Post #157,622
5/29/04 6:58:06 PM
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Re: "Coincidence"??? Bullpucky!
Depends on the demographics. If most of the murders are in inner-cities, and are connected to drugs, it doesn't really matter if they have guns or not. If you magically took away all the guns I think stabbings and beatings would probably rise precipitously.
I'm not commenting on the politics. Just pointing out something you may not have taken into consideration.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #157,623
5/29/04 7:04:01 PM
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Yeah, possible, but I think that's discounted for already.
AdminiScott points out: If you magically took away all the guns I think stabbings and beatings would probably rise precipitously. Yeah, but I think those are "more survivable" than shootings. (I may be wrong on this; I have no stats to back it up, it just seems "intuitively obvious".) So some of what are now killings would become GBHes in stead (if I happen to be right on the "survivability"); bad enough for the victim, but still better than pushing up daisies.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
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Post #157,624
5/29/04 7:11:11 PM
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Either way...
The problem isn't the guns, the knives, the baseball bats, or the bare knuckles.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #157,752
5/30/04 6:19:00 PM
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What do you mean by "problem"?
AdminiScott mixes up his categories: The problem isn't the guns, the knives, the baseball bats, or the bare knuckles. Whether "the guns" are "the problem", is precisely what we were debating! Are you trying to close the discussion by fiat? Naah; much more probably, it seems to me, is that you are using the word "problem" in the colloquial sense of "the real underlying root problem, that caused the immmediate and apparent problem -- as opposed to the immmediate and apparent problem itself". Sure, in that sense, the Evil Of Man Towards His Brother that you probably meant (or your "flawed characters", as Skip put it) is probably the "root cause" of "the problem" of excessive gun killings. But, sorry to be a nit-picker, but that's not "the problem" that I was talking about -- I was talking about the immmediate and apparent problem of excessive gun killings in general(*). And in *that* context, "the guns, the knives, the baseball bats, or the bare knuckles" are just as much "the problem" as anything else.
(*): Or, if you will, you can look on it as me using *another* colloquial sense of the word "problem", namely "the piece of the larger original problem that one should go for in trying to find a fix". Doesn't matter which, comes to the same.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
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Post #157,633
5/29/04 8:30:34 PM
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Nod.
We must treat the root causes, not the symptoms.
Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #157,678
5/30/04 6:04:17 AM
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Pure Boolean. Again.
Note to obsessed programmers:
PEOPLE DO NOT BEHAVE LOGICALLY.
(Well, hardly ever, and then usually when planning their portfolio, not when reading their Good Books and actually acting on those. Etc.)
Captain Kirk has already explained it to us, in one of those (early) exchanges with a testy Spock.. commenting upon humans' massive predilection for every kind of -cide.
Exasperated, Kirk says, (IIRC)
YES, YES .. WE'RE KILLERS!
.. but each day we can get up and say,
'Today.. I Won't Kill'.
Now this conversation was fictional and set in a (hoped-for) future.. a really Large hope, given the proliferation of 'guns' of the nuclear sort - and with all the OVER-kill which a gun/nuke represents over, say
a slap in the face..
TODAY: We Know we're still iggerant adolescents with too fucking many toys; we entertain ourselves with infinite variations on mayhem, [mayhem + sex}, torture, rape, mass- and individual color-graphic Slaughter
[with/ without sex or separately].
We remain under the madness that is Puritanism, but hourly encouraged to indulge Every Fantasy via toys that all are only Too-eager to sell to All. For $$ - that makes it OK. Capitalismicide?
So in *this milieu* -As With Children, in all things-
AVAILABILITY MATTERS.
I hope this clears it up for you.
Ashton
PS - since Peter promised by proxy, The SUV Rant:
See, eventually it will reach the USSC -
(if it hasn't been folded into the RNC, officially):
The case of *All Drivers* on the roads [plaintiff] that:
the presence of trackless-tanks amidst ordinary cars == a unnecessary hazard to that class [All Drivers] ergo..
compensation followed by official disincentives to continue doing this anti-social type toy stuff of big kids playing in the world-as-[My]-sandbox.
Inevitable. Matches must be kept from toddlers, SUVs from 2 yos.
[2 yo: the age of Mine Mine]
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Post #157,690
5/30/04 11:27:01 AM
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Oakland calling
admin observes If you magically took away all the guns I think stabbings and beatings would probably rise precipitously. A type of slaying we see* with some dreary regularity here involves the undiscriminating fusillade discharged from a passing vehicle, intended variously as a corrective to injured honor or as a measure to restrain commercial competition but not infrequently leaving the intended target standing while taking out the odd passer-by (church deacon, schoolchildren, grocer sweeping sidewalk). I cannot recall offhand any incidents of hurled knives impaling bystanders, or of persons bludgeoned by mistake, in the nearly three decades I've been living here. cordially, ____________________________ *The we who see are of course not generally to be found in Oakland's tonier districts—there are several—but rather in the seedier, swarthier parts of town where sensible yuppies do not tread. Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
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Post #157,694
5/30/04 11:35:56 AM
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just be glad they are not using grenades or suicide bombers
Ya think the Israelis have not imposed gun controls in the Palestinian areas? Or the brits in northern ireland? Gee doesnt work except to disarm the law abiding.
thanx,
bill
Time for Lord Stanley to get a Tan
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #157,696
5/30/04 11:39:09 AM
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Whatever, Box.
32000 people died in 1999 in the USA in gun-related incidents.
Thirty Two Thousand.
In ONE year.
It took 30 years of sectarian violence and terrorism to rack up 3000 dead folk in NI.
Private gun ownership transcends the "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" because with no effort at all, someone can ensure that I privately own 9 millimetres of lead in my skull from 100 metres.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #157,697
5/30/04 11:41:14 AM
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gee the guy that does that is
a pretty decent shot, with a pistol at any rate.
thanx,
bill
Time for Lord Stanley to get a Tan
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #157,764
5/30/04 8:12:33 PM
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I'd say that's part of the problem.
With a knife, club, sword, etc. - it's pretty hard to hit the wrong target.
If you're a crappy shot, you're just as likely to plug the guy next to the guy you're trying to shoot.
(I'm not weighing in on this discussion one way or the other. The real problem is that the potential to destroy is increasing at a greater rate than the ability to protect - and that curve scales down to the individual level.)
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
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Post #157,767
5/30/04 8:38:11 PM
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Um, I must pick that nit.
Thane writes:
The real problem is that the potential to destroy is increasing at a greater rate than the ability to protect - and that curve scales down to the individual level.
Um, when has it not been that way? E.g. Mausolous's [link|http://techcenter.davidson.k12.nc.us/fall025/ancient/maus.htm|tomb] of circa 350 B.C. was one of the wonders of the world. It was [link|http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=%2Bsvhtsd%40lynx.unm.edu|burned to make lime for mortar].
It's always been easier to break things and hurt people than to do great things and protect. It may seem easier now that there's so much industrial infrastructure, but little has really changed in at least the last 2500 years. In any society, destruction is easier than construction, killing people is easier than protecting them from harm.
Cheers,
Scott.
(And no you may not call me [link|http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pollyanna|Pollyanna].)
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Post #157,771
5/30/04 9:05:22 PM
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No argument there.
The problem isn't that it's easier to destroy - it's that the amount of destruction that an individual person can wield is increasing at a much greater rate than the ability to defend against that is. Firearms are becoming more accurate and more destructive. If you went amok at your workplace before firearms, you'd probably be able to kill two or three others before somebody took you down. With guns, as the Columbine Highschool massacres showed, two people can take down a LOT of people. Then we've got 9/11 - people willing to trade their own lives took 3000 lives.
All it takes to set off a nuke is one person.
As technology advances, new "improved" ways of killing people at a distance, in larger numbers, will work their way down the chain. Fewer and fewer people will be required to do the killing.
That's the real issue we need to deal with, before we get to the point that somebody builds and uses a planetbuster.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
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Post #157,766
5/30/04 8:33:17 PM
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Private ownership of guns banned in Chicago
for the past 20 or so years. Look how many murders that's stopped since then...
lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
[link|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net|contact me]
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