[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu wrote:
You have already embarrassed yourself by showing you don’t understand your own political system, don’t compound it further. You clealrly have no understanding of the make up of the commons. All that is coming out here is a standard yank fear of British Aristocracy. Don’t worry, you don’t need to curtsy. [/quote]
Britain clearly has a class system when it comes to politics. It is not like the US where an obscure state senator can become a US senator and then president in less than ten years Like Obama did.
If America had the British model he first would have had to displace all the senior members of the Democratic party, like Ried, Frank, Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry and then finally Howard Dean to be the head of the party. You have to be an accepted party insider to be Prime Minister. The system is insular. You have to be connected member of the political class and networked within the political class in order to rise to the top.
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There are big problems in the UK criminal justice system, they are nothing to do with the criminalisation of gun ownership.
You are crazy. The criminal justice system is not locking up violent criminals who are a threat to society. Instead it just lets them loose upon society to commit more crimes. Which increases the peoples need to be able to defend themselves.
Stick to the point and stop rambling god damn it, I have agreed with you that there were serious problems with the UK CJ system, and you say I am crazy. Are you just arguing against anything that is written for the sake of it? [/quote]
I thought my point was clear, but obviously not clear enough for it to get through your thick British skull.
It is absurd that the UK justice system is not concerned about releasing violent criminals who are clearly a danger to society. But it is extremely concerned that innocent law abiding citizens who have no criminal history do not have a means of defending themselves from said criminals, lest they somehow become a threat to society.
Crime reporting in Britain is a joke read the news sometime. The vaunted British Crime Survey suggests that certain crimes are way higher than is actually reported.
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Australia has very similar laws to Britain but is a similar size to the US. You see one big difference between Britain and Australia is if someone is being threatened they can move two thousand miles away and still be in the same country. In Britain there is nowhere to run. So Australia and the US have more accurate crime reporting
So because Australia is a huge country with a very spread out population and lots of areas where there is not very much police pressence, reporting of crime will be far higher than in a smaller more controlled country and that is why you chose Australia as being similar to the UK even though by your own argument it is different to the UK and similar to the US.
Wow, that’s a coherent argument. [/quote]
My point again is that Australia is like America but with a British system.
Australia is ranked number 3 in the world for rape. Britain is probably just as bad or worse. But neither country thinks that women should be allowed to protect themselves from getting raped.
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Not at all. You keep rationalizing every fact you are confronted with. There are specific quantifiable reasons why some parts of the US experience a lot of crime while most of the country experiences very little crime.
So by your arguments there is absolutely no need for people in most of the US to have a gun, unless they are planning to overthrow the government, which they of course won’t because the US government is all about freedom and not like that nasty British government. [/quote]
It does not matter if we need them or not. It is not the governments place to tell us.
But more importantly our already having them quite often negates the need to use them. Something that you obviously are not able to understand.
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Your rationalization about the vote in Brazil is the evil gun lobby must have used the Jedi mind trick through some kind of magical use of words. It is because you absolutely refuse to admit that maybe, just maybe the gun manufacturers presented their case in a way that was logical and made sense to the overwhelming majority of people.
[QUOTE] Brazil has a population of 200 million people. A $5 million dollar advertising budget to reach that many people is not a lot. The EU spent more than that in it’s failed attempt to get the Irish to vote in favor of the EU Constitution and there are only 5 million people in Ireland.
You ask me to present the information, I do, now it is irrelevent! [/quote]
I did not say that was irrelevant. But you are making a mountain out of a molehill. The no vote might have outspent the yes vote but not by that much.
If all it takes is money to win overwhelming majorities in an election, then there is no reason why Barack Obama shouldn’t have beaten John McCain by an overwhelming majority. Which he didn’t do.
It is not like they were buying votes in Brazil so stop pretending that the yes vote did not make sense to the vast majority of voters because it was a bad idea.
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Oh and of course advertising costs in Brazil are totally comparable to Ireland. [/quote]
Oh no they are not. Brazil has 80 times the population and you can fit Ireland into Brazil at least 50 times over.
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The point is that the gun manafacturers spent what they needed to in order to win. They had more available money than the yes vote and they used it to maintain their business. Which is of course totally sensible. If you make guns, you want people to buy them. [/quote]
They protected their business. But more importantly they defended their right to self defense. Something which you can’t accept.
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The yes campaign spent $2.7 million and one of the sponsers was the CBF. Maybe you don’t realize it, but Football is the national sport in Brazil. This gives the CBF the ability to have a significant impact with a modest advertising budget.
Your point being? [/quote]
They had multiple soccer stadiums full of people that they could make their case to. I don’t know how often they have soccer matches there. But probably every week at least they had soccer stadiums filled with 50-100,000 people that they could direct advertising into. They had a massive audience coming to them on a regular basis.
So quit trying to pretend that they didn’t have a chance to get their message across.
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You are the one who keeps claiming that he is speaking for the whole world. Yet you have provided not one poll that supports you. I on the other hand have presented referendum results from one of the worlds largest countries.
OK, I’ll repeat the question. Was the vote indicitive of world opinion? You have stated yes and no in separate posts. Please clarify your position. [/quote]
Look you are the one who keeps saying the rest of the world without proving it. I have proven that America is not alone.
Now you need to prove what you are saying or concede.
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No the way decisions are made in the UK is the commoners elect a party of political class elites who make promises that they don’t intend to keep. Then when they get into power they proceed to ignore the peoples wishes and do whatever they feel like.
ie. I2005 the Labour party said that they would hold a referendum on the EU constitution. They never held the referendum and an essentially unelected Prime Minister had to sneak into Lisbon to sign it.
The reaction of the British people as was to be expected was spineless, non existent and demonstrative of no character.
Please, please, either stop talking about the UK political system, or at least read up on it.
We don’t vote for a party, we vote for a local representitive. The commons is made up of mostly normal everyday people. Yes Labour has gone back on promises and it has been bashed for it. Because of this and other issues Labour will probably not have a majority in the next election. This is how democracy works in the UK. [/quote]
Bullshit. Gordon Brown was picked to be Prime Minister by his friends in the Labour party. He never stood for a general election where the people got to vote if they wanted him to be prime minister.
Then he refused to give the people the referendum on the EU constitution that his party ran for election on and took it upon himself to sign over the nations sovereignty to the EU.
To call that a working democracy is ridiculous.
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Since it is a lot easier for gangs to threaten and kill unarmed people it makes a lot of sense that the drug gangs would have supported the yes vote. It is also quite obvious that if the drug gangs have no problem getting ahold of drugs to sell that they would have no problem getting ahold of guns either.
Another contradiction from you, you previously stated that there wasn’t any negative propoganda. This is exactly an example of it. [/quote]
What are you talking about? What negative propaganda.
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Not at all. We are people who are just like them. We share the same genes. We face the same issues of crime and the ever present threat of government tyranny that all people face. We have come to the same conclusion as to the correct answer.
Whereas most of the rest of the world disagrees, are they genetically different then by your argument? [/quote]
This is just getting tiresome now. You are the one who came here and started making ridiculous statements that somehow in some way that you have not explained we are different.
You say that since the constitution was written 230 years ago it is no longer relevant. To which I have repeatedly replied that since we are still genetically the same human beings now that we were then we still face the same human condition.
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I have presented you with plenty of statistics. Yet you have still not presented election results to back up your claim that you are speaking for the entire world.
What the hell are you rambling on about now? Election results? To what? [/quote]
You keep saying the rest of the world t agrees with you jackass. To which I reply show me some proof.
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If anyone is trivializing it is you. School shootings account for an extremely small fraction of all violent crimes but they are repeatedly brought up by gun control nuts in order to fear monger and push their agenda.
I have never said anything other than that they are rare, horrific and something that is easier to happen in an area where guns are easier to get hold of. [/quote]
If they are so rare why do you keep injecting them into the conversation?
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It was an international news story and it was horrific.
No it wasn’t. How could it be horrific if it didn’t happen in a school?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-08-23-britain-gun-violence_N.htm
Are you retarded or lieing? If it wasn’t an international news story how do you even know about it? [/quote]
I know about it because it was headline news in the British press for weeks. It went on and on and on in the British news for weeks. It didn’t get anywhere near that kind of coverage in this country.
It wasn’t a headline news story on network TV in the US like it would have been if it happened in a school. Without the school angle it wasn’t as important of a news story. It can’t be used to breed hysteria, and it shows that gun control doesn’t work like it is intended to.
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anwhere in the world, criminals can get their hands on illegal guns and use them for crime.
So you freely admit that the criminals can get guns. But despite that, you don’t want law abiding citizens to be able to confront them with guns of their own
I am not arguing for criminalisation of guns, please, please, please stick to the argument. [/quote]
Earlier on you said that the law should be changed so that anyone caught with a gun should be considered guilty of attempted murder.
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Obviously an 11 year old wouldn’t be packing. However there were adults in the area. If the gunman’s calculus had to include the possibility of a third party opening up on him as he gunned down the 11 year old he might not have been so quick to shoot. But that wasn’t my point anyway.
My point again is that a school aged kid shot and killed another school aged kid. The law that was trumpeted as being something to keep school children safe from being shot failed.
There have been scores of unnecessary adult deaths because of a law that has failed to achieve it’s stated purpose.
A law that prevents adults from having self defensive firearms has failed to prevent a 16 year old criminal getting a gun and killing an 11 year old. If you can’t see something wrong with that picture there is something seriously wrong with you.
The Rhys Jones case is most relevant to this discussion. But you don’t want to debate it because you know you will come out the loser.
So you would advocate adults having a shoot out in a public place with kids now? [/quote]
What would you suggest? That we let a 16 year old who is shooting an 11 year old go unchallenged? That noone should try to stop it? That we should just let a kid get murdered?
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I have news for you. It is much easier to buy guns off of the black market than it is to go through the FBI background check.
You don’t know what you are talking about when it comes to violence in the US. There are plenty of areas in this country that are just as safe as Switzerland and have just as many guns.
But I thought everyone was in mortal danger, that’s why they need the guns. [/quote]
Now you are falling back on your standard rhetorical tactic of grossly exaggerating. I never said that everyone is in mortal danger.
Gun ownership in this country does a lot to maintain law and order. There are a lot of safe areas because of it.
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When you talk about all the violence in this country what you are really referring to is just a small handful of ghetto areas that are populated by a minority group that has had a lot of bad things done to it and have a lot of problems as a result.
What is the case here is there are criminals who are shot law abiding citizens who are defending themselves.
In the UK all the shootings are victims of crime. Let’s also not forget the 22,000 stabbing victims last year and the 5000 glassing victims.
Figures that are still far below those in the US so your argument doesn’t add up. [/quote]
The average stabbing rate for all of Britain is higher than the murder rate in Detroit. A lot of those stabbings are merely failed murder attempts.
Britain is a very violent country. But there are a lot of Brits who want to pretend that it isn’t. You’re one of them.
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This doesn’t change the fact that legally owned guns are used to shoot people illegally in the US and at an alarming rate.
Bullshit. The majority of guns used in crime are illegally owned.
Could you back that up? How large a majority are we talking? There are thousands of gun crime events so just saying a majority doesn’t really paint the picture. [/quote]
You know what? Fuck you! I’m not wasting my time on your bullshit. You said the majority of guns used to commit crimes are legally owned, you prove it.
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Bullshit. The only people who are kept from owning guns are the ones who obey the law. And people who would not otherwise break the law are forced to become criminals if they want to be able to defend their lives. It is bullshit.
Try looking up the word impeded in a dictionary. And again you are equating a gun as the only way to defend your life. You are right, that is bullshit. [/quote]
I almost lost my life to the bullshit you are proposing. Gun control laws don’t stop the criminals from getting guns. They just fuck over people like me who are good enough to obey the law.
Through out this whole discussion you have done nothing but talk out of your ass. There are plenty of people on this board who will agree with me.
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They are not as rare as they used to be before the 1997 gun ban. Plus the British compensate for a lack of guns by using other deadly weapons that honest people can’t defend themselves from.
They are not as rare as they used to be before 1994 either or 1980. There was no sudden spike after 1997 due to the fact that you were not allowed to own a gun for self defence purposes at any time since the 40s. [/quote]
Between 1997 and 2002 the number of gun crimes doubled. That is a spike.
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So what Switzerland has more guns than Britain and lower crime. America’s crime rates are the result of cultural factors, like the war on drugs. If Britain fought the war on drugs as aggressively as the US it would see much more crime.
So are you arguing that the war on drugs increases crime rates? (I actually agree with this but it has nothing to do with the argument.) [/quote]
Yes I am. Gun ownership is not causing the violence, the war on drugs is. Mexico is a perfect example of that.
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Like most other laws Britain does not enforce it’s drug laws with anywhere near the ferocity that America does. That is why drugs a much cheaper in the UK which makes the drug trade less competitive.
A less competitive drugs trade is a good thing. Also, what the hell has this to do with US attitude to guns? Please try to stay on track. [/quote]
The vast majority of shootings takes place in Americas ghettos because they are full of crack neighborhoods. If you get outside of the ghetto it is quite safe.
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If accidents are irrelevant why do you keep bringing them up?
Air ambulance crashes are irrelevant and you know it, so why mention them? Is it because you want to pad the really short post that you were writing? [/quote]
You are the one who keeps bringing up accidents. I clearly demonstrated that you have not put them in any kind of a context.
Just like air ambulances, guns save a lot of lives. Noone says that we should get rid of air ambulances just because of a few accidents because they save lives. The same standard should apply to guns but you refuse to admit that guns have a useful purpose.
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Nothing like Britain’s. But that was just a legal disclaimer because someone spilled hot coffee on themselves sued Mcdonalds and won. So stop being a retard.
What about the ‘may contain nuts’ warnings on packets of nuts? Is this another example of how the US has a higher level of common sense? [/quote]
More common sense than 'high court recently changing sentencing guidelines for burglary so that people who are committing burglary to support a drug habit can get a shorter sentence.
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Your whole argument has been based upon serious exaggerations.
Whereas yours is based on solid fact, except when you disagree with yourself, or misrepresent numbers or randomly pick countries to talk about or choose to take reports from a newspaper that is ridiculed in the UK or ramble off into a totally unrelated argument. [/quote]
What ever.
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Nobody knew who owned a gun and who didn’t. That uncertainty caused a lot of criminals to hesitate and limited crime. Once the limiter of legal gun ownership was revoked the crime rate took off. More people are getting shot and stabbed in Britain now than ever before.
Yes they did, it was registered. Also as the person was not allowed to use their legally owned gun for self defence, how would it have effected the crime figures? [/quote]
Just because people were not legally allowed it doesn’t mean that when given the choice between living or dying they wouldn’t defend themselves.
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What permissive attitudes? The vast majority of American gun owners handle their guns responsibly.
Another word for you to look up. Permissive. [/quote]
Fuck you.
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Are you crazy? In Britain the people are completely dependent upon the government for protection and security because they are not allowed to do it for themselves. Since the government isn’t too interested in taking care of them they are fucked.
No. In Britain, if we need garbage taken away, we leave it to the dustbinmen. If we need surgery, we go to a surgeon. And if there is a criminal act taking place, we call the police. [/quote]
There is a world of difference between waiting for the fortnightly garbage removal and needing to defend yourself from an armed attacker.
In self defense situations milliseconds can make the difference between life and death. Yet assholes like you want to insist that people can bloody well wait for the police to get around to saving them. If they die waiting for police services to be delivered that’s their tough luck. Because you liberals don’t give a fuck about anyones life you just want to have control over them.
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If I were in a bank with my wife and daughter and someone walked in with a gun to hold up the bank. The last thing I would want is some Johnny Rambo have a go hero pulling a gun and trying to resolve the situation. [/quote]
If a bank robber tries to rob a bank with ghetto glass they can’t threaten to shoot the teller. That’s why I don’t go to banks that don’t have the glass.
I have seen several surveillance films of gunmen who robbed a place then shot people on the way out just for the hell of it. Or took hostages and had a standoff with the police, which ended with the robbers going down a line of hostages shooting them. But I haven’t seen nor heard of Johnny Rambo have a go hero shooting up a bunch of innocent bystanders, it sounds like another one of your paranoid delusions.
I think it says a lot about your mentality though that you would think it preferable for innocent people to be left at the mercy of armed criminals.
Your whole argument has been based upon irrational fears and paranoia. But this one really takes the cake. No rational person would expect a bank robber to have better judgment or be more trustworthy than an honest citizen.
I think that if you ever do find yourself in a hostage situation and the gunmen just start shooting hostages, you will be very glad if all of a sudden one of your fellow hostages starts shooting back.
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In a country where they have warnings about coffee being hot and nuts containing nuts, are you really, truthfully and honestly comfortable that Joe Public is going to sensibly use their hand gun in a well trained safe manner? [/quote]
It’s a legal disclaimer dumbass. Besides the only warning I have seen on a bag of nuts related to the machinery being used to process peanuts. Peanuts can cause deadly allergic reactions in some people. If I had a severe peanut allergy and I wanted to buy a bag of Cashews I would appreciate such a warning.
Well unlike you, I have a lot more confidence in my neighbors than some criminal.
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No. The has sought to systematically render the British people as dependent upon it for everything in their lives as it possibly can.
The Labour government is committed to achieving abslute control over the British people. Welfare dependency is one rung of the ladder, security dependency is another. The way things are going they will eventually have a database recording everyone’s emails, phone calls, movements, DNA etc… The British will just sheepishly go along with it because they are a nation of spineless sniveling cowards who don’t have the stones to stand up for themselves.
Or they will vote Tory at the next election. [/quote]
The Tories aren’t going to do much better.
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‘Postcode gangs’ stalk East End
London’s East End youngsters are being intimidated by gangs - based on which postcode they live in.
Teenagers marked as “E5” or “E9” risk being attacked for straying into the wrong area.
Simply crossing to the other side of a street which borders two postcodes could end in violence.
Teenagers Biko and Wez have to deal with the situation every day.
They are “E5” - and walking down the wrong road into neighbouring E9 could get them into trouble.
So just because some dumb gangs in a small part of one city in the UK choose to name their gangs after the first part of their postcode (E5 actually represents hundreds of postcodes as does E9.) You surmise that every postcode in the UK has a gang? How stupid are you? And I see that you just love sensationalist headlines (this time from the Beeb whose standards of journalism have been dropping like a stone in recent years.) [/quote]
The term postcode gang is quite common amongst news organizations over there.
Stabbed to death at 16 - a victim of the teen gangs’ postcode lottery
A teenager was stabbed to death when rival ?postcode? gangs, some armed with baseball bats and knives, fought running battles in the street after clashing at a girl’s 16th birthday party.
Up to 40 youths were involved in the fight in Sheffield.
Dale Robertson was the second to die over the weekend from stab wounds. A 17-year-old was killed in Manchester on Friday night.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/partygoer-18-is-knifed-to-death-922584.htm
A teenager stabbed to death after rival “postcode” gangs clashed at a girl’s birthday party [quote]
You know damn well what my point was. Besides the Tiananmen Square massacre did not happen in the sixties dumbass.
I was talking about a typical 60s attitude of being fearful of the Reds. And I don’t know what your point was. Are you saying that you need a gun to protect you from the Chinese government? [/quote]
My point is you have repeatedly stated that since the American constitution was written over 230 years ago the Second amendment no longer made sense.
Which prompted several of us to reply that the second amendment is there so we can defend ourselves from our government. Because the historical trend has been for governments to become tyrannical.
To which you replied, Oh no that never happens, tyranny is a thing of the past. The American revolution was over 230 years ago tyranny is a thing of the past so you stupid Americans don’t need protecting from it anymore.
So I pointed out that China is a tyranny that just a few years ago sent tanks and troops into Tienanmen Square to massacre unarmed civilians.
Which prompted you to play stupid (though in your this case I am starting to believe it isn’t an act) and say what does China have to do with tyranny.
There you have it folks. The final words of the man whose homeland wants to keep permanent records of all his emails, record his phone calls, put him and his children on a DNA database and track his movements with radio ID cards.
