Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by Seth » Tue Mar 04, 2014 8:08 pm

rainbow wrote:
Seth wrote:
rainbow wrote:
Seth wrote: The only thing gun bans do is disarm the very people who might need them to save their lives.
You don't allow people to walk around with handgrenades, or napalm flame throwers.
...so you're disarming people too.
Actually, if you want a hand grenade or a flamethrower, all you have to do is file a Form 4 (or a Form 1 if you want to manufacture one yourself) and pay the $200 for the tax stamp.

Didn't know that, did you?
Actually, I didn't.
Still, filling in forms is an infringement of your constitutional right to freely carry lethal weapons.
I mean it restricts the rights of the terminally stupid illiterate citizens, not so?
Yes, it does. However, in the case of NFA items the forms do two things: they ensure that the applicant is not disqualified from possessing the item due to some malfeasance on his or her part (criminal background check); and to ensure that the required tax on the item has been paid. Now, there are other rules regarding the interstate transport of NFA items, including (with the exception of silencers) a requirement that you notify the NFA Branch any time you move the item across a state line. The pertinent question is whether those regulations burden the RKBA without the requisite "strict scrutiny" governmental need to do so. Many people believe that the government NFA regulations do NOT pass strict scrutiny muster, but the courts have not ruled it unconstitutional (yet) so they remain valid law. A close review of the Supreme Court cases involving facial challenges to the NFA shows a notable lack of challenges and plenty of poor lawyering on the part of those few who have challenged it. I suspect this is because most state bureaucrats are unwilling to challenge federal gun control authority because they like having the issue taken off their plates at election time. Rather than having to fight divisive political battles at the state level, politicians can shove the responsibility and the blowback onto the Congress. Colorado, for example, passed some rather radical anti-gun legislation last year and as a result, two state senators were recalled, the first time that has happened in Colorado history, and a third was forced to resign in order to hold on to the democrat control of the state senate by turning over her seat to another democrat to avoid a recall election.

That being said, neither the NFA rules nor any other federal or state regulations restrict the rights of "terminally stupid illiterate" citizens, who have just as much right to keep and bear arms as anyone else, unless and until they do something to abuse that right and therefore forfeit it. There is one exception to this conduct-based analysis and that is persons who have been "adjudicated" to be mentally ill. Every other disqualifier requires some wrongdoing on the part of the individual who is being disqualified.
Now if the people at the train station had handgrenades instead of knifes, do you think the death toll might have been a bit higher?
Yes, indeed it would have. Then again nothing prevented those attackers from using hand grenades if that's the weapon they choose to use. They didn't, but they certainly could have. Every single terrorist bombing, like the Boston bombers, involves the illegal use of items that are or can be turned into weapons, and all the laws on the books that forbid people from doing such things did not stop the bombers, did they? You're trying to conflate the actions of killers and terrorists with the actions of law abiding citizens, which is a typical bit of liberal illogic. That a law-abiding citizen might be carrying a concealed handgun for self defense cannot be used to bolster an argument that a killer or terrorist might be carrying a concealed handgun for illegal use. If a killer wants to carry a concealed handgun, or a concealed hand grenade, or a concealed vest bomb, or a concealed knife that killer will do so regardless of and in spite of every law controlling the carrying of arms by anyone, including the law-abiding. Therefore, those laws are utterly useless in preventing terrorists from blowing people up, or shooting them, or knifing them. The only thing that can stop an armed killer intent on killing people is someone with an effective weapon who can use it in self defense, and the only thing that laws prohibiting law-abiding citizens from carrying those arms does is to ensure that no member of the public actually present in the first 60 seconds of such an attack will be able to a damned thing other than run, hide or die with the rest of the victims.

Which is what makes laws that disarm law-abiding citizens so fundamentally evil.

Since 1987, Florida has issued more than 2.5 million concealed carry permits. Of all those permits issued, a grand total of 168 permittees have committed gun-related crimes. That is a whopping 0.00672 percent. This amply proves that law-abiding citizens do not, as the anti-gun hysterics, engage in street gunfights with one another. In point of fact, CCW permitees are far, far less likely to be involved in any sort of crime than your average unarmed citizen.

The obvious conclusion is that there is not only no compelling government need to prohibit the lawful carrying of arms by citizens (which is required by the 2nd Amendment), there is a compelling need for the government NOT to do so. That's exactly why the federal courts ordered Illinois to issue a law that allows citizens to obtain concealed carry permits after more than a hundred years of flatly denying them to anyone.
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"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by Seth » Tue Mar 04, 2014 8:14 pm

SnowLeopard wrote: Ya I think not. An individual has a "right" to defend themselves to the best of their abilities within reason, but people don't have a "right" to be armed to facilitate that, at all, in any sense.
Why not? Because you don't think they need to be armed? How arrogant of you. Who gave you, or anyone else the power to determine what arms a person fighting for his life can use?

Nobody, that's who. If you dispute this then you won't mind if I drop by Aberdeen and beat you to death with a hurley stick as you obey the law and refuse to defend yourself with any arms because some fuckwit bureaucrat in London (or Edinburgh) told you not to.

Something tells me you'd put a shaft through my heart without a second thought if I were raping and strangling your precious daughter, son or wife.

Go ahead and deny it if you like.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by JimC » Tue Mar 04, 2014 8:28 pm

laklak wrote:
SnowLeopard wrote:Ya I think not. An individual has a "right" to defend themselves to the best of their abilities within reason, but people don't have a "right" to be armed to facilitate that, at all, in any sense. Just because you might think it doesn't make it reality.
You may not, but I do. Well, as much of a "right" as can be said to exist. Let's say it's legal for me to arm myself for the purpose of self defense in 35 states and to carry my weapon concealed. I avail myself of that right occasionally, depending on where I'm going. On the highway, heading up to the mountain house, yeah, I'm armed. Going downtown on Friday night to have dinner and a few drinks, nope.
It's a "right" in a legal sense in certain jurisdictions (though clearly not others), but not a "natural right", that's merely Seth's mystical psychobabble...

Most people have a natural tendency to defend themselves, as would be expected in any creature honed my natural selection. This is one factor in the complex historical process where societies have created or assigned rights; almost always those rights are circumscribed, and never absolute.
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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by Seth » Tue Mar 04, 2014 8:32 pm

JimC wrote:
laklak wrote:
SnowLeopard wrote:Ya I think not. An individual has a "right" to defend themselves to the best of their abilities within reason, but people don't have a "right" to be armed to facilitate that, at all, in any sense. Just because you might think it doesn't make it reality.
You may not, but I do. Well, as much of a "right" as can be said to exist. Let's say it's legal for me to arm myself for the purpose of self defense in 35 states and to carry my weapon concealed. I avail myself of that right occasionally, depending on where I'm going. On the highway, heading up to the mountain house, yeah, I'm armed. Going downtown on Friday night to have dinner and a few drinks, nope.
It's a "right" in a legal sense in certain jurisdictions (though clearly not others), but not a "natural right", that's merely Seth's mystical psychobabble...

Most people have a natural tendency to defend themselves, as would be expected in any creature honed my natural selection. This is one factor in the complex historical process where societies have created or assigned rights; almost always those rights are circumscribed, and never absolute.
Well, there's your problem Sparky! If you believe that society creates rights, then you implicitly accept that society can take away those rights "democratically" as well. That just makes you a slave to the collective with nothing you can really call your own, not even your life or labor.

My rights exist by virtue of my existence as a living organism able to assert and defend them against all comers, no matter how many of them there might be attempting to usurp those rights. Me and the other 299,999,999 Americans who operate on the same principle.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by JimC » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:08 pm

Seth wrote:
JimC wrote:
laklak wrote:
SnowLeopard wrote:Ya I think not. An individual has a "right" to defend themselves to the best of their abilities within reason, but people don't have a "right" to be armed to facilitate that, at all, in any sense. Just because you might think it doesn't make it reality.
You may not, but I do. Well, as much of a "right" as can be said to exist. Let's say it's legal for me to arm myself for the purpose of self defense in 35 states and to carry my weapon concealed. I avail myself of that right occasionally, depending on where I'm going. On the highway, heading up to the mountain house, yeah, I'm armed. Going downtown on Friday night to have dinner and a few drinks, nope.
It's a "right" in a legal sense in certain jurisdictions (though clearly not others), but not a "natural right", that's merely Seth's mystical psychobabble...

Most people have a natural tendency to defend themselves, as would be expected in any creature honed my natural selection. This is one factor in the complex historical process where societies have created or assigned rights; almost always those rights are circumscribed, and never absolute.
Well, there's your problem Sparky! If you believe that society creates rights, then you implicitly accept that society can take away those rights "democratically" as well. That just makes you a slave to the collective with nothing you can really call your own, not even your life or labor.

My rights exist by virtue of my existence as a living organism able to assert and defend them against all comers, no matter how many of them there might be attempting to usurp those rights. Me and the other 299,999,999 Americans who operate on the same principle.
Most modern democratic societies have some version of the right to self-defence firmly enshrined in their legal system, to the point where it's removal would only occur in a total upheaval of society. I am happy to be part of a society whose members would resist any move by authorities to remove such a legal right (it may be more circumscribed than the US situation, but it is sufficient in most circumstances). Taking away fundamental rights is not something like legislating for a new method of patent protection; you paint it as something a whim could remove, which is a nonsense. Society's strength is the collective power of the population to work together, and to resist attempts by rulers to remove rights which the people themselves, over a long historical process have helped to create; they are not rights granted as largesse by rulers.
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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by laklak » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:11 pm

Rights, like political power, comes from the barrel of a gun.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by JimC » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:18 pm

laklak wrote:Rights, like political power, comes from the barrel of a gun.
It's more nuanced than that. Deep down, the possible use of violence by any group in society exists, and it is certainly one of the factors which have influenced the historical process of a society assigning rights. But there are others, chiefly the collective pressure of the majority of people who simply wish to live in some degree of comfort and peace, and who recognise the power of the Kantian imperative, and/or some version of the golden rule. The rule of law works to take us away from the Hobbesian "war of all against all"...
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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by Beatsong » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:19 pm

laklak wrote:Rights, like political power, comes from the barrel of a gun.
Then clearly the people in China - as in the UK and many other countries, DON'T have the right to carry guns. The government tells them they don't, and the government has the biggest gun barrel with which to enforce what it says.

So there we go.

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by SnowLeopard » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:45 pm

Seth wrote:
Why not? Because you don't think they need to be armed? How arrogant of you. Who gave you, or anyone else the power to determine what arms a person fighting for his life can use?

Nobody, that's who. If you dispute this then you won't mind if I drop by Aberdeen and beat you to death with a hurley stick as you obey the law and refuse to defend yourself with any arms because some fuckwit bureaucrat in London (or Edinburgh) told you not to.

Something tells me you'd put a shaft through my heart without a second thought if I were raping and strangling your precious daughter, son or wife.

Go ahead and deny it if you like.
In Scotland we settle kerfuffles with hand to hand mortal combat. It stops people, you know, getting shot.

The law doesn't say I have to stand there and take a beating... Not sure why you think it does.

Yes you're right I could put an arrow through you if you we're clever enough to do it while I was archerying.

You seem to be under the misconception that people who disapprove of guns are oblivious to defending themselves. Within arms reach of me when I'm laying in bed is a baseball bat propped up in the corner. I have a 6 inch knife in a plastic sheath which just happens to live on my bed side table (I carve spoons). Also on the bedside table is my 215 lumen torch with convenient strobe function, which is extremely bright and disorientating if shined in your eyes. I have a hatchet which leans against my bed side table (For gathering wood to carve spoons). On my desk live heavy duty cable ties I use for work. My basic plan for intruders is to blind them, beat them, zippy tie them and phone the police. The house across the road and the house around the corner from mine have been burgled in the past. Nothing illegal with keeping a hatchet a knife and a baseball bat beside your bed. If one of them happens to be the first thing I grab if I'm disturbed during the night, well. That's just unlucky for the prowler.

Or if I'm walking through an area I'm not keen on it's prudent to have your house keys in your fist with keys poking out through your fingers while in your pocket. I also always carry my handy torch. If someone does try to mug me I can be confident in knowing with 99.99999999% certainty they don't have a gun so I don't have to worry about being shot. It comes down to who "wants it" more. Blind them with my torch, buy enough seconds to charge/punch them with my key-fist which will do plenty enough damage. In the heat of the moment I just lunged at him and happened to have my keys in my hand officer. It's just bad luck that I managed to break his nose and poke out one of his eyes in the process....
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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by laklak » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:51 pm

Beatsong wrote:
laklak wrote:Rights, like political power, comes from the barrel of a gun.
Then clearly the people in China - as in the UK and many other countries, DON'T have the right to carry guns. The government tells them they don't, and the government has the biggest gun barrel with which to enforce what it says.

So there we go.
Precisely. The (slightly) butchered quote was from Chairman Mao, after all.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by SnowLeopard » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:52 pm

Seth wrote:
JimC wrote:
laklak wrote:
SnowLeopard wrote:Ya I think not. An individual has a "right" to defend themselves to the best of their abilities within reason, but people don't have a "right" to be armed to facilitate that, at all, in any sense. Just because you might think it doesn't make it reality.
You may not, but I do. Well, as much of a "right" as can be said to exist. Let's say it's legal for me to arm myself for the purpose of self defense in 35 states and to carry my weapon concealed. I avail myself of that right occasionally, depending on where I'm going. On the highway, heading up to the mountain house, yeah, I'm armed. Going downtown on Friday night to have dinner and a few drinks, nope.
It's a "right" in a legal sense in certain jurisdictions (though clearly not others), but not a "natural right", that's merely Seth's mystical psychobabble...

Most people have a natural tendency to defend themselves, as would be expected in any creature honed my natural selection. This is one factor in the complex historical process where societies have created or assigned rights; almost always those rights are circumscribed, and never absolute.
Well, there's your problem Sparky! If you believe that society creates rights, then you implicitly accept that society can take away those rights "democratically" as well. That just makes you a slave to the collective with nothing you can really call your own, not even your life or labor.
Like I said to you before, there are safeguards in place in civilized countries that prevent the masses from enacting their will on the minority. If it's democratically decided by majority to hang gay people then stops being a democracy and becomes a fascist state... Just because some people believe in something and want it to happen doesn't mean it should ever be allowed to happen. Like Christians or Muslims. Or libertarians for that matter ...
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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by laklak » Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:53 pm

Or democratic socialists, or Greens, or Republicans, or Tories, or......
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by MrJonno » Tue Mar 04, 2014 10:40 pm

Most modern democratic societies have some version of the right to self-defence firmly enshrined in their legal system
Most countries permit it in certain circumstances, I'm not sure any country has it as a 'right'
When only criminals carry guns the police know exactly who to shoot!

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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by JimC » Tue Mar 04, 2014 11:01 pm

MrJonno wrote:
Most modern democratic societies have some version of the right to self-defence firmly enshrined in their legal system
Most countries permit it in certain circumstances, I'm not sure any country has it as a 'right'
Well, it's not one of Seth's illusory "natural rights", but whether we call it a "right" or not, it can represent a valid legal argument if you have harmed someone else in certain contexts.
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Re: Knife attack kills 27 people, wounds 109

Post by Seth » Wed Mar 05, 2014 3:05 am

JimC wrote: Most modern democratic societies have some version of the right to self-defence firmly enshrined in their legal system, to the point where it's removal would only occur in a total upheaval of society. I am happy to be part of a society whose members would resist any move by authorities to remove such a legal right (it may be more circumscribed than the US situation, but it is sufficient in most circumstances). Taking away fundamental rights is not something like legislating for a new method of patent protection; you paint it as something a whim could remove, which is a nonsense. Society's strength is the collective power of the population to work together, and to resist attempts by rulers to remove rights which the people themselves, over a long historical process have helped to create; they are not rights granted as largesse by rulers.
I believe the Brits told the King that with the Magna Carta. Something about "the rights of Englishmen" as I recall. Pity the current occupants of the island don't read their own historical documents.
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"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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