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Navy Yard shooting in D.C.; 13 dead so far (Page 3)
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pooka
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Sep 20, 2013, 08:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by lpkmckenna View Post
That's right, American gun deaths are comparable to a nation currently at war with itself. The only thing missing are the beheadings.
There may be correlation with the illegal drug trade and all of that.

As for your government vs civilian bullshit... Stick with an argument. When it's the most advanced military in the world against it's own citizens, there's no contest. iMessages will fail to send and the population will fall within a matter of days. When it's the worlds most advanced military force vs non-uniformed insurgents (in a foreign land), it's obviously an "unwinnable war" and/or "quagmire" that should have been avoided from the get go. I mean, come the **** on. Even the ****ing FRENCH put up one hell of a resistance against an invading force. You're being willfully goofy about this. Almost like you want us to learn a lesson or something. I think you *may* have issues in the sense that you don't necessarily want to be right so much as you want the other side to suffer for their stupidity.

And for the record, I don't give a flying shit if the US bans guns. I think it's stupid and the "benefits" are grossly exaggerated, but it won't affect my day to day life. Until Mad Max becomes reality. But even then I'm fit enough to whoop some ass. Jeeze... these scenarios are giving me a chub. BRB.

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besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 08:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by pooka View Post
As for your government vs civilian bullshit... Stick with an argument. When it's the most advanced military in the world against it's own citizens, there's no contest. iMessages will fail to send and the population will fall within a matter of days.
Exactly, and it seems like some aren't considering their prospects against unmanned aerial bombers all that carefully. The best case scenario against an opponent like this is what?
     
subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 08:28 PM
 
How does the Air Force deal with a bomber?

They attack it with a fighter.

How do you attack a drone bomber?

With a drone fighter, which is a drone with a gun on it.


P.S. Drone... unmanned... kamikaze without the person inside.
     
pooka
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Sep 20, 2013, 08:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Exactly, and it seems like some aren't considering their prospects against unmanned aerial bombers all that carefully. The best case scenario against an opponent like this is what?
Dude, I'm not naive, that is not my point of view. I wouldn't be surprised if the unrestrained efforts of the US's military might could subdue and pacify any sort of civilian uprising, but I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't. Situations like that tend to get... complicated. Do you really think the rest of the world would sit idly by? Who's to say that Russia & China wouldn't do the whole war by proxy thing? I mean, drones are cool and all, but they ain't exactly making short work of part time fighters/full time goat herders.

But hey, everyone is entitled to their own fiction.

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subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 08:35 PM
 
To be clear from my side, I'm not saying it's a gimmie.

The point which started this all is the people who claim it's impossible aren't thinking it through like someone whose life and country are on the line.

I think if they were, they could and would come up with counters to some of their own arguments.
     
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Sep 20, 2013, 08:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by pooka View Post
As for your government vs civilian bullshit... Stick with an argument. When it's the most advanced military in the world against it's own citizens, there's no contest. iMessages will fail to send and the population will fall within a matter of days. When it's the worlds most advanced military force vs non-uniformed insurgents (in a foreign land), it's obviously an "unwinnable war" and/or "quagmire" that should have been avoided from the get go. I mean, come the **** on. Even the ****ing FRENCH put up one hell of a resistance against an invading force. You're being willfully goofy about this.
I don't need to "pick an argument," because there's no difference in my opinion regarding these two issues.

Iraq, or Afghanistan, and Vietnam were quagmires, but were they "unwinnable?" It all depends on what you call winning.

If "winning" meaning putting an end to ALL counter-insurgency efforts, then yes, these conflicts are unwinnable. No matter what, the opposite side has no reason to stop and won't.

However, if "winning" means maintaining power over the region, then Iraq, Afghanistan, and Veitnam were wars where the Americans and their allies were clearly winning. It's doesn't matter how many schoolhouses, roads, or mosques the insurgents bomb, under no circumstances was the US-supported gov't going to fall. These insurgents have no hope whatsoever of attaining any real goals. Hell, in Vietnam, the US-supported gov't maintained power for 2 years after the Americans left. If they had stayed, they never would have fallen.

It's the same in the US or any other western nation. No uprising has any hope whatsoever of removing the established government. None. And the French resistance had no hope in hell of ever removing the Germans from their country. They were minimally useful as western allies, at best.

There's nothing "goofy" about any of this. Resistance movements rarely have any hope of success, and when they do succeed, it's only because the authority they are fighting are too disinterested in the war to begin with or are too busy fighting other conflicts to care. (The American Revolution required both of these to succeed, and the Americans left Vietnam because there was little interest in maintaining such a death toil indefinitely for no goal other than supporting the south.)
     
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Sep 20, 2013, 09:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Rate of gun deaths per 100,000 people

- In 2011 US: 10.3
- In 2011 UK: 0.3
- In 2009 Canada: 0.5
- In 2010 Germany: 1.1

Sorry guys, it just doesn't make logical sense to say that mental health alone accounts for this HUGE ASS difference, there is more to it than that. There are mentally unhealthy people everywhere, exposure to violence everywhere, video games, etc.
You're not looking at the whole picture.

What about the rate of deaths due to untreated, undiagnosed, or ignored mental illness? In order for your above list to be useful to the discussion, you have to cross-reference it with deaths related to mental illness.

Not only that, but the massive majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are not from spree shooters. They're from gang-on-gang thug violence using illegally acquired weapons. If we took guns away from everyone in the country, it wouldn't stop the flood of violence from gangs. They would just start using knives and hatchets instead.

That's my point. Of course it isn't unique, but why is the difference between the US and any other country so massive?
What's the rate of gang-on-gang or similar violence in other large countries? So Chinese people don't kill others with guns as often as Americans. Does that mean that Chinese people don't kill each other as often, or does it simply mean that Chinese people use other methods to murder their victims?

There's a much more complex picture here. Guns are not the only method of violence. Shooting sprees are not the only type of gun violence. Mental illness is not the only cause of gun violence.

Until we get at this question and stop trying to come up with a single answer, I don't think this debate will end. Nobody should be happy with the startling US numbers, and in my opinion nobody should come at this without putting all options on the table to fix this.
I hate to break it to you, but when the majority of gun violence in the US is caused by minority thugs in gangs, there isn't a single goddamn thing anyone is going to do about it. A culture that glorifies gang activity is going to encourage teenagers to join gangs, where they are pressured and eventually desire to engage in frequent and bloody violence.

Trying to rip legally-owned firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is a single-answer response to a situation that is in no way even slightly the fault of those law-abiding citizens.

Feeling that any comparison to other countries is fundamentally flawed
Comparison to other countries is fundamentally flawed. Our population is enormous compared to every single country in the European Union. You can't take what works in Sweden, where the work ethic is significantly different, there's little to no racial, ethnic, or cultural diversity, and the population of the entire country is smaller than Michigan, and use that as a basis for why we should allow taxes to skyrocket in the name of universal healthcare.

We have more lazy, entitled, arrogant, fatass LOSERS in this country than any other country on the planet. I sure as shit don't want my tax dollars going to socialized healthcare so that some four-hundred-pound welfare mommy can get her gastric bypass surgery for free.

Why don't we let the EU create a universal healthcare program that removes all other healthcare programs in the individual member countries and see how that works out. Then we can make a comparison to the US.

I agree that mental health issues are a part of the problem, but they must only be a part of it.
Well, the fact is, if the people who caused some of the worst single-person gun-related massacres in the United States in the past decade had been properly treated and kept under supervision, those massacres wouldn't have happened. James Holmes lost his mind. Cho Whats-his-name in Blacksburg was completely ****ing insane, and the investigation following his spree indicated that multiple groups and individuals were to blame for not appropriately dealing with his mental illnesses (that's politically correct feel good bullshit for you). Adam Lanza couldn't function as an adult without close supervision. Alex Alexis was hearing voices and hallucinating.

Lots and lots of people have guns and don't kill anyone. Most people suffering from psychotic, delusional mental illnesses are a threat to their own safety as well as the safety of everyone around them.
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besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 09:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
How does the Air Force deal with a bomber?

They attack it with a fighter.

How do you attack a drone bomber?

With a drone fighter, which is a drone with a gun on it.


P.S. Drone... unmanned... kamikaze without the person inside.


So you think that civilians can jerry rig together some sort of remote controlled/autopilot plane that will take down a military drone?

If so, I think this is far fetched.
     
besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 09:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by pooka View Post
Dude, I'm not naive, that is not my point of view. I wouldn't be surprised if the unrestrained efforts of the US's military might could subdue and pacify any sort of civilian uprising, but I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't. Situations like that tend to get... complicated. Do you really think the rest of the world would sit idly by? Who's to say that Russia & China wouldn't do the whole war by proxy thing? I mean, drones are cool and all, but they ain't exactly making short work of part time fighters/full time goat herders.

But hey, everyone is entitled to their own fiction.

I was directing this at the entire chat, not you. Sorry!

My point, and where this started is the idea that we need guns to take down our own government. If our own government starts waging war against us, it will be complicated, just like you said, but let's not kid ourselves, some dudes firing guns at aircraft is not going to be the deciding factor of that extremely far fetched battle.

It's far fetched because the government doesn't need to oppress/control us physical to have their way with us, but that's another story.
     
shifuimam
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Sep 20, 2013, 09:58 PM
 
Don't forget that a lot of Americans have guns simply to protect themselves from others. It's not just about what might happen if the President goes rogue.

I don't trust the police department to arrive instantaneously at my house in the middle of the night if an intruder enters my bedroom. Teleportation isn't quite ready for production use, y'know.
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besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
You're not looking at the whole picture.

What about the rate of deaths due to untreated, undiagnosed, or ignored mental illness? In order for your above list to be useful to the discussion, you have to cross-reference it with deaths related to mental illness.
So you think mental illness accounts for this difference by a factor of over 10? If so, why are we comparatively so mentally ill?

Not only that, but the massive majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are not from spree shooters. They're from gang-on-gang thug violence using illegally acquired weapons. If we took guns away from everyone in the country, it wouldn't stop the flood of violence from gangs. They would just start using knives and hatchets instead.
What about the gangs in other countries? What makes our gangs special?

What's the rate of gang-on-gang or similar violence in other large countries? So Chinese people don't kill others with guns as often as Americans. Does that mean that Chinese people don't kill each other as often, or does it simply mean that Chinese people use other methods to murder their victims?

There's a much more complex picture here. Guns are not the only method of violence. Shooting sprees are not the only type of gun violence. Mental illness is not the only cause of gun violence.
So what accounts for this difference? I'd like to think that you'd acknowledge that mental illness isn't the only factor?

I hate to break it to you, but when the majority of gun violence in the US is caused by minority thugs in gangs, there isn't a single goddamn thing anyone is going to do about it. A culture that glorifies gang activity is going to encourage teenagers to join gangs, where they are pressured and eventually desire to engage in frequent and bloody violence.
How do we glorify gang activity, and how are our gangs different than those of any other country? Sorry to keep on coming back to this, but I'd really like to understand this and I was hoping you'd have a satisfying answer for me. Not to be aggressive about this and suggest the onus is on you to provide this answer, but we're just having a friendly chat, so I'm interested in if you have opinions here.

Comparison to other countries is fundamentally flawed. Our population is enormous compared to every single country in the European Union. You can't take what works in Sweden, where the work ethic is significantly different, there's little to no racial, ethnic, or cultural diversity, and the population of the entire country is smaller than Michigan, and use that as a basis for why we should allow taxes to skyrocket in the name of universal healthcare.
That's why I looked at the gun *rate* and not the gun totals, and this particular line of questioning of mine is not about universal health care.

We have more lazy, entitled, arrogant, fatass LOSERS in this country than any other country on the planet. I sure as bore don't want my tax dollars going to socialized healthcare so that some four-hundred-pound welfare mommy can get her gastric bypass surgery for free.
I'm not sure I buy this either. There are countries with fewer working hours, socialism, far less material upside, etc. what is it about our culture that makes us this way compared to other countries?

Well, the fact is, if the people who caused some of the worst single-person gun-related massacres in the United States in the past decade had been properly treated and kept under supervision, those massacres wouldn't have happened. James Holmes lost his mind. Cho Whats-his-name in Blacksburg was completely ****ing insane, and the investigation following his spree indicated that multiple groups and individuals were to blame for not appropriately dealing with his mental illnesses (that's politically correct feel good bullshit for you). Adam Lanza couldn't function as an adult without close supervision. Alex Alexis was hearing voices and hallucinating.
I definitely agree that there has been a lot of unchecked mental illness. I'm just wondering why this seems to happen so often here. I'm thinking we need to take stock of what we have and why we have it before coming up with a solution to treat it. I mean, obviously mentally screening everybody on a regular frequency will be evasive and tricky.
     
subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
So you think that civilians can jerry rig together some sort of remote controlled/autopilot plane that will take down a military drone?

If so, I think this is far fetched.
Why? Drones have all kinds of civilian applications. I'm considering getting one as a camera platform.

Weaponizing a drone can be as simple as flying it into what's bugging you.
     
besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
Don't forget that a lot of Americans have guns simply to protect themselves from others. It's not just about what might happen if the President goes rogue.

I don't trust the police department to arrive instantaneously at my house in the middle of the night if an intruder enters my bedroom. Teleportation isn't quite ready for production use, y'know.

This makes perfect sense to me. I'm just struggling to come up with a good solution to keep the guns out of the wrong hands. My questions are not leading questions. I don't have an answer I'm trying to lead you to see.
     
besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Why? Drones have all kinds of civilian applications. I'm considering getting one as a camera platform.

Weaponizing a drone can be as simple as flying it into what's bugging you.

Would you at least concede that if a city was attacked with, say, 20 of these things and they started bombing the trash out of everything that it would ruin your day?
     
subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
This makes perfect sense to me. I'm just struggling to come up with a good solution to keep the guns out of the wrong hands. My questions are not leading questions. I don't have an answer I'm trying to lead you to see.
The answer is at some point you can't.

It's a cliche, but it's 100% accurate: freedom has a price.
     
besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
The answer is at some point you can't.

It's a cliche, but it's 100% accurate: freedom has a price.

Would you say that the other countries I listed are lacking freedom?

Freedom comes in all sorts of different forms, some countries are better off than others in some respects (for example, if I was gay I would say prior to the legalization of gay marriage in some states that in countries where gay marriage is legal there is more freedom in this respect). I don't like pretending that we are absolutely free.

We are free in respect to owning the guns we want to own, yes.
     
subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Would you at least concede that if a city was attacked with, say, 20 of these things and they started bombing the trash out of everything that it would ruin your day?
Concede?

What on earth do you think I'm arguing?

Is the drone argument somehow different than the tank/artillery/nuke argument?

Would a nuke not ruin your day too?
     
besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 10:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Concede?

What on earth do you think I'm arguing?

Is the drone argument somehow different than the tank/artillery/nuke argument?

Would a nuke not ruin your day too?

I guess I don't know what you are arguing.
     
subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 11:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Would you say that the other countries I listed are lacking freedom?

Freedom comes in all sorts of different forms, some countries are better off than others in some respects (for example, if I was gay I would say prior to the legalization of gay marriage in some states that in countries where gay marriage is legal there is more freedom in this respect). I don't like pretending that we are absolutely free.

We are free in respect to owning the guns we want to own, yes.
I'm too lazy to look up the countries you listed, but assuming you mean Europe...

Europeans don't have freedom. If they did, they'd use it to kill each other, like they did through, oh... all of history until NATO (i.e. us) parked there.

If you think you're free when your safety is dependent on a bunch of Big Mac chomping, mass-market beer swilling, sexist, homophobic douchebags, I've got news for you.
     
besson3c
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Sep 20, 2013, 11:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I'm too lazy to look up the countries you listed, but assuming you mean Europe...

Europeans don't have freedom. If they did, they'd use it to kill each other, like they did through, oh... all of history until NATO (i.e. us) parked there.

If you think you're free when your safety is dependent on a bunch of Big Mac chomping, mass-market beer swilling, sexist, homophobic douchebags, I've got news for you.

My point is that freedom means different things to different people, it isn't a binary thing, or something you either absolutely have or absolutely don't if you are most developed countries.
     
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Sep 20, 2013, 11:20 PM
 
Some freedoms are likewise more important than others, and that's context dependent.

Having a constitutional freedom to bear arms doesn't matter as much when you have another country protecting you from your neighbors.
     
subego
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Sep 20, 2013, 11:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
I guess I don't know what you are arguing.
What I'm trying to argue is you're not thinking like a rebel.

A rebel can't afford to see drone attacks and go "put a fork in it, everybody go home". Because that's how you're playing the rebels in your head, that's why they could never win.

If your future really depended on it, I think you'd put more effort into that role.
     
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Sep 21, 2013, 12:10 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
What I'm trying to argue is you're not thinking like a rebel.

A rebel can't afford to see drone attacks and go "put a fork in it, everybody go home". Because that's how you're playing the rebels in your head, that's why they could never win.

If your future really depended on it, I think you'd put more effort into that role.

Okay, I guess I'd agree with this, but my point is that against those drones we'd be far more overmatched than we would have been back in the days the constitution was written, so I don't think invoking the constitution and presuming what the founding fathers would want today makes sense, because we don't live in that time anymore - our technological advancements put this entire thing in a different context.

Maybe to protect us against tyranny, the president shouldn't be able to order military action without congressional approval? This change would seem like a better protection against tyranny, although to be honest, I think all of us are barking up the wrong tree. The government doesn't need to take away our guns or exert physical dominance over us to establish a tyranny, they can do so by doing what they are doing now in serving interests other than the general population. I fear this far more than the prospects of having to put together that rebel army.
     
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Sep 21, 2013, 01:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by lpkmckenna View Post
I don't need to "pick an argument," because there's no difference in my opinion regarding these two issues.
That's not what you said. That's NOT what you were implying. Your "points" aside you're full of shit and this is essentially an emotional argument. Cue "bwhahhahaha" and your "victory". Good day.

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subego
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Sep 21, 2013, 01:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Okay, I guess I'd agree with this, but my point is that against those drones we'd be far more overmatched than we would have been back in the days the constitution was written, so I don't think invoking the constitution and presuming what the founding fathers would want today makes sense, because we don't live in that time anymore - our technological advancements put this entire thing in a different context.

Maybe to protect us against tyranny, the president shouldn't be able to order military action without congressional approval? This change would seem like a better protection against tyranny, although to be honest, I think all of us are barking up the wrong tree. The government doesn't need to take away our guns or exert physical dominance over us to establish a tyranny, they can do so by doing what they are doing now in serving interests other than the general population. I fear this far more than the prospects of having to put together that rebel army.
Why must one protection against tyranny be at the expense of another?

You continue to get hung-up on imagining some fruitless frontal assault. That's not how a successful rebellion would operate. They'd be terrorists. While a terrorist can make use of tanks, jets, and nukes, they don't need them.

This, and every other mass shooting thread is about how disturbed people get by the idea some random crazy could just open fire, yet they can't fathom rational people with guns causing a ruckus.

Or that tanks, drones, and nukes could take care of this. Do you bomb everybody with a gun?
     
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Sep 21, 2013, 01:32 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Straw man.

Shaddim said it's hard. This is compared to people American soldiers are usually ordered to kill, who have brown or yellow skin and speak a different language.
Correct, well said.

Originally Posted by subego View Post
With the Civil War example? Those were govenments fighting each other.

No one is arguing it's difficult to shoot your neighbor when your neighbor is shooting you, the problem arises when your rebellion has yet to reach the point of half the country seceding. You can't kill the rebels without causing collateral damage to American innocents. That's what's hard and/or difficult.
Again, right on.
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Sep 21, 2013, 08:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego
I (accidentally) tried to ignore you, and vBull said "nice try, he's a mod".
Originally Posted by shifuimam
I'm betting that the admins made a special vB group for him in order to give him a custom title and stars image, and that's what triggered the lock on ignoring him.
If that's the case -- that would suck.

I wanted the custom stars and requested them via PM through a couple of mods and was told you have to be a contributor to the forum as either a mod or admin.
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Sep 21, 2013, 09:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by pooka View Post
Dude, I'm not naive, that is not my point of view. I wouldn't be surprised if the unrestrained efforts of the US's military might could subdue and pacify any sort of civilian uprising, but I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't. Situations like that tend to get... complicated. Do you really think the rest of the world would sit idly by? Who's to say that Russia & China wouldn't do the whole war by proxy thing? I mean, drones are cool and all, but they ain't exactly making short work of part time fighters/full time goat herders.

But hey, everyone is entitled to their own fiction.
People who suggest the US military is impenetrable under such a circumstance are looking at this the wrong way. They fail to account for defection and an unwillingness to support Government folly. We already have a wealth of Sheriffs on record for refusing to enforce unconstitutional gun legislation and we're nowhere near civil war status. When you're talking about insurgency, it's a numbers game and one that would often rely upon the factors that lead to the uprising.

For example, there are approximately 90 guns for every 100 people in the US. Approximately 35% of the US population owns a gun. That equates to more than 109 million armed US citizens. There are some 2.5 million soldiers in the US Military which equates to approximately 2% of the overall armed citizenry. The type of conditions necessary to usher in civil war in the US are hard to imagine, but I suspect they'd include draconian government activity. Under this condition, you're asking the standing army and police presence to support and enforce policies that stand in stark contrast with their own sensibilities through force and put them at odds with the populace of which 109 million are armed. Yes, the standing army has tanks and drones and fighter jets, but someone needs to man that technology. If worse comes to worse and we're faced with conditions bad enough to facilitate a civil war -- your government is hoping the people that man this technology would be willing to use it against their brothers and sisters to support and enforce policies they're inclined not to. In the US, I suspect much of the military would defect under such conditions and Police precincts will neglect to uphold the measures only to take their wares over to the side of the populace. Granted, I certainly hope for the sake of our country that our government does not get this adventurist, but I can assure you that disarming the populace would be a great start.
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Sep 21, 2013, 12:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by ebuddy View Post
People who suggest the US military is impenetrable under such a circumstance are looking at this the wrong way.
Yeah, no shit. It's simply absurd. I mean once you start actually thinking it through, it becomes a shit storm of epic proportions. Morons gleefully celebrate and point their snarky little fingers at Hezbollah's "victory" over Israel in Lebanon (2006). Only an IDIOT would compare the capabilities of that paramilitary force against a US-based insurgency. I mean, completely overlook defections and the whack-job Waco loonies. Just factor in retired law enforcement, military personnel, hunters, etc. Look at the SIZE of this country and the completely porous borders. The generations of citizens that know each of their respective locals like the back of their hand. The technology currently at their disposal (flir, night vision, advanced military-grade optics, military-grade sniper rifles, armor piercing ammunition, etc). And I'm not jerking off to this hair-brained scenario. It's ****ing retarded. And with everything I've said, there is still NO guarantee one way or the other. The government forces may kick the ever loving shit out of any uprising. But to imply that it would be easy... **** off. Not you. Whoever subscribes to that jack-tard newsletter.

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Sep 21, 2013, 03:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
So you think mental illness accounts for this difference by a factor of over 10? If so, why are we comparatively so mentally ill?
No, I just think that single-factor statistics are useless in this sort of conversation.

The gun crime rate in a country is not single factor. It's caused by a LOT of things. A low gun crime rate does NOT mean a low violent crime rate or a low homicide rate. The point here is that you can't look at gun crime and say "if we didn't have guns, we wouldn't have violent crime". That's very ignorant of what causes violent crime.

Mental illness is not the only factor. It's one of many factors, and more recently, it has been a primary factor in spree shootings on innocent victims, as opposed to gang-on-gang thug crime.

What about the gangs in other countries? What makes our gangs special?
Money? Direct links to drug cartels in Central and South America? Many countries in Africa suffer from extremely high homicide rates compared to the United States (43 of the 54 countries in Africa have a higher homicide rate than the US). I'm not a sociologist, so I can't tell you the specific reasons why countries in Africa have such problems with homicide - I'd suspect it's related to civilian unrest, poverty, corrupt governments and law enforcement, and a general feeling of chaos in those countries.

When looking at the gun crime rate specifically in the United States, you have to look at it holistically, and that includes acknowledging that gangs account for an enormous portion of gun crimes and gun-related violence in this country. The spree shooters are a tiny fraction. We just focus on them more because Detroit and LA and New Jersey don't report every single Crips vs. Bloods shooting that happens, since it happens dozens of times a day, every day of the year.

So what accounts for this difference? I'd like to think that you'd acknowledge that mental illness isn't the only factor?
Mental illness has been a primary factor in every large-scale spree shooting that has occurred in the United States in the past decade. Period.

How do we glorify gang activity, and how are our gangs different than those of any other country? Sorry to keep on coming back to this, but I'd really like to understand this and I was hoping you'd have a satisfying answer for me. Not to be aggressive about this and suggest the onus is on you to provide this answer, but we're just having a friendly chat, so I'm interested in if you have opinions here.
Thug culture is glorified in rap music, branding, role models looked up to by black youth, and the general victimization of black people in modern American society. Black kids raised in urban environments are pressured by older brothers, cousins, and peers to join gangs as the only way to make money, protect their families, and "be a man". These kids are threatened with violence and even death if they don't join their neighborhood's gang. It's a vicious cycle.

I'm not sure I buy this either. There are countries with fewer working hours, socialism, far less material upside, etc. what is it about our culture that makes us this way compared to other countries?
America is a country of consumerism, conspicuous consumption, and immediate gratification. We import more than we export. We consume more than we produce. We spend more than we make. Add to that the more recent push for $whatever "rights" and a victim mentality, and you end up with a bunch of arrogant, self-entitled jackasses who think they're special little flowers who should follow their dreams rather than becoming productive, contributing members of society. The fact that most high school graduates are pursuing bullshit liberal arts degrees is a big sign of this social shift.

I definitely agree that there has been a lot of unchecked mental illness. I'm just wondering why this seems to happen so often here.
I've said this multiple times already, so I suppose you're just selectively listening at this point.

In an effort to destigmatize mental illness we have over-corrected and made it politically incorrect to even consider residential treatment for citizens suffering from psychotic mental illnesses. A person suffering from dementia, delusions, paranoid schizophrenia, etc. should not be afforded the same freedoms as a sane adult. Such a person is a danger to their own person and everyone around them and should be treated as a dangerous safety risk.

State-run mental hospitals of decades past were terrible places. This marred history is preventing us from moving forward and providing safe, locked-down facilities where those suffering from mental illnesses can be protected from themselves.

In the case of the Virginia Tech shooter, his parents desperately tried to make him get help. They knew that he had severe and debilitating psychological problems. However, thanks to the bleeding-hearts making it impossible for a parent to maintain legal guardianship of an adult child who isn't mentally retarded, his parents lost all control over him when he turned 18. There was nothing they could do. He should have been locked up, not allowed to go to a public university and interact with everyone else as though he was a normal adult. 23 innocent people are dead because it was too politically incorrect to keep a mentally delusional man away from those innocent people.
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Sep 21, 2013, 03:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by ebuddy View Post
If that's the case -- that would suck.

I wanted the custom stars and requested them via PM through a couple of mods and was told you have to be a contributor to the forum as either a mod or admin.
I want custom classic Mac rainbow Apples. I am after all the vintage Mac loon around here.
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Sep 21, 2013, 03:50 PM
 
Also:

Guns in the United States: Facts, Figures and Firearm Law

Nearly half of gun-related deaths in the United States are due to suicide - which is frequently a side effect of mental illness.

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Sep 21, 2013, 04:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by pooka View Post
Yeah, no shit. It's simply absurd. I mean once you start actually thinking it through, it becomes a shit storm of epic proportions. Morons gleefully celebrate and point their snarky little fingers at Hezbollah's "victory" over Israel in Lebanon (2006). Only an IDIOT would compare the capabilities of that paramilitary force against a US-based insurgency. I mean, completely overlook defections and the whack-job Waco loonies. Just factor in retired law enforcement, military personnel, hunters, etc. Look at the SIZE of this country and the completely porous borders. The generations of citizens that know each of their respective locals like the back of their hand. The technology currently at their disposal (flir, night vision, advanced military-grade optics, military-grade sniper rifles, armor piercing ammunition, etc). And I'm not jerking off to this hair-brained scenario. It's ****ing retarded. And with everything I've said, there is still NO guarantee one way or the other. The government forces may kick the ever loving shit out of any uprising. But to imply that it would be easy... **** off. Not you. Whoever subscribes to that jack-tard newsletter.
And as I mentioned above:

One whack-job with a gun is so terrifying, we need to restrict guns!

20 million rational people with guns can't do shit!
     
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Sep 21, 2013, 05:12 PM
 
I also want to throw in there's overlap with the people who think guns are like sewage and the people who think war is like sewage. War is simply your capability to blow shit up.

If I needed to boil down three millennia of military thought into one paragraph I would do it thusly:

The only reason to go to war is to get something. Nothing worth getting to the point of going to war is worth destroying. War is (ironically and counter-intuitively to most) not about destruction, it's about taking and keeping. There is no value in taking and keeping a bomb crater.

Wholesale destruction has limited military value. There's a reason why the winner isn't always the ones with the biggest guns.
     
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Sep 21, 2013, 05:51 PM
 
Snipping out your other well written stuff because we're covering it well in the other thread...

Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
Thug culture is glorified in rap music, branding, role models looked up to by black youth, and the general victimization of black people in modern American society. Black kids raised in urban environments are pressured by older brothers, cousins, and peers to join gangs as the only way to make money, protect their families, and "be a man". These kids are threatened with violence and even death if they don't join their neighborhood's gang. It's a vicious cycle.
Although of course there are other kinds of gangs too other than all black, although the profiles of these other gangs are probably not too dissimilar - poverty leading to desperation leading to lacking education, etc.

America is a country of consumerism, conspicuous consumption, and immediate gratification. We import more than we export. We consume more than we produce. We spend more than we make. Add to that the more recent push for $whatever "rights" and a victim mentality, and you end up with a bunch of arrogant, self-entitled jackasses who think they're special little flowers who should follow their dreams rather than becoming productive, contributing members of society. The fact that most high school graduates are pursuing bullshit liberal arts degrees is a big sign of this social shift.
You know I disagree with you on stigmatizing the liberal arts degrees themselves rather than the people who get them, but I get your point here...

I've said this multiple times already, so I suppose you're just selectively listening at this point.

In an effort to destigmatize mental illness we have over-corrected and made it politically incorrect to even consider residential treatment for citizens suffering from psychotic mental illnesses. A person suffering from dementia, delusions, paranoid schizophrenia, etc. should not be afforded the same freedoms as a sane adult. Such a person is a danger to their own person and everyone around them and should be treated as a dangerous safety risk.

State-run mental hospitals of decades past were terrible places. This marred history is preventing us from moving forward and providing safe, locked-down facilities where those suffering from mental illnesses can be protected from themselves.
Okay... I'm feeling to lazy to look up some data on unhealthy mental health diagnoses and how this compares to other countries, but let's shift gears and discuss solutions here, what do you think? Whatever the numbers are, helping the mentally ill is certainly not a bad thing.

Would you be in favor of mental health background checks for various potentially dangerous activities? How do we go about decreasing mental illness?
     
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Sep 22, 2013, 12:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Wholesale destruction has limited military value. There's a reason why the winner isn't always the ones with the biggest guns.
Exactly. Which is why they're simply going to temporarily switch off text messages versus nuke-n-pave.

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Sep 22, 2013, 12:41 AM
 
God bless the CB radio.
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subego
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And iMessage!
     
subego
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Sep 22, 2013, 01:00 AM
 
On a related note, I'd love being a HAM for disaster purposes (doubtfully of the revolution kind), but I see it as too likely the only kind of disaster we could get which would require it (earthquake), would mean I'm toast before I'd get to use it.

I've got 9 stories of early 20th century construction overhead.

Squish.
     
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Sep 22, 2013, 08:47 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
I've got 9 stories of early 20th century construction overhead.

Squish.
Yeah you're ****ed.

Where did it all go wrong? I can pinpoint it. Han shot first. All downhill from there. George Lucas knows it too. The bastard.
     
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Sep 22, 2013, 09:33 PM
 
"Clearly we care. Our hearts are broken again. The question is do we care enough?”

Says Obama.

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Sep 22, 2013, 11:24 PM
 
Isn't it amazing how he so skillfully uses tragedy to further his goals? What a great man.
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subego
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Sep 22, 2013, 11:34 PM
 
I expect that.

What's got me smoked is him asserting the problem with my position is I hold it because I don't care enough.
     
Shaddim
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Sep 22, 2013, 11:50 PM
 
Isn't that what he's been saying all this time, with his smug looks and calls for "reasonable dialog" WRT gun control (where he means for others to be "reasonable, but not him)?
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Sep 22, 2013, 11:58 PM
 
I wouldn't be surprised. I've tuned him out.

This time though, he threw down with the sound bite.
     
The Final Dakar
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Sep 23, 2013, 10:40 AM
 
Originally Posted by subego View Post
Sure.FWIW, I'm not trying to make it about you, only trying to respond to the question of "what gets blown out of the water by using them".

It's an easy response if you've never gone shooting. If you have, I'm curious as to why you didn't find it barrel of monkeys fun.

Learning to drive a stick is not barrel of monkeys fun, judging by my complete inability to succeed. It's very easy to succeed at shooting a paper target.
Is it very easy to shoot a paper target accurately though?


Originally Posted by subego View Post
People don't want to learn stick because it's hard. People (often) don't want to learn guns because guns disgust them.

That's the rationale behind the analogy.
People don't want to learn stick because they don't need to. Most people don't want to learn guns for the same reason. My rationale.

---

I missed it but what preconceived notions are negated by actually firing a gun?
     
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Sep 23, 2013, 01:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Is it very easy to shoot a paper target accurately though?
Not without practice.

People don't want to learn stick because they don't need to. Most people don't want to learn guns for the same reason. My rationale.
True. On the other hand, I think that learning basic gun safety is important for everyone. Knowing how to safely disarm a gun and check the barrel for a bullet can mean the difference between life and death.

I missed it but what preconceived notions are negated by actually firing a gun?
Just my opinion:

Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
I'd say that actually shooting a gun will make you completely re-evaluate what you think about how a person handles and shoots a gun.

For instance: the one-handed stance you see in movies is pretty much impossible for normal people, and for skilled shooters, the recoil still poses a self-injury risk because you have so much less control over where the gun goes once a bullet has been fired.

Also: you can't just pull the trigger over and over and over to fire bullets in fast succession. Again, the release of energy following the discharge a bullet is such that there's recoil that your body has to absorb before you can pull the trigger again.

Also x2: aiming is a hell of a lot harder than it looks on TV.
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Sep 23, 2013, 01:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
True. On the other hand, I think that learning basic gun safety is important for everyone. Knowing how to safely disarm a gun and check the barrel for a bullet can mean the difference between life and death.
In what situation would the average person need to know this?


Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
Just my opinion:
I don't see how any of those would cause someone to rethink their position on guns.
     
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Sep 23, 2013, 02:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
I don't see how any of those would cause someone to rethink their position on guns.
I don't see how actually visiting Portland could make me rethink my position on disliking it.
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Sep 23, 2013, 02:22 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
In what situation would the average person need to know this?
I don't see how any of those would cause someone to rethink their position on guns.
Seems like willful ignorance. That's your choice, right, whatever. But why? You don't have to answer. "Because I don't feel like it" is sufficient. Why does your average person need to know how to change a flat tire? You can certainly function just fine without this knowledge. That's what AAA is for. I guess it would just be nice if you and others didn't feel bitterness or disdain for those that wish to retain some knowledge and/or proficiency with such archaic skills.

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