ARGH!!!!!!!!!i!!!! RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[reaper239]

Run for cover man. Seriously when me and reaper have "discussions" its like the scene in the Hobbit with the giants (im talking about a seventy something year old book so fuck spoiler warnings).
Don't get in the middle.

You know here has next to no gun violence? Britain.
We have the occasional knife problem but our murder rate is WAY down.
America won't and can't do what Britain does because the guns are already in circulation.
Also because why should you, gun culture is part of your culture, for good or bad.
But it could be controlled effectively to minimise deaths.

Reaper I'll reply in the morning since its nearing midnight and I'm pissed off at Peter Jackson because he came so close to making a good Hobbit movie.

but britains other violent crime stats are way higher than the US.

[LiamKerrington]

Solanine and Reaper: Actually - I 'enjoy' you trading 'blows', i.e. opinions and arguments on such hard'n'heavy topics. Basically your spar evolves on topics where neither "right" nor "wrong" really exist, while you argue around questions about things, how they might be more right or more wrong ...
Helps me - to some degree - to define my personal understanding of things ...

[Solanine]

But Reaper total violent crime is WAY down in Britain.

(Reported) Violent crimes in England and wales in 2012: 1977 crimes in a population of around 60 Million
(Reported) Violent crimes in America in 2011: an estimated 6 million violent crimes.

Thats a population only five times the size with 3000X the number of violent crimes.
I did the figures twice because I couldn't believe them (Included are the two reports to show I'm not pulling the figures out of my ass).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...-england-wales UK figures

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_1974123.html

Again I left my post too late so I won't get back to your proper points. Tomorrow I promise.

[scbubba]

But Reaper total violent crime is WAY down in Britain.

(Reported) Violent crimes in England and wales in 2012: 1977 crimes in a population of around 60 Million
(Reported) Violent crimes in America in 2011: an estimated 6 million violent crimes.

Thats a population only five times the size with 3000X the number of violent crimes.
I did the figures twice because I couldn't believe them (Included are the two reports to show I'm not pulling the figures out of my ass).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...-england-wales UK figures

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_1974123.html

Again I left my post too late so I won't get back to your proper points. Tomorrow I promise.

Just a couple of things that stuck out to me regarding the US stats:

- From the linked article: "The annual report compiles data from a nationwide survey and captures many crimes not reported to police."
That leaves any lot to the imagination, IMO.

- the 6 million is the number of victims of violent crimes, not necessarily the number of crimes. Probably close since I think that most crimes have a single victim.

I'm not saying that the US has less violent crime than the UK, just saying that these stats for the US may not be very reliable. But then again, when are they ever - you know the old saying - There are 3 kinds of liars: liars, damn liars, and statisticians....

[reaper239]

i'll sum up my whole argument with the same question i posed to nik: what right do you have to tell me what i can and cannot own? let's remove guns from the equation, what this boils down to is personal property, you're telling me that there is certain property i cannot own, and that is wrong. let's substitute cars for guns, more people are killed by cars every year than by guns, so i say the average citizen cannot be trusted to own their own auto, only highly skilled heavily regulated individuals can be trusted and those people will drive busses for the rest of us. i'm telling you that you can't own a piece of private property because i say so.

[LiamKerrington]

i'll sum up my whole argument with the same question i posed to nik: what right do you have to tell me what i can and cannot own? let's remove guns from the equation, what this boils down to is personal property, you're telling me that there is certain property i cannot own, and that is wrong. let's substitute cars for guns, more people are killed by cars every year than by guns, so i say the average citizen cannot be trusted to own their own auto, only highly skilled heavily regulated individuals can be trusted and those people will drive busses for the rest of us. i'm telling you that you can't own a piece of private property because i say so.

The answer to this question is hard to tell.
Let me put it this way: Why then it is forbidden to own bombs, especially nuclear, bio, or chemical versions of it? Or to take a more 'delicious' example: drugs. But such questions are not fair; and actually I am not convinced about the 'message' behind questions like these.

More interesting, though, is the question about who or what defines property or private property. In the end both terms are "legal terms"; thus their meaning and understanding is not what a more or less likely "common sense" defines, but what on the one side the State decides by laws and decrees and judicial court decisions, and on the other side what lawyers make of it. At least this is the legal and political tradition in many European countries. But, if you remember my huge wall of words about the legal situation for Germany in the other threat, the State-theory and the theory of authority might be different in the USA (as a reminder: In Germany political and legal tradition is that private persons may not own guns without permit by the authority, while the permits have very steep or high requirements to be met by private persons). Simplified: Who defines "poperty" or "private property" in the USA? And the one doin' so might be the one who may put restrictions on property as well, right?

All the best!
Liam

[reaper239]

The answer to this question is hard to tell.
Let me put it this way: Why then it is forbidden to own bombs, especially nuclear, bio, or chemical versions of it? Or to take a more 'delicious' example: drugs. But such questions are not fair; and actually I am not convinced about the 'message' behind questions like these.

More interesting, though, is the question about who or what defines property or private property. In the end both terms are "legal terms"; thus their meaning and understanding is not what a more or less likely "common sense" defines, but what on the one side the State decides by laws and decrees and judicial court decisions, and on the other side what lawyers make of it. At least this is the legal and political tradition in many European countries. But, if you remember my huge wall of words about the legal situation for Germany in the other threat, the State-theory and the theory of authority might be different in the USA (as a reminder: In Germany political and legal tradition is that private persons may not own guns without permit by the authority, while the permits have very steep or high requirements to be met by private persons). Simplified: Who defines "poperty" or "private property" in the USA? And the one doin' so might be the one who may put restrictions on property as well, right?

All the best!
Liam

those are very good questions, what right does someone have to tell you what you can put in your body? if you want to shoot up heroine, go ahead, i don't care, that's your choice. as long as it is lawful for all people to own nukes, why not? now, that may come across as a bit extreme, but the principle remains, law abiding citizens will not misuse these things and criminals have them already (not nukes but drugs and certain chemical weapons).

as for who defines personal property: there is a certain principle called natural law upon which all other law is based. man made laws often go beyond natural law, but ultimately if you boil down any society you will find at the core a set of universal laws that everyone acknowledges as being true laws. one of those is the law of personal property, and personal property can be defined as private property that is movable. basically, personal property is anything that can be owned, that is not land. and everyone believes in personal property, communists, socialists, americans, indians, american indians, chinese, russians, polish, brazilian, south african, zambian, left, right, everyone acknowledges the law of personal property. my two year old godson understands personal property (granted, he thinks it's all his, but he's getting it, slowly). now, as for what can be defined as personal property, it is anything capable of being owned. communists believe that the means of production should be public property, therefore they are acknowledging that it is capable of being owned and therefore qualifies as personal property. anything is elligible of being considered personal property.

[yarri]

Liam and Solinine the U.S.A isn't Europe and our situations are not the same nor is our traditions and history. We can not be compared to you and yours and you can not be compared to us. I may disagree with Reaper on health care I do not disagree with him on much else. Any repeal on the second amendment is an attack on the bill of rights and leaves my people open for loses of freedoms the rest of the world doesn't enjoy for the most part.
In your country and many other gun banned locations you still have rape and crimes of violence against women and children. How is this acceptable to you?

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there,

@yarri: Well, that is exactly why I ask how things are in the US. And I agree with reaper that "natural law" is a very fundamental and philosophical principle which is the source of many (legal) things. In fact most European legal systems are based or rooted in the principles of "natural law" afaik.
Another reason why I emphasize the "European" (or better: German) perspective is to make anyone, who reads my words, understand or at least see that my perspective is or may be different, because I am not from the USA; I just want to prevent misunderstandings of any kind, because someone might assume that I could be one of the few weirdos from the USA.

As for crimes and rapes and stuff ... Well, let me put it this way: The moral and ethical understanding of any criminal act is to no degree different here in Germany or the EU from how things are acknowledged in the USA. Crimes and rape are not acceptable and are to be punished by all means necessary. Regardless of that I feel inclined to simply neglect the simple logic: "Because there is crime/ rapes, I speak up in favor of more guns for anyone." In my humble understanding both don't necessarily connect. Just consider all the different kinds of criminal actions which do not need to involve the harm of individuals - like anything happening in economy (corruption), involving money or valuable stuff (fraud, scams, theft, IT-based crimes).

Too many people are being shot because of a "good cause" in the wake of revenge or self-defense, and in the aftermath his death is too be considered "need- and senseless", because he was assumed to be a certain criminal or rapist, but in fact he was not (reminds me of those death-sentences in which the death-sentenced was not responsible, because the real convict was found later). It is like what Gandalf asks Frodo: To take a life is easy, but could you give it back as easily?
In other cases you shoot your gun in self-defense - a 100% proper cause, no need to argue about it-; but for whatever reason your aiming is poor and instead of the villain you wound or even kill someone else - a so-called 'aberatio ictus'. And if the one being shot feels threatened by you although you act in self-defense against another one, maybe he starts shooting you because he depicts you as an attacker and threat instead of a defender ... This is spiraling towards epic fail on all sides.
That things like these are not as "paranoid" or "weird" as they may seem at first, is obvious, if you just consider the many, many cases in which police-men (everywhere in the world) misunderstand situations and act - more or less violent - in good faith with all their force available; NYPD is a good (arguable) example, or in Germany any police-officer using his gun against individuals as a means of "finaler Rettungssschuss" (finale rescue-shot), although this was avoidable. And if trained personell like police-forces is not safe from getting into or performing such crazy situations, then the 'normal guy' around with his gun is just as well in danger of getting things wrong and acting, though accordingly, still failing - maybe even horribly.

But to be frank: I don't want to get lost in details like those (extreme) cases, because they happen in a minority of cases; this is why I don't connect with the different statistics, because statistics either point towards prevention of extremes or over-emphasizing things, which actually are not a real problem at all. I'd rather stick with principles. And here - in all honesty, and although I did not grow up with guns in anyway and thus have no understanding or feeling for them - I actually tend towards supporting private ownership or private property of guns, maybe with some restrictions set up by public authorities (certain age; maybe kind of a test or a licensing system, maybe registration, whatever ...). The reason for this is the - very idealistic - understanding that people living a responsible life won't use guns in order to harm others - like what madmen, criminals, or people with 'self-justic-missions' tend to do ... As far as this I think I am totally on par with reaper here, right?

All the best!
Liam

edit: Sorry for me butchering English so hard'n'heavy. I tried to streamline it a bit ...

[yarri]

As I'm stuck on mobile my cut and paste skills are limited so bear with me as I go through you lengthy post
You asked how things were in the states? Dangerous depending on where you live. My father and step mother used to live in a nice neighborhood. Gangs have moved in and now car windows are broken nightly and vandalism has escalated. They've been robbed twice and an elderly couple down the street who as my step mother put it " had nice things" were subject to a home invasion and beaten half to death. My father invested in home security and an AR.... They haven't as of yet been robbed again but I can tell you average police response time is 7 to 15 minutes.