You guys and your guns...

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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by JimC » Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:33 pm

Gawdzilla Sama wrote:There are hundreds of millions of people in the US. Characterizing all of them with one outlook seems rather odd to me.
Certainly not going to characterise all American individuals in one particular way; for example, I know several American posters here who are not impressed with gun laws in your country... However, it represents a fairly major social and legal difference to other western cultures, and therefore worth exploring...
mistermack wrote:You've missed out the fourth strand, which is the real explanation for the gun obsession.

These people are pathetic wankers, who have watched too many Clint Eastwood movies, where the bad people always get killed, and the good ones just get wounded, and nursed back to health by a devoted blonde.

You can't lock them all away, there just aren't enough padded cells. But why the fuck would you make one President?
I'm not sure the media thing is really a 4th strand, merely a reflection of a significant part of the culture. Perhaps it reinforces it somewhat...
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:42 pm

Non-Americans obsess about American gun laws far more than we do, I think. Not sure why that's true.
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by JimC » Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:45 pm

Gawdzilla Sama wrote:Non-Americans obsess about American gun laws far more than we do, I think. Not sure why that's true.
Maybe because many other cultural/social aspects are the same, but the gun thing is so very different, seen from the outside...
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:47 pm

JimC wrote:
Gawdzilla Sama wrote:Non-Americans obsess about American gun laws far more than we do, I think. Not sure why that's true.
Maybe because many other cultural/social aspects are the same, but the gun thing is so very different, seen from the outside...
There are variations from culture to culture, but this one thing seems to make non-USians :nervous: I've only witnessed one shooting in the US, and I was the shooter.
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by FBM » Sat Jul 28, 2012 5:56 pm

I like the historical aspect of the OP, Jim. Things don't happen arbitrarily. They develop out of previous conditions out of necessity or probability. Most serious scientists today see free will as an illusion. People don't just arbitrarily decide to do this or that for whatever whimsy that pleases their immortal soul or homunculus at the moment. Europe was mostly settled before firearms became mass-produced. The US happened, by historical accident, to be settled at a time when firearms were becoming cheaper and more available to the average citizen. And there was a great survival advantage to having firearms during the initial settlement and colonial periods. And long afterwards. When I was a kid, hunting was for putting food on the table, not for sport. Thus, owning a firearm and knowing how to use it was synonymous for survival and success for many - not all, not the protected elite - early Americans. Those people had children and grandchildren, etc, and the values were quite naturally passed on.

Now, I agree that the widespread availability of firearms in the US also results in a greater number of firearm deaths than in countries that were settled prior to the development of mass-produced, readily available firearm technology. Statistics make this blatant. But that doesn't mean that centuries of history and cultural momentum can be erased overnight based on a statistical finding. Humans aren't computers. If we tried to apply the same logic to automobiles, they would also be outlawed because of the number of deaths they cause. But we don't do that. Instead, we try to teach people how to drive better and stiffen the requirements for getting a driver's license. If you subtract the emotive element from the issue (arguably of political origins), it makes perfect sense for the US to do exactly what it is doing: increasing the firearm safety education and licensing reqirements, as well as the penalties for violations.

Prohibition won't work. Why? Because there are already millions of unregistered firearms in the US that the gov't has absolutely no chance of confiscating from a public that doesn't want them confiscated. Think about what it would cost to have a nationwide, comprehensive sweep of every household in the country.

And most of these people just want to hunt or target practice like their dads and granddads taught them to. It is a source of cultural identity. Most people also see the utility of firearms in self-defense. Not just for themselves, but for their loved ones or even strangers, should the opportunity arise. Naturally. These people aren't the ones that should have their firearms taken away or their right to owning firearms taken away.

What the US gov't should do is pretty much what they are already doing. Increasing their scrutiny of people who purchase firearms and increasing the amount of training and education required of people who want to purchase them. Even if the US gov't were to somehow come up with a way to take every firearm away from every US citizen, it wouldn't take long before most of those firearms were replaced by illegal and unregistered firearms from various willing suppliers around the world. Smuggled in through Mexico, Canada or whatever. That's the reality that the US gov't is faced with wrt gun control.

I grew up in a hunting family and various firearms are in my earliest childhood memories. Of all the people I've known who owned and enjoyed having guns, I have never met one who expressed an interest in using a firearm for murder. It's rare. But it makes the worldwide headlines when one American whacko manages to kill a few people with a gun. Despite the fact that it's almost a daily occurence in many places in Africa, the Middle East, South America and even some European countries. Not so much the lone whacko, maybe, but groups of whackos aligned to a political ideology. Which is more dangerous? Which kills more innocent people? The lone US whacko or the gangs and pseudo-political factions around the world? Why the obsession on the occasional lone US whaco? Because the US is in the limelight due to its status in the global economy? Whereas the darkies who kill each other in the same (or worse) manner in poor countries are back-page blips? A bit of global perspective is in order, I think.
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by mistermack » Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:15 pm

You don't get darkies from Africa coming onto this site and pontificating about how they bear arms to defend the innocent, just like John Wayne, and how "responsible" they are.

I don't give a fuck about americans killing americans. I just can't stand their sanctimonious bullshit.
Especially when you know from reading it that it's a pack of lies from a pathetic fantasist.
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by FBM » Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:21 pm

"Sanctimonious bullshit." :lol: There's irony fer ya. ;) We don't have any African "darkies" in this forum at all, as far as I know. But if there were here, and if they were of the gun-toting sort, they would be defending their slaughtering of entire villages, including the elderly, women and children, as a justifiable defense of their political aspirations. There are many thousands of them. Wonder why they haven't joined up at Ratz? :roll:
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by JacksSmirkingRevenge » Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:27 pm

:read:


Edit- Didn't want to start another thread but had no idea where to post this nifty little gadget.
I've never seen one before. Illegal in the States, surely? :ask:
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Jason » Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:33 pm

You can have my guns when you pry 'em from my cold dead fingers.

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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Seth » Sat Jul 28, 2012 7:34 pm

JimC wrote:I detect 3 strands in the American love affair with guns:

One strand is simply the enjoyment of guns themselves; firing them, hunting with them, learning about them, even cleaning them. I share this; when I was a young bloke, I owned a few rifles, and loved hunting rabbits on the farm. I can still remember they smell of gun oil myself... So, I get this strand, and at least a reasonable number of folk around the world would too...
One might note that shooting is included in several Olympic sports. One might also note that the British pistol teams aren't even allowed to possess their Olympic target pistols in the UK, and they have to go out of the country to practice.
The second is the whole self-defence thing; the whole "criminals better walk softly around me, coz I'm a righteous citizen packing serious heat". This strand is totally surreal to me, although I understand that, in a society with a vast number of hand-guns in circulation, the need for one of your own becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy... I suspect that "alea jacta" applies here...
Why is this so "surreal" to you? Even in the UK, prior to 1924, people commonly carried handguns (concealed) for protection against criminals. Is the notion of self-defense so alien to you that you simply cannot comprehend either the threat or the simple fact that when and if one is attacked by a violent criminal that the police are virtually never going to be there to protect you? The handgun is the most effective deterrent/defensive weapon ever invented. Period. In the vast majority of cases its mere presence in the hands of a potential victim scares off the criminal, which means that it's most effective merely by its existence. And it has wide utility because of the varying degrees of force that it provides for different dangerous situations, from brandishing it to scare of a criminal to shooting a vicious dog to shooting a deranged mass killer.

Your attitude demonstrates a serious and IMHO pathological paranoid fear of your fellow law-abiding citizens.
The third strand is the combined historical/libertarian thing. Citizen colonists fought off colonial oppression using their own weapons, and that legacy has become a truly sacred message to many. Socialism, the new world order and those pesky black helicopters can only be held at bay by that magic amulet, the gun, with the NRA as high priests...
Indeed, and precisely correct. Guns are not a "magic amulet," they are a stern and effective deterrent to government-sponsored tyranny, which is why we remain a free people. The NRA (of which I'm an Endowment Life Member) is nothing more than the collective voice of about five million people in the US who are determined not to allow anyone to disparage or infringe upon our fundamental natural right to arm ourselves for self-defense and defense against tyranny. It's not some alien organism, it's the voice of the people, and I am very glad that our elected leaders are staunch in their defense, and promotion of gun rights for the law-abiding. Thanks to the NRA, I can now carry concealed lawfully in 40 states, whereas 15 years ago I couldn't do so (as an average citizen) even in my own community.
Oh well, one out of three is better than nothing, I suppose...
Just because you are incapable of understanding the meanings and reasons for protecting the right to keep and bear arms (which by the way came from Great Britain as a concept) doesn't mean those meanings and reasons are invalid, it only points to your own ignorance and/or political persuasion.
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Seth » Sat Jul 28, 2012 7:41 pm

JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote::read:


Edit- Didn't want to start another thread but had no idea where to post this nifty little gadget.
I've never seen one before. Illegal in the States, surely? :ask:
It's only illegal if you haven't filed for and received the proper paperwork and licensing from the BATFE under the National Firearms Act as a suppressor manufacturer or you didn't do the paperwork to buy it as a suppressor from a licensed Class III dealer.

Just sticking ANYTHING (includng a liter soda bottle) on the end of a gun to reduce the sound signature without the proper paperwork is, however, illegal under the NFA.

The market for suppressors has never been stronger in the US. They are so popular that the waiting time for the BATFE approval for a suppressor purchase is about a year to a year and a half right now, whereas two years ago it was two months.

Suppressors make plenty of sense, and are rarely used in crimes (contrary to popular myth) and they are commonly available in places like Switzerland and Germany as well as the US. They protect your hearing, they reduce the nuisance impact of shooting, they sometimes improve accuracy, and they make pig hunting at night particularly fruitful.

I've got a couple of suppressor apps in the mill right now.
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"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Tyrannical » Sat Jul 28, 2012 7:48 pm

The majority of gun crime in the US would be eliminated if not for Blacks. While the small percentage of crazy Whites make the news, it is Blacks that are vastly over represented in that form of criminality. It's not gun control that is needed, but Black control through either segregation or deportation back to Africa. Of course some people are offended by this, yet when it comes to facts arguing against it they can only resort to name calling.
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Jason » Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:10 pm

Tyrannical wrote:The majority of gun crime in the US would be eliminated if not for Blacks. While the small percentage of crazy Whites make the news, it is Blacks that are vastly over represented in that form of criminality. It's not gun control that is needed, but Black control through either segregation or deportation back to Africa. Of course some people are offended by this, yet when it comes to facts arguing against it they can only resort to name calling.
I've seen this trope countless times from Hollywood, but are there any proper study results which have accounted for socio-economic differences to support this?

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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by JacksSmirkingRevenge » Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:15 pm

Seth wrote:
JacksSmirkingRevenge wrote::read:


Edit- Didn't want to start another thread but had no idea where to post this nifty little gadget.
I've never seen one before. Illegal in the States, surely? :ask:
It's only illegal if you haven't filed for and received the proper paperwork and licensing from the BATFE under the National Firearms Act as a suppressor manufacturer or you didn't do the paperwork to buy it as a suppressor from a licensed Class III dealer.

Just sticking ANYTHING (includng a liter soda bottle) on the end of a gun to reduce the sound signature without the proper paperwork is, however, illegal under the NFA.

The market for suppressors has never been stronger in the US. They are so popular that the waiting time for the BATFE approval for a suppressor purchase is about a year to a year and a half right now, whereas two years ago it was two months.

Suppressors make plenty of sense, and are rarely used in crimes (contrary to popular myth) and they are commonly available in places like Switzerland and Germany as well as the US. They protect your hearing, they reduce the nuisance impact of shooting, they sometimes improve accuracy, and they make pig hunting at night particularly fruitful.

I've got a couple of suppressor apps in the mill right now.
I was under the impression that they were a no-no, full-stop. What about arms with in-built suppressors? - I take it you could only obtain one with the above parework?
I suspect the movie industry of expanding fears about them being associated with clandestine 'hits' and other sinister stuff.
Once upon a time they were considered a courtesy around here. :sigh:
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Re: You guys and your guns...

Post by Tyrannical » Sat Jul 28, 2012 8:37 pm

PordFrefect wrote:
Tyrannical wrote:The majority of gun crime in the US would be eliminated if not for Blacks. While the small percentage of crazy Whites make the news, it is Blacks that are vastly over represented in that form of criminality. It's not gun control that is needed, but Black control through either segregation or deportation back to Africa. Of course some people are offended by this, yet when it comes to facts arguing against it they can only resort to name calling.
I've seen this trope countless times from Hollywood, but are there any proper study results which have accounted for socio-economic differences to support this?
From Hollywood? :funny:
Proper studies are frowned against by a UN anti-racist resolution, but all the evidence is already out there in US FBI statistics. Really, if I just presented enough evidence would it be that simple to turn you racist :hehe:
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