws and strong shooting traditions, has led to a very high gun count per capita. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. In recent times political opposition has expressed a desire for tighter gun regulations.[1]"-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
"In some 2001 statistics, it is noted that there are about 420,000 assault rifles stored at private homes, mostly SIG 550 types. Additionally, there are some 320,000 assault rifles and military pistols exempted from military service in private possession, all selective-fire weapons having been converted to semi-automatic operation only. In addition, there are several hundred thousand other semi-automatic small arms classified as carbines. The total number of firearms in private homes is estimated minimally at 1.2 million to 3 million.[8]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
From a population of 7.5 million approx.
"Police statistics for the year 2006[13] records 34 killings or attempted killings involving firearms, compared to 69 cases involving bladed weapons and 16 cases of unarmed assault. Cases of assault resulting in bodily harm numbered 89 (firearms) and 526 (bladed weapons). This represents a decline of aggravated assaults involving firearms since the early 1990s. Some 300 deaths per year are due to legally held army ordinance weapons, the large majority of these being suicides. The majority of gun crimes involving domestic violence are perpetrated with army ordnance weapons, while the majority of gun crime outside the domestic sphere involves illegally held firearms.[14]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
Compare this to American Statistics for 2006
In 2006, there were 30,896 gun deaths in the U.S: 12,791 homicides (41% of total deaths), 16,883 suicides (55% of total deaths), 642 unintentional shootings (2% of total deaths), 360 from legal intervention (1.2% of total deaths) and 220 from undetermined intent (.8% of total deaths).
http://www.ichv.org/Statistics.htm
So here is a concrete example of a country with a much higher gun ownnership rate,looser gun ownership laws,than the US and far less gun violence.
The difference lies with the people who own guns......In Switzerland Militia-military service is almost mandatory for most male citizens-most gun owners have better training than the avg. gun owner in the US.
So maybe the answer to gun violence is not prohibition or restrictive laws but higher training standards.Then you can weed out the whack jobs who own guns.
Obviously there are too many whack jobs with guns in the US.
Criminals don't generally use registered weapons therefore I find gun control legisation useless in reducing gun crime.Why should legal registered gunowners pay extra money for what amounts to useless policy.
Registrered gunowners should have to prove a higher level of competancy in my opinion. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 8:09:30 AM | It is a simple fact that an unarmed population is at the mercy of its leadership; it may not find it so easy to rebel against tyranny. (Can you imagine what would have happened if the Thirteen Colonies had not been able to own guns by law? Would Hitler have come to power, or would there have been an insurrection at his 1st election? Would he have been able to waltz through Poland if every peasant along the way had been able to shoot back?
I find it hard to believe that a public armed with pistols and rifles is going to fight off a tyrannical government armed with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, attach helicopters, and various armored vehicles. Only in cases like Afghanistan where you have extremely mountainous terrain making it difficult to use much of that equipment can such a resistance be effective. Even at that, the Afghans, when fighting the Russians, had rockets, missiles and heavy machine guns supplied by us. As far as the 13 colonies go, they had equal armament, no tanks, no machine guns, just muskets and crude canons on both sides. That was a much more equal situation. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 8:59:55 AM |
I find it hard to believe that a public armed with pistols and rifles is going to fight off a tyrannical government armed with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, attach helicopters, and various armored vehicles.
Would you deny people the right to own heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, attack helicopters & armored vehicles if they had the money to buy them? Why? | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 10:03:43 AM |
Would you deny people the right to own heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, attack helicopters & armored vehicles if they had the money to buy them? Why?
Absolutely!!! There is no purpose for weapons like that in an urban environment. And the question is moot, who but people like Bill Gates could afford to buy and maintain a tank or Apache Longbow (and maybe only one or two)....these weapons take constant training and constant maintenance to operate properly. It's just completely impractical. Do you want the dufus next door playing around with his mini-gun some night and having an accidental discharge sending incendiary rounds through houses for blocks ? Imagine the carnage just from road rage if weapons like this were available.
Even in countries like Denmark and Israel where everyone is a member of the army or militia, no one has weapons like this at home. They have light machine guns at most, but even light machine guns wouldn't fight off a tyrannical government. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 10:13:24 AM |
Absolutely!!!
Then you are a tyrant. I'm glad I don't live under your jurisdiction.
All your (extremely sensible) arguments notwithstanding, you have no right as another human being to prohibit anyone from having anything they can lay legitimate claim to, so long as it doesn't conflict with your right to be left to live your life in peace.
even light machine guns wouldn't fight off a tyrannical government.
That's why your founding fathers (I assume you're American) gave you the RIGHT to keep and bear arms (note that they didn't specify what kind). They knew that only by force of arms would the people stand a chance of keeping their government "honest." | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 10:48:53 AM |
That's why your founding fathers (I assume you're American) gave you the RIGHT to keep and bear arms (note that they didn't specify what kind). They knew that only by force of arms would the people stand a chance of keeping their government "honest."
Our founding Fathers gave members of a well organized and trained militia the right to bear arms. That is what countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Israel do. People own machine guns, but have to train on a regular basis and can be called up to serve in time of emergency. More recent Supreme Court rulings in this country have interpreted the second amendment to allow citizens to own weapons, but if you note, that is not absolute. There are still Federal Laws preventing private citizens from owning automatic and other military weapons. And there is no way I believe the founding Fathers could predict what kind of weaponry we would have today. Can you predict what we'll have in 200 years? Would you like your neighbor to have a particle beam weapon that could vaporize you without a trace? what a good idea that would be. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 11:04:53 AM | The constitution was written at the only time in american history when the country had no standing army, the milita was the standing army. so arming the citizens made sense. throw into the mix the need to protect yourself from the native americans who were not happy with all their new neighbors and you got a whole lot of reasons to arm folks that are no longer valid. for the record too Jefferson did not write the constitution, that document was mostly the work of James Madison. Jefferson wrote the declaration.
btw Kennesaw ( I assume the town is in rural Georgia) I doubt has near the issues with gangs, drugs and the violence that goes with them that you see in large cities. living in Indianapolis there are a lot of folks here I would not want to see with a gun. I think in particular of a guy who lived downstairs from me who walked around drunk half the time with a bad attitude and a loaded pistol in his pocket. some folks simply dont need guns. while a person can be killed with a steak knife true enough, it is a whole lot esier to kill with a gun than a knife and you can do it from a safe distance too. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 11:19:27 AM |
Our founding Fathers gave members of a well organized and trained militia the right to bear arms.
So are you doing your patriotic duty? Do you belong to one? Why not? Do you have so much faith that the crooks & liars in government are doing THEIR DUTY and defending the Constitution? It looks to me like they've passed a bunch of laws to "shred" it instead, which would make them a tyrannical and illegitimate regime not unlike the one the founding fathers wanted you to be armed to defend yourself against. So I'll ask again; are you doing your patriotic DUTY as an American and defending your Constitution against all enemies, both foreign AND DOMESTIC by belonging to a militia with sufficient arms to take on a tyrannical regime? | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 11:35:09 AM |
So are you doing your patriotic duty? Do you belong to one? Why not? Do you have so much faith that the crooks & liars in government are doing THEIR DUTY and defending the Constitution?
Dude, you live in Winnipeg
If protecting the US Constitution is so important, why are you living in Canada? | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 1:16:00 PM |
So are you doing your patriotic duty? Do you belong to one? Why not? Do you have so much faith that the crooks & liars in government are doing THEIR DUTY and defending the Constitution? It looks to me like they've passed a bunch of laws to "shred" it instead, which would make them a tyrannical and illegitimate regime not unlike the one the founding fathers wanted you to be armed to defend yourself against. So I'll ask again; are you doing your patriotic DUTY as an American and defending your Constitution against all enemies, both foreign AND DOMESTIC by belonging to a militia with sufficient arms to take on a tyrannical regime?
I never said anything about overturning the government of this country. Our Founding Fathers gathered together a militia to fight off mainly the British. Now I can' t remember who, but one of the founding Father said that if a government is corrupt, we have the right, even the duty to overthrow it. The first way you do that is by the pen. Have you done your patriotic duty and voted, contacted your representatives, organized peaceful groups and marches on Washington to protest our policies, put pressure on your elected officials to do the right thing? There are other and better ways of changing things than at the barrel of a gun. In fact, violence is usually not the best way.
I don't think it's generally anyone's patriotic duty to join the armed forces (not militia note, armed forces which didn't even exist during the time of our Founding Fathers), but I think it's everyone's patriotic duty to participate in the process of government. And to me the biggest scandal in politics every 2 years is when barely 50% of the qualified voters show up to at the poles. We get the government we elect.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent"
-Thomas Jefferson | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 1:45:52 PM |
Have you done your patriotic duty and voted, contacted your representatives, organized peaceful groups and marches on Washington to protest our policies, put pressure on your elected officials to do the right thing? There are other and better ways of changing things than at the barrel of a gun. In fact, violence is usually not the best way.
In the first place, I'm not even an American, so the US constitution doesn't apply to me. I was only pointing out your duty as an American citizen to preserve & defend your constitution and that failure to do so will leave you a subject of the tyranny I see in the US today.
As for the rest of the stuff, I've been there, done that, and I agree with you that the barrel of a gun should always be the last alternative. Being a man of peace, I've opted for another way. Whereas the Canadian government has introduced tyrannical laws and follows policies abhorrent to my conscience, I've opted out of the corporation called Canada, so it's statutes no longer apply to me. I have become a sovereign man, no longer subject to a government that no longer represents me and that I no longer vote for. I have withdrawn my consent to allow them to govern me. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 1:52:52 PM |
Whereas the Canadian government has introduced tyrannical laws and follows policies abhorrent to my conscience, I've opted out of the corporation called Canada, so it's statutes no longer apply to me. I have become a sovereign man, no longer subject to a government that no longer represents me and that I no longer vote for. I have withdrawn my consent to allow them to govern me.
Well that' s not very patriotic. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 2:09:59 PM | Well that' s not very patriotic.
One might have said that to a German who announced that he wasn't a subject of Hitler's government, or a Russian who disavowed any allegiance to Stalin. In that sense, I suppose you could say that the founding fathers of the United States weren't very patriotic to turn on their king like that too. At least I didn't start a war over it, I just revoked my consent to let them govern me. From MY point of view, any government that treats its citizens like a resource to be exploited for their own ends is not worthy of allegiance, but I guess that's just me. | |
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| What happened to the Wild West?
Posted: 7/8/2009 2:49:59 PM | One might have said that to a German who announced that he wasn't a subject of Hitler's government, or a Russian who disavowed any allegiance to Stalin. In that sense, I suppose you could say that the founding fathers of the United States weren't very patriotic to turn on their king like that too. At least I didn't start a war over it, I just revoked my consent to let them govern me. From MY point of view, any government that treats its citizens like a resource to be exploited for their own ends is not worthy of allegiance, but I guess that's just me.
No insult intended, but your whole point was that's when you should overthrow your government, and as I said, even our Founding Father's recognized there is a point where that is necessary by force, yet you chose to take a course of little action. | |
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