[lordofduct]

Wow, I agree with Farrel about something.

If you want to form an opinion, form your own opinion based on the data.

A Canadian may or may not like their healthcare is also an issue of the fact they often don't have anything to compare their healthcare too unless they've lived elsewhere with other kinds of health coverage. I personally would find more meaning in some Canadian not liking their healthcare if they said, "I prefer some other system over my healthcare" to get a scale of relativity on it.

I don't like the US healthcare system, but I certainly like it better than say the healthcare of some 3rd world nation that has little to no healthcare at all.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 04 November 2013 - 02:08 PM

[supersloth]

btw this is my favorite crazy person with a sword story EVER http://www.laweekly....machete-murder/

jon.kiparsky, on 04 November 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

I'm having a little trouble figuring out the relevance of Canada's health care system to the specific topic of the shooting at LAX, or the general topic of shootings generally, or the more general topic of what would be the best policy for the US to adopt regarding the ownership of firearms.

we're just covering all of our liberal vs conservative bases as far as i can tell.

[farrell2k]

jon.kiparsky, on 04 November 2013 - 09:03 PM, said:

I'm having a little trouble figuring out the relevance of Canada's health care system to the specific topic of the shooting at LAX, or the general topic of shootings generally, or the more general topic of what would be the best policy for the US to adopt regarding the ownership of firearms.

Fine. Canadians who are shot don't have to worry about being uninsured, because every one of them is. Join in or leave, man.

[jon.kiparsky]

lordofduct, on 04 November 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

Wow, I agree with Farrel about something.

Global warming must be a myth... hell just froze over...

Quote

I don't like the US healthcare system, but I certainly like it better than say the healthcare of some 3rd world nation that has little to no healthcare at all.

Don't knock the third world nations, some of them have some pretty rockin' health care. A friend of mine told me a story about her son's root canal in, I think it was Guatemala. (Maybe Costa Rica, I forget now) Apparently, the equipment was better than the stuff his dentist had in Portland, and the procedure was an absolute breeze.

I have another friend who travels home to Argentina once a year to visit his family and get his dental work done, because he says he has better results with Argentine dentists than with American ones. Argentina might not be quite third-world, but it's not a rich country, so that should count for something.

[BBeck]

One argument that has been brought up is essentially: "If no one had guns we would be safe from gun crime." Well, strictly speaking, if there were no guns in the world, then there could not be any gun crime.

However, that ignores the fact that its not the gun doing the killing but the person with evil intention pulling the trigger. A rapist is still a rapist with a knife instead of a gun. If someone wants to kill you, many of them can do it with a brick or just a big rock if bricks are banned. If there were no guns in the world, there would still be violent crime, just basically no way to defend yourself or your children from a bigger assailant.

So you're largely pushing for "survival of the strongest". The fact of the matter is that women and the elderly are often faced with violent criminals, rapists, murderers, and just violent thieves who are often bigger and physically stronger than they are. A gun, or at least a weapon, is the only thing that is going to even the odds. Unless you have your own private police officer hired to follow you around 24 hours a day, chances are that your weapon is the only thing that "may" prevent the crime from happening. Police file reports and put people in body bags; it is exceedingly rare that they stop a crime, especially a violent crime, from happening. They just simply can't be everywhere at once instantaneously. They have to somehow be made aware a crime is taking place and they have to move from whereever they are at to the scene of the crime, and 60 seconds is a whole lot of time in which someone can be killed or permenantly injured.

And women carrying guns, makes the women who do not carry guns safer (going back to the "my gun makes you safer" argument). A rapist may at least think twice if he knows that many women in the area carry a .357 magnum with them, even if he doesn't know whether his target is armed or not. Just the fact that "some" women concealed carry makes all women a little safer.

And I've seen dozens of cases of the elderly defending themselves and their homes from young criminals in their own homes this past year. No one stays young forever. It doesn't matter how tough you were as a young guy when you're 90, but trust me when I say you don't want to mess with a 90 year old grandmother and her gun. Such crimes are thwarted by the elderly with their guns pretty much every week.

People have an inalienable right to self defense.

This post has been edited by BBeck: 04 November 2013 - 02:18 PM

[lordofduct]

jon.kiparsky, on 04 November 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

lordofduct, on 04 November 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

Wow, I agree with Farrel about something.

Global warming must be a myth... hell just froze over... />/>

Quote

I don't like the US healthcare system, but I certainly like it better than say the healthcare of some 3rd world nation that has little to no healthcare at all.

Don't knock the third world nations, some of them have some pretty rockin' health care. A friend of mine told me a story about her son's root canal in, I think it was Guatemala. (Maybe Costa Rica, I forget now) Apparently, the equipment was better than the stuff his dentist had in Portland, and the procedure was an absolute breeze.

I have another friend who travels home to Argentina once a year to visit his family and get his dental work done, because he says he has better results with Argentine dentists than with American ones. Argentina might not be quite third-world, but it's not a rich country, so that should count for something.

I totally agree, I wasn't trying to imply that they all have shit health care. I was just referring to those that do.

But yeah, my buddy just spent a while down in Guatemala, where a friend of ours moved to buy a hotel and restaurant, and had the same thing to say.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 04 November 2013 - 02:26 PM

[supersloth]

we've reached the point in the discussion where it turns into that episode of itchy and scratchy where they keep pulling out bigger and bigger guns.

[farrell2k]

BBeck, on 04 November 2013 - 09:17 PM, said:

If there were no guns in the world, there would still be violent crime, just basically no way to defend yourself or your children from a bigger assailant.

Do you really believe this? This is like saying that if there were no cars in the world, then there would be no way to get you and your children from point A to point B, 100 miles away. A gun is not the only way to defend yourself. Don't fall into the pro gunners' trap that it is.

[no2pencil]

farrell2k, on 04 November 2013 - 05:40 PM, said:

BBeck, on 04 November 2013 - 09:17 PM, said:

If there were no guns in the world, there would still be violent crime, just basically no way to defend yourself or your children from a bigger assailant.

A gun is not the only way to defend yourself. Don't fall into the pro gunners' trap that it is.

Are you familiar with the phrase "Bringing a Bat to a Gun fight"?

[Dogstopper]

farrell2k won't be disrupting this thread for a bit, as he went for a little vacation. Let's try to keep on topic.

[Craig328]

farrell2k, on 04 November 2013 - 04:11 PM, said:

I doubt anyone blindly trusts the government, and I most certainly have never claimed to. This is a fine example of him projecting his irrational paranoia on others, in order to satisfy that paranoia by giving it a target which to attack. These kinds of people have convinced themselves that they need a gun to protect them from some imagined form of tyranny that is happening now, or will happen within their lifetime. Not only that, they've convinced themselves that they actually could do it, if needed, that they could actually defeat a "tyrannical" government. You know, those 2nd amendment remedies they always go on about. You guys may not like it or want to admit it, but these kinds of people are dangerous, because they really believe this nonsense!

Edit: finally figured out the wall text tag.

Spoiler

Sorry if a basic knowledge of American history and civics is causing you discomfort. Just to clear things up for you (because your appalling ignorance of your own country's history is readily apparent): I don't own a gun because tyranny is happening to me now and I truly don't hope it will happen in my lifetime. It kind of goes hand in hand with the same reasoning for why I own a fire extinguisher. I'm not on fire now and truly don't hope to be in my lifetime...so why the effing hell do I own a fire extinguisher, you might ask? For that matter, why does my county fire department own a fire truck? Nothing's on fire now and hopefully nothing will be on fire later. Why go to the trouble of procuring a fire truck then? Idiots, right?

So, do so enlighten us all then: do NO tyrannical governments exist or do you simply believe they just can't happen here?

If you select option 1 then your ignorance is battling your delusion for top spot in the "why even pay attention to farrell" olympics. In just the past several decades people have overthrown their own governments in Iran, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria...just to name the ones off the top of my head. You think people did that with just harsh language? Understand and hear this: ALL governments that aren't overthrown from without descend into despotism and tyranny. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. EVER. History holds no exceptions to that rule. It's not a question of "if" but one of "when". This isn't a point up for debate.

For someone who's this liberal you're astonishingly ignorant of the fact that the man widely regarded as the Father of Classical Liberalism (John Locke...though I doubt the name will mean anything to you) wrote widely on tyrannical government and the fundamental right of the governed to dissolve the government when that government becomes tyrannical. Ancient Chinese dynasties described similar concepts as the Mandate of Heaven. The Magna Carta describes the concept of a security clause to remove power from the king, by force if indicated, should he become despotic. Thomas Aquinas wrote of his belief in the right to resist tyrannical rule. The list of figures and documents that address the rights of the people to oppose tyranny aren't merely the airy fairy musings of a bunch of slack-jawed indolents who are unworthy of carrying farrell's much more enlightened jockstrap of modern reason. Tyrannical governments happen all the effing time, they're happening today and it is the destination of every known government up til the modern day.

But maybe you hold option 2 and you think it can't happen here. Maybe you believe in a magical non-revolution fairy that flicks a magic "no uprisings" wand and makes the western hemisphere immune to trends of all recorded human history. Perhaps you hold the notion that modern man is far and away more enlightened and smarter than previous generations and that certainly WE know best how to do this. If so now we're dealing with colossal arrogance married to majestic hubris. Cultivate a little humility and understand that our mastery of technology doesn't make homo sapiens sapiens any better now than even 50 years ago. Jesus, just 20 years ago, despite having had a refresher course in history when the Nazis rolled through town, the Balkans were merrily genociding their way to a better tomorrow. Supposedly civilized muslims happily set up the tripod to record beheadings so as to demonstrate their superiority whilst gangs just south of the border regularly leave headless corpses lying about to make sure everyone knows who's in charge. Just 20 years ago next year we get to "celebrate" the Rwandan genocide. Know what the weapon of choice was in the mass slaughter of upwards of a million people in that fracas was? Machetes. Not guns. Big sharp knives. Point is, mankind is no more civilized now than we ever were and you could make an argument that we're even less so today. Your belief in a non-violent utopia where nobody ever does violence to another is so stupidly and laughably ludicrous it needs to come with a warning label. PEOPLE are violent. Their choice of weapon with which to do that violence is immaterial. The Rwandan genocide lasted just 100 days man. Nearly 1M people...in 100 days...with frickin' machetes. Maybe we should ban and license sharp objects?

And yes, it's happened here too. We luckily don't have mass murder as a feature of our history (although native Americans might pointedly disagree not without cause) but we've had two revolutions in our 237 year history. One succeeded and the other did not. Mexico just observed the 100th anniversary of theirs and they have parts of their own country where today people, fed up with crime, corruption and their own compromised and useless government have effectively seceded and formed their own governments. The history of South America is rife with rebellions and revolutions against tyrannical governments. But no, it can't happen here. We're "special". History only touches every OTHER country. Unless you're from Canada, you can't even claim that.

Most children know the tale of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Maybe you don't. Only the foolish, lazy and stupid traipse along through life blithely believing in luck and good fortune. Do I want to live under a tyrannical government? Not any more than someone in Libya or Syria does. Are we there yet? Nope. Are we moving toward that? Yes. Slowly for now but yes...we are. Tyranny doesn't show up suddenly. It's a process. Usually a long process. However, when the government is confiscating more and more of the peasantry's labor product (aka: "money"), spying on them, seizing their property, curtailing their freedoms and doing it all in the name of a "better tomorrow" that never quite seems to come, it's just another step along an inevitable path. We have the world's highest incarceration rate and most of those are minorities. That's the government in action. We have our government breaking their own laws regularly with no consequence. They have run the public coffers well past dry. We have the Patriot Act. We have Gitmo. We have the TSA. We have military spending that's out of all control. They seize phone records in the name of security. They seize private property not in favor of a public good but to increase government tax revenue. They skim data from sites that, amongst other things, track individual interests and usage of the internet. They do that without a warrant. Most of these revelations, incidentally, are relatively new just within the past 10-15 years.

And against that, some of us discern a wisdom in the people possessing firearms (our Founding Fathers surely did). I don't know what's coming and neither do you. However, I've owned a firearm since I was 8 and haven't gotten around to either slaughtering a crowd of people or resisting my own government. So, hopefully it's just there for no purpose whatsoever...just as it's been for most of our history. I do indeed hope the wheel doesn't stop spinning on my generation and say "you're up" and if it did, I don't know that I'd have the will to act. I suspect it takes a great deal to force someone to say "enough's enough".

Either way, you don't buy life insurance for your loved ones after you're dead. You don't start eating better and getting in better shape after the fatal heart attack. Once the awful event happens, it's too late to prepare for it. All the 2nd Amendment says is "guys, this kind of shit happens and it will eventually happen here again". You want to reduce gun violence...that's easy. Make any crime committed with a gun a first degree felony. Make possession of a gun by a convicted felon (any level) a first degree felony as well. Prosecute both vigorously and without mercy in sentencing. Empty the jails of the weed dealers and such and replace them with the assholes that don't respect the Right and abuse it. Consider reeling back some of the freedoms we've decided to allow the mentally ill. It nearly takes an act of God to involuntarily confine someone with serious mental instability. While we're at it, give Hollywood a kick in the ass and tell them to reconsider their constant diet of entertainment featuring violence all over the place. And when the do depict violence with guns, make sure they show it as it actually happens. The good guy doesn't get shot in the arm and then proceed to hop back up and smite the bad guys (usually with ridiculously huge gasoline explosions everywhere). If the society glorifies violence then that same society needs to re-examine when its members start acting insanely and unthinkingly violently.

This post has been edited by Craig328: 04 November 2013 - 03:09 PM

[AnalyticLunatic]

Dogstopper, on 04 November 2013 - 09:47 PM, said:

farrell2k won't be disrupting this thread for a bit, as he went for a little vacation. Let's try to keep on topic.

Swimming with zee fishes?

This thread reminded me, I need to look into my conceal carry. 6 Paintball Guns, 4 Baseball Bats, and a Pineapple will only help me out for so long when stranded on the side of the road.

[h4nnib4l]

jon.kiparsky, on 04 November 2013 - 03:04 PM, said:

h4nnib4l, on 04 November 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

My gun isn't supposed to make you safer.

You sure? I usually hear the claim that "more guns makes a safer society" offered as a justification for unrestricted gun ownership. If the claim is instead "my gun makes me safe, you worry about yourself" then that's a very different claim.

Does society as a whole benefit from individual gun ownership or not? 'Cause if it doesn't then you're basically saying "allow nutbags to have guns, so I can have a gun to defend myself from nutbags". And I start to think, well, maybe there's a simpler answer.

(and no, Farrell, before you jump in here, h4nnib4l is not paranoid or crazy or any such thing, and I'd like to have a civil discussion about this, so please go fly a kite)

I shouldn't have thrown that out so flippantly. In the moment, my thought process was somewhere in line with "I wouldn't use my gun to save farrell2k's life," but upon closer examination, I realize that that isn't true, no matter how caustic and unreasonable his behavior, and it really only served to put me in a position to explain myself. So fuck. Anyway...

I believe that my gun makes the people around me safer (although I don't think it obligates me to act on any individual's behalf - I believe in my right to pick my fights). I know how it works, I know how to service it, I know how to operate it, and I know how to use it, all with a pretty high degree of proficiency. If someone can say that, and lives by the weapons safety rules (see below), then chances are almost nonexistent that anyone will accidentally die while that person is in possession of said weapon.

* Treat every weapon as if it were loaded
* Never point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot
* Keep your weapon on safe (if applicable) until you are ready to fire.
* Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you intend to fire
* Be fully aware of your target's foreground and background

If they then extend that knowledge to anyone who lives with them and might come in contact with that weapon, and keep the weapon safe from unintended discovery, then the chances of that weapon accidentally killing someone are almost nonexistent. I'd say you run a greater risk using shitty power strips on your home entertainment system. So, if you'll allow me that (that my gun isn't endangering anyone I don't intend to endanger), then we end up in the realm of malice (whether on the part of a criminal gun owner, or an assailant) and mental illness. If you won't allow me that, well we don't have anything else to talk about - the chances of someone getting my gun away from me are pretty slim, and we end up in corner-case-heaven, where nothing of substance is ever really discussed - but I'm not worried about that here from you, jon.kiparsky.)

EDIT: I guess what I meant in the moment was more like "My gun doesn't make you safer..."

This post has been edited by h4nnib4l: 04 November 2013 - 03:56 PM

[jon.kiparsky]

Craig, the problem with your position is that many people weigh the possibility of armed rebellion against the most advanced military in the history of the world, with off-the-shelf tools, and then they look at the reality of what guns are actually being used for, today, for real, not for pretend-playtime-stories, and they make a rational decision that they actually want to trade away the opportunity to indulge in a futile and suicidal armed attack on your hypothetical future dictatorship in favor of getting some control on the real and actually occurring violence that happens every day.

It's all well and good to play out some paramilitary fantasy, but preserving your fairy tale has real consequences in the real world. Are you really willing to trade away people's lives for the chance to run around playing cowboys and robbers with the National Guard? Because that's what we're talking about here. Every year that we fail to get some control over these things, people die needlessly. Is your fantasy of fighting off the storm troopers so important to you that you're willing to have innocent people die for it?
If so, what can you say to convince someone that
- your scenario could conceivably work. Consider the balance of power, and convince me that there's some point to this. Consider Waco, Ruby Ridge, and MOVE, and show me how this isn't just idiotic to conceive of.
- your scenario is somehow better than participatory democracy. Taking part in the government and making sure that it doesn't slowly shade into tyranny seems a much preferable approach.
- they would really prefer to have armed uprisings against the government succeed. I mean, you're essentially suggesting that it's a good thing for arbitrary groups of people to have the wherewithal to overthrow the govermnment. As I recall, there's lots of nutbags out there who would like to do that, and I don't really relish the thought of living under Shariah law. (whether it's the Islamic flavor, or the Christian kind that's rearing its ugly head again)
- they would even prefer to live under a government formed by an armed rebellion at all. "To long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart" as Yeats observed of men who were trying to rise up against the Stranger. The IRA was fighting for freedom from their oppressor, but you'd never want to live in a state governed by such men.
- and that the chance of armed overthrow of the US government by some parties yet to be named in some imaginary future is preferable to any real chance of getting guns out of the hands of criminals in New York and Chicago where they are killing children, right now.

I think that you have some convincing to do.

[KYA]

supersloth, on 04 November 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

my favorite part is that the dude was carrying a katana. everyone i've ever known that owns a katana is batshit insane. (full disclosure, i too, own a katana)

I had mental pictures of Hiro from Snow Crash.