London Anarchy
- Thread starter Nick
- Start date
Dude I can't argue with you because you don't make any points that follow from a logical stream.
Let me just ask you this, what would it take to prove to you that your country is a more dangerous place to live because it is awash with guns?
When it comes to guns the bad guys in the UK don't need them because the good guys don't have them. Access to them is highly restricted, but of course SOME bad guys get them. In the US it is just too easy for the bad guys to get them.
Your logic that if you can't legally own guns then the bad guys will have them anyway is flawed as that is just not the case in the UK. I am not saying that some bad guys have them and that gun crime is not a problem, but in the whole it is not an epidemic like in the US.
Overall murder rates are 4-5 times less in the UK than the US and I would hazard a guess that there are as many bad guys (per capita) out on the streets in the UK than the US. Probably just as much poverty and proportionally as many, if not more, immigrants (if you think this is a major factor). What is the reason for less murders? Hazard a guess.
Also studies show that in the US you are much more likely to be murdered if you carry a gun or have a gun in your home. Which makes sense as burglars mainly want your goods and not to kill you, but if you pull a gun they are going to fire back. So you are far from being safer. By protecting your business with a gun you are infinitely more likely to be murdered than if you didn't.
And the idiocy you are talking about the military is ridiculous. I am not talking about forced conscription on everyone, just those convicted of the rioting and looting and/or possibly other major anti-social behaviour. It would be used as a deterrent to it in the future and it could potentially stop whats currently happening. I am not saying it will work, but it's an idea (which very few people seem to have).
Nickster, as someone else pointed out, you're better off talking to a brick wall than arguing with these fools. I fully agree with everything you said, but for some reason gun-nuts will never think a system without guns can work. They have been conditioned that way as you said and that educational process shows no sign of stopping. Throw as many statistics as you want at them, they'll laugh and find an irrelevant comparison. It's just a shame this has deteriorated into a discussion about gun control laws and not these mindless animals rioting for no good reason.
I see that in some areas, people have organised into their own groups to patrol the streets and keep looters away.
Perhaps this is what David Cameron had in mind with the "Big Society".
Perhaps this is what David Cameron had in mind with the "Big Society".
You are completely right Crisis. I was just astounded that people were suggesting that more guns would be the answer to these riots even though all evidence points towards the opposite (and logic). But you're right there is no point in even trying as it is complete conditioning and you can't argue against that.
What evidence? Did you read the paper I linked to above? I've known anti-gun professors, but they will not make the argument you are making, because they don't have the numbers to back it up. One thing they will point out is how having a gun in the home increases chances of accidental death, and they do have evidence for that.
People on both sides of this argument need to remember that correlation is NOT causation.
"Also studies show that in the US you are much more likely to be murdered if you carry a gun or have a gun in your home."
This one gets thrown around a lot and I'm pretty sure that how you've stated it is wrong. If you have a gun in your home you are more likely to die of a gun-related death (not necessarily murdered).
That includes suicide and accidental deaths related to owning a firearm.
Again..correlation is NOT causation.
But having a lethal instrument in the house means i am more likely to die from that lethal instrument. herp derp. No argument there.
Just like if i decide to live next to a giant hole in the ground or cliff side i am more likely to die a 'falling related death'. Yup.
I never understood why Euros in general would consider less freedom a good thing.
I just think y'all watch too many terrible Hollywood action films. Where everyone has a gun and everyone starts firing off rounds on a whim.
That isn't how it is over here.
"Also studies show that in the US you are much more likely to be murdered if you carry a gun or have a gun in your home."
This one gets thrown around a lot and I'm pretty sure that how you've stated it is wrong. If you have a gun in your home you are more likely to die of a gun-related death (not necessarily murdered).
That includes suicide and accidental deaths related to owning a firearm.
Again..correlation is NOT causation.
But having a lethal instrument in the house means i am more likely to die from that lethal instrument. herp derp. No argument there.
Just like if i decide to live next to a giant hole in the ground or cliff side i am more likely to die a 'falling related death'. Yup.
I never understood why Euros in general would consider less freedom a good thing.
I just think y'all watch too many terrible Hollywood action films. Where everyone has a gun and everyone starts firing off rounds on a whim.
That isn't how it is over here.
If you get to the bottom of that please tell.
Jesus Christ they love to be told what to do here.
...and this very well may be true.
I personally believe that CCW & gun ownership does reduce crime. In addition, I am in favor of open carry. With that said, I also believe states like Arizona and Vermont who allow open carry without licensing should mandate being licensed. The issue in the end is that all these lobbyist groups, including the NRA, go extreme one way or the other. There needs to be a happy medium.
As far as case studies...
In the end for every study that shows crime is reduced due to gun ownership and CCW, there will be a study that refutes it. It comes down to what you personally believe in and what study meets your agenda.
-=Chipmunk=-
It's amusing to read your comment and how absolutely irrelevant to the discussion it is.
So no-one can talk about guns unless they've shot one? YeeeeeeHawww!!!
Under the same logic, then since you've never worked for Government, you can't talk about the government?
Oh, and if you've never been a terrorist, better not talk about terrorism because unless you've been there done that and killed a few innocents, your opinion means jack shit.... right?.
I don't need to fire a gun to know how they are used within society, because i have this thing called a 'brain', i can collect data from first and second hand experiences, collate it, and form an opinion.
While your comment's irrelevant, I'd just like to point out that personally, I've fired shotguns & air rifles before.
Air rifles on lots and lots of occasions, probably like 150+ hours of target shooting.
Shotguns not so much, but still a reasonable amount, clay pigeon shooting. I've also had the opportunity to go pheasant shooting on a mate's farm, but I turned that down.
This is where the USA-Gun-Laws vs Brit-Gun-Laws arguments always break down. Our History is different, and so is the percentage of Socialists we each have making up our population.
I personally don't believe that lethally-armed citizens will ever "work" again in northern Europe. You guys are soft and spoiled now and have lost the mindset (as a whole, not speaking about any member here) that would keep you effectively using your guns. They'd be like paperweights to 95% of Brits.
I would go so far as to say that every time any of us americans suggests that Brits should arm their citizens to stop such looting, we are being lazy to not include the words: "Should HAVE armed Brits 300 years ago."
So let me just state for the record that very few smart people of any nationality anywhere would suggest to change the British gun laws TODAY to help this problem. We've all been suggesting all along that the problem would have been non-existent if you only had been toting guns all along in your history like we have in the USA.
No. I'm saying that 50 innocents are more important than 8 thugs. Where the hell did money come into that comparison? Are you high?
Insulting my logic now... I see. Two can play at that game if you really don't want to continue this conversation in a productive manner.
For Whom? The good guys or the bad guys?
That's a major flaw in your thinking... Which I can't really blame you for because every single chart you see published by any university or government all show the "victims" as simply people who got shot... They have a hard time or simply do not try (in the case of the more liberal sources) to seperate the good guys from the bad guys in any gun-related confrontation.
Case in point: If a mugger pulls a gun on a jogger, and the jogger whips out a concealed handgun & shoots the mugger dead (example taken from another thread here somewhere) then that shooting death goes down in statistics worldwide as a "Gun Death." Most americans don't see it as a 'gun death' nearly as much as we see it as 'Justice Served.'
Further, the Liberal organizations will list the Mugger as a "Victim" of the shooting... When he was the aggressor who pulled a gun first; so it is simply NOT KOSHER for his very justified death to be used statistically against the cause of justice.
So take every statistic you've ever seen on gun deaths and victims of gun deaths, wad them up and shove them down the loo because they're more helpful to you there than in your head.
You're just totally not getting the point about the economics of the situation.
Citizens can generally afford guns. Further the laws say citizens have a right to get them so after some screening they are allowed to walk in a gun store (Like WalMart!) and buy them in all 50 states.
DREGS are dregs because they are living below the poverty line and eventually all have criminal records. That means:
1. They usually can't Afford a gun
2. After any conviction at all, no one will legally be able to sell them a gun.
Further, there just aren't as many dregs as their are citizens, let's say 1/10th as many dregs although that's a total guess.
So, if you crunch the numbers you'll see that the numbers of Armed Dregs is a very small percentage of the population here, say .01 percent, and even in the wildest looting situations they'd be VASTLY outnumbered by citizens with guns whenever they want to go out and start looting.
That's exactly why the number of innocents killed by guns here is so low. They know they don't have a chance to kill many of us before they even start shooting. They don't think: "With this gun I can steal something and get away with it..." Instead they think: "With this gun I might be able to take out 3 people before they kill me."
-It's quite the deterrent.
Being able to protect your family is no epidemic. But in the case of the UK, It is just hard for me to accept why you think it's ok for the really bad guys, (the armed ones) as few as they are, to have complete and total control over you and your families' pulse.
Yeah, sure the bobbies are running around with their cute little sticks chasing them, but that doesn't save your wife's life today if the armed bad guys feels like raping & killing her ATM, now does it?
Your gun could though... So it's a matter of which you prefer: Lowering the statistics of something horrible & totally unpreventable from happening to your loved ones, or being able to have a fighting chance when it happens at a somewhat increased frequency.
Statistical error including but not limited to liberals adding the bad guys into the wrong column.
Sounds reasonable... But so does a fighting chance instead of a GUARANTEED death when you get someone worse than a simple house robber.
Killers gonna kill, & Rapists gonna rape.
Just tell me you wouldn't want a gun in your hand if one of THOSE showed up in your bedroom at 3am...
Then you obviously haven't thought it through far enough.
So again, it sounds like you would like to give the Bad Guys guns and make them your protectors & your Ambassadors.
I'm just not so sure that is a sound decision. It sounds a bit fruity to me.
Clearly if you want to press your bad guys into the service, you have to do it BEFORE they are the bad guys.
This, in my mind, is what makes Switzerland such a kick-ass country so free of bad guys.
Correction: "Gun Nuts" will never think a system without legalized guns can work IN THE USA until we've solved our education problems.
Very few of us, myself included, use our guns on a routine basis. Heck, my shotgun is 12 years old now and It's been in the same hiding place since the day I moved into this apartment... I hope those shells still fire when I need them!
Honestly, for most of us, having a gun is exactly the same thing as having a Fire Extinguisher... Both keep you alive and we have to worry about their long-term shelf life more than anything else.
Or we'll point out how logically flawed your sad statistics are.
I have to give you this, the central theme of the thread is about the looters in the UK... We should get back to this theme asap.
I will conceded that if you changed the laws now and made guns legal to brits then it would help little.
Only a few store owners would know what to do with them or "lower" themselves to use one when needed.
...But I hold fast to the opinion that this riot could never have happened at all if the UK had legalized guns all along. These looters are cowards and one warning shot over their heads 4 days ago would have stopped this whole thing before it got going.
Wise words... But I wish someone would take the time to do proper studies detailing gun deaths between REAL Victims and oppressors, instead of this liberally-biased crap just making everyone who got shot "the Victim."
The way it's done now totally obfuscates any shooting deaths that are justified or lead to a positive outcome.
Your brain would be of much more use to you in this discussion if it had first-hand experience of NEEDING to fire a gun... Then you'd know that it really is a 'good' thing to have one when you need one.
...And the way Britian is set up right now, they might need one far more than we do over here!
Wrong and irrelevant and that's not even the question being debated.
It's not conditioning dude. It's history. Maybe you're not familiar with the history of the United States. Our country was borne from its armed citizens mopping up against highly trained armies. And then doing it again. And again.
We don't worry too much about being invaded and even these days in the face of a government that wants to kill or enslave the majority of its citizens the bad guys can't load up the trains yet. Guns have a special place in the hearts of American culture.
If you want to talk about conditioning I suggest you sift through some declassified files of MK Ultra, Cointelpro, read some Tavistock literature, and look at who funds the gun grabbers. Building up anti-gun sentiment in the US has taken a lot of time, money, and effort.
Government has guns, you don't feel a desire to have a gun. That is a pretty good sign of mind control to me. Or you haven't read much history or something.
No, we'll laugh and tell you that your statistics are shortsighted and unrepresentative of the issue.
Guns don't make Americans violent. America makes Americans violent.
H. Rap Brown said:
They are rioting because you fucking fluffy, soft ass bitches, aren't giving them more welfare and free shit. Now fucking pony up some more of that free healthcare before they take over the capitol. God knows they wouldn't have much trouble doing it, your cops are the equivalent to a bunch of tranny strippers dressed up like police on Halloween.
*sigh*
Again, i fully understand the concept behind 'needing' to use a weapon to defend myself, i sincerely do. I'm old enough and experienced enough to grasp the concept - it's not that hard. I've done it before when someone tried to break into my flat when i was in my bed. I rushed the dude with a big-ass kitchen knife and he jumped back out the window he came in, if he had stood his ground to fight i would've stabbed him - no question about it.
If it was a gun i had instead of a knife, and i felt my life was in danger, i'd have shot him.
I can only assume by your comment that you have personally shot people, or needed to fire your gun at someone in self defence. Thats fine, I've shot guns before myself (not at anyone)...... but my entire point that you seem to have missed, is that i (or anyone else) doesn't need to have fired a gun in order to have a valid opinion on whether our country should allow every citizen to have one.
Just like i don't need to have fired a nuke to discuss whether we have nuclear weapons or not.
[URL="http://www.wickedfire.com/members/ly2-from-wf.html" said:
Your posts seriously make me cringe, it's like being back at school with the 16 year olds arguing who's dad is tougher.
If you're gonna insult for no reason, at least make it funny.