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I love the line "We Need a Return to ‘Well-Regulated’ Gun Ownership" in that article. It's delightfully naive. We have almost the strictest gun laws we've ever had. There really aren't more regulated times to return to.
I think it says less about how bad guns are, and more about how harmless terrorists are. More people die from being struck by lightning than from terrorists in the US.
On February 20 2012 03:25 MerdaPura wrote: Owning a gun gives you the option of slef defense, but IMO martial arts do that job pretty well. And also, the worst part about having a gun, is that you may want to use it. And from there on countless things may happen, good or bad, impossible to know. Finishing: Learn kung-fu
I agree with the poster above me, you can have a 10th dan in karate or whatever but if someone really wants to kill you... they will kill you. I've been doing martial arts for six years now and if anything I am way less confrontational, in a way disciplining yourself to not get into a fight in the first place has more uses than coming out on top in a fight.
Again, if someone really wants to kill you, and wants to risk serious jail time they will probably kill you no matter what elite gun or fighting skills you may have.
On January 17 2014 05:32 zeo wrote: Again, if someone really wants to kill you, and wants to risk serious jail time they will probably kill you no matter what elite gun or fighting skills you may have.
I don't see your point. 1st degree murder is obviously almost impossible to defend yourself from. But what about unpremeditated acts of violence? That's where most violence comes from around here and, if you have the right training and mentality for the situation you find yourself in, your chances of survival can be drastically boosted.
On January 17 2014 05:32 zeo wrote: Again, if someone really wants to kill you, and wants to risk serious jail time they will probably kill you no matter what elite gun or fighting skills you may have.
That is true. A lot of non-gun weapons, such as knives, blunt objects, etc, are really assassination weapons, not self defense weapons. They are much more useful when the person they are used against doesn't see them, since they don't really require as much precision as a gun and can easily hit a target in the same motion as pulling them from concealment, which is really only advantageous when they are used in aggression rather than defense. I'm not saying you can't do that with a gun, it's just that guns are a hell of a lot louder, making it harder to get away with it, and also have much less room for error, meaning that more (if any) training is required.
On January 17 2014 05:32 zeo wrote: Again, if someone really wants to kill you, and wants to risk serious jail time they will probably kill you no matter what elite gun or fighting skills you may have.
I don't see your point. 1st degree murder is obviously almost impossible to defend yourself from. But what about unpremeditated acts of violence? That's where most violence comes from around here and, if you have the right training and mentality for the situation you find yourself in, your chances of survival can be drastically boosted.
What you are saying is true, just in an earlier post I said that trying your hardest to not get into a situation in the first place is better in the long run than having the skills to get out of it.
Someone running up and stabbing you from behind (like in the video) is something that does not happen and if it does happen to you you are in deep shit. On the other hand some bum pulling a knife on you in the street and asking for money is completely different, and yes having the means to defend yourself comes in handy. But not going down that dark alley at night, not threatening people and not making enemies, is a smarter thing to do than arming yourself, then proceeding to be a dick and not have a care in the world for consequences. No? Teaching yourself how to be sensible should take precedent over learning how to use a gun.
On January 17 2014 05:38 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On January 17 2014 05:32 zeo wrote: Again, if someone really wants to kill you, and wants to risk serious jail time they will probably kill you no matter what elite gun or fighting skills you may have.
I don't see your point. 1st degree murder is obviously almost impossible to defend yourself from. But what about unpremeditated acts of violence? That's where most violence comes from around here and, if you have the right training and mentality for the situation you find yourself in, your chances of survival can be drastically boosted.
What you are saying is true, just in an earlier post I said that trying your hardest to not get into a situation in the first place is better in the long run than having the skills to get out of it.
Someone running up and stabbing you from behind (like in the video) is something that does not happen and if it does happen to you you are in deep shit. On the other hand some bum pulling a knife on you in the street and asking for money is completely different, and yes having the means to defend yourself comes in handy. But not going down that dark alley at night, not threatening people and not making enemies, is a smarter thing to do than arming yourself, then proceeding to be a dick and not have a care in the world for consequences. No? Teaching yourself how to be sensible should take precedent over learning how to use a gun.
Ah, so that's the point you were making. I agree with that 100%. No matter what you're using for self-defense, it's always going to be too easy to lose a fight for your life.
In Age of School Shootings, Lockdown Is the New Fire Drill
The North Carolina elementary school where Jackson Green, 5, counts to 100 and delights in celebrating classmates’ birthdays has gone into lockdown twice this school year, once for a drill and once for real, sending Jackson and his classmates to huddle quietly in a hidden corner of the classroom until their teacher says everything is O.K.
“It speaks to the psychological conditions of these children, that they’re alert, they’re on the lookout, that this danger is always present for them,” Jackson’s mother, Sarah Green, said in an interview. “It’s constantly on their minds.”
Though Jackson is still too young to understand the broader threats behind the drills, he has absorbed their lessons so well that he has started playing lockdown at home, Ms. Green said. “Attention everyone, this is a lockdown!” he announces in the playroom. “Turn off the lights!”
“For Jackson, it’s just normal,” Ms. Green said in an email. “Quite frankly, it is horrifying that my son imposes lockdowns on his little brother in the same way that he pretends to announce the lunch menu.”
In Louisville, the school where Rachel Hurd Anger’s daughter, Ella, attends second grade was locked down after a man with five BB guns walked onto the campus. A few days later, Ms. Hurd Anger said her daughter drew a red-and-yellow emergency button and taped it to her bedroom wall. When she presses it, she and her 4-year-old brother run to the basement to hide.
“It’s kind of like a security blanket,” Ms. Hurd Anger said. “She doesn’t want to take it down.”
The North Carolina elementary school where Jackson Green, 5, counts to 100 and delights in celebrating classmates’ birthdays has gone into lockdown twice this school year, once for a drill and once for real, sending Jackson and his classmates to huddle quietly in a hidden corner of the classroom until their teacher says everything is O.K.
“It speaks to the psychological conditions of these children, that they’re alert, they’re on the lookout, that this danger is always present for them,” Jackson’s mother, Sarah Green, said in an interview. “It’s constantly on their minds.”
Though Jackson is still too young to understand the broader threats behind the drills, he has absorbed their lessons so well that he has started playing lockdown at home, Ms. Green said. “Attention everyone, this is a lockdown!” he announces in the playroom. “Turn off the lights!”
“For Jackson, it’s just normal,” Ms. Green said in an email. “Quite frankly, it is horrifying that my son imposes lockdowns on his little brother in the same way that he pretends to announce the lunch menu.”
In Louisville, the school where Rachel Hurd Anger’s daughter, Ella, attends second grade was locked down after a man with five BB guns walked onto the campus. A few days later, Ms. Hurd Anger said her daughter drew a red-and-yellow emergency button and taped it to her bedroom wall. When she presses it, she and her 4-year-old brother run to the basement to hide.
“It’s kind of like a security blanket,” Ms. Hurd Anger said. “She doesn’t want to take it down.”
I left elementary school a decade ago and we had lockdown drills, they're not anything new. We called them Code Reds and they happened 1-2 times a year.
On January 17 2014 08:49 iVLosK! wrote: I left elementary school a decade ago and we had lockdown drills, they're not anything new. We called them Code Reds and they happened 1-2 times a year.
That's interesting. I don't think the article is making the claim that lockdowns are new though. The argument is that they're becoming disturbingly commonplace.
On January 17 2014 08:49 iVLosK! wrote: I left elementary school a decade ago and we had lockdown drills, they're not anything new. We called them Code Reds and they happened 1-2 times a year.
That's interesting. I don't think the article is making the claim that lockdowns are new though. The argument is that they're becoming disturbingly commonplace.
So are the warning speeches flight attendants give about the emergency exits. The commonality of safety exercises doesn't really have any correlation with the frequency of incidents they are meant to deal with.
Further, lockdown drills are good for more than just school shootings. Tornadoes, chemical spills, major lightning storms. I remember my high-school had a partial lockdown because someone had some kind of medical emergency. They locked down a good portion of the building to keep the halls clear for EMT's.
In the end, we probably should be doing lockdown drills regardless of whether school shootings continue to happen.
Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of "gun control" advocates?
The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.
If gun control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.
Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates. Washington, D.C., is a classic example, but just one among many.
When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. For the country as a whole, hand gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.
[...]
Guns are not the problem. People are the problem— including people who are determined to push gun control laws, either in ignorance of the facts or in defiance of the facts.
There is innocent ignorance and there is invincible, dogmatic and self-righteous ignorance. Every tragic mass shooting seems to bring out examples of both among gun control advocates.
My problem is that the people who argue against gun control and say that the problem is the people rather than the guns tend to be the same people who refuse to pay taxes and blame the poor for all the difficulties they're experiencing. Sure, gun control many not prevent many (if any) crimes. But social programs would. Social equality measures would. State-funded mental health establishment might, paired with 21st century legislation to that effect.
But no, the poor kids in ghettos, the sick white crackheads ought to get their shit together on their own. Or get shot dead by police or incarcerated shortly after they've snapped or have murdered a cashier because their life sucks and people don't give the slightest amount of fuck. Well they don't care until little sally gets killed because dad wouldn't pay a dollar out of his yearly income to feed people who'll fight for their subsistence before they let themselves die.
On January 21 2014 03:10 Djzapz wrote: My problem is that the people who argue against gun control and say that the problem is the people rather than the guns tend to be the same people who refuse to pay taxes and blame the poor for all the difficulties they're experiencing. , gun control many not prevent many (if any) crimes. But social programs would. Social equality measures would. State-funded mental health establishment might, paired with 21st century legislation to that effect.
But no, the poor kids in ghettos, the sick white crackheads ought to get their shit together on their own. Or get shot dead by police or incarcerated shortly after they've snapped or have murdered a cashier because their life sucks and people don't give the slightest amount of fuck. Well they don't care until little sally gets killed because dad wouldn't pay a dollar out of his yearly income to feed people who'll fight for their subsistence before they let themselves die.
On January 21 2014 03:10 Djzapz wrote: My problem is that the people who argue against gun control and say that the problem is the people rather than the guns tend to be the same people who refuse to pay taxes and blame the poor for all the difficulties they're experiencing. , gun control many not prevent many (if any) crimes. But social programs would. Social equality measures would. State-funded mental health establishment might, paired with 21st century legislation to that effect.
But no, the poor kids in ghettos, the sick white crackheads ought to get their shit together on their own. Or get shot dead by police or incarcerated shortly after they've snapped or have murdered a cashier because their life sucks and people don't give the slightest amount of fuck. Well they don't care until little sally gets killed because dad wouldn't pay a dollar out of his yearly income to feed people who'll fight for their subsistence before they let themselves die.
That says more about you than anyone else.
Your one liner says about more about you than my post says about me. My post referred the the observable fact that many people who are against gun control also tend to be against the actual, functional solutions to reduce gun violence. That being said, I'm not really a proponent of gun control, definitely not in the US. So I'm at least an exception to my observation... But I would argue that I don't really fit in my observation because I would never make for the sole reason of discrediting gun control. What's the point? If gun control doesn't work, and it doesn't, then make an effort and bring up something that does.
What my post says about me, perhaps, is that I have a nuanced understanding of the problem and its potential solutions as well as the ineffective solutions that are brought forward by some sheeple who have a very shallow understanding of the underlying causes of gun violence and criminality in the US.
If you happen to think that my assessment is wrong, please do me a favor and write, say, three lines. Make six times the effort. Articulate your thoughts as if you were graced with sapience. What have you got to add to this conversation?
On January 21 2014 03:10 Djzapz wrote: My problem is that the people who argue against gun control and say that the problem is the people rather than the guns tend to be the same people who refuse to pay taxes and blame the poor for all the difficulties they're experiencing. , gun control many not prevent many (if any) crimes. But social programs would. Social equality measures would. State-funded mental health establishment might, paired with 21st century legislation to that effect.
But no, the poor kids in ghettos, the sick white crackheads ought to get their shit together on their own. Or get shot dead by police or incarcerated shortly after they've snapped or have murdered a cashier because their life sucks and people don't give the slightest amount of fuck. Well they don't care until little sally gets killed because dad wouldn't pay a dollar out of his yearly income to feed people who'll fight for their subsistence before they let themselves die.
That says more about you than anyone else.
Your one liner says about more about you than my post says about me. My post referred the the observable fact that many people who are against gun control also tend to be against the actual, functional solutions to reduce gun violence. That being said, I'm not really a proponent of gun control, definitely not in the US. So I'm at least an exception to my observation... But I would argue that I don't really fit in my observation because I would never make for the sole reason of discrediting gun control. What's the point? If gun control doesn't work, and it doesn't, then make an effort and bring up something that does.
What my post says about me, perhaps, is that I have a nuanced understanding of the problem and its potential solutions as well as the ineffective solutions that are brought forward by some sheeple who have a very shallow understanding of the underlying causes of gun violence and criminality in the US.
If you happen to think that my assessment is wrong, please do me a favor and wrote say three lines. Make six times the effort. Articulate your thoughts as if you were graced with sapience.
Sometimes a man's head is so far up his ass it's not worth anyone's time to yank it out. All you can do is laugh it up.