100 homicidal home invasions

[Jason]

As far as the debate is between hoplomania (sorry I just coined that) and police-statesmanship (I just coined that too), I'm for police-statesmanship. That is having trained professionals deal with the defense needs of the population vs having an armed population. The reason: I have seen the epox of the armed state - it leads, as I said, and as you agreed Seth, to an eternal stand-off between the civilian populace and the criminal populace. This is unacceptable to me. The stand-off, if it must exist (and I'm not convinced it must) should exist between the police and the criminal element until such time as the criminal element is subdued, and it shall be without popular support.

That is really the question to my mind. Do you, Seth, think the criminal element can ever be effectively subdued by armed the civilian populace against it, or does it, rather, end in an eternal 'mexican' stand-off whereby the 'good guys' of society are eternally pitted against the 'bad guys' of criminality with the 'guns' holding the middle-ground? Is there ever a resolution to the problem or rather an eternal struggle to which we must sacrifice our sons and daughters to perpetuate the existence of both? And, follow up question, if you had a son or daughter, is this a choice you'd be prepared to make for him or her?

[Seth]

When Seth gets old enough to attain a little wisdom, he may realise what everyone else here already knows. The guns in the USA are not the solution. They are the problem. Without guns, and especially hand guns, the threats that Seth feels to need to guard against simply do not exist.

You lie.

Come to NZ, Seth. You will not be permitted to own or carry a hand gun. But you will not need one. And your chances of getting murdered will immediately drop five fold.

If my chances of getting murdered or even violently victimized are greater than zero, as they are everywhere, including NZ, then I reserve the right to carry effective self defense weapons as I deem fit and necessary.

[Seth]

As far as the debate is between hoplomania (sorry I just coined that) and police-statesmanship (I just coined that too), I'm for police-statesmanship. That is having trained professionals deal with the defense needs of the population vs having an armed population. The reason: I have seen the epox of the armed state - it leads, as I said, and as you agreed Seth, to an eternal stand-off between the civilian populace and the criminal populace. This is unacceptable to me. The stand-off, if it must exist (and I'm not convinced it must) should exist between the police and the criminal element until such time as the criminal element is subdued, and it shall be without popular support.

The problem is that the participants in the stand-off are not the criminals and the police, they are the criminals and the citizens they wish to victimize. This is always going to be the case. The police at best come along and clean up and investigate after the fact, and hopefully find and take the criminal out of circulation. But criminals don't target police officers for violent crime (well, most of them don't) in part because police officers ARE armed and trained to deal with such attacks. Until criminals give up trying to victimize the helpless and innocent, which they never will, the police will always be only minutes away when your need to defend yourself against violent crime is in progress.

That is really the question to my mind. Do you, Seth, think the criminal element can ever be effectively subdued by armed the civilian populace against it, or does it, rather, end in an eternal 'mexican' stand-off whereby the 'good guys' of society are eternally pitted against the 'bad guys' of criminality with the 'guns' holding the middle-ground? Is there ever a resolution to the problem or rather an eternal struggle to which we must sacrifice our sons and daughters to perpetuate the existence of both? And, follow up question, if you had a son or daughter, is this a choice you'd be prepared to make for him or her?

The evidence of a continuously dropping violent crime rate in the US that coincides with a massive increase in citizens who are armed in public is a good indicator of how the balance is tipped when a criminal's potential victims become their potential death-dealers. Criminals, you see, are generally not involved in crime because they want to hurt people, they mostly just want to steal from them to fund (usually) a drug habit or an opulent lifestyle. Most street thugs use guns not with the specific intent to kill their prey, but rather as a method of inducing cooperation and surrender through the threat of deadly harm.

One of the reasons that concealed carry is so effective is because when criminals are uncertain about whether or not their potential victim is armed and might turn the tables and kill them, they both change their habits and are much more careful in selecting victims, times and places for committing their crimes. Many criminals give up street crime entirely and shift to property crime because they fear getting killed.

In answer to your final question, you are stating a false dilemma fallacy. It's not an either/or choice of guns and crime or no guns and no crime. There will always be guns AND crime, but the essential question is always who has the guns and what do they do with them. The possession of guns by the law abiding has zero impact on public safety insofar as that simple possession is concerned, and it has a positive effect on public safety with respect to reducing both the incidence and potential for violent crime when guns are carried in public by the law abiding. The 99.9994 percent of the 300 or so million guns in private hands in the US that are never used either in, or even in direct defense against violent crime prove that merely possessing a gun has absolutely nothing whatever to do with violent crime.

Nor do we "sacrifice" anyone, ever. That's what BG and his ilk do, sacrifice innocent, disarmed victims of violent crime at the altar of gun-banning.

Every person in every generation faces the same general risks of criminal victimization to one degree or another, and that fact cannot be viewed as "sacrificing" our children to anything merely because we desire to have at a minimum arms parity (and preferably overwhelming superiority) with those who would do us harm. This implies that by "clinging to our guns" we are somehow responsible for or are in some way perpetuating criminality. Nothing could be further from the truth. What a criminal does with an illegally-possessed gun has nothing whatever to do with lawful gun ownership and the latter is in no way responsible for the former.

In the place of my own children I have nephews for whom I purchased NRA life memberships and whom I actively engage in firearms training so that they will be qualified to carry arms of their own when they reach their majority...if they choose to do so. I would be derelict in my duty to their futures and to the future of America if I shirked the obligation to provide them with appropriate gun safety and marksmanship training.

[Blind groper]

Guns and crime.

It is like the biblical quote: "The poor are always with us." True, but we can effectively reduce the numbers. And we should.

You do not reduce the amount of guns and crime by having more guns. That is a moronic suggestion. You reduce guns and crimes involving guns by reducing the number of guns out there, which has been done successfully by all developed western countries EXCEPT the USA.

As I said before, the number of guns does not affect the total amount of crime, but it sure affects the amount of gun crime. If guns are easily obtained, as they are in the USA, there will be more gun crime. And there is.

[Blind groper]

Probably a good time here to point out the stupidity of the idea that guns are needed to oppose oppressive governments.

No government has been worse than the military led tyrants in Myanmar. Yet the opposition, led by that wonderful woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been unremittingly non violent. And patient. As a result no lives were lost in an idiotic revolution.

The end result?
The first election results are coming in and it is a landslide for the opposition, putting the military coup leaders into a new opposition party. Democracy wins, without a single bullet being fired.

This was also true for India's independence from Britain, the overthrow of apartheid, and numerous independence movements around the world.

Indeed, it is worth noting the views of Matt. Ridley. This guy is not some bleeding heart liberal. He has, in fact, been criticised for his extreme right wing views (shown in his latest book - 'How Prosperity Evolves'.)

In the book before that (The Rational Optiomist) Ridley shows the results of a detailed study into national movements to overthrow oppressive governments, and demonstrates that non violent methods are increasingly common, and have a success rate more than ten times as great as armed revolution. And they do not leave trails of corpses.

When Seth advocates guns for opposing oppression, he is recommending something that flies in the face of reality, and results in megadeaths. In other words, it is stupid!

[Rum]

I have a vision of the Merican public rising up against their tyrants, pistols and shotguns in hand and a wall of soldiers complete with tanks, missiles and rail guns ready to put them back in their place as patriotic consumers and burger munchers!

[Svartalf]

After T'ien an Men, Times Square...

[JimC]

I have a vision of the Merican public rising up against their tyrants, pistols and shotguns in hand and a wall of soldiers complete with tanks, missiles and rail guns ready to put them back in their place as patriotic consumers and burger munchers!

They'll prise their burgers guns from their cold, dead, slightly greasy hands!

[Svartalf]

I have a vision of the Merican public rising up against their tyrants, pistols and shotguns in hand and a wall of soldiers complete with tanks, missiles and rail guns ready to put them back in their place as patriotic consumers and burger munchers!

They'll prise their burgers guns from their cold, dead, slightly greasy hands!

Actually, that's not grease, it's cosmoline, those guns were straight from long term storage...

[Seth]

Guns and crime.

It is like the biblical quote: "The poor are always with us." True, but we can effectively reduce the numbers. And we should.

And we are, but not by stealing the property of others but rather by giving the poor better education and opportunities to advance themselves.

You do not reduce the amount of guns and crime by having more guns.

Compound question fallacy. Yes, in fact you do reduce the amount of crime, including gun crime, by having more guns in the right hands.

That is a moronic suggestion.

No, it's a moronic claim on your part.

You reduce guns and crimes involving guns by reducing the number of guns out there,

So were you lying before when you said that the number of guns is unrelated to the amount of gun crime, or are you lying now?

which has been done successfully by all developed western countries EXCEPT the USA.

Except it hasn't.

As I said before, the number of guns does not affect the total amount of crime, but it sure affects the amount of gun crime.

Now you're just making shit up. Again.

If guns are easily obtained, as they are in the USA, there will be more gun crime. And there is.

Except that this is demonstrably not true given the fact that in the US there are more guns and LESS crime, including "gun crime," as time goes by and the number of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens being carried in public continues to increase.

That's the thing about facts, they remain facts even when moronic claims such as yours are made that deny the facts.

[Seth]

I have a vision of the Merican public rising up against their tyrants, pistols and shotguns in hand and a wall of soldiers complete with tanks, missiles and rail guns ready to put them back in their place as patriotic consumers and burger munchers!

Tell it to the soldiers in Afghanistan. How come the relatively small Taliban forces haven't been wiped out by all these tanks, missiles and rail guns?

Because guerrilla warfare where the enemy resides among the population and is indistinguishable from them until they actually attack is an incredibly difficult challenge for any military to deal with. They cannot simply kill everyone, now can they?

Now imagine 150 million guerrilla partisans hiding among 150 million non-combatants sniping away at the less than 2 million members of the regular army (assuming that the army would even obey orders to tyrannize Americans. How long do you think it's going to take before the military gets either decimated or gets tired of trying to do something that the Constitution forbids them from doing in the first place. Not long.

When I say "tyrants and despots" I mean one or a few individuals who are putatively in command. Only they need to be taken to the woodshed. Cut the head off the snake and it soon dies. I'll pit 150 million armed citizens against a Hitler wannabe and his small cadre of loyalists anytime, anywhere. It only takes one well-placed bullet to put an end to tyranny you see.

The North Koreans knew the value of mass attack, and as a result North Korea is still a despotic tyranny because our military commanders would not do what was necessary to free the Korean people from such despotism by attacking the head of the snake and cutting it off right away. This is in part because the laws of "civilized" warfare prohibit us from deliberately targeting the leaders of enemy nations for assassination.

Partisans fighting for their freedom are under no such constraints, as every presidential assassin proves.

[Blind groper]

Seth

You are correct in saying that powerful central governments cannot easily overcome determined groups of guerilla fighters.

What you do not say is something equally true. Guerilla warfare of that kind goes on and on and achieves nothing except to cause immense human misery and megadeaths. Look at the Palestinian conflict. A bunch of very angry young men fighting against the Israeli oppressors for 70 years now. Neither side can win, and the numbers of deaths and the amount of damage to human welfare just keeps climbing.

Non violent opposition to oppressive governments have an amazing success rate, and without the costs. Taking up guns against oppressors mostly just makes matter worse.

The only way to end such conflicts is to put the guns down and get around the negotiation table. If both sides want a solution and are prepared to make resonable compromises, then a solution can be reached. Hanging onto and using guns just causes heaps of people to be killed, wounded, sick, lose teir homes or family, and generally creates unbelievable misery.

[Seth]

Seth

You are correct in saying that powerful central governments cannot easily overcome determined groups of guerilla fighters.

What you do not say is something equally true. Guerilla warfare of that kind goes on and on and achieves nothing except to cause immense human misery and megadeaths. Look at the Palestinian conflict. A bunch of very angry young men fighting against the Israeli oppressors for 70 years now. Neither side can win, and the numbers of deaths and the amount of damage to human welfare just keeps climbing.

Well, "a bunch" isn't 150 to 300 million. Or even 50 million. Or 10 milliion. The point is that an armed populace (and I note that the "Palestinian angry young men" are largely armed with rocks and knives, not modern military-grade arms) always has a better chance at putting down a tyrant than does an unarmed populace. More importantly, an armed populace is a strong deterrent against the rise of tyranny in the first place, because politicians know (although they have to be reminded from time to time with the blood of patriots and other tyrants) that even attempting to tyrannize an armed ciizenry (as in Switzerland) is many orders of magnitude more difficult than oppressing an unarmed populace.

An armed populace is the non-nuclear version of overwhelmingly superior force that deters tyrants and despots. That is why the first act of a tyrant is to disarm the populace.

Non violent opposition to oppressive governments have an amazing success rate, and without the costs.

Yes, sometimes it is. Then again sometimes it's not.

Taking up guns against oppressors mostly just makes matter worse.

Um, how much worse would it have been for the Jews of Europe to have been thoroughly armed against Hitler's tyranny? Why has the ubiquitously armed Swiss population never been invaded, much less tyrannized? It was, in the end, massive armed force that put Hitler down, not negotiation. You would do well to remember that.

The only way to end such conflicts is to put the guns down and get around the negotiation table.

Well, the problem with trying to negotiate with tyrants is that they don't negotiate, they use their guns to kill dissenters, as every Marxist tyrant in history has done, from Stalin to Castro. That is, after all, the very nature of tyranny. And negotiation is not the only way to end such conflicts, and is not even necessarily the best way. When it comes to tyrants the best way to end the conflict is to kill the tyrant and his minions and put their heads on spikes as an object lesson to future wannabes.

If both sides want a solution and are prepared to make resonable compromises, then a solution can be reached.

Tyrants want only one solution: absolute power and control, and they don't care who has to die to achieve that goal. You might want to look up Neville Chamberlain sometime, because you're channeling his ghost at the moment.

Hanging onto and using guns just causes heaps of people to be killed, wounded, sick, lose teir homes or family, and generally creates unbelievable misery.

Which is precisely why tyrants hang on to guns, a fact that seems to have escaped you.

Armed rebellion is always a last resort, but if you're not armed when the time for last resorts arrives, you're just completely screwed, as the intellectuals of Cambodia could tell you if they weren't skulls stacked in enormous piles. Just like crime, if you aren't already armed when you need to be, it's too late. Therefore, as the Swiss know, it's best to always be fully armed.

You may negotiate on your knees with your mouth open and ready. I'll negotiate with the barrel of my rifle stuck up the tyrant's ass.

[JimC]

It all depends on the situation. There have been times when un-armed resistance movements have been very successful, and indeed it is much to be preferred if possible. However, as Seth says, there have been times when arms used by a populace were the only possible solution, as unfortunate as that might be. However, the likelihood that this applies to modern western democracies, in the sense of needing to resist tyrannical home-grown governments (as opposed to armed invaders) is so unlikely it should not be a factor in the debate about guns.

[Seth]

It all depends on the situation. There have been times when un-armed resistance movements have been very successful, and indeed it is much to be preferred if possible. However, as Seth says, there have been times when arms used by a populace were the only possible solution, as unfortunate as that might be. However, the likelihood that this applies to modern western democracies, in the sense of needing to resist tyrannical home-grown governments (as opposed to armed invaders) is so unlikely it should not be a factor in the debate about guns.

...said the ghost of Neville Chamberlain.

The problem is, you see, that it is not necessary to resort to force under "modern western democracies," it's when they stop being modern western democracies that necessitates the perpetual need to be armed and vigilant against the rise of tyranny.