[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
pushharder wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
dude, Don’t you mean “dolt”? I don’t claim to understand the American Socio-political scene so well. That is excactly the point. I have not been promoting gun control…
Oh.
My.
God.
I can’t believe you actually just typed, “I have not been promoting gun control.” Seriously, dolt, you have some psychological problems. You need some help. I’m not kidding.
I have repeatedly stated that I don’t think changes to the law would make any noticeable difference. [/quote]
Be that as it may you keep postulating the false arguments that all gun control nuts keep coming out with. So we don’t trust you. We think you are playing coy.
[quote]
The only exception to this was a postulation that if you went to the total extreme of charging anyone found in possesion of a firearm then you might be able to have an impact (in reality I know that this would not get passed into law and doubt that it would be practical.) [/quote]
No it wouldn’t make a positive impact. All such laws do is put innocent people in a trap where if they are under a genuine threat and need protection they have to make a choice between risking a serious criminal charge or getting murdered. In order to have protection 24/7 they have to break the law 24/7.
Genuine criminals on the other hand do not need to break the law 24/7. All they need to do is come into possession of an illegal firearm long enough to commit a crime then ditch the weapon.
So such laws favor dangerous criminals while putting harmless people at a severe disadvantage.
Here is a scenario of how such laws work in the real world.
Let’s say we have a good guy who is poor who lives with his family on a bad housing estate with a lot of gang activity. Since is a good guy he refuses to join the local estate gang. The gang considers this an affront to their supremacy on the estate and resort to escalating acts of violence against the good guy eventually threatening to kill him.
He goes to the police who turn out to be useless. All they can do is have him make out a report so that if he gets murdered they might have something to base an investigation on. Which will do nothing to bring him back to life after he is dead and probably won’t even get a conviction.
So he get’s himself an illegal gun and starts carrying it with him all the time because he doesn’t know when the hit is going to come, he just knows he has to be ready when it does. He does this until one day out in the nice suburbs where he has an honest minimum wage job he gets pulled over in his beater car because a taillight is out.
The cop looks at the address on the mans license sees the man lives in the ghetto, decides to search his car and finds a gun under the seat.
So he goes to jail for a good number of years. Then he finally gets out. But because he is poor and now has a felony criminal record the only place he can housing is back with his family on the estate. Where he is soon noticed by the violent gang he pissed off.
One of the gang bangers decides to settle the score immediately. So he knocks on a window and another gang member passes out a gun to him. The gang banger goes up to the good guy and shoots him dead. Then he goes back to the window where he got the gun, passes it off and he is now clean.
The final analysis is the good guy spent years of his life illegally carrying finally got caught and arrested for it. Then spent several years of his life in jail. When the gang finally did carry out it’s hit on him the hitman was only in possession of the gun for less than a minute.
That is how such a law plays out in the real world. Harmless honest people are forced to become criminals and end up with serious criminal records. While really bad organized criminals are able to manipulate the law to their advantage and get away with murder.
This is why in Britain there are so many young people who carry knives for their protection. Because they know the police can’t protect their lives.
Yet all the British can think to do is assume that all these kids have bad intentions and call for severe penalties which will destroy the lives of young people who are caught up in circumstances beyond their control. Instead of facing up to much deeper societal issues.
[quote]
Exactly my point is that the issue is the attitude, not the laws or the guns. [/quote]
What is sad about this statement is you yourself have an attitude that is based purely upon assumptions that refuse to see both sides of the issue. Which is exemplified by your call for draconian penalties being imposed upon people irregardless of their personal reality, which may be very different from yours.
You may think that you are an open minded, fair person, but in this matter you’re not.
[quote]
If you are unable to see that, then perhaps you need to read what I am actually writing not use the standard argument that you role out anytime you feel your position is being attacked.
Still waiting for your comments on the stats that I have posted 3 times… [/quote]
Kellerman is only an emergency room physiologist. Yet you keep pushing his study like it is some kind of gospel truth. There are some serious flaws to his study.
The first thing to take into consideration is exactly what is his world view. The man is a doctor. Which means that he probably lives in a nice neighborhood. A place where most if not all of his neighbors have college degrees. Where kids are raised in two parent families.
Where the police are bored because they don’t have much else to do except write speeding tickets to people for being 5 over all day long. So when his local cops do get a real call they are on it in a flash and an incident report is made.
My neighborhood in Detroit is not like that. On New Years four years ago when my neighbor was out in the front yard firing off an AK47 nobody called the police because it would be pointless. There was no report made.
A couple of years ago in Detroit I watched a guy get jumped getting into his truck. He wrestled with the jacker for a couple of seconds then the jacker took off running.
As I pulled alongside the intended victim who was running after the jacker I saw he had a big automatic in his hands. I looked at him, he looked at me, I laughed, then he laughed and stopped running. I doubt a report was made on that incident either.
There is a lot of stuff like that that does not get reported. So your trying to quote some doctors statistical study as authoritative is a joke. There are just so many variables in Kellermans study that are not reported with anywhere near %100 accuracy that we cannot consider it authoritative.
[quote]
…Americans (with a number of exceptions) equate liberty to having a gun. The rest of the world equates liberty to not needing a gun. [/quote]
No. Americans equate gun ownership as the ultimate safeguard of their liberty. They consider their having the right to own guns as defining what their relationship to their government is to be. Americans say that their government has no choice but to trust them.
In other countries like North Korea, Red China, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Britain, the government tells the people that they have to trust the government and they don’t get to have a choice.
Again you are arrogantly claiming to speak for the rest of the world. We all know that a sizable portion of the world is not allowed to speak for itself so we know you are full of shit.
[quote]
You’re playing fast and loose with the term, “the rest of the world” but then again that’s your style.
If you look at developed countries that are not actively involved in warfare in their own country then I don’t think I am playing fast and lose. I am basing my views on reading things written by people all over the world and travelling widely speaking with people. [/quote]
Speaking of warfare. More people were killed in Mexico’s drug war last year than were killed in Iraq.
I think you only read the writings of and talk to people who think like you do. So it is little wonder you have that view.