Debate For All

Pacific methods will work against a civilised power which is exhausted from fighting a six year long war for survival. It would not work against a ruthless dictator, ever.
How many tyrants give a fig what the world thinks of them? They no damn well the world probably won't do a thing to stop them - look at Iraq, one of the most viscious tyrants certainly since the war is removed and most of the world regards the villains of the piece as being the US and Britain for removing him.

 

Ahhh Utopia at last, no violent crime in middle America, Happy days finished years ago. I know I haven't been to middle America, but surely middle Americans do commit Violent crimes.

Getting back to Granny, She has a gun, however, a neighbour sees the door open and goes in to make sure nobody from the nearest ghetto has gone in to shoot her. The neighbour knocks on the open door and shouts. Hello anyone in there?

Granny doesn't hear and therefore doesn't reply, the neighbour goes in and startles granny who pumps the neighbour full of lead. Although she hasn't murdered the neighbour, she knows the she has killed an innocent person, and for her dying days is saying it wasn't her fault.

In America there are about 30,000 to 50,000 gun deaths per year, of which about 8,000 are murders. It is not just the Murders I don't want in Britain. I want more police power for the police to protect me and granny more effectively.

I have never said guns are the culprit, it is the idiot on the blunt end that pulls the trigger, if a country has very relaxed gun laws then there are mor idiots who can obtain guns so the risk is greater.

 

Ok, I feel the urge to clarify some points...

Sadly, Simon beat me to the point of whether a 105-year old could actually manage to hit somebody with a gun...
Even with training, how many eldery people could? I know many who surely would be able to, and many who would not.
However, as it was at least partly tongue in cheek, I'll not harp on about this too much.

Mao's china & Stalin's Russia actually did have (at least initially) popular support.
For Stalin - have you ever heard of his 'cult of personality' - or the fact that he pumped maximum propaganda out of every opportunity to make him & his regime popular (like WW2)? How about the reports of widespread grief across the country when he died - including inside the gulags?
For Mao - how do you think he came to power? During the Long March (for example) the Red Army toured the country, overthrowing the oppressive trappings of Chiang & being nice to the peasants (this was unusual). Plus they had actually devoted a lot of energy to fighting the Japanese. Without the support of the populace, guerilla fighters (Chinese Red Army) do not survive.

Both regimes have lasted as long as they have (or did, in the CCCP's case) because indocrination produced enough loyal men with guns, and the climate of fear produced by the successful application of 'secret police' etc prevented any true co-ordinated threat from arising.

You will never, ever, find a situation where 100% of the population is against (or for) a particular regime. Even Revolutionary France, or Revolutionary America... Although large groups of people are happy to jump on the bandwagon when one side is winning.
Any dispute involving politics will always cause very confusing situations - as Kellhound referred to with the Spanish Civil War.

Russia 1917-22 is a valid example, because although there was armed conflict, the populace as a whole was not armed. If chunks of the army had not rebelled, and if foriegn powers had stayed out of it, what would have happened?

Passive resistance....
Hmmm.
Yes, it works great when your leader needs to (or wants to) heed world opinion. Like the British Empire in India.
Against very ruthless leader (Pol Pot springs to mind) - nope.

Providing he has the support of enough armed men, and the rest of the world is not willing to intervene, a dictator can do as he wishes.
However, if there are enough loyal armed men, a dictator can do as he pleases anyway.

Hungary 1956 and Prague 1968 have already been cited.

Unless a significantly large chunk of the population can arm itself with decent weapons (this will almost certainly need to include AT weaponry & AA weaponry), and act as a co-ordinated body, then they are unlikely to succeed. Again, Russia 1917-22, where (as has been pointed out) the Red Army won because its enemies were a rather diverese bunch who allowed themselves to be dealt with as seperate entities, rather than as one co-ordinated enemy.

 

The United States of America already possess the most effective means to protect the people from oppression from the goverment, a constitution based on the principles of Montesquieu where the legislative, executive and judical powers are separated. You also have a free press.

Regarding Switzerland : I certainly see your point, but what about Japan ? Japan have very strict gun laws, and very few people own guns. The US have 14.24 gun related attacks annually per 100000, Switzerland 5.31 and Japan only 0.05. As you can see, the difference between the US and Switzerland is nothing compared to the difference between Switzerland and Japan. I share your view as far as guns not being the only cause to the high percentage of gun related deaths in the US compared to other western countries, but I believe you are wrong if you believe that gun control will not reduce gun related deaths.

Would someone like to produce some statistics regarding guns and violence in the US btw ? I remember reading one once, and it struck me that guns were mostly used to kill either yourself ( 50-60% if I recall correctly ), friends or members of your family. Further, a large portion of the gun related deaths were accidents. Are guns not dangerous to the people ?

 

Hmm...

I had a futher little muse...

It has been said that gun controls will not stop criminals from getting their hands on guns.
But this is mostly because there are an awful lot of guns sloshing about, because arms manufacturers produce large numbers for the civilian market, as well as the military.
What if nobody had ever produced guns for civilians?
Yes, there would still be lots of military hardware out there, especially of ex-Soviet bloc manufacture or war booty, but realistically, how many of those weapons are used in 'gun crime'?

Obviously, large criminal organsations (ie: those with money) would have no bother obtaining arms. Heck, in the late 1990s you could buy tanks, jets, even nuclear subs from Russia if you had the cash.
But the majority?

IMHO we would probably only see a profligation of knife-related crime, instead of gun-related crime, but hey.
Oh, and obviously this is a 'world that never was' musing, and pretty much irrelevant to the debate, but I found it interesting to think of!
If you want to reply, please do so. If you can't be bothered to dignify it with an answer, I will not be offended!

 

A momentary divergence.
Inasmuch as I am debating mostly people from Scandinavia and Northern Europe I would like your opinion; what would you consider to be more of a threat to the people of your lands..guns or alcohol? The reason I ask is that are some valid comparisons to be drawn, perhaps.

 

Wouldn't make a great deal of difference at all. For a start a gun is a gun, whether it's intended for the civilian market or the military is largely irrelevant, what you might see would be the dissappearance of the arguably less dangerous types, such as WWII Bolt action rifles, .22 target waepons and air-rifles/pistols, but let's face it how many times on the news do you here "Bank staff waited patiently whilst the armed raider tried to dissentangle his Lee-Enfield rifle from his ridiculously long trenchcoat"?

Secondly in terms of "civilian" firearms bear in mind that in the UK it is reckoned that only around 0.1% of guncrime involves weapons that were ever legally owned (This came from a TV interview I saw with the chief of police for Birmingham). This includes legal weapons stolen from their owners, replicas that are modified to fire and deactivated weapons that are "Reactivated". Stop producing and importing these and what difference would it make in the UK?

How indeed? It doesn't take much force to fire a handgun. With training she would have been capable of using it IMO.

So your going to take a 105 year old woman and turn her into some kind of commando?

Let's assume that you were going to give her a handgun. As I hope you will have noted I said "Load, cock and aim". So you're either going to go for a revolver, probably not, the trigger mechanism on a revolver tends to be a bit heavier than an semi-automatic in my experience, so you're probably going to go for a semi-auto. Which means she has to load the magazine (She's a 105 for pity's sake, her strength, co-ordination and probably eyesight are not going to be that great) and load the magazine into the housing.

OK, let's now assume that all this has been done either by or for her. It's be breaking a fundamental rule of gun safety to keep the weapon cocked, so that'll have to wait till she hears the intruders, if she hears them, then she'll have to find it cock it (Again bear in mind she's 105, let's assume that this is a farily typical automatic, say something like a Browning GP35/Hi-Power - I'm assuming that you don't want to give Commando-Gran something like a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle?).

Now let's assume against all the odds that she has cocked it and has the co-ordination and refelxes to aim and fire it, or if you've given her a revolver she has the strength, co-ordination and reflexes to aim and pull the trigger before these three guys are on her.

Bear in mind here English houses are small, and the rooms are much smaller than comparable homes in the US or even on continental Europe.

Now even being hypothetical and allowing one shot on target you now have two men which will be on top of her by now, angry about their dead/wounded friend and almost certainly by now armed.

I'm pretty confident in my assessment of a fairly typical English elderly lady, my own Grandmother died two years ago and she was 27 years younger than this lady, she couldn't drink a cup of tea without the cup and saucer rattling let alone have pulled a gun on and shot an intruder.

You held this up as an example of how a gun would have helped, I'm trying to demonstrate that it would not.

If however she'd had a security guard(s) where she lived and he/they had been armed then maybe this wouldn't have happened, or maybe there'd be a few extra guns in the hands of criminals not just one.

They already terrorized her and it is belived already caused her death so how would she have been worse off?

A very simplistic view. These guys were reasonably willing to kill, you have now effectively given them an efficient means to do so. She might not have been worse off, but her neighbour, a security guard, a policeman or just a random passer by who wanted to be a have-a-go-hero might well have been substantially worse off.

Strength through weakness and surrender! Shades of Neville Chamberlain

Surrender. There is no hope. Big Brother will take care of you and keep you safe. Big Brother is watching you

Nobody's saying surrender, just that a gun wouldn't have helped her and all it probably would have meant would have been one extra gun in criminal hands.

Nobody's said that there is no hope, and I'm certainly not suggesting that "Big Brother" is the answer, but however much I loath English Gun Law I don't think that US-Style freedoms of ownership are the answer to English crime.

Do you realise that for the last 20 years whenever the issue of routinely arming the police has been brought up the police themselves in England have been almost completely against it? The reason is almost always the same, if they have guns more criminals will feel the need for guns and the problems will spiral upwards, more guns on the streets and more crimes.

I do not pretend to understand US Society, and certainly don't pretend to have the answers for any kind of US problems, but please don't suggest that more guns and a greater availability of guns in England is the solution to our violent crime.

We are not in a position where "Home Defence" is considered a valid reason to want to own a gun, I truly hope we never will be.

 

A momentary divergence.
Inasmuch as I am debating mostly people from Scandinavia and Northern Europe I would like your opinion; what would you consider to be more of a threat to the people of your lands..guns or alcohol? The reason I ask is that are some valid comparisons to be drawn, perhaps

In Britain almost certainly Alcohol.

No-one can say a bottle of booze never killed anyone, whether through inflaming tempers or something like drunk-driving or even more directly through alcohol poisoning, generally though guns enable criminals who want to kill or maim to do so, alcohol can make people dangerous but very rarely deliberately so, and in those cases the individual was probably violent to begin with.

Here I am of course refering purely to guns in the hands of criminals because in Britain, with the exception of the Military that's probably where the majority are.

 

Alcohol is more of a threat (drunk drivers, fights at closing time, drowning in your own vomit, etc). But then, we do not have as many guns!
Now, alcohol & guns together...

Obviously, this assumes people will go out drinking armed!
Which I would hope rarely happens...

Anyhow...
Personally, as one who rarely drinks (I never liked the taste of alcohol, and too many nights out with drunk people has mildly reduced by wish to follow suit!), I would not be unhappy if I never again saw another drunk person. I would not mind an alcohol-free world (although this will never happen!)
However, as every nation (except those under Islamic Sharia law - apologies for spelling - and maybe a few others) has alcohol freely available to all adults (in UK it is from 18, in USA it is from 21, etc) everyone potentially faces the same risk.

A bigger killer than guns and alcohol combined, in any developed country, are cars.
And again, cars are freely available to any adult (within restrictions that are mostly financial) in just about every nation (Uk is 18, US is 16 or 17?)

I really am starting to waffle on about rubbish, aren't I?

But, if nobody had ever produced guns for the civilian market, there would be a lot less guns available. Which was the basic point of my irrelevant musing, although I don't think I made myself very clear.

 

My reasons for raising the issue of alcohol are several. The questions of utility and risk/benefit analysis underlie all such considerations.
Automobiles are the biggest killer in the US (discounting disease) yet the utility of cars is great and the risk/benefit analysis places them strongly on the side of benefits outweighing the risks. Guns have considerable risk yet the benefit (by some peoples reckoning) is small.
Alcohol has considerable risk yet how do the benefits stack up?
Do any of you advocate banning alcohol. What about recreational drugs?
As I understand it, most of these drugs are permitted in the Netherlands?
Now don't misunderstand, as a Libertarian/Objectivist I have no problem with that (probably confuses some of you who had no doubt labelled me as a right wing, conservative reactionary?) but is there philosophical consistency to your position if you think people should be free to harm themselves with drugs/alcohol but guns should be banned for their own protection?
Of course some of you will say that guns can harm other people whereas with drugs one can only harm themselves. I will buy that argument so long as you drop the part of your gun argument related to harming oneself i.e. the majority of gun deaths in the US that are the result of suicide or accidents.

 

I'm afraid I will be awkward, as I would happily see an alcohol-free society!
And I have made no comment about suicides - which IMO can easily be undertaken without guns in any case (which is quite probably what you yourself might argue) - sadly I have experience of this with people I know/knew.

There's always one awkward bloke...

However, a damn good line of reasoning.

I bet that you might well get replies of 'responsible drinking is fine'

 

I'm aware that it isn't an issue for some of you. I find it's easiest to clarify the issue by boiling it down to it's constituent parts. If we can dispense with the suicide/accident argument(suicide/accidents accounting for the majority of gun deaths in the US) against guns we can bring it down to the issue of gun murders. Makes the debate clearer.

 

This is a good one.

http://www.enoughisenoughcoalition.com/ ... States.htm

 

Japan is much lower than virtually every other society. You are assuming that this is because of the absence of guns in Japan while ignoring strong socio-cultural factors. The Japanese have an extremely homogenous, conformist culture unlike Europe and the US. Any comparisons based on one factor alone such as availability of guns while ignoring other factors which are possibly more important is likely to be erroneous. Japan is likely the worst society to use in attmpting to make valid comparisons to Western society.

 

Yes. I don't know exactly which drugs are freely permitted for sale and medicinal use here, but some are. However, the fact that something is allowed in a country doesn't mean the whole population supports it; especially when those against are under the age to vote. Like me.

I'm with Ricky on the whole alcohol issue and on the use of most other "pleasure-enhancing" chemicals; in my Utopian world-view there would be no alcohol either. In reality, however, these things can't practically be banned as was shown in the US in the days of the Prohibition (which, as a sidenote, did actually work in terms of alcohol abuse figures). They are basically there for the purpose of consumption, which I think makes them entirely different from firearms which were designed for the sole purpose of effectively killing people.

Countries have guns, organized into armies, for self defence. This is exactly why civilians should not need their own guns; there is the governmental police force and the army to protect them from all threats. You can't compare a household to a country since the two are entirely different; I find that whatever the social matter at hand, you can't compare large groups to small because different rules apply. A pacifist country will no doubt eventually fail in international politics, but a household can perfectly live (IMO) without force to protect it.

On the one hand we have the fact that an infinitesimal percentage of houses is actually ever robbed or raided. On the other hand we have the (hopefully efficient) police that will come around as quickly as possible to legally arrest the criminals, if necessary with the use of force. For the minority within a minority that has its house intruded and yet does not have an adequate police force protecting him/her, guns would come in handy (provided for a whole load of other ifs and buts) but does this justify over 250,000,000 guns in private ownership in the US?

By the way, once when we needed the police to come to our aid at home they arrived within five minutes. I dare say a burglar would have to take trouble to get out in time even without us interefering.

 

I'm going to go broke reading all of this. You folks have got me wanting another gun. I already have 24, oh yeah, I bought one 2 weeks ago.

I think the rest of the world should ban all guns and send them to me!

Here in Alabama, there were just under 200 gun related crimes last year. There were just under 400 accidental drownings and over 1,000 car deaths (majority of those due to drunk driving).

Not all of the drunk driving deaths were multiple vehicles. Some ran in to trees, light poles, a train :roll: and some creeks.

Hammers and chainsaws are dangerous and should banned. Sorry, I'm just trying to liven up the subject. Y'all are starting to sound like a bunch lawyers at a dinner party.

 

you can have all the guns in the world and enjoy yourself with them. :lol:

 

But one can use the same argument of the Swiss example I gave...
He did choose to use a (freely available) gun, just not the one belonging to the army. Why? Because it was government property & therefore not for private use. The stereotypical Swiss mentality of everything being ordered & governed etc.
If you can quote Switzerland as an example of gun-onwership but low gun crime, then Skua can quote Japan!
No 2 countries will ever have the same socio-cultural factors. Some will be similar, but never the same.

JCalhoun -
Surely we're more exciting than lawers. I'm not even wearing a tie!!

 

Ok, after many interesting discussions, including a few tangents, I have the following summary in my head...

Reasons for gun ownership:

1) It's in the Constitution.
Many Americans will cite this. However, I still cannot see how you can get past the apparent neccessity of having a well-regulated militia. Especially as at least one of the founders made a quote about 'the first thing a despot does is disband the militia.' (I'll find this exact quote for you...)
To me, it does appear that the writers of the Constitution seemed to want to ensure that each state had its own effective militia force, in order to prevent any President (or outside threat) from saying: 'Do it my way, because I have lots of men with guns'.

2) To protect myself & my family.
More appealing (I would hate to be burgled & defenceless), but there is a police force, and even something like a baseball bat can be used to protect you & yours. And (as much discussed above ), guns kept in the home do allow for domestic violence to spin out of hand, and also allow for children/teens to get their hands on guns. If they are continually taught proper respect for them, that is not as potentially harmful. If they are not, oh dear.

3) Because I like it / it's fun.
This, surprisingly, I have more sympathy for. Why? For several years, I was a member of an archery club. I enjoyed it. I kept my bow & arrows in my house. Now, while a bow is not exactly the ideal weapon to use to threaten people (unless you have seriously strong arms!), and is not quite so easy to conceal as a handgun, the only real purpose of it is still the same - to kill. What justification do I have for joining an archery club & owning such a lethal weapon (deadly out to ~200 yards/metres)?
I could cite old English laws (from the 16th Century) that state that all English subjects must practice with the bow at least once a week.
But as the Spanish are not likely to be invading us anytime soon, that is surely irrelevant. (unless Kellhound knows something I do not ).

 

Of course no one wants any of these tragedies to happen. Should we not be looking for the best ways to prevent all of the above from happening? Now it seems sort of hard to ban rivers and creeks because people drown in them; while cars could possibly be replaced by public transportation to some extent, society as we know it would still be greatly paralyzed by any legal banning of cars. The only example of the deaths mentioned above that legislation can effectively bring down is gun deaths. This is why we are discussing it!