Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Campfire Soapbox. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
They Got Us Runnin Scared
Topic Started: Oct 7 2005, 02:52 PM (767 Views)
feddoc
Member
pentax
Oct 9 2005, 04:57 AM
Your increasing ferocity is backing ME up - you wanted stats, I gave you stats - you swept them off the table without a moments thought - Q.E.D.

Yawn,

Once again you assume....I took the time to look up the numbers and countered with others.
I did not sweep them off without a thought. Back you up....not hardly, don't flatter yourself.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
brewster
Member Avatar
Winemaker Extraordinaire
Quote:
 
First you say this: indicating to me that guns are involved in a higher and higher percentage of crimes.

Then you point to murder rates. Why the change in tactics? Stay on subject, please......no doubt murder is a crime; but, my data was for overall crime with a gun.


I Apologize... I did say "crimes" - I meant to say "murders".

We are at slight cross purposes here - I am much more worried about people getting killed than robbed, but both are bad. But doesn't it bother you that in spite of the fact that while crimes - including those with guns, thank you very much - are going down, murders with guns are not?

By the way, I have yet to hear from a reputable analyst as to why crimes are going down recently - not just in the US, but in many places.

As for guns preventing crimes..... :whistle:


Corky, you're right again. :clap:

Posted Image My Favourite Campsite
Bow Valley Provincial Park, Kananaskis Country, Alberta
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
brewster
Member Avatar
Winemaker Extraordinaire
Feddoc, neither Pentax nor I need prove your initial statement wrong with statistics. It isn't related to statistics except in a very general way.

To reiterate the statement that started you on this tangent:

Quote:
 
I would argue vehemently that giving every citizen a concealed pistol does not immediately meet Madison's criteria of a "Well Regulated Militia"

But then, a Militia Regulated by ???? sounds a lot closer to Hitler's brownshirts than any desirable force...


Out of that you came to the truly astounding conclusion that gun laws were going to regulate a Militia! It's beyond me...

Maybe while I sleep on all this tonight you can give me a detailed description of just how that would happen.
Posted Image My Favourite Campsite
Bow Valley Provincial Park, Kananaskis Country, Alberta
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
feddoc
Member
brewster
Oct 9 2005, 05:04 AM
Quote:
 
First you say this: indicating to me that guns are involved in a higher and higher percentage of crimes.

Then you point to murder rates. Why the change in tactics? Stay on subject, please......no doubt murder is a crime; but, my data was for overall crime with a gun.


I Apologize... I did say "crimes" - I meant to say "murders".

We are at slight cross purposes here - I am much more worried about people getting killed than robbed, but both are bad. But doesn't it bother you that in spite of the fact that while crimes - including those with guns, thank you very much - are going down, murders with guns are not?

By the way, I have yet to hear from a reputable analyst as to why crimes are going down recently - not just in the US, but in many places.

As for guns preventing crimes..... :whistle:


Corky, you're right again. :clap:


Feddoc, neither Pentax nor I need prove your initial statement wrong. It isn't related to statistics except in a very general way.

To reiterate the sgtatement that started you on this tangent

Yes it does bother me that folks are getting murdered with guns.

Yet there is conflicting evidence about this: Although exact figures are not known, firearm ownership increased since 1994 by as much as 2.5 million per year, while, as shown above, the murder rate decreased during that period. This conclusively shows firearms do not lead to higher murder rates. (Source: May 25, 1998, edition of U.S. News & World Report)



As for guns preventing crimes..... :whistle:
Haha, I supppose you and I disagree here. I would also add that guns in the right hands will prevent crimes....not everyone should own a gun.

Thank you for another lively discussion...no sarcasm, it is indeed a joy to discuss things with someone who is passionate about what they believe in.

Best to you.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
pentax
Member Avatar
Kamloops - BC Interior
Nothing sarcastic about that at all - you posted that a population that is not armed to the teeth is more likely to be taken over by the government - I posted that I happen to live in a country that is NOT armed thusly, and yet we are a free Democracy.... ?????
Posted Image
(thumbnail)

Posted Image

"Kirk to Enterprise - Very funny, Scotty.... now beam down my clothes!"
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
feddoc
Member
pentax
Oct 9 2005, 05:11 AM
Nothing sarcastic about that at all - you posted that a population that is not armed to the teeth is more likely to be taken over by the government - I posted that I happen to live in a country that is NOT armed thusly, and yet we are a free Democracy.... ?????

HUH,

Murray, where did I post that? Perhaps you are confusing me with this:

Without personal weapons, governments can more easily take control of populations. The writers of the Constitution realized that. With that, there will be abuses; but, the safeguards of having them may out-weigh the bad. The writers of the Constitution were pretty savy folks who seemed to have an uncanny foresight.


From Banandanges, not me.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
pentax
Member Avatar
Kamloops - BC Interior
OH, FER KRYPE-SAKES!!! MY deepest apologies, feddoc! HONEST!

That was Banan, that threw that post in the midst of the to-and fro between you, corky and I..... I am REALLY embarrassed, man!

Once again - sorry! :fryingpan:


Posted Image
(thumbnail)

Posted Image

"Kirk to Enterprise - Very funny, Scotty.... now beam down my clothes!"
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
feddoc
Member
No worries.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
bikemanb
Member Avatar
Liberal Conservative
Why does the subject of guns always generate so much emotion?

I am very ambivalent on the subject and have no trouble with regulations such as registration, how does that interfere with the right to own and bear? I know the paranoid within the NRA see the jackbooted storm troopers coming for their guns if they are registered but give me a break. Also, I can see no justification for the average citizen to have true assault or fully automatic weapons. If you want to be a “strict constructionist” on the subject, the Constitution does not allow or forbid registration and if you really want things to be strict maybe it only applies to muzzle loaders since that was the weapons they Founders were referring to.

On the other hand it is not your average citizens that commit most of the gun crimes, one could make the argument that there are more accidental shootings and crimes of passion when more average citizens have guns, but they are offset by crimes and/or deaths prevented though I doubt the numbers the NRA claims.
Bill, Rita and Chloe the Terror Cat

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

Benjamin Franklin
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
cruiser
Member Avatar
Member
The fallout of our fear. I would love to know what was in the can. Does anyone know if Pepsi makes anything green?


Fear bubbles out
from a Pepsi can





Half of the mezzanine at Penn Station was closed off with yellow crime scene tape and beyond that four figures in hazardous materials suits complete with respirators were huddled around a Pepsi can.
One of the figures knelt and gingerly took a sample of a green substance that had spilled from the can somebody had left beside an ATM machine by the west entrance to tracks 15 and 16. The figure placed the substance with great care into a clear plastic bag, which was promptly sealed.

"Due to ongoing police activity, part of the station has been closed off," came the announcement over the public address system.

The PA system resumed playing what sounded like the meeting of Mozart and Muzak as suited figures placed the clear plastic bag in a big orange plastic bag.

"The full New York experience," said one of the travelers at the Amtrak ticket windows adjacent to the taped-off area.

Just two days before, the soda can would not likely have drawn a second look. City officials then went public on Thursday afternoon with an intelligence alert from Iraq, a country that had been no threat to us when the Bush administration went in after illusory weapons of mass destruction.

Nearly 2,000 of our best men and women have died over there, and Iraq has become a rallying point for Islamic fundamentalists who would happily kill even our kids. Any intelligence report from there has to be treated as deadly serious, even if the feds are terming the source to be of "doubtful credibility." The feds having not so long ago termed reports of Saddam Hussein's WMDs to be "beyond doubt."

The fiction of WMDs in Iraq has turned to fear of a soda can, which the suited figures left by the cash machine Friday morning as they scuffled off in their booties. A woman strode up to one of the uniformed officers who remained posted behind the yellow tape.

"Can't use the rest room?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," the officer said.

Four plainclothes cops arrived on the scene and placed what looked like a clipboard behind the soda can. They set a small black device in front. A tiny red light atop the device began to blink and the four stepped quickly away.

When the tiny red light ceased blinking, the four retrieved the device and the clipboard, which apparently held a large piece of X-ray film. One of them peeled open the film as if it were an outsized Polaroid and whatever he saw gave him no apparent concern.

Two new figures in haz-mat suits approached from the far side of the danger area. One knelt and placed the can in a clear plastic bag. He or perhaps she then reached for a container of saline solution and poured some on the floor.

The other figure held out a stack of brown paper towels, which the first figure took one by one, wiping up the solution. He discarded the used paper towels in the bag with the can, all of which then went in a second clear plastic bag.

"Double bag it," remarked one of the onlookers.

After these figures scuffled off, the cops took down the tape, and several citizens made quickly for the rest rooms. The media mobbed the station's assistant supervisor, Mike Gallagher.

"A discarded soda bottle with an unknown substance," he said.

A bottle or a can seemed an insignificant distinction, but the facts of even an event this minor were already being altered as a pair of emergency service unit cops strode past. One lugged two air tanks, the other with hair apparently mussed from the hood of one of the protective suits, what might be called haz-mat head.

The ESU cops continued out to Eighth Ave. and loaded their gear into a truck bearing a testament to two of their comrades who perished during that time when we counted on just the feds to protect us against terrorism:

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
5thwheeler
Member Avatar
Get the message?
puli-one
Oct 7 2005, 06:00 PM
Chris: Both of our countries are so porous we are sitting ducks for any type of scare tactics.  One just has to hope that after many false alarms we don't become so complacent that we get caught again.  No amount of military tactics in the muslim world is going to stop religious fanatics from doing what they believe is right, we have to get to the clerics and make them change their onslaught.

I hope you don't mind me changing your quote to read the following, I think it better describes the situation in Iraqi.

"No amount of military tactics in the world is going to stop fanatics, religious or otherwise from doing what they believe is right."
History 101: When a popular myth is believed to be factual, teach the myth.

Its not possible to underestimate the intelligence of the voting populous.

Hummm, after seeing the results of the 06 election, I may have to modify my perception of the voting populous and refer to them as "Late Bloomers".

:ohmy:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
5thwheeler
Member Avatar
Get the message?
corky52
Oct 7 2005, 09:57 PM
A culture of "Fearing Life"?

Using fear from within or without to control ones people is not new. Ultra right wing Conservatives have been trying it for years. Fortunately its a short ended game.
History 101: When a popular myth is believed to be factual, teach the myth.

Its not possible to underestimate the intelligence of the voting populous.

Hummm, after seeing the results of the 06 election, I may have to modify my perception of the voting populous and refer to them as "Late Bloomers".

:ohmy:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
5thwheeler
Member Avatar
Get the message?
passinthru
Oct 8 2005, 05:34 AM
FDR was a better leader in times of uncertainty: "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."

And then out of unfounded fear put Americans of Japanese decent into concentration camps. Go figure??? :scratch: :scratch:
History 101: When a popular myth is believed to be factual, teach the myth.

Its not possible to underestimate the intelligence of the voting populous.

Hummm, after seeing the results of the 06 election, I may have to modify my perception of the voting populous and refer to them as "Late Bloomers".

:ohmy:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
5thwheeler
Member Avatar
Get the message?
Banandangees
Oct 8 2005, 03:54 PM
Without personal weapons, governments can more easily take control of populations.  The writers of the Constitution realized that.  With that, there will be abuses; but, the safeguards of having them may out-weigh the bad.  The writers of the Constitution were pretty savy folks who seemed to have an uncanny foresight.

Fear can be a good thing.

Yeah, I'll feel so much safer having a hand gun when a US Army tank pulls up on my lawn and aims its gun at my house. :pistols: That argument worked well when the long rifle was state of the art in weaponry, but not today. The right to question our government, protest its actions, and remove it from office are our only protection from our government. Unfortunately its our self proclaimed "loyalists and Patriots" that try to deny us of these rights.
History 101: When a popular myth is believed to be factual, teach the myth.

Its not possible to underestimate the intelligence of the voting populous.

Hummm, after seeing the results of the 06 election, I may have to modify my perception of the voting populous and refer to them as "Late Bloomers".

:ohmy:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
cmoehle
Member Avatar
Chris - San Antonio TX
Bill's rephrase of Don's post: "No amount of military tactics in the world is going to stop fanatics, religious or otherwise from doing what they believe is right."

No, but ordinary, common, everyday people will. It's happening in Iraq, see Exploit Rifts in The Insurgency. The Doors were right in "5 to 1".
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Soapbox · Next Topic »
Add Reply