Name any other weapon a person can legally obtain that can mow down a whole group of people so easily and effortlessly, regardless of your size, strength, age or intelligence.
So that's end of argument? Anything can be changed. Afterall, the only consistency in life is change.
Currently, it is part of the constitution, but it wasn't so originally.
It was an amendment, a change.
As a non-American, I'm surprised this constitutional stuff is such a set-in-stone argument the world gets to hear c/o the NRA ********s who'd shoot their own children to preserve their "god-given" right to shoot their own children.
If the constitution was changed once to address the danger of an English invasion, now that the English problem has passed and a new problem arisen, why not scrap the amendment or change it to something much more modern and fitting with standards demanded by a modern society?
Honestly, I don't see why this is such a big deal, countries change their constitutions to suit demands all the time, this is not some sacred cow we're talking about.
Okay, you're not an American, so there's no reason for you to know this, but the first ten amendments of the Constitution aren't really "amendments" in the normal sense you're thinking of. They aren't after-the-fact rules patches. They were introduced to Congress as the Bill of Rights in 1789, a little over a year after Constitutional ratification, and they were written by James Madison, the man who wrote the Constitution. Basically, people thought that some rights were so obvious that they didn't need stating, and that stating them would imply that those are the only rights people have and therefore give the government license to trample over all the other rights. This opinion carried the day at the Constitutional Convention, which is why these rights aren't in the Constitution itself. But Madison and company soon changed their minds, hence the Bill of Rights, with the addition of the Ninth Amendment specifically to head off that worry about enumeration. They're called "amendments", and technically they are, but practically they're more like a part of the main body of the Constitution. They certainly don't represent a change in Americans' thinking; it's not like they only decided later on that free speech and due process and so forth were good ideas.
Long story short: these ten kind of are sacred cows. (Well, the ones that are relevant; I don't think anybody is particularly attached to the Third Amendment anymore.) It is legally possible to change them, of course, but realistically it's never going to happen. Other countries change their constitutions all the time, but the United States has only changed the Constitution 27 times in 227 years, only repealed an amendment once (the Eighteenth, prohibiting alcohol, the one really dumb amendment), and never even modified One through Ten. Repeal of the Second Amendment simply isn't part of the conversation; gun-control advocates know they'll never be able to pull it off, so they don't even bother. So they try to reinterpret it to say what they want it to say (it doesn't), or circumvent it in other ways, or actually accept that it's a part of the American social fabric and work to improve gun safety in ways that are consistent with it.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Can't be worse than what they're already teaching kids. I slept through all of my high school classes that I was able to and graduated with a 3.8; I'd say that 90% of the curriculum is just a rehash of middle school, ergo a complete waste of tax dollars.
Errrm... That was definitely not my High School experience.
That's pretty much how my High School experience was... and then the same thing for my first semester of college. In my school career I took some form of intro to Spanish 3 times (elementary, Middle and high school), every math class spent the first half of the year redoing all of last year (this includes Calc 2 in college re-hashing high-school's AP calc), I swear we went over the five paragraph essay in every English class I ever took... That's just off the top of my head. I literally played Bomber man through AP calc in High School and did just fine skipping Calc 1 in college and going straight into Calc 2. I know I am not a Math genius, but when you learn the same thing every day for a week it sticks no matter how little attention you pay to it and also makes class extremely boring which encourages poor behavior.
Gun safety is something that could be taught in a single class so it's not something that really fits into a school curriculum unless it is rolled into a class on other things... hence why I brought up other life skills. I mean... if people are not even for allowing schools to teach basic life skills then I see no point in discussing having schools teach something that is actually controversial.
My gen. ed. classes in college were also a bull***** rehash of middle school/high school concepts. So dull. Why am I paying $10000/year for this garbage?!?
The process of learning difficult mathematics is valuable even if you don't go on to use those specific techniques. It builds generally applicable skills like analytic thinking and quantitative reasoning. Now, I'm not saying everyone is prepared for Calc 2 in high school - some will struggle with math and need a slower pace. But they're the ones who can least afford to give up actual class time to learn not to look down the barrel of a gun. They would be best served by taking classes at the level and pace that matches their learning ability.
Just curious... what kind of classes did you take in high school?
I took 3 levels of Chem, 2 Physics, 5 Programming classes, 3 cooking classes, a small engines course, a small animals course, bio, basic drawing, 4 classes worth of band, 4 classes of PE, mythology, 3 teachers assistant classes (where I did nothing) and got to completely skip one class period one year, ontop of the required math, history and English. Then in Middle School I had another cooking class, a wood shop class and a sewing class.
You think that nowhere in any of that time it would be acceptable to squeeze in a class on life skills?
Since this is a thing, I'll post my high school classes:
H Geometry, H Algebra II (I took H Algebra I in middle school), H Trigonometry, H Probability & Statistics (I love math, but not formulas - like hell I'd take Calc!), H World History I, H World History II, H U.S. History, H. Government, H Philosophy, H Bioethics, H Sociology, H Civil War History, H English 9, H English 10, H English 11, H English 12, H Biology, H Chemistry, H Physics, H Anatomy, H Physiology, Basic Tech Drawing, Intermediate Orchestra (2 years), AP Music Theory, Gym/Health, Gym/Driver's Ed, Spanish I, Spanish II, Spanish III, and I had a free period every other day to be a guidance aide whereupon I would deliver passes to students to let them see their guidance counselors. (I also took H Earth Science in middle school, so I had...quite a few credits. I graduated with an advanced diploma, and could have finished high school a year early, but opted not to for personal reasons.)
Anyway, while I enjoyed most of my classes in theory, they were all terribly slow, boring, and taught me little new. My biggest learning experiences in high school were social and emotional. So why not?
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
I said "required that level of math"... meaning sure it's useful for physics, computer, engineering etc majors, but not so much for non-college bound students, or people going into art, political science, etc...
No, I don't think you understood what I said. I'm saying that majors who don't require that level of math arguably benefit more from taking those classes. I was an English major. It was awesome that I took calculus and statistics courses at the college level in high school, not just because of the knowledge they gave me, but also because getting those classes out of the way meant I got college credit for them, and thus fulfilled my mathematics requirements (which did not require me to take calculus, but did require me to take a certain number of math and/or computer science credits) that my degree program demanded of me. Before I started college.
Which freed me up to take courses that actually pertained to my major or that I wanted to take.
and Small Animals was a class on small animals... like dog breeds, cats, different kinds of pets.... probably useful for someone wanting to get into pet related work. I just liked animals and thought it might be interesting; however, much like my High School Biology class I didn't learning anything I didnt already know from watching Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.
... How much choice, exactly, did you have in the courses you took, Fluffy? If you're taking classes on small animals, and, as you describe it, three courses you did nothing in, I'm thinking the fact that you didn't find high school a valuable learning experience is at least partially your own doing.
Looking only inside the USA your point is moot, as you guys have a huge number of guns in circulation.
I didn't only look inside the USA.
You knew when you wrote the above sentence I didn't only look inside the USA because my next sentence addresses Switzerland.
So you deleted the part in which I addressed a country that was not America, which was in the same paragraph after the sentence you just quoted, and then tried to claim that I was only looking at America.
Disingenuous and disrespectful.
I would argue you look at the gun violence in countries with a low number of guns or low gun ownership to see a very obvious correlation between a low number of guns equalling a significantly low rate of gun violence.
For starters, invalid. In the US, the gun numbers have gone up while violent crime has gone down, demonstrating no correlation.
Second, as I pointed out in a sentence you deleted in order to facilitate your disingenuous misrepresentation of my argument, Switzerland has mandatory gun ownership, and a high number of guns, but has low gun crime, demonstrating further that number of guns is not correlated to low gun crime.
Third, low numbers of guns is not correlated to less violent crime. Russia is an example of this.
Fourth, and most importantly, tighter gun control laws does not necessarily relate to less gun crime. See also Chicago.
Name any other weapon a person can legally obtain that can mow down a whole group of people so easily and effortlessly, regardless of your size, strength, age or intelligence.
A car, homemade explosives, possibly a knife depending on crowd density.
Violence will always be a problem in society > I don't see how having guns around does anything but increase your risk of injury/death.
It also increases the risk of an someone else's injury/death. That's the entire point of a gun. To kill things that aren't you.
And things that are designed to kill things that aren't you — that is to say, weapons — are most certainly a necessity for the security of a free state. They most certainly do something.
So that's end of argument? Anything can be changed. Afterall, the only consistency in life is change.
Arbitrary statement is arbitrary. Demonstrate why it should be changed.
Currently, it is part of the constitution, but it wasn't so originally.
Silly argument is silly. Neither was any part of the Bill of Rights. Neither was a law forbidding slavery. Demonstrate why it should be removed.
If the constitution was changed once to address the danger of an English invasion, now that the English problem has passed and a new problem arisen, why not scrap the amendment or change it to something much more modern and fitting with standards demanded by a modern society?
The Bill of Rights was not written to protect the people from the British.
The Bill of Rights was written to protect the people from the US government.
And it's not an accident that the right to bear arms directly follows the First Amendment.
Honestly, I don't see why this is such a big deal, countries change their constitutions to suit demands all the time, this is not some sacred cow we're talking about.
Because there's no need to change something when there's no need to change something. Demonstrate the need.
You didn't have to take a foreign language course?! That's bull*****!
To be fair, needing to take a foreign language is relatively new. When I graduated high school it wasnt a requirement to get into college. Actually foreign languages were taught mainly in college. I believe only Spanish, French, and Latin were offered in my high school when I went and all of them were 1 year introductory courses.
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So that's end of argument? Anything can be changed. Afterall, the only consistency in life is change.
Currently, it is part of the constitution, but it wasn't so originally.
It was an amendment, a change.
As a non-American, I'm surprised this constitutional stuff is such a set-in-stone argument the world gets to hear c/o the NRA ********s who'd shoot their own children to preserve their "god-given" right to shoot their own children.
If the constitution was changed once to address the danger of an English invasion, now that the English problem has passed and a new problem arisen, why not scrap the amendment or change it to something much more modern and fitting with standards demanded by a modern society?
Honestly, I don't see why this is such a big deal, countries change their constitutions to suit demands all the time, this is not some sacred cow we're talking about.
Actually it is a sacred cow to many in America. For as many people that we read about gun violence about, there are thousands of law abiding gun owners. Punishing the many because of the actions of a few is not the proper way to go about it.
As for changing the law, it is very hard to get laws changed or removed from the books. Especially something like the constitution. Its been decades since an amendment was added to the Constitution, there are other issues much bigger then the right to bear arms that need to be addressed, so I doubt America will change anything about guns any time soon. The money involved not to mention the divide it would cause with in the society, would be unrepairable and probably cause another civil war.
I said "required that level of math"... meaning sure it's useful for physics, computer, engineering etc majors, but not so much for non-college bound students, or people going into art, political science, etc...
No, I don't think you understood what I said. I'm saying that majors who don't require that level of math arguably benefit more from taking those classes. I was an English major. It was awesome that I took calculus and statistics courses at the college level in high school, not just because of the knowledge they gave me, but also because getting those classes out of the way meant I got college credit for them, and thus fulfilled my mathematics requirements (which did not require me to take calculus, but did require me to take a certain number of math and/or computer science credits) that my degree program demanded of me. Before I started college.
Which freed me up to take courses that actually pertained to my major or that I wanted to take.
and Small Animals was a class on small animals... like dog breeds, cats, different kinds of pets.... probably useful for someone wanting to get into pet related work. I just liked animals and thought it might be interesting; however, much like my High School Biology class I didn't learning anything I didnt already know from watching Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.
... How much choice, exactly, did you have in the courses you took, Fluffy? If you're taking classes on small animals, and, as you describe it, three courses you did nothing in, I'm thinking the fact that you didn't find high school a valuable learning experience is at least partially your own doing.
My point on the Calc 2 class is that I would argue that for many people while Calc 2 may not be 100% useless it also may not be the best choice of class for them to take. For example someone going to a tech school for auto mechanics may be better served taking more shop classes...
I had a ton of choice which was great. I was able to take all of the available science courses, 5 different programming classes, quite a few things that were great. But... I took all of the science courses and all of the programming courses, and was a year ahead in math and still had time to take 3 TAs, take a class off, take a bunch of foods classes, etc... etc...
ALso I forgot to mention this earlier but I did take 1 year of German in high school.
Okay, you're not an American, so there's no reason for you to know this, but the first ten amendments of the Constitution aren't really "amendments" in the normal sense you're thinking of. They aren't after-the-fact rules patches. They were introduced to Congress as the Bill of Rights in 1789, a little over a year after Constitutional ratification, and they were written by James Madison, the man who wrote the Constitution. Basically, people thought that some rights were so obvious that they didn't need stating, and that stating them would imply that those are the only rights people have and therefore give the government license to trample over all the other rights. This opinion carried the day at the Constitutional Convention, which is why these rights aren't in the Constitution itself. But Madison and company soon changed their minds, hence the Bill of Rights, with the addition of the Ninth Amendment specifically to head off that worry about enumeration. They're called "amendments", and technically they are, but practically they're more like a part of the main body of the Constitution. They certainly don't represent a change in Americans' thinking; it's not like they only decided later on that free speech and due process and so forth were good ideas.
The above point is central, and anyone not familiar with American Constitutional law should read it carefully.
The first ten amendments were not "added" to the Constitution. They were seen by the founders as inherently protected by the Constitution and by common law. For example, because the Constitution did not specifically spell out any Federal power to regulate arms, they reasoned, no such regulations could ever be passed. But ultimately, to be extra clear, they decided to spell out some of these rights anyway. Early citizens of the US would have viewed the right to bear arms as inherent in the common-law natural right to self defense.
Even a century years later, the US Supreme Court held the same view: "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." United States v. Cruikshank (1876). In other words, the right was thought to exist even if not spelled out in the Constitution. US law has traditionally viewed the right as akin to a "natural right," i.e. a right granted by God or nature, not by the government.
What the hell was a nine-year-old doing with an Uzi? The lesson apparently went wrong exactly where you'd expect it to go wrong with a small child firing a fully automatic weapon: she lost control of the recoil and the bullets went spraying everywhere. It's like letting her drive a car on the street and then being surprised when she hits something because she can't see over the dashboard. Regardless of where you stand on Second Amendment rights in general, or on how to educate children, there are some things that they simply cannot be allowed to do under any circumstances.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Albeit the girl is nine and the original post said sixteen, accidents happen and things like this are likely to occur. This girl now has to live for the rest of her life with the fact that she killed a dude.
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One of these day I have to get myself organizized.
My point on the Calc 2 class is that I would argue that for many people while Calc 2 may not be 100% useless it also may not be the best choice of class for them to take. For example someone going to a tech school for auto mechanics may be better served taking more shop classes...
Dude, you took a course on small animals and three (3) courses that you said you did nothing in. And I see you took life education as well.
So if you're saying that high school was a waste of your time, not sure exactly how that's an endorsement of what you're saying.
Nor do I understand how "don't take higher level math courses" is a great solution. If you're complaining about people not learning stuff in high school they didn't in middle school, why is Calc 2 a class that you're taking aim at?
I had a ton of choice which was great. I was able to take all of the available science courses, 5 different programming classes, quite a few things that were great. But... I took all of the science courses and all of the programming courses, and was a year ahead in math and still had time to take 3 TAs, take a class off, take a bunch of foods classes, etc... etc...
ALso I forgot to mention this earlier but I did take 1 year of German in high school.
And you took all of that in middle school? If not, how was high school just a rehash of middle school for you?
What the hell was a nine-year-old doing with an Uzi? The lesson apparently went wrong exactly where you'd expect it to go wrong with a small child firing a fully automatic weapon: she lost control of the recoil and the bullets went spraying everywhere. It's like letting her drive a car on the street and then being surprised when she hits something because she can't see over the dashboard. Regardless of where you stand on Second Amendment rights in general, or on how to educate children, there are some things that they simply cannot be allowed to do under any circumstances.
Well, no one can say the instructor didn't end up teaching a valuable lesson about gun safety that day.
Yeah, that is Darwin Award material. I'm getting an Uzi as weighing 7.72 pounds when empty. How is it reasonable to assume that a nine-year-old girl is going to be able to maintain control over that thing when it's loaded and recoiling?
I would not have a problem with a school hosting such a class as a supplemental after school activity, paid for by the students who take it. But I don't see why it should be funded publicly given the lack of good it would do (i.e. unlike the typical sports/arts we support).
What the hell was a nine-year-old doing with an Uzi? The lesson apparently went wrong exactly where you'd expect it to go wrong with a small child firing a fully automatic weapon: she lost control of the recoil and the bullets went spraying everywhere. It's like letting her drive a car on the street and then being surprised when she hits something because she can't see over the dashboard. Regardless of where you stand on Second Amendment rights in general, or on how to educate children, there are some things that they simply cannot be allowed to do under any circumstances.
This was totally the instructors fault. You do not give a youth, new to shooting a full clip for a fully automatic gun.
There are plenty of children that get taught to shoot at a young age, younger then 9, and dont hurt anyone.
When my grandfather was in high school, shooting was a high school sport you could letter in. To my knowledge it never really caused any problems.
So considering it used to be fine, it doesn't really seem like teaching a 16 year old how to handle a .22 is the end of the world.
I also think the safety implications might be much larger than anyone expects - lots of people seem to handle guns without really ever having been exposed to the two main rules of handling firearms:
Always treat a gun as though it is loaded.
Never point a gun at something you don't intend to kill or destroy.
I'm actually surprised that more "gun safety" advocates aren't on board with this kind of idea since it provides a perfect place to promulgate questionable notions like always keeping guns locked up in hard storage.
Looking only inside the USA your point is moot, as you guys have a huge number of guns in circulation.
I didn't only look inside the USA.
You knew when you wrote the above sentence I didn't only look inside the USA because my next sentence addresses Switzerland.
So you deleted the part in which I addressed a country that was not America, which was in the same paragraph after the sentence you just quoted, and then tried to claim that I was only looking at America.
Disingenuous and disrespectful.
Pop an "IF" in front of my statement, and you might see I'm not being disingenuous and disrespectful at all.
I'm not personally attacking you, only addressing a thought. How you interpret it is up to you.
I would argue you look at the gun violence in countries with a low number of guns or low gun ownership to see a very obvious correlation between a low number of guns equalling a significantly low rate of gun violence.
For starters, invalid. In the US, the gun numbers have gone up while violent crime has gone down, demonstrating no correlation.
Second, as I pointed out in a sentence you deleted in order to facilitate your disingenuous misrepresentation of my argument, Switzerland has mandatory gun ownership, and a high number of guns, but has low gun crime, demonstrating further that number of guns is not correlated to low gun crime.
Third, low numbers of guns is not correlated to less violent crime. Russia is an example of this.
Fourth, and most importantly, tighter gun control laws does not necessarily relate to less gun crime. See also Chicago.
Looking at your points;
The USA is still a very violent place to live > the number of shooting deaths there compared to pretty much any other western civilised country is gobsmackingly sad.
Saying that it's improving is good to hear, but it's got a very long way to go before it's near what other countries would consider as acceptable.
RE: Point 2, Switzerland conscripts every eligible male into military service, similar to Israel & Singapore.
Every one of these men is allowed to keep their firearms, you're right there. So every one of these gun owners you're talking about is not only military trained and very aware of how to safely use a firearm, but also aware that anyone else out there may be the same.
In the USA this is not the case, so I would suggest this is like comparing apples with oranges.
Point 3 is also comparing a rich western country with a strong police force with that of a decaying and corrupt country with a social support network that is severely lacking. If you're going to compare the USA with another country relating to crime, the USA is only really comparable to South Africa in terms of gun-deaths, where as we know, the police force is severely outgunned and spread thin, and violence is so commonly expected that many erect massive walls around their houses (or emigrate to Australia ;), so much so in my hometown I commonly get called 'token', as in token-aussie, given the large number of Kiwi's, South African's and Pom's living here).
As to your 4th point, look at my country, Australia.
We had a gun-buyback program implemented in the 90's following the Port Arthur Massacre. Guns all over the country were bought back and crushed, and gun ownership laws were tightened. It'd arguable as to how much it achieved, but since then we have had zero massacre's.
Statistics can be used to prove anything if you allow yourself to be persuaded. Common sense tells me that if I chose to take up boxing, I'm going to get punched.
Common sense also tells me, that if there's lots of guns in circulation, I have a greater chance of getting shot, either accidently or not.
I think we can all agree on this.
Now here's the but where the pro-gun types tend to differ > they will argue that guns aren't to blame for shootings, it's the people > the violent people.
I would suggest that each country has to adapt to their citizen's, and that in the case of the USA, where violence IS a problem, that tighter rules on gun ownership would only be a positive step.
weapons — are most certainly a necessity for the security of a free state. They most certainly do something.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
Honestly, I don't see why this is such a big deal, countries change their constitutions to suit demands all the time, this is not some sacred cow we're talking about.
Because there's no need to change something when there's no need to change something. Demonstrate the need.
You guys have a massacre like Sandy Hook, and there's no need for change?!??! .....Sandy Hook is not an isolated case!
Are you serious?
The USA is still a very violent place to live > the number of shooting deaths there compared to pretty much any other western civilised country is gobsmackingly sad.
Point out to me any other major western power with as much (bad) racial history and cultural/ethical diversity as the U.S. has.
And, yes. I am outright saying right now that a major source of U.S. violence is the cultural/ethical diversity and the (bad) racial history within it.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
... You really need to read up on why the U.S. rebelled against the British.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
... You really need to read up on why the U.S. rebelled against the British.
And you probably need to stop mythologizing them. You did not want to pay the taxes we levied in order to pay for the wars we conducted in your defence against the French.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
well, no. I'm pretty sure that had the British given the colonies some say in how they payed (and direct representation in the parliament), then there would have been no problem. Half the problem the colonies had with Britain was that they felt like second class citizens.
There is a reason that "taxation without representation" was something of a rallying cry, as well as "give me liberty or give me death". The Colonies honestly felt that they were being mistreated. And honestly, they kinda were.
And then the actions of the British honestly just got worse.
And on the subject of said wars waged in America's defense... who instigated those wars, again (or, should I say, that war)? who had little to no say in what was going on in the country they were supposedly defending? And what happened once the war was over? What honestly would have changed in the colonies had the French taken over? Honestly, the Americas probably would have revolted sooner, because now there's no loyalty to the home country getting in the way. And, as the British saw, it is not strategically or tactically feasible to attempt to quell an uprising that big.
And you probably need to stop mythologizing them. You did not want to pay the taxes we levied in order to pay for the wars we conducted in your defence against the French.
I'm not going to dispute the historical accuracy of your statement, its reasonably correct. But, whether the American's perspective was *accurate* or not is irrelevant to this discussion. What matters is that the American's perspective framed the cultural thought on guns and military style weapons. There can't really be any dispute that, at the very least, the Americans *thought* they were fighting against a tyrannical government and needed the appropriate tools to do so.
When you take this frame of mind, and extrapolate it, there shouldn't really be any question in anyones mind that the framer's really did intend for the average American citizen to be able to have weaponry sufficient to protect themselves from unjust governmental interference. Now, the point that there is no way they could have anticipated modern weaponry, like tanks, nuclear weapons, etc, is a valid point. But, I don't think that extends down to assault rifles. And certainly not down to "assault style" rifles, which is just double speak for "normal rifles that have a different body, but function in the exact same way but, OMG, scary because they *look* like assault rifles."
My point on the Calc 2 class is that I would argue that for many people while Calc 2 may not be 100% useless it also may not be the best choice of class for them to take. For example someone going to a tech school for auto mechanics may be better served taking more shop classes...
Dude, you took a course on small animals and three (3) courses that you said you did nothing in. And I see you took life education as well.
So if you're saying that high school was a waste of your time, not sure exactly how that's an endorsement of what you're saying.
Nor do I understand how "don't take higher level math courses" is a great solution. If you're complaining about people not learning stuff in high school they didn't in middle school, why is Calc 2 a class that you're taking aim at?
I had a ton of choice which was great. I was able to take all of the available science courses, 5 different programming classes, quite a few things that were great. But... I took all of the science courses and all of the programming courses, and was a year ahead in math and still had time to take 3 TAs, take a class off, take a bunch of foods classes, etc... etc...
ALso I forgot to mention this earlier but I did take 1 year of German in high school.
And you took all of that in middle school? If not, how was high school just a rehash of middle school for you?
First of all... are you completely unable to decipher an exaggeration? You caught me! no High School was not 100% a re-hash of Middle School. And no my first year of college was not 100% a re-hash of High School. But it was not 0%... and some classes were a 100% re-hash (I'm looking at you college Speech class).
My point in this whole discussion and why I bring up both sides of some classes being completely worthless because they literally don't teach anything and some classes being worthless because they teach things that the majority of students would never need to use, is that there is plenty of "wasted" time in public school already. I see no reason to believe that there is no way to fit a class on important life skills into the electives when the electives include garbage options. Then to refute Tiax's claim that all garbage classes should be replaced with... more college classes... I brought up that despite me taking a ton of garbage classes I was still overly prepared for college. So why not push more life skills teaching into High School?
Every one of these men is allowed to keep their firearms, you're right there. So every one of these gun owners you're talking about is not only military trained and very aware of how to safely use a firearm, but also aware that anyone else out there may be the same.
This sounds a lot like standard American pro-gun arguments.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
And you trust those authority figures to always have the best interests of the civilians at heart? You shouldn't. The threat of armed insurgency is the ultimate check on the abuse of government power.
Even setting that aside, it is not generally the practice of countries that claim to be "free" to decide on their citizens' behalf what they do and don't need.
You guys have a massacre like Sandy Hook, and there's no need for change?!??! .....Sandy Hook is not an isolated case!
Are you serious?
There are more fatal lightning strikes in the U.S. than there are rampage shootings. You are literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
There is certainly a gun violence problem in America. But rampage shootings aren't it. It is precisely because they are so strange and tragic that the media gives them wall-to-wall coverage when they occur. The vast, vast majority of gun homicides in this country are single-victim, committed with ordinary handguns, and - here's the key - gang-related.
Please, dude. I get that you're horrified by gun violence. Who wouldn't be? But everything you've said here tells us you don't understand even the basics of the gun situation in America.
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There are more fatal lightning strikes in the U.S. than there are rampage shootings. You are literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
In the US, there are also more annual bee sting deaths and deaths from being thrown from a horse than mass shooting deaths. You are something like 10 times more likely to die from falling down stairs than from a mass shooting.
Also, of the roughly 32,000 annual gun deaths in the US, about 2/3 are suicides. Presumably few to none of these would be prevented by gun regulations.
Also, of the roughly 32,000 annual gun deaths in the US, about 2/3 are suicides. Presumably few to none of these would be prevented by gun regulations.
Actually, assuming the gun regulations reduce the rate of gun ownership, a lot of them probably would. Suicide is an impulse decision (something like 90% of suicide survivors never repeat the attempt). And like all impulse decisions, things that make it really easy - like just pulling a trigger - make it more common, whereas if you have to work at it, you're more likely to have second thoughts. Hell, I don't have data on this, but I'd bet a study will find that the guns used in suicides are disproportionately those kept immediately at hand and not stored in locked safes.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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And you probably need to stop mythologizing them. You did not want to pay the taxes we levied in order to pay for the wars we conducted in your defence against the French.
I'm not going to dispute the historical accuracy of your statement, its reasonably correct. But, whether the American's perspective was *accurate* or not is irrelevant to this discussion. What matters is that the American's perspective framed the cultural thought on guns and military style weapons. There can't really be any dispute that, at the very least, the Americans *thought* they were fighting against a tyrannical government and needed the appropriate tools to do so.
When you take this frame of mind, and extrapolate it, there shouldn't really be any question in anyones mind that the framer's really did intend for the average American citizen to be able to have weaponry sufficient to protect themselves from unjust governmental interference. Now, the point that there is no way they could have anticipated modern weaponry, like tanks, nuclear weapons, etc, is a valid point. But, I don't think that extends down to assault rifles. And certainly not down to "assault style" rifles, which is just double speak for "normal rifles that have a different body, but function in the exact same way but, OMG, scary because they *look* like assault rifles."
Yes, this is what I meant.
Kahedron, I was a history major who focused on early american/pre-Rev. history. I know about most of the myths.
But, as bLatch wrote, the truth is not particularly relevant here. The fact of the matter is that the average colonials joined the rebellion because they saw the Parliament as acting in a tyrannical manner, and the Framers decided that arming the populace (and in doing so creating the ever-present fear of an armed rebellion as B_S alludes to) is a sensible way to prevent the government from becoming a tyranny.
Honestly, the issue now is that people don't respect fire-arms. They are seen as a symbol of power and masculinity by many, and so they use it as such.
Afaik, everything B_S wrote above is correct. Gun violence is a very serious issue, but not because massacres occur here and there. There is no feasible way to prevent them, and just because you ban guns (an impossibility in the U.S.) doesn't mean that massacres won't continue to occur. Need I remind you of the incident in China where a single man knifed and killed many dozens?
If anything, educating people on guns and removing the glamour they have may be the key to reducing gun violence.
Pop an "IF" in front of my statement, and you might see I'm not being disingenuous and disrespectful at all.
Yes, I'm sure if I changed your statement to make it not disrespectful or a distortion of the truth, it would be neither disrespectful nor a distortion of the truth.
The question is if that is within your capacity to do, why did you choose to post a disrespectful distortion of the truth instead?
I'm not personally attacking you, only addressing a thought. How you interpret it is up to you.
You addressed a thought you attributed to my post that most certainly was not my intention, then omitted things I said in order to better misrepresent my opinions. I interpreted it the only way one can interpret such things: that you are being rude and disingenuous.
Looking at your points;
The USA is still a very violent place to live > the number of shooting deaths there compared to pretty much any other western civilised country is gobsmackingly sad.
I mean, I don't wish to diminish the tragedy of any shooting death, but how many Western civilized countries can you name that even come close to our population?
RE: Point 2, Switzerland conscripts every eligible male into military service, similar to Israel & Singapore.
Every one of these men is allowed to keep their firearms, you're right there. So every one of these gun owners you're talking about is not only military trained and very aware of how to safely use a firearm, but also aware that anyone else out there may be the same.
In the USA this is not the case, so I would suggest this is like comparing apples with oranges.
Except it isn't at all. Saying that per capita gun ownership correlates to higher numbers of gun deaths does not work when a country with mandatory gun ownership does not have higher numbers of gun deaths.
Point 3 is also comparing a rich western country with a strong police force with that of a decaying and corrupt country with a social support network that is severely lacking. If you're going to compare the USA with another country relating to crime, the USA is only really comparable to South Africa in terms of gun-deaths, where as we know, the police force is severely outgunned and spread thin, and violence is so commonly expected that many erect massive walls around their houses (or emigrate to Australia ;), so much so in my hometown I commonly get called 'token', as in token-aussie, given the large number of Kiwi's, South African's and Pom's living here).
Once again, you are comparing countries with mismatched populations. The US homicide rate is 4.7 for every 100,000 inhabitants, which is relatively high as far as European countries are concerned, but certainly nowhere close to either South Africa or Russia.
As to your 4th point, look at my country, Australia.
We had a gun-buyback program implemented in the 90's following the Port Arthur Massacre. Guns all over the country were bought back and crushed, and gun ownership laws were tightened. It'd arguable as to how much it achieved, but since then we have had zero massacre's.
You haven't actually addressed my point. Tighter gun control laws are not correlated to less gun violence.
I would suggest that each country has to adapt to their citizen's, and that in the case of the USA, where violence IS a problem, that tighter rules on gun ownership would only be a positive step.
Except facts demonstratively prove this is not the case, as I have already illustrated.
weapons — are most certainly a necessity for the security of a free state. They most certainly do something.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
As Blinking Spirit already said, the police cannot always be relied upon. Sometimes governments are oppressive or corrupt, and thus weapons provide a check against those who would abuse their power against the innocent. Indeed, this is how our country came into being in the first place.
But it's not just if governments turn tyrannical. Sometimes police just cannot be relied upon to show up on time. Say I live in rural America where I'm miles away from anyone else. Say I live in a bad neighborhood in a large city. Say I live anywhere in which the police have terrible response times. If someone's trying to break into my house, why should I not be allowed to defend myself?
Then there's the big one: sometimes civilization just breaks down. The Ferguson debacle is one instance. The LA riots were another. When the police will not or cannot protect the populace, and when law and order dissolves into chaos, why should people not be allowed the means of defending themselves?
There is very simply no reason why a sane, responsible person should not be allowed to own a gun.
What the hell was a nine-year-old doing with an Uzi? The lesson apparently went wrong exactly where you'd expect it to go wrong with a small child firing a fully automatic weapon: she lost control of the recoil and the bullets went spraying everywhere. It's like letting her drive a car on the street and then being surprised when she hits something because she can't see over the dashboard. Regardless of where you stand on Second Amendment rights in general, or on how to educate children, there are some things that they simply cannot be allowed to do under any circumstances.
I agree; people who are physically incapable of safely handling guns shouldn't. And if they do, then they should be held responsible (or the adults making the decision for them should be, depending on age/intent) for if something goes wrong as a result.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
... You really need to read up on why the U.S. rebelled against the British.
And you probably need to stop mythologizing them. You did not want to pay the taxes we levied in order to pay for the wars we conducted in your defence against the French.
We were perfectly capable of holding our own against the French. That said, this is completely tangential and I don't see what it has to do with the topic at hand.
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The Honda Civic.
Okay, you're not an American, so there's no reason for you to know this, but the first ten amendments of the Constitution aren't really "amendments" in the normal sense you're thinking of. They aren't after-the-fact rules patches. They were introduced to Congress as the Bill of Rights in 1789, a little over a year after Constitutional ratification, and they were written by James Madison, the man who wrote the Constitution. Basically, people thought that some rights were so obvious that they didn't need stating, and that stating them would imply that those are the only rights people have and therefore give the government license to trample over all the other rights. This opinion carried the day at the Constitutional Convention, which is why these rights aren't in the Constitution itself. But Madison and company soon changed their minds, hence the Bill of Rights, with the addition of the Ninth Amendment specifically to head off that worry about enumeration. They're called "amendments", and technically they are, but practically they're more like a part of the main body of the Constitution. They certainly don't represent a change in Americans' thinking; it's not like they only decided later on that free speech and due process and so forth were good ideas.
Long story short: these ten kind of are sacred cows. (Well, the ones that are relevant; I don't think anybody is particularly attached to the Third Amendment anymore.) It is legally possible to change them, of course, but realistically it's never going to happen. Other countries change their constitutions all the time, but the United States has only changed the Constitution 27 times in 227 years, only repealed an amendment once (the Eighteenth, prohibiting alcohol, the one really dumb amendment), and never even modified One through Ten. Repeal of the Second Amendment simply isn't part of the conversation; gun-control advocates know they'll never be able to pull it off, so they don't even bother. So they try to reinterpret it to say what they want it to say (it doesn't), or circumvent it in other ways, or actually accept that it's a part of the American social fabric and work to improve gun safety in ways that are consistent with it.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
My gen. ed. classes in college were also a bull***** rehash of middle school/high school concepts. So dull. Why am I paying $10000/year for this garbage?!?
Since this is a thing, I'll post my high school classes:
H Geometry, H Algebra II (I took H Algebra I in middle school), H Trigonometry, H Probability & Statistics (I love math, but not formulas - like hell I'd take Calc!), H World History I, H World History II, H U.S. History, H. Government, H Philosophy, H Bioethics, H Sociology, H Civil War History, H English 9, H English 10, H English 11, H English 12, H Biology, H Chemistry, H Physics, H Anatomy, H Physiology, Basic Tech Drawing, Intermediate Orchestra (2 years), AP Music Theory, Gym/Health, Gym/Driver's Ed, Spanish I, Spanish II, Spanish III, and I had a free period every other day to be a guidance aide whereupon I would deliver passes to students to let them see their guidance counselors. (I also took H Earth Science in middle school, so I had...quite a few credits. I graduated with an advanced diploma, and could have finished high school a year early, but opted not to for personal reasons.)
Anyway, while I enjoyed most of my classes in theory, they were all terribly slow, boring, and taught me little new. My biggest learning experiences in high school were social and emotional. So why not?
Edit: Haha, I just found this gifset: http://bigbadsteppenwolf.tumblr.com/post/95848234140
Strangely appropriate.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Which freed me up to take courses that actually pertained to my major or that I wanted to take.
... How much choice, exactly, did you have in the courses you took, Fluffy? If you're taking classes on small animals, and, as you describe it, three courses you did nothing in, I'm thinking the fact that you didn't find high school a valuable learning experience is at least partially your own doing.
I didn't only look inside the USA.
You knew when you wrote the above sentence I didn't only look inside the USA because my next sentence addresses Switzerland.
So you deleted the part in which I addressed a country that was not America, which was in the same paragraph after the sentence you just quoted, and then tried to claim that I was only looking at America.
Disingenuous and disrespectful.
For starters, invalid. In the US, the gun numbers have gone up while violent crime has gone down, demonstrating no correlation.
Second, as I pointed out in a sentence you deleted in order to facilitate your disingenuous misrepresentation of my argument, Switzerland has mandatory gun ownership, and a high number of guns, but has low gun crime, demonstrating further that number of guns is not correlated to low gun crime.
Third, low numbers of guns is not correlated to less violent crime. Russia is an example of this.
Fourth, and most importantly, tighter gun control laws does not necessarily relate to less gun crime. See also Chicago.
A car, homemade explosives, possibly a knife depending on crowd density.
It also increases the risk of an someone else's injury/death. That's the entire point of a gun. To kill things that aren't you.
And things that are designed to kill things that aren't you — that is to say, weapons — are most certainly a necessity for the security of a free state. They most certainly do something.
Arbitrary statement is arbitrary. Demonstrate why it should be changed.
Silly argument is silly. Neither was any part of the Bill of Rights. Neither was a law forbidding slavery. Demonstrate why it should be removed.
The Bill of Rights was not written to protect the people from the British.
The Bill of Rights was written to protect the people from the US government.
And it's not an accident that the right to bear arms directly follows the First Amendment.
Because there's no need to change something when there's no need to change something. Demonstrate the need.
To be fair, needing to take a foreign language is relatively new. When I graduated high school it wasnt a requirement to get into college. Actually foreign languages were taught mainly in college. I believe only Spanish, French, and Latin were offered in my high school when I went and all of them were 1 year introductory courses.
Actually it is a sacred cow to many in America. For as many people that we read about gun violence about, there are thousands of law abiding gun owners. Punishing the many because of the actions of a few is not the proper way to go about it.
As for changing the law, it is very hard to get laws changed or removed from the books. Especially something like the constitution. Its been decades since an amendment was added to the Constitution, there are other issues much bigger then the right to bear arms that need to be addressed, so I doubt America will change anything about guns any time soon. The money involved not to mention the divide it would cause with in the society, would be unrepairable and probably cause another civil war.
My point on the Calc 2 class is that I would argue that for many people while Calc 2 may not be 100% useless it also may not be the best choice of class for them to take. For example someone going to a tech school for auto mechanics may be better served taking more shop classes...
I had a ton of choice which was great. I was able to take all of the available science courses, 5 different programming classes, quite a few things that were great. But... I took all of the science courses and all of the programming courses, and was a year ahead in math and still had time to take 3 TAs, take a class off, take a bunch of foods classes, etc... etc...
ALso I forgot to mention this earlier but I did take 1 year of German in high school.
The above point is central, and anyone not familiar with American Constitutional law should read it carefully.
The first ten amendments were not "added" to the Constitution. They were seen by the founders as inherently protected by the Constitution and by common law. For example, because the Constitution did not specifically spell out any Federal power to regulate arms, they reasoned, no such regulations could ever be passed. But ultimately, to be extra clear, they decided to spell out some of these rights anyway. Early citizens of the US would have viewed the right to bear arms as inherent in the common-law natural right to self defense.
Even a century years later, the US Supreme Court held the same view: "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." United States v. Cruikshank (1876). In other words, the right was thought to exist even if not spelled out in the Constitution. US law has traditionally viewed the right as akin to a "natural right," i.e. a right granted by God or nature, not by the government.
What the hell was a nine-year-old doing with an Uzi? The lesson apparently went wrong exactly where you'd expect it to go wrong with a small child firing a fully automatic weapon: she lost control of the recoil and the bullets went spraying everywhere. It's like letting her drive a car on the street and then being surprised when she hits something because she can't see over the dashboard. Regardless of where you stand on Second Amendment rights in general, or on how to educate children, there are some things that they simply cannot be allowed to do under any circumstances.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Albeit the girl is nine and the original post said sixteen, accidents happen and things like this are likely to occur. This girl now has to live for the rest of her life with the fact that she killed a dude.
So if you're saying that high school was a waste of your time, not sure exactly how that's an endorsement of what you're saying.
Nor do I understand how "don't take higher level math courses" is a great solution. If you're complaining about people not learning stuff in high school they didn't in middle school, why is Calc 2 a class that you're taking aim at?
And you took all of that in middle school? If not, how was high school just a rehash of middle school for you?
Well, no one can say the instructor didn't end up teaching a valuable lesson about gun safety that day.
Yeah, that is Darwin Award material. I'm getting an Uzi as weighing 7.72 pounds when empty. How is it reasonable to assume that a nine-year-old girl is going to be able to maintain control over that thing when it's loaded and recoiling?
This was totally the instructors fault. You do not give a youth, new to shooting a full clip for a fully automatic gun.
There are plenty of children that get taught to shoot at a young age, younger then 9, and dont hurt anyone.
So considering it used to be fine, it doesn't really seem like teaching a 16 year old how to handle a .22 is the end of the world.
I also think the safety implications might be much larger than anyone expects - lots of people seem to handle guns without really ever having been exposed to the two main rules of handling firearms:
I'm actually surprised that more "gun safety" advocates aren't on board with this kind of idea since it provides a perfect place to promulgate questionable notions like always keeping guns locked up in hard storage.
Pop an "IF" in front of my statement, and you might see I'm not being disingenuous and disrespectful at all.
I'm not personally attacking you, only addressing a thought. How you interpret it is up to you.
Looking at your points;
The USA is still a very violent place to live > the number of shooting deaths there compared to pretty much any other western civilised country is gobsmackingly sad.
Saying that it's improving is good to hear, but it's got a very long way to go before it's near what other countries would consider as acceptable.
RE: Point 2, Switzerland conscripts every eligible male into military service, similar to Israel & Singapore.
Every one of these men is allowed to keep their firearms, you're right there. So every one of these gun owners you're talking about is not only military trained and very aware of how to safely use a firearm, but also aware that anyone else out there may be the same.
In the USA this is not the case, so I would suggest this is like comparing apples with oranges.
Point 3 is also comparing a rich western country with a strong police force with that of a decaying and corrupt country with a social support network that is severely lacking. If you're going to compare the USA with another country relating to crime, the USA is only really comparable to South Africa in terms of gun-deaths, where as we know, the police force is severely outgunned and spread thin, and violence is so commonly expected that many erect massive walls around their houses (or emigrate to Australia ;), so much so in my hometown I commonly get called 'token', as in token-aussie, given the large number of Kiwi's, South African's and Pom's living here).
As to your 4th point, look at my country, Australia.
We had a gun-buyback program implemented in the 90's following the Port Arthur Massacre. Guns all over the country were bought back and crushed, and gun ownership laws were tightened. It'd arguable as to how much it achieved, but since then we have had zero massacre's.
Statistics can be used to prove anything if you allow yourself to be persuaded. Common sense tells me that if I chose to take up boxing, I'm going to get punched.
Common sense also tells me, that if there's lots of guns in circulation, I have a greater chance of getting shot, either accidently or not.
I think we can all agree on this.
Now here's the but where the pro-gun types tend to differ > they will argue that guns aren't to blame for shootings, it's the people > the violent people.
I would suggest that each country has to adapt to their citizen's, and that in the case of the USA, where violence IS a problem, that tighter rules on gun ownership would only be a positive step.
In the hands of the Authority figures that protect the civilians, like Police, Army etc., I agree with you.
I don't see why a civilian needs, or should have a right to own an assault-type weapon designed to be used by an army.
You guys have a massacre like Sandy Hook, and there's no need for change?!??! .....Sandy Hook is not an isolated case!
Are you serious?
Point out to me any other major western power with as much (bad) racial history and cultural/ethical diversity as the U.S. has.
And, yes. I am outright saying right now that a major source of U.S. violence is the cultural/ethical diversity and the (bad) racial history within it.
... You really need to read up on why the U.S. rebelled against the British.
Based on Google, there are 98,817 public schools in the U.S.
Sandy Hook, and Columbine and all those other massacres, are rare.
Far more pertinent is violence in school.
And you probably need to stop mythologizing them. You did not want to pay the taxes we levied in order to pay for the wars we conducted in your defence against the French.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
There is a reason that "taxation without representation" was something of a rallying cry, as well as "give me liberty or give me death". The Colonies honestly felt that they were being mistreated. And honestly, they kinda were.
And then the actions of the British honestly just got worse.
And on the subject of said wars waged in America's defense... who instigated those wars, again (or, should I say, that war)? who had little to no say in what was going on in the country they were supposedly defending? And what happened once the war was over? What honestly would have changed in the colonies had the French taken over? Honestly, the Americas probably would have revolted sooner, because now there's no loyalty to the home country getting in the way. And, as the British saw, it is not strategically or tactically feasible to attempt to quell an uprising that big.
"normality is a paved road: it is comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow there."
-Vincent Van Gogh
things I hate:
1. lists.
b. inconsistencies.
V. incorrect math.
2. quotes in signatures
III: irony.
there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can make reasonable conclusions based on conjecture.
I'm not going to dispute the historical accuracy of your statement, its reasonably correct. But, whether the American's perspective was *accurate* or not is irrelevant to this discussion. What matters is that the American's perspective framed the cultural thought on guns and military style weapons. There can't really be any dispute that, at the very least, the Americans *thought* they were fighting against a tyrannical government and needed the appropriate tools to do so.
When you take this frame of mind, and extrapolate it, there shouldn't really be any question in anyones mind that the framer's really did intend for the average American citizen to be able to have weaponry sufficient to protect themselves from unjust governmental interference. Now, the point that there is no way they could have anticipated modern weaponry, like tanks, nuclear weapons, etc, is a valid point. But, I don't think that extends down to assault rifles. And certainly not down to "assault style" rifles, which is just double speak for "normal rifles that have a different body, but function in the exact same way but, OMG, scary because they *look* like assault rifles."
First of all... are you completely unable to decipher an exaggeration? You caught me! no High School was not 100% a re-hash of Middle School. And no my first year of college was not 100% a re-hash of High School. But it was not 0%... and some classes were a 100% re-hash (I'm looking at you college Speech class).
My point in this whole discussion and why I bring up both sides of some classes being completely worthless because they literally don't teach anything and some classes being worthless because they teach things that the majority of students would never need to use, is that there is plenty of "wasted" time in public school already. I see no reason to believe that there is no way to fit a class on important life skills into the electives when the electives include garbage options. Then to refute Tiax's claim that all garbage classes should be replaced with... more college classes... I brought up that despite me taking a ton of garbage classes I was still overly prepared for college. So why not push more life skills teaching into High School?
And you trust those authority figures to always have the best interests of the civilians at heart? You shouldn't. The threat of armed insurgency is the ultimate check on the abuse of government power.
Even setting that aside, it is not generally the practice of countries that claim to be "free" to decide on their citizens' behalf what they do and don't need.
There are more fatal lightning strikes in the U.S. than there are rampage shootings. You are literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
There is certainly a gun violence problem in America. But rampage shootings aren't it. It is precisely because they are so strange and tragic that the media gives them wall-to-wall coverage when they occur. The vast, vast majority of gun homicides in this country are single-victim, committed with ordinary handguns, and - here's the key - gang-related.
Please, dude. I get that you're horrified by gun violence. Who wouldn't be? But everything you've said here tells us you don't understand even the basics of the gun situation in America.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
In the US, there are also more annual bee sting deaths and deaths from being thrown from a horse than mass shooting deaths. You are something like 10 times more likely to die from falling down stairs than from a mass shooting.
Also, of the roughly 32,000 annual gun deaths in the US, about 2/3 are suicides. Presumably few to none of these would be prevented by gun regulations.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Yes, this is what I meant.
Kahedron, I was a history major who focused on early american/pre-Rev. history. I know about most of the myths.
But, as bLatch wrote, the truth is not particularly relevant here. The fact of the matter is that the average colonials joined the rebellion because they saw the Parliament as acting in a tyrannical manner, and the Framers decided that arming the populace (and in doing so creating the ever-present fear of an armed rebellion as B_S alludes to) is a sensible way to prevent the government from becoming a tyranny.
Honestly, the issue now is that people don't respect fire-arms. They are seen as a symbol of power and masculinity by many, and so they use it as such.
Afaik, everything B_S wrote above is correct. Gun violence is a very serious issue, but not because massacres occur here and there. There is no feasible way to prevent them, and just because you ban guns (an impossibility in the U.S.) doesn't mean that massacres won't continue to occur. Need I remind you of the incident in China where a single man knifed and killed many dozens?
If anything, educating people on guns and removing the glamour they have may be the key to reducing gun violence.
The question is if that is within your capacity to do, why did you choose to post a disrespectful distortion of the truth instead?
You addressed a thought you attributed to my post that most certainly was not my intention, then omitted things I said in order to better misrepresent my opinions. I interpreted it the only way one can interpret such things: that you are being rude and disingenuous.
I mean, I don't wish to diminish the tragedy of any shooting death, but how many Western civilized countries can you name that even come close to our population?
Except it isn't at all. Saying that per capita gun ownership correlates to higher numbers of gun deaths does not work when a country with mandatory gun ownership does not have higher numbers of gun deaths.
Once again, you are comparing countries with mismatched populations. The US homicide rate is 4.7 for every 100,000 inhabitants, which is relatively high as far as European countries are concerned, but certainly nowhere close to either South Africa or Russia.
You haven't actually addressed my point. Tighter gun control laws are not correlated to less gun violence.
I mean, for ****'s sake, there's ONE legal gun store in Mexico. Exactly one. In the entire country.
Except facts demonstratively prove this is not the case, as I have already illustrated.
As Blinking Spirit already said, the police cannot always be relied upon. Sometimes governments are oppressive or corrupt, and thus weapons provide a check against those who would abuse their power against the innocent. Indeed, this is how our country came into being in the first place.
But it's not just if governments turn tyrannical. Sometimes police just cannot be relied upon to show up on time. Say I live in rural America where I'm miles away from anyone else. Say I live in a bad neighborhood in a large city. Say I live anywhere in which the police have terrible response times. If someone's trying to break into my house, why should I not be allowed to defend myself?
Then there's the big one: sometimes civilization just breaks down. The Ferguson debacle is one instance. The LA riots were another. When the police will not or cannot protect the populace, and when law and order dissolves into chaos, why should people not be allowed the means of defending themselves?
There is very simply no reason why a sane, responsible person should not be allowed to own a gun.
As Blinking Spirit pointed out, mass shootings occur less often than lightning strikes.
Nor do I understand why the actions of a mentally-ill individual justify the removal of freedoms for 313.9 million people.
I agree; people who are physically incapable of safely handling guns shouldn't. And if they do, then they should be held responsible (or the adults making the decision for them should be, depending on age/intent) for if something goes wrong as a result.
We were perfectly capable of holding our own against the French. That said, this is completely tangential and I don't see what it has to do with the topic at hand.
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2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
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