Are Guns the Problem?

[xenuwonder]

Xenu out.

And don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, my friend.

Ha... I'm not leaving buddy..

The only people that should be leaving are the redneck republican, gun loving bafoons in the USA.

And their days are numbered.. The country's days are numbered.

"It is a masterful ideological manipulation: the Tea Party agenda is fundamentally irrational in that it wants to protect the interests of hardworking ordinary people by privileging the "exploitative rich", thus literally countering their own interests.

This twisted ideology is also behind the current federal government shutdown in the US. An opinion poll at the end of June 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly support most of its provisions. Here we encounter Tea Party ideology at its purest: the majority wants to have its ideological cake and eat the real baking. They want the real benefits of healthcare reform, while rejecting its ideological form, which they perceive as a threat to the "freedom of choice". They reject the concept of fruit, but they want apples, plums and strawberries."

Xenu.

[bobevenson]

Australia's nickname Down Under is obviously a euphemism for Hell.

[xenuwonder]

Australia's nickname Down Under is obviously a euphemism for Hell.

Don't give up your day job buddy..Comedy obviously aint your thang..

So it's a "Hell" because there aint no guns? Hahahaha. Funny how people think.

All jokes aside, if I were to believe in such a fictional place and complete fantasy in this "Hell" you describe then maybe I would have got a little chuckle from it.

Hell is a fantasy. Just like the idea guns are not part of the problem.

Guns, religion, what else can we throw into the mix here?

You got a better argument for why guns are'nt the problem?

Xenu.

[Ginkgo]

You got a better get an argument for why guns aren't the problem?


Yes, Bob come to think of it you never did addressed the issues I raised in relation to this.

[Ginkgo]

Australia's nickname Down Under is obviously a euphemism for Hell.

Not according to the Wall Street Journal. The organization for Economic Cooperation and Development consists of 34 nations that make up its membership. The index statistics found that 75% of Australians were satisfied with their lives above the U.S. average of 70%.

[bobevenson]

Why don't you guys take on Walter Williams? Oh, I know, you can't figure out how to refute his impeccable logic.

[henry quirk]

"what do you think, Henry(?)"

That you, Doc, are right on the money.

[henry quirk]

"You got a better argument for why guns are'nt the problem?"

Guns only allow for (generally) easier killing.

Guns are not the source of the antipathy or insanity that leads to killing.

Try again, x-wonder.

[henry quirk]

"the current federal government shutdown"

At best, only 20 percent of the gov is down...the other 80 percent is chuggin' away as usual.

*shrug*

[uwot]

Why don't you guys take on Walter Williams? Oh, I know, you can't figure out how to refute his impeccable logic.

You must have missed it, Bob. Never mind, here it is again.

The problem is that you and your leftist friends can't find anything to attack in Williams' article, so you just play your little ring-around-the-rosey game.

The problem with reactionary right-wingers is that they make up a story, provide no evidence for it, but nonetheless assail people who challenge it. That is what religious fundamentalists of all 'faiths' do and that is what Walter Williams has done in his article.

With so many guns in the hands of youngsters, did we see today's level of youth violence?

Probably not, but what are the facts? How many guns were actually in the hands of youngsters and how do the levels of youth violence actually compare?

What about gun availability? Catalogs and magazines from the 1940s, '50s and '60s were full of gun advertisements directed to children and parents.

Were crime rates stable during this period?

For example, "What Every Parent Should Know When a Boy or Girl Wants a Gun" was published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The 1902 Sears mail-order catalog had 35 pages of firearm advertisements.

You cannot use a catalogue from 1902 to support a claim about the 40's' 50's and 60's

People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped. For most of our history, a person could simply walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in our country, and buy a gun.

Is there any evidence that the 'virtually anywhere' you could buy guns easily were safer than places you couldn't?

Few states bothered to have even age restrictions on buying guns.

Those and other historical facts should force us to ask ourselves: Why — at a time in our history when guns were readily available, when a person could just walk into a store or order a gun through the mail, when there were no FBI background checks, no waiting periods, no licensing requirements — was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted?

It's because policies put in place by conservative administrations, that have allowed personal debt to spiral, jobs to be shipped overseas, working people to be disenfranchised and the gap between rich and poor to escalate have placed an extraordinary stress on people who are struggling to make the best of their lives.

Guns are guns. If they were capable of behavior, as some people seem to suggest, they should have been doing then what they're doing now.

Can Williams or you provide examples of what you mean by people suggesting that guns are capable of behaviour?

Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not just laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society, not restraints on inanimate objects. These behavioral norms — transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works.

If as he says the wisdom is distilled through trial and error and looking at what works, then any particular point we should return to is completely arbitrary.

The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching.

Exactly what are these customs, traditions and moral values and who exactly doesn't have them? What evidence is there that such people are responsible for a disproportionate level of crime?

In other words, it's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.

How are you going to make someone behave as you would wish if they are pointing a gun at you?

Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century.

Punishment for criminal behaviours has never been stricter or swifter which is why the US has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.

Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle.

What moral absolutes? Who has abandoned them?

We've been taught not to be judgmental, that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another.

What sort of lifestyle? What evidence is there that people living such lifestyles are disproportionately responsible for gun related crimes?

More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and progressives.

What is the evidence for this claim? What moral standards? What has the education establishment done to attack them?

Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws are needed to regulate behavior.

So to civilise society, you give everyone a gun?

What's worse is that instead of trying to return to what worked, progressives want to replace what worked with what sounds good or what seems plausible, such as more gun locks, longer waiting periods and stricter gun possession laws.

Does he recommend that we should try things that don't sound plausible?

Then there's progressive mindlessness "cures," such as "zero tolerance" for schoolyard recess games such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, shouting "bang bang," drawing a picture of a pistol, making a gun out of Lego pieces, and biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop-Tart.

What are the regulations with regard to the above?

This kind of unadulterated lunacy — which focuses on an inanimate object such as a gun instead of on morality, self-discipline and character — will continue to produce disappointing results.

Is there any evidence that playing cops and robbers or making a gun out of a Pop-Tart improves morality, self-discipline and character?
The reason sane people can't find anything to attack is that it is a facile piece of tripe, because the author lacks the balls, the knowledge or the intellect to make any substantive claims.

[bobevenson]

The quotation "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, act III, scene II, where it is spoken by Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. The same quotation could be applied to you, my friend, even though I assume you're not a lady, although I'm not prepared to debate the point.

[Arising_uk]

In America, a crust is the end of a loaf of bread, and that's something I should be asking the masses of socialist Europe.

Once again bob draws from his stock responses. Maybe he's a candidate for the Turing Test! Of course!! That'd explain a shitload!!!

[Arising_uk]

Why don't you guys take on Walter Williams? Oh, I know, you can't figure out how to refute his impeccable logic.

uwots repost

... although I'm not prepared to debate the point.

Never a truer word from bob.

[uwot]

The quotation "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, act III, scene II, where it is spoken by Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. The same quotation could be applied to you, my friend, even though I assume you're not a lady, although I'm not prepared to debate the point.

Bob, you are priceless. As Arising intimated, you don't actually debate anything, a bit like Walter Williams. Mind you, it's a mystery why a prophet like you needs vindication from someone who doesn't have a hotline to the almighty. Is WW just a bit closer to god than you?

[xenuwonder]

I'm getting the feeling the guy that started this thread is a light weight.

Were you one of those childern your logic guru Walter Williams described as "biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop Tart"?

What a fun game that must have been. I'd like to see the evidence about how that improves brain development.

As per usual from that part of the world, a lot of hot air, and no substance.

If you're going start a thread about whether are guns part of the problem you're opening yourself up to an outside in look at how ludicrous the guns laws are in the USA.

Give us your opinion on why you believe what you do on this as we as the rest of the world are strugglig to see the common senses of it all.

It's a bit like this.

Why don't we let Iran create whatever Nuclear Technology they want to? Weapons included?

Because we can't let nuclear weapons fall into the hands of evildoers? Doing their evil things the do so evily?

Because the USA thinks they are crazy trigger happy, button pushing mujahadeens that will undermine the interests of the USA?

YES!

So the US decides to act against allowing them to carry on with their nuclear programs and obtain weapons.

Use that philosophy on your own people and you'll solve the schoolyard shooting massacres.

Or shall we just give everyone a gun because that just makes so much sense does'nt it BRIGHT SPARK!

xenu.