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#151 (permalink) | |
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Location: Adelaide, Australia
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Good luck in your idiocracy. Last edited by Dean from Australia; 12-21-2012 at 09:02 PM. |
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#152 (permalink) | |||||
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Now I'd imagine most would point out the vast differences between the US government and these volatile dictatorships/regimes. That's a valid point and I don't consider the current conditions in the US to be all that bad (e.g. the whole "police state" notion). But there have been some pretty fundamental shifts in the power that have been granted to the federal government over the past 12 years (plenty of valid arguments regarding the degradation of our 4th & 5th Amendments, started by the Bush administration and pushed even harder by Obama's, but that's a whole other argument). Look, I'm not clairvoyant. I don't know what's going to happen 1 year from now, let alone 10, 20, 50 years down the road. Furthermore, while life in the US is pretty damn good even when things are at their worst (relatively speaking), I'm not audacious enough to assume that it will remain this way forever. I'd rather retain the rights already granted to US citizens than give them up now (especially under false pretenses) and place the burden on future generations to have to fight to get them back. Quote:
This just happened on December 20th near an area where I'm from. Who knows how it would have ended if the intended victim wasn't carrying a firearm of his own. Justifiable homicides/self-defense shootings occur more often than you would think. Finally, I've heard many people tout Australia's gun control laws as the model in which others should follow, but never bothered to actually look into it much. Last night I glanced over some studies (The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths - Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi - From the University of Melbourne's "Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series" - particularly intersting due to the statistcal methods employed by the authors). Would it surprise you, Dean, that most of the studies I've come across (granted they were found in the Wikipedia entry here) don't show any large reductions in gun violence attributable to Australia's gun laws and reduction in firearms? It surprised me, considering how successful I've heard it's been (side note: some claim that gun crimes had risen since the band, but that doesn't appear to be credible, so let's ignore that). Some argue the ban has reduced firearm related suicides, but fail to mention the already declining trend existing before the major gun control laws were passed (apparently 'they', whoever that is, have also ignored the "substantially rising" suicide rate by substitute methods. Doesn't appear to be any solid evidence that suicide substitution methods are due to the gun control legislation though). Also, there seems to be some controversy surrounding someone named Simon Chapman. Apparently he wan't too pleased in 2005, when New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, revealed that "the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence." Here's a little back and forth between the two (source - Gun politics in Australia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Quote:
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Anyway, I'm not to sure what's going on with this guy, his credibility has certainly been called into question. I'll be reading his study tomorrow on a lengthy car ride to visit some family. Here's link to his paper for all interested parties (HTML Verison, PDF Version). Time permitting, I'll post anything noteworthy that I find (may be difficult due to the holiday though). Seems like the wikipedia page is a good start to find more detailed information on the subject. -Golgi Last edited by golgi body; 12-22-2012 at 01:48 PM. |
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#153 (permalink) | |
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It looks to me like you are the ideologue here, you don't want to be troubled by inconvenient facts and you wish to remain unencumbered by the thought process. Last edited by Really; 12-22-2012 at 09:39 AM. |
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#154 (permalink) | |
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#155 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Adelaide, Australia
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"This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded. "Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs." Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire. Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers. Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again." Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.
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#156 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Jan 2008
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Wasn't sure where to post this, so I chose here.
Look At All These Guns People Got for Christmas - National - The Atlantic Wire |
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#157 (permalink) |
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Join Date: May 2007
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I haven't read that anywhere reputable. Do you have anything to prove this? The cops were there within a minute, the shooter's gun jammed and then started working again, so he shot himself. I found something about a guy hiding behind a pole holding his gun that admits to making eye contact, but that wasn't on anything reputable.
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#158 (permalink) | |
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"The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.... If gun-control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun-control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.... Guns are not the problem. People are the problem — including people who are determined to push gun-control laws, either in ignorance of the facts or in defiance of the facts. -- Thomas Sowell" Gun-Control Ignorance - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online |
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#159 (permalink) | |
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The Columbine shooting is a good example of this problem. It occurred right in the middle of the Clinton Assault Weapons ban. Instead of a big gun control controversy, it sparked a discussion about school bullying and how desperate and isolated it makes some students feel. Address the problem. |
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