Another reason to support the right to arms...?

Fire and Ice, I have three words for you.

Guns are great.

As per your criteria above I am at full rights to say that.

I use a gun to hunt, my highly evolved brain has managed to get to this point in evolution by adapting to use tools. I also eat what I kill or donate to hunters for the hungry. I'd bow hunt instead but it's much easier to drop game on the spot with a gun, and a drop on the spot is far more humane than chasing a bleeding animal through the woods.

Unless you are willing to move all of those people out of their bad neighborhoods and feed all those who rely on hunting as part of their food income then your ideas about guns are nothing more than the silly wishing of a hippy child.

Grow up, lose the hate. Shall I list all of the things that I've had to use to kill another human being? I'll give you a hint, hands are on the list, shall we get rid of those too?

It seems there have been a few posts since my last reading of this thread...

We do not attack each other...

We do not call each other names, or insinuate low intelligence of another... Or mock each others posts or thoughts

We talk with respect, using words that would be fit to use in a church, for that's where you are...

You are in a church owned website....

I have deleted disrespectful posts, and blocked members who don't heed the warnings....

Please, this is a discussion forum, yes, no one is right, no one is wrong.... We all have our opinions, and they are equally valid, and justifiable....

This is not how I picture good decent people to have a discussion....

If you are going to type with emotion, then don't type... Take a walk, take a deep breath....

And if that still doesn't work, please don't post...

Arguing doesn't solve anything, nor move us forward....

Thanks for reading....

Wendaline wrote: I appreciate your points, but it doesn't seem you will ever get why some people are on the pro-gun side. It's going waaaay over your head. I'm going to take a cue from Jestor and the others and say agree to disagree and be done.

It may not seem that way, but I am actually trying to understand, believe it or not. I am not trying to change your mind. I am just trying to see what your reasons are for believing as you do and whether you can answer my reasons for believing as I do. Perhaps this will allow us both to accurately view this topic from both angles. The reasons being said however are not showing me why, what I see as these weapons of painful agonizing death, are legal, sold regularly and in 1/3rd of our homes.

I get that the military needs them for wars and the safety of Americans (wish they weren't but I accept that they are currently). I get that they are useful tools for police officers for providing safety and service to Americans (but only as long as they maintain the same level of security screenings that they do now). I get that hunters need particular weapons for killing game (although I still fail to see how a handgun would help in that regard). I get that Olympic competitors need them to compete (although I am still unsure why we need to be entered in that sport at all seeing as how there are several others we are not in also and why they need to carry a gun in the US to practice for competition).

If you would still like to leave that is certainly your choice to make. Though I, personally, would like to continue hearing more thoughts on the subject from both sides of the discussion.

I ask nicely, the thread is locked....

MAybe I wasnt specific enough....

I said to be nice, in my way...

Now, I saying it outright...

Stop witht the venomous tones and attitudes...

Please...

Just because I say 'please' does not mean I wont enforce the rules...

Let things cool a while...

Thanks for reading...

Now that we've had a cooling off period this thread is unlocked.

If anyone needs a copy of a moderated post (your post is gone because its been disabled) we'll PM or email it to you. That way you can edit it in your own words and re-post it.

Please don't be discouraged or feel insulted if you've been moderated. I've been moderated too.

Attack ideas not people.

Good discussion so far, everyone. Thread-locking notwithstanding.

Paladin_PSK wrote: Obviously you have never owned a gun. My dick is well over 15 inches long and I attribute every inch to firearms and military training. I dare say most of us have to tie our dicks up in our belts to keep from stomping on them in the heat of battle.

LOL!

Paladin_PSK, several of your comments made me laugh (in the sense that I enjoyed them), despite the aspects of your delivery to which the admins objected (not saying you were the only one, by far). Sometimes it seems that for some truths, the ones that pierce through a person's delusions anyway, there is no nice way to say them. But I applaud you trying to the best of your ability.

Resticon, I appreciate your balance.

Wendaline, I second Paladin's sentiment to you.

Adder wrote: It says a lot when a societies citizens do not feel safe unless they have a gun.

Fear leads to the dark side

It may be a matter of fear in some cases, and when it is, it is often reasonable fear based in eye-opening experience. But it does not intrinsically have to involve fear. What about simple preparedness? The world is a dangerous place, in the US, UK, Australia, or anywhere else. There are no Utopias. I hold to the Boy Scout motto of "Be Prepared". Even then, there's only so much you can do. Sometimes in life there are things that can happen that are so bad that even those people who know what to do, don't really "know what to do." That is, they know how to react but they are still devastated by it.

But this is all the more to the point that we should always strive to be as prepared as possible. Ignoring evil does not make it go away, nor protect you from it when it comes knocking on your door. Can a person go his or her whole life without being mugged, car jacked, burglarized, breaking a bone, being shot or stabbed, etc? Sure. No one here is denying that possibility. Does that mean we should live our lives and make choices based on the assumption that none of that will ever happen? The answer to that question seems logically self-evident. Feces doth verily occur.

Adder wrote: I guess that happens a lot when everyone's got guns.

Yes, because only criminals equipped with guns try to steal cars, mug or rape others, or burglarize homes.

Adder wrote: I know you might say that's why everyone has a gun to defend themselves.... except those who don't, like children, tourists etc.

Actually, as Resticon has pointed out numerically, not everyone has a gun to defend themselves. Only about a third of people, even in the US. And children have no place owning guns, or even carrying them around without close supervision. So many people seem to be oblivious about how to be proper parents these days. They look to the government to relieve them of the burdens of their parental responsibility, which is ultimately impossible. As for tourists, it wouldn't matter that they don't have their own guns, so long as everyone else around them (who are citizens) have guns.

But not everyone does have a gun, which may be part of the problem. I would be curious to find out how many incidences of gun crime (and/or violence) have been committed against victims equipped with guns, versus victims not so equipped. My guess would be that it is mostly only the situations where the ordinary citizens present are all unarmed that deadly gun shenanigans are perpetrated by the assailant(s). If a criminal or potential assailant KNEW that everyone else in a situation is likely to be armed, there would not be nearly the tendency of violent gun crime that you see today.

Adder wrote: Eventually this leads to who has the most guns. It's commonly called an arms race. Humans will always conflict amongst themselves, and they will use whatever they can access. Gun proliferation just elevates the likelihood of gun related violence, and given guns are designed for maximizing the efficiency of killing....

I fail to see how this proves anything, or is even true, concerning the part about an arms race. There is no personal arms race. Period. No individual can hope to match the sheer number and variety of arms that a government can amass (although some people try, lol, and more power to them). The fact remains that in the end equation, individual people only have (at most) two hands. We can therefore only fire up to two weapons at the same time, regardless of how many guns we own, crotch cannons notwithstanding.

How is that an arms race? Stockpiling for the sake of some kind of "race" serves no purpose. Brinkmanship only applies in situations involving weapons of mass destruction, or the armies of entire countries, etc. Especially since, in matters of personal self-defense, you usually only need one well-placed bullet. Two, in the case of zombies. Always double-tap the undead. (Rule #2)

Resticon wrote: That actually helps to show the point I am trying to make better actually. Deaths by firearms per 100k people are 1 death less than cars and 3.3 less than poisonings (which could be murders and accidents as well but it's pretty hard to eliminate all toxic chemicals from the world. Even though that'd be a good idea too lol). Even though there are about 3 times as many households that have chemicals or cars than there are households with guns.

What you have said here is a better step in the direction of the quantifications I was hoping for. However, neither what you have said so far, nor what Alethea has said, is as direct as it (c/sh)ould be. For example, how many of those "total" gun deaths were accidental versus intentional? And of the intentional ones, how many were due to self-defense vs. crime? How many were due to legal guns vs. illegal ones?

How much smaller would that total number be if more citizens in a gun death situation had legally possessed and been carrying a gun at the time? How many fewer knife deaths would there be in the UK if they allowed guns there? To me, it's kind of a dynamic equilibrium: people are going to kill each other sometimes, regardless of what laws we make to try to stop it. The only way we can combat murders, regardless of weapon used, is by working as Jedi to raise the level of the social/mass consciousness through service, especially by serving as examples in our daily lives of the change we would like to see. Not by legislating into nonexistence the rights of others.

Resticon wrote: I do not consider shooting guns a valid sport personally (or gaming either, for that matter.) Where is the athletic skill that is shown in all other sports? Through how well they can aim and squeeze a trigger? Sounds like a pretty good "sport" to get rid of too.

My guess is, you have never fired a gun at a distant target, or if you have, you have not cared whether you hit it with accuracy and speed or not. Shooting a gun is just like anything else in life. You can make an art form out of it, if you do it the right way long enough. There is a "Zen" that can be achieved with firing a weapon, whether it be a gun or a bow and arrows.

But you typically don't ever get to experience that state without a metric F-ton of practice and discipline. Reflexes, hand-eye coordination, and concentration are every bit as much a part of a healthy physical organism as are big muscles, flexibility, endurance, etc. and thus the former three are co-indicators of "athletic skill". As such they are worthy to be represented in the Olympics and elsewhere as a sport.

Resticon wrote: Guns are weapons. It was what they were created for, it is they only thing they do.

Being weapons is what guns were created for, but that is not the only thing they do. Anyone who says that guns only kill or destroy has never seen someone pistol whipped before. Also, even unloaded guns have an inherently threatening nature against those who do not know the gun is unloaded. Usually a gun will force an aggressor to respect your space even if they don't respect you. A gun is not a Medusa head. If an attacker looks at it, they don't automatically turn to stone. A gun can be used to intimidate without incurring fatalities or injuries. Anyone who believes otherwise about guns has obviously never forced a criminal to run away by unholstering one.

Fire and Ice wrote: Yeah, I hate guns and most of the people who own them. I probably hate people who try to justify having them even more because it's a ridiculous argument in any application. I don't care what it's for or what justification you think there is for having them, there's no reason for anyone to have them.

Even though I think that hating anyone or anything is unhealthy and ultimately an unwise use of your time, I wholeheartedly support your right to hate and to (harmlessly) express your hatred, because I value your rights. Do you reciprocally support my right to own whatever self-defense property I deem fit and necessary, even in the face of finding such property personally distasteful yourself? If not, then why should I respect your right to free speech? After all, hateful speech has started wars. Maybe you're a danger to the world with no other use than to cause destruction...

Fire and Ice wrote: I don't see any of these things as being a right of anyone to do to anyone else, nor do I see any rationale for giving people the means to do this for any reason. When you've seen the reality of it and witnessed the horror, that tends to change your mind.

These things you mentioned, of people being brutalized and maimed, etc, are indeed horrible and to be eliminated wherever possible. But honestly, did any of the people you were talking about deserve what happened to them? That is, did they invite it upon themselves by threatening or harming others first? I doubt it. When we talk about the benefits of guns, we mean in self-defense against people who are asking for it by being aggressors in the first place. Yes, guns can hurt or kill innocent people. I don't think anyone was arguing otherwise.

But there is a time and place for everything. And that time or place is not always solely restrictable to just "the military" or "the police". There are relatively few members of either of those groups compared to the total population, and criminals typically avoid such obvious authority figures. Sometimes in life we may find ourselves involuntarily caught up in situations where the only viable solution to avoid injury, death, or violation to ourselves or those we love, is a gun. Try as hard as we might, this fact, albeit unpleasant, is undeniable. For now. It may change in the future, but this is the present reality of things. And it will not be changed by removing guns from the hands of those who are rational and obey the law.

What I would like to hear more feedback about from those here who have served, or are currently serving, in the military is:

What do you think about the "protection from tyranny" argument for gun rights? Personal ownership of firearms were a viable solution back in the Revolutionary War days, when ships were made of wood and people rode horses. But considering today's advanced weaponry and delivery systems (rockets and grenades, as well as attack helicopters, bombers, tanks, et al) and Kevlar body armors, bulletproof glass, etc, do you still feel that the Second Amendment is anywhere near as useful in protecting us against the government coup or foreign invasion contingencies? I will grant that some armed defense is infinitely better than no armed defense, but against a modern army, would it be all that much of a defense any more?

Fraternally in the Force,
-David