Pin number

[JimC]

Except that people in New Zealand, specifically murderous criminals, DO have guns, not to mention cricket bats, rocks, sticks, knives, broken beer bottles, boots, fists and any of a thousand other items that can be used to cause physical injury, against all of which a handgun is the best, most effective personal defense weapon ever invented.

That argument is shown to be a crock by the simple fact that the per capita murder rate in NZ is one fifth of that in the USA where people can carry hand guns.

And yet people get murdered, robbed, raped, kidnapped and assaulted in NZ every day, just like they do here and everywhere else on earth. The difference is that in NZ, there's fuck all a victim can do to effectively protect themselves because the fuckwits in charge deny everyone the right to carry defensive arms of any kind, including something as simple and non lethal as OC spray.

They really are dumbshits down there.

Missed the point, big time. A fuck of a lot less get murdered. Simple as that, a fact which you consistently ignore.

[Brian Peacock]

Seth: "Some <imaginable harm> therefore guns obligatory."

The challenge is to imagine a society where harms are limited by reason and order, not overwhelming individual force.

[Blind groper]

The challenge is to imagine a society where harms are limited by reason and order, not overwhelming individual force.

Well put.

If you look at the varius societies from a relative view point, rather than Seth's idiotic absolutist approach, you see it is already working. Many, many societies are already succeeding in reducing violence to levels way below that which was historically true. An invariable method in the nations that succeed is strict gun control.

Out of the 24 wealthiest nations, the USA has 85% of all gun murders. Widespread gun ownership is clearly not reducing violence.

[Rum]

..and the 'escalation' and meeting violence with greater violence results in further crime, more murder and ultimately 1% of their male population in prison. Its fucking nuts. There are ways to de-escalate, but arming the population to the teeth won't do it. That just engenders more fear and an entrenched violence oriented mind-set which spirals the whole process upwards again.

[Seth]

Except that people in New Zealand, specifically murderous criminals, DO have guns, not to mention cricket bats, rocks, sticks, knives, broken beer bottles, boots, fists and any of a thousand other items that can be used to cause physical injury, against all of which a handgun is the best, most effective personal defense weapon ever invented.

That argument is shown to be a crock by the simple fact that the per capita murder rate in NZ is one fifth of that in the USA where people can carry hand guns.

And yet people get murdered, robbed, raped, kidnapped and assaulted in NZ every day, just like they do here and everywhere else on earth. The difference is that in NZ, there's fuck all a victim can do to effectively protect themselves because the fuckwits in charge deny everyone the right to carry defensive arms of any kind, including something as simple and non lethal as OC spray.

They really are dumbshits down there.

Missed the point, big time. A fuck of a lot less get murdered. Simple as that, a fact which you consistently ignore.

No, you missed the point. A fuck of a lot MORE people get murdered who need not have been helpless victims when the law abiding are disarmed.

More people here in the US are not murdered because law abiding citizens carry guns. In fact fewer and fewer people here are murdered because (or, if you must, in spite of) more and more law abiding citizens are carrying guns. This fact demonstrates that it is not law abiding citizens who are responsible for murders, or any other kind of violent crime. Quite obviously violent crime and murder are perpetrated by violent criminals who arm themselves with whatever weapons they wish to carry, regardless of every law forbidding them to do so and regardless of every law which attempts to eliminate the pool of potential weapons that might be used by criminals, as shown by the fact that even in NZ, OZ and the UK, people are murdered with guns, among other weapons.

So, the obvious conclusion is that trying to eliminate weapons from a society merely makes it more difficult for a criminal to get his weapon of choice, but does nothing to prevent a criminal from obtaining some sort of deadly weapon with which to murder law abiding citizens.

But what weapons bans do accomplish is to disarm the entirety of the law abiding public, leaving them helpless to defend themselves against criminals who can, and have always armed themselves with deadly weapons, including ones that have been banned for defensive use by the government.

This, of course, is because law abiding citizens obey weapons bans laws and criminals don't, which places law abiding citizens at a severe disadvantage if and when their lives are in immediate jeopardy from armed criminals.

Your calculus is a brutal and uncaring one which states that the objective of vainly attempting to create a "gun free" society is more important than the lives of those innocent persons who are murdered and victimized by armed criminals, and not just the ones armed with guns, but ALL of them who are armed with anything that can inflict a harmful or fatal wound.

You know full well that you can never create an actual "gun free" society, much less a completely disarmed, weapon-free society and that there will always be violent crime, attacks, injuries and murders no matter what you do to try to ban and eliminate access to weapons of any kind. But in your mindless attempt to "do something" about gun violence you focus on the inanimate object rather than the operator, and you consistently ignore the fact that the same inanimate object that can be used unlawfully to kill someone can also be effectively used by the intended victim to prevent that crime. Which of course is why you're fine with the police and military being armed with firearms.

But your thoughtless and heartless agenda of trying to disarm criminals by disarming the law abiding public not only doesn't work or prevent murders or any other crime, it makes things worse. Much worse. And it's morally and ethically one of the most reprehensible and evil things anyone can advocate. It's on the moral and ethical level of Hitler disarming the Jews and then rounding them up and stuffing them into ovens, because that's exactly what happens when tyrants and despots disarm the citizenry on the entirely false and deliberately mendacious notion that doing so makes society "safer from crime." It doesn't, it just turns those who are victimized and murdered into faceless statistics and acceptable collateral damage that disarmament freaks are perfectly willing to see brutally murdered because their grossly stupid ideas of creating a gun-free society must, in their deranged and evil minds, take precedence over the right of each and every law abiding individual in their society to absolute safety and protection from criminal violence and victimization.

To this sort of gun-banning mentality it's actually preferable if a number of people per year are murdered with guns because it enhances their opportunities to dance on their graves and use them as tools of propaganda in their pointless and futile quest to disarm criminals by disarming non criminals. I'd venture a guess that most gun banners would actually be very frustrated and angry if no law abiding citizen got killed by a criminal with a gun because this would severely damage their gun banning argument.

Indeed, we see here that the fewer people killed each year in the US because all 50 states have now been forced to admit that allowing lawful concealed carry does not lead to increases in crime, murder or gun violence of any kind are of grave concern to gun banners because those former potential victims are not being killed and are therefore not useful to the gun banning propaganda machine.

That's why you don't see the reports of the thousands of times every single day that US citizens across the country use their lawfully kept and borne arms to prevent, thwart and stop crime. That's why mindless gun banners worldwide denigrate such reports and refuse to believe or accept that they occur...because such incidents don't play into their false propaganda campaign of "less guns, less crime," which is as big a crock of shit as Hitler telling the Jews that disarming them will make Germany safer. It made Germany safer for non-Jews...temporarily...but the Jews paid the ultimate price for believing that bit of propaganda.

But the facts are plain and indisputable. Since the 1980s states in the US have been increasingly authorizing lawful concealed carry, and today there are at least 12 million people nationwide who have permits, and that number may be much higher than that due to the delay in compiling the numbers of permits issued by each state. Some estimate it could be 25 million in reality, that number is climbing every month.

And what's happening to crime and the murder rate here in the US? It's going down. It has been going down since the "experiment" in an armed citizenry took off in Florida in 1985 and it's continued downwards ever since. Not upwards, downwards. And it continues downward as the number of guns possessed by the citizenry goes up, and up, and up...to the point where there appear to now be more than one gun for each and every citizen of the United States. And crime goes down.

Therefore, your silly notion that the number of guns in a society correlates to the number of murders is utter horseshit. And you know it. But you deny it because your twisted and evil anti-gun agenda has made you incapable of objectively examining the actual facts involved and instead you've succumbed to Nazi-like anti-gun propaganda and can no longer make a rational argument about gun control.

[Seth]

Seth: "Some <imaginable harm> therefore guns obligatory."

The challenge is to imagine a society where harms are limited by reason and order, not overwhelming individual force.

Utopian nonsense that, for it to come to pass, requires a fundamental change in human nature. This might happen (though I doubt it) through evolutionary processes, over millions of years, or it could be imposed by issuing everyone Soma tablets and creating a surveillance-ubiquitous propagandistic totalitarian society that simply kills anyone showing aberrant characteristics, but that's not "reason and order" except in the most extreme sense of the words.

Until then, overwhelming individual defensive force is absolutely the best, and only way to create a society with minimal violence and victimization.

The failure in your reasoning is the false implication that harm is only imaginary and that therefore arming oneself against an "imaginary" harm somehow increases the potential for harm. Harm is anything but imaginary, although depending on the individual and the many factors which are involved in assessing one's individual risk of harm the actual risk may be small or large. But the question that you refuse to address and make unwarranted and unfounded implications about is how a law abiding individual's preparations to defend against harm, no matter what kind of harm we are talking about, be it a natural disaster or an armed criminal, somehow increases the risk to that individual or even to society at large merely because they are now prepared (and armed).

Here's a clue: It doesn't. Not at all. And that's an observable fact that is demonstrated by the slope of the curve of lawful gun ownership in the US versus the crime rate.

Therefore, there is no rational reason to deny any law abiding individual the right to keep and bear arms for self defense...there are only false, specious, illogical, irrational, evil, cruel, uncaring, arrogant and propagandistic reasons to even make such arguments because such arguments are simply flatly wrong. And if you don't know that, you should, if you claim to be a rational person.

[Seth]

The challenge is to imagine a society where harms are limited by reason and order, not overwhelming individual force.

Well put.

If you look at the varius societies from a relative view point, rather than Seth's idiotic absolutist approach, you see it is already working. Many, many societies are already succeeding in reducing violence to levels way below that which was historically true. An invariable method in the nations that succeed is strict gun control.

Out of the 24 wealthiest nations, the USA has 85% of all gun murders. Widespread gun ownership is clearly not reducing violence.

Of course it is. You lie when you make such claims because you mendaciously misuse facts and statistics. Widespread gun ownership in the US has NOT resulted in increasing violence because as gun ownership in the US increases, the violent crime rate continues to decline.

That one simple fact, which you are most dishonestly simply refusing to acknowledge, makes a complete mockery of everything you say.

And you're lying through your teeth because you have previously claimed, in this forum, repeatedly, that the number of guns in a society has NO EFFECT on the number of murders or violent crimes in that society.

[Seth]

..and the 'escalation' and meeting violence with greater violence results in further crime, more murder and ultimately 1% of their male population in prison. Its fucking nuts.

Pacifist nonsense. You're trying to argue that because gang-bangers shoot other gang-bangers and that results in retaliatory shootings is horseshit because your argument is one of criminals committing criminal acts against other criminals, all of whom deserve to be either in jail or dead in the first place. The bald-faced mendacity of this argument as a justification for saying ANYTHING about the rights of law abiding citizens to be armed for self defense is simply unimaginable.

There are ways to de-escalate, but arming the population to the teeth won't do it. That just engenders more fear and an entrenched violence oriented mind-set which spirals the whole process upwards again.

Except of course for the fact that you don't have the first fucking idea about what you're bloviating about. Arming the law abiding population "to the teeth" can only continue the trend that doing so has already started, which is to REDUCE violent crime and either kill or put the perpetrators of violent crime in prison or a grave, where they belong.

The intellectual dishonesty of trying to use gang warfare as an argument against law abiding citizens being armed for self defense is quite breathtaking, even coming from you.

[Blind groper]

Seth

You keep repeating the same fallacy. Murder rates in the USA have not dropped due to gun ownership.

The basis for your claim is the fact that murder rates went up substantially WORLD WIDE (not just in the USA) in the late 1960's, and then fell WORLD WIDE (not just in the USA) after 1990.

The only world wide trend that explains the rise and fall is the change world wide in age demographics, due to the baby boomer generation reaching the age of greater violence in the late 1990's, and then reaching the age of less vioence after 1990.

It had nothing to do with guns. Your prediction would have the increase in the late 1960's coincident with fewer guns, which did not happen, and would have the drop after 1990 happen only in the USA, which was also false.

Your theory is a fallacy.

[Seth]

Seth

You keep repeating the same fallacy. Murder rates in the USA have not dropped due to gun ownership.

Assuming arguendo you are right, murder rates have not gone UP due to massive increases in gun ownership, so the result is the same, your argument is the same pile of steaming shit it's always been.

The basis for your claim is the fact that murder rates went up substantially WORLD WIDE (not just in the USA) in the late 1960's, and then fell WORLD WIDE (not just in the USA) after 1990.

Lie. I'm only speaking about US murder rates, which have been going down for decades despite increases in gun ownership.

The only world wide trend that explains the rise and fall is the change world wide in age demographics, due to the baby boomer generation reaching the age of greater violence in the late 1990's, and then reaching the age of less vioence after 1990.

Fuck your "worldwide trend" bullshit. Here's the facts: More guns (in the US), less crime (in the US) Fuck all the rest of y'all.

[Brian Peacock]

Seth: "Some <imaginable harm> therefore guns obligatory."

The challenge is to imagine a society where harms are limited by reason and order, not overwhelming individual force.

Utopian nonsense that, for it to come to pass, requires a fundamental change in human nature. This might happen (though I doubt it) through evolutionary processes, over millions of years, or it could be imposed by issuing everyone Soma tablets and creating a surveillance-ubiquitous propagandistic totalitarian society that simply kills anyone showing aberrant characteristics, but that's not "reason and order" except in the most extreme sense of the words.

Until then, overwhelming individual defensive force is absolutely the best, and only way to create a society with minimal violence and victimization.

The failure in your reasoning is the false implication that harm is only imaginary and that therefore arming oneself against an "imaginary" harm somehow increases the potential for harm. Harm is anything but imaginary, although depending on the individual and the many factors which are involved in assessing one's individual risk of harm the actual risk may be small or large. But the question that you refuse to address and make unwarranted and unfounded implications about is how a law abiding individual's preparations to defend against harm, no matter what kind of harm we are talking about, be it a natural disaster or an armed criminal, somehow increases the risk to that individual or even to society at large merely because they are now prepared (and armed).

Here's a clue: It doesn't. Not at all. And that's an observable fact that is demonstrated by the slope of the curve of lawful gun ownership in the US versus the crime rate.

Therefore, there is no rational reason to deny any law abiding individual the right to keep and bear arms for self defense...there are only false, specious, illogical, irrational, evil, cruel, uncaring, arrogant and propagandistic reasons to even make such arguments because such arguments are simply flatly wrong. And if you don't know that, you should, if you claim to be a rational person.

The day-to-day life of the average UK citizen alone puts the lie to that.

Again, you justified your position on the back of: "Some <imaginable harm> therefore guns obligatory." Additionally you bolster your point by implicitly assuming that the social, cultural, economic, and political setting of your home nation represents the ideal global normative - it doesn't - meaning your justification is more like: "Some <imaginable harm here> therefore guns obligatory everywhere."

Civil order is not an imposition, it's a social contract. It's time for US citizens to renegotiate that contract.

[Blind groper]

Brian

The harm Seth is afraid of is not imaginary. The harm comes from a person carrying a gun. If those guns were not widely available (and this really only applies to hand guns) then Seth would have nothing to require him to carry his own gun to defend against.

Get rid of the hand guns, and the harm to defend against will largely disappear. Threats from daggers, clubs etc are much lower order threats, and can mostly be dealt with by talking or by running. You cannot run away from a bullet, though.

[Blind groper]

Fuck your "worldwide trend" bullshit. Here's the facts: More guns (in the US), less crime (in the US) Fuck all the rest of y'all.

Standard nonsensical Seth response.

[Brian Peacock]

Brian

The harm Seth is afraid of is not imaginary. The harm comes from a person carrying a gun. If those guns were not widely available (and this really only applies to hand guns) then Seth would have nothing to require him to carry his own gun to defend against.

Get rid of the hand guns, and the harm to defend against will largely disappear. Threats from daggers, clubs etc are much lower order threats, and can mostly be dealt with by talking or by running. You cannot run away from a bullet, though.

Just to clarify, I didn't say the harm was 'imaginary', but 'imaginable'. A slight distinction I'll grant, but an important one nonetheless.

[Seth]

The day-to-day life of the average UK citizen alone puts the lie to that.

Sooo...you're claiming that no UK citizen is ever robbed, beaten, maimed, scarred, victimized or killed in the UK? Really?

Again, you justified your position on the back of: "Some <imaginable harm> therefore guns obligatory." Additionally you bolster your point by implicitly assuming that the social, cultural, economic, and political setting of your home nation represents the ideal global normative - it doesn't - meaning your justification is more like: "Some <imaginable harm here> therefore guns obligatory everywhere."

No, not "guns obligatory" merely "guns optional." Your argument is premised on the specious assumption that nobody every gets victimized or killed in the UK. It's specious because you try to group everyone together using the term "average UK citizen" in order to bolster your argument by implicitly excluding all those "not-average UK citizens" who happen to be unlucky enough to actually be victimized, maimed and murdered in the UK...every day.

You discount their absolute and sovereign right NOT to be victimized or harmed by crime because they are not "average UK citizens," which you implicitly define as those UK citizens who don't need defensive arms because they don't happen to get victimized or murdered. So what you are in fact saying is that every single UK citizen who is ever victimized or murdered by a criminal is not "average" and therefore can be denied their sovereign right to effective self defense merely because they have the bad luck to be "not-average" and it's more important for you to "protect" the "average UK citizen," meaning the ones who aren't harmed by crime, by denying all the "not-average UK citizens" their rights.

Of course, the fallacy involved here is that you do not and cannot ever know which citizens are which, which are "average (non-victimized) UK citizens" and which are "non-average (victimized) UK citizens. This is because ANY UK citizen, in fact any person of any country anywhere on earth since Cain slew Abel, CAN BE VICTIMIZED BY CRIME, thus becoming, using your logic a "non-average citizen" who is not entitled to defensive capability.

And so you claim that it is unnecessary for ANY UK citizen to be effectively armed for self defense merely because the tautologically-defined" average UK citizen" isn't victimized by crime. But the moment they are victimized, they are no longer "average UK citizens" they become "not-average UK citizens" who can be utterly ignored by you as you deny THEIR self-evident need for self-defense.

Talk about your "No True Scotsman" fallacy, you've just stated it in spades: "No true Englishman needs defensive arms against criminal victimization because any Englishman who is victimized by a criminal is not a true Englishman and may therefore be ignored."

Sheesh.

Civil order is not an imposition, it's a social contract. It's time for US citizens to renegotiate that contract.

Indeed. And civil order is not established and maintained by the government, it's established and maintained by the citizens of the civil society who demand that civil order be maintained and who are willing to do what is required to establish and maintain it...like arming themselves so that they can provide for the common defense.

As Sir Robert Peel, the Founder of the London (England/UK) Metropolitan Police force said in 1829:

[The police must]...maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

And the public who are the police have every bit as much of a right to be armed in order to provide for the common defense and the suppression of crime as the police do, since all just powers exercised by government flow from the people alone TO their hired agents only by their express consent. And those powers are not abdicated by the people in granting to the government the authority to act in the name of the people. The people retain those powers and may revoke that grant of authority to the government any time they choose to do so, and the government has absolutely no recourse or power to deny the people that right.