The Political Discussion Thread

[Galileo_Galilee]

Thats just not true.

Sigh. Yes it is.

Deny it all you want. If it isn't then you should allow people to openly carry. And yes, it really is as simple as that.

Not allowing people to openly carry means you want to keep them hidden from sight. If you want to keep them hidden from sight, that's fear and or hate. Pure and simple. It's not that confusing. Sometimes people just don't know it.

And it's not really all that confusing. But I don't know how else to explain it to you.

[Ukko]

Sigh. Yes it is.

Deny it all you want. If it isn't then you should allow people to openly carry. And yes, it really is as simple as that.

Not allowing people to openly carry means you want to keep them hidden from sight. If you want to keep them hidden from sight, that's fear and or hate. Pure and simple. It's not that confusing. Sometimes people just don't know it.

And it's not really all that confusing. But I don't know how else to explain it to you.

No.

Or it it means one doesnt really see a need or point for people to carry guns around. And no, its not fear and hate. How many times does someone have to tell you they dont hate them or want to take them away before you believe them or are just going to continue to ignore what people say because they dont agree or fit with your view of how things are or should be.

You havent explained anything. I asked how you come to and hold to the wrong conclusions about someone when they have told you plain and simple what they believe. You just posted some rubbish about chicago and repeated yourself. And to be honest, i dont care anymore and really cant be bothered with this.

[LtColCarter]

[Galileo_Galilee]

No.

Or it it means one doesnt really see a need or point for people to carry guns around. And no, its not fear and hate. How many times does someone have to tell you they dont hate them or want to take them away before you believe them or are just going to continue to ignore what people say because they dont agree or fit with your view of how things are or should be.

You havent explained anything. I asked how you come to and hold to the wrong conclusions about someone when they have told you plain and simple what they believe. You just posted some rubbish about chicago and repeated yourself. And to be honest, i dont care anymore and really cant be bothered with this.

Yes.

Just because there's no point to it doesn't mean it should be legislated into law. Leave it as a civil liberty. And let people have their own choice. Just because you don't see any point doesn't mean other people will do the same thing as you. You're assuming that what must be true for you must be true for everybody else and if not must be made to be true so you want it into legislation.

A free society is about civil rights and liberties, period. That means allowing people to make their own decisions for themselves. That's what the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means, the right to self govern yourself and live life as you see fit.

As an adult, it is my right to make those choices for myself. When you make legislation you are infringing upon my liberty to choose because legislation takes that choice away and forces me to make a choice I might not want to make. I value my liberties. It's a shame you do not.

Legislation takes away people's liberties and in many cases infringes upon their rights.

There are many other things that have no point either. There's no point to comics or movies or mmorgs so let's just legislate them into hiding or out of existence too.

And it is not wrong. You can claim it is all you want to.

And I have done my best to explain it, I'm sorry I can't make it clear enough for you. But I doubt if I wrote a long twenty thousand word essay you would be able to see what I've been trying to say. Because you have too much of an emotional interest in taking people's liberties away, you won't see anything else but there's no point so it must be legislated out of existence.

And just because I don't like something doesn't mean I have to legislate it it all to hell and back either.

At this point we're going to have to agree to disagree and drop the matter before things get too heated and people want to ban or gag me again for being disrespectful

[Gatefan1976]

No I don't. You're the one making the claim that right to ownership of a firearm should be based on need only, the onus is on you to justify why this should be so. Rights are not based on need as you claim.

Hang on, I never said they were, I said people can have a need for them based on thier profession true, yet I also extended that same right to people who want to have them for sporting activities such as target shooting. If every man, woman and child in the US wanted to take up a firearms based sport and own a gun, then, more power to them, they have that constitutional right to do so.

People who hate firearms and want to use any flimsy reason to take them away.

An interesting and completely wrong assesment of me. I have no issue with anyone owning a gun at all GG, nor am I trying to "disarm the populous".

Actually, yes you are. Your first question "Why do they need a firearm in an urban setting" is the perfect example of this. And your argument nobody is responsible is just for that.

Actually, I don't believe I argued that no one was responsible, I argued for reasonableness, something you adress here:

And one thing you forget, is that urban settings have ghettos and the highest rates of crime.

Right, so for all your points about people fearing and hating firearms, you are gonna hang your hat on "I need a gun because I'm Afraid of the actions of others", interesting........

People have a right to self defense.That's the thing about rights, is they're for the protections of minority and other groups. If there weren't any, they would simply get trampled over by those who have the power.

Yes, you do have the right to self defence, I don't believe anyone would argue that you did not, what people ARE saying however, is why does that form of self defence have to take the form of a firearm, thats all.

-Snip part not directed at me

Edit:

The Supreme Court also does not seem to agree with this belief, that firearm ownership should be based on need.


Justice Scalia

Irrelavent to this discussion as Justice S seems to be talking about 2 things here, that the supreme court cannot make rulings on the second ammendment as it falls outside thier purview and secondly, while the state has the right to regulate and control firearms in public spaces, it has no such right to do so in a persons home.

The needs of the many ignores the needs of the few or the one. A good example of this would be allowing the handicapped to have access to places of business. If the needs of the many worked as you say it does, the handicapped would never be allowed access to places of business.

And we would still have slavery and women would never be allowed to vote, homosexuals would never be allowed to marry under ANY circumstances and so on if that were true.

That saying is an absolute abomination ebcause it ignores rights of the minority.

Actually, you seem to forget that there are 2 parts to that quote. Spock made a concious decicion to give up his right to life in order to save the rest of the crew (the needs of the many vs the one), The crew then did all they could to get Spock back when they bacame aware of the possibility (the needs of the one vs the many) It does not ignore the needs of the one or the minority at all, it relies on good judgement all around and both sides working togeather to make life better for all.

[Galileo_Galilee]

Yes, you do have the right to self defence, I don't believe anyone would argue that you did not, what people ARE saying however, is why does that form of self defence have to take the form of a firearm, thats all.

Firearms save over one million lives a year. Knives don't. That's far more lives saved than taken, which numbers maybe twenty thousand in a year.

People are going to run from a firearm more than a knife.

And if all you know is martial arts, well, martial arts won't outrun a bullet.

Here's a page of some statistics for you.

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

Please note how little crime is actually done with a firearm in comparison to other crimes as follows: (The number in parenthesis is a footnote to show the source of the data):


Roughly 16,272 murders were committed in the United States during 2008. Of these, about 10,886 or 67% were committed with firearms.[11]

Based on survey data from the U.S. Department of Justice, roughly 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States during 2008. These include simple/aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders.[13] [14] [15] Of these, about 436,000 or 8% were committed by offenders visibly armed with a gun.

A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]

In 2007, there were 613 fatal firearm accidents in the United States, constituting 0.5% of 123,706 fatal accidents that year

A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]


• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"

• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"

• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]

Edit: And here's an article that refutes the claim that a firearm isn't a good mechanism for self defense:

Contrary to myth that using a gun in self-defense is more likely to result in injury or death to the victim or innocent bystanders and fail to successfully thwart the crime rather than the criminal, the evidence, as opposed to selective anecdotes, suggests the opposite. (Of course this doesn't mean that all people should have a gun, or a gun should be used in all life-threatening situations.)

Discussion

Florida State University criminologist, Gary Kleck, analyzed data from the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey (1992-1998). Describing his findings on defensive gun use, in Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, New Yorkrometheus Books (2001), Kleck writes:

"In general, self-protection measures of all types are effective, in the sense of reducing the risk of property loss in robberies and confrontational burglaries, compared to doing nothing or cooperating with the offender. The most effective form of self-protection is use of a gun. For robbery the self-protection meaures with the lowest loss rates were among victims attacking the offender with a gun, and victims threatenting the offender with a gun. For confrontational burglarly, attacking with a gun had the second lowest loss rate of sixteen self-protection measures, bested only by another mode of armed self-protection, threatening the offender with a nongun weapon." (p. 291)

"[W]hile defensive gun use is generally safe, it does not appear to be uniquely safe among self-protection methods as data from earlier NCVS data suggested. Nevertheless, there does not appear to be any increase in injury risk due to defensive gun use that counterbalances its greater effectiveness in avoiding property loss." (p. 292)

Kleck summarizes the effectiveness and risks of victim self-protection measures, gleaned from NCVS data, in this table.

Are the lower rates of injury and property loss with defensive gun use simply due to the victims having a more favorable set of circumstances than non-gun victims? Perhaps the criminals failed to surprise gun defending victims giving them time to ready their weapons. Kleck responds to this speculation by writing:

"These data indicate that victims who use guns for self-protection actually face less favorable circumstances than other victims, and that the post-self-protection injury rates for defensive gun use, low though they are, may still be misleadingly high compared to tother self-protection measures because victims who used guns faced tougher crime circumstances. More dangerous situations apparently prompt victims to adopt more dangerous self-protection measures. Two pieces of information available in the NCVS support this view. First, victims who used guns were substantially more likely than victims in general or victims using other self-protection measures to face offenders armed with guns — 32.7 percent of victims who attacked the offender with a gun, and 21.8 percent of those who threatened the offender with a gun, and 21.8 percent of those who threatened the offender with a gun, faced offenders with guns, compared to only 6.8 percent of all victims who used self-protection measures, and 2.2 percent of all victims. Second, victims who used guns were more likely to face multiple offenders — 33.2 percent of victims who attacked offenders with a gun and 34.5 percent of those who threatened with a gun confronted multiple adversaries, compared to 20.6 percent of all those who used self-protection measures, and 6.2 percent of all victims. These findings are consistent with the view that crime circumstances likely to appear more dangerous to victims are more likely to push victims into using guns. They are contrary to the speculation that crime outcomes are better for gun-wielding victims merely because other circumstances of the crime made successful outcomes more likely." (pp. 291-92)

Full article:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgeff.html

[SoulReaver]

actually weren't there several studies which revealed that in the US you have a greater chance of being shot by armed coppers than by armed civies?

[Womble]

I don't recall there being anything about guns in the Bible. Swords, slings, spears- yes. No guns.

[Galileo_Galilee]

actually weren't there several studies which revealed that in the US you have a greater chance of being shot by armed coppers than by armed civies?

Here's an article that refutes that assertion and how those conclusion were come by:

Introduction

Some papers in the medical literature have written a homeowner's gun is more likely to kill its owner or family member than kill a criminal, and therefore "the advisability of keeping firearms in the home for protection must be questioned." The most notable (or notorious), and quoted in the previous sentence, is written by doctors Arthur Kellermann and Don Reay, and is titled, "Protection or peril? An analysis of firearms related deaths in the home." (New Engl J Med 1986. 314: 1557-60.)

The oft cited Kellermann paper found a homeowner's gun was 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend, or acquaintence, than it was used to kill someone in self-defense. Kellermann stated, "for every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms." Florida State University professor Gary Kleck appropriately terms these ratios "nonsensical." (Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, pp. 177-179, 1997)

Although this study was published in 1986 its findings continue to be uncritically cited in medical journals, government publications, and non-technical periodicals such as health newsletters, general interest magazines, op-ed pieces, letters-to-the editor, etc.

Not only is Kellermann's methodology flawed, but using the same approach for violent deaths in the home not involving a firearm, the risk factor more than doubles from 43 to 1, to 99 to 1. Let's see why this 43 to 1 ratio is a meaningless indicator of gun ownership risk.

Full article:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html

[Spimman]

Republicans in the US, as a general rule, claim to desire smaller government with large spending cuts.

The US military spends between $650 Billion -1.5 Trillion dollars a year + classified spending


China 91.5 Billion (Published Budget)

Our military budget makes up at least 42% of military spending in the entire world. How can a group of people that support being reasonable in our spending support such a enormous military? We could cut our military in half and still have a bigger budget that China, Russia, France and the UK put together.

[SoulReaver]

Here's an article that refutes that assertion and how those conclusion were come by:



Full article:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgaga.html

that's not what I meant

[Galileo_Galilee]

The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues.[citation needed] According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000–2009.[26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar..._United_States

[Galileo_Galilee]

that's not what I meant

Whoops, sorry, I misread your question.

[Gatefan1976]

Firearms save over one million lives a year. Knives don't. That's far more lives saved than taken, which numbers maybe twenty thousand in a year.

People are going to run from a firearm more than a knife.

Have you ever PERSONALLY been confronted with either weapon mate, I only ask to better understand your position. I have been confronted with both and yep, I'll agree, a gun has far more "impact" than a knife.

And if all you know is martial arts, well, martial arts won't outrun a bullet.

Not the point dude

Here's a page of some statistics for you.

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

Please note how little crime is actually done with a firearm in comparison to other crimes as follows: (The number in parenthesis is a footnote to show the source of the data):


Roughly 16,272 murders were committed in the United States during 2008. Of these, about 10,886 or 67% were committed with firearms.[11]

Based on survey data from the U.S. Department of Justice, roughly 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States during 2008. These include simple/aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders.[13] [14] [15] Of these, about 436,000 or 8% were committed by offenders visibly armed with a gun.

A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]

In 2007, there were 613 fatal firearm accidents in the United States, constituting 0.5% of 123,706 fatal accidents that year

A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]


• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"

• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"

• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]

Immaterial, these are "cherry picked" statistics from all over the place, a common tactic employed by every man and his monkey trying to spin things. If you want accuracy in statistical sampling, you need to use one year and cover all bases, not use a statistic of X for year Y and A for year Z, its BS, pure and simple. Now, thats not to say they are not interesting or telling, just that they are inherently biased.

In addition, the statistics cited by the reaserch from prison inmates does NOT cover what kind of crime was in progress at the time such events took place. Just remember dude, *I* am not discussing the "home invasion" scenario, ONLY the carrying of firearms on a day to day basis, either openly or concealed. If someone breaks into your house, I have ZERO issue with you owning a gun and choosing to use it to defend your home and/or family, and quite frankly I don't care if you "scare off the offender" or put them in the hospital or the ground in that situation.

Edit: And here's an article that refutes the claim that a firearm isn't a good mechanism for self defense:

Full article:

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgeff.html

Again, not an issue, the article is on the home invasion scenario, NOT the carrying of firearms in public spaces, which is what I am discussing, nothing else mate.

[pookey]

so, carrying a gun is the right of every individual, ok, i agree, but they must be able to use it responsibly, so this means some form of training, it would be a responsible thing for the individual to do, would it not?