When 1024x768 is too much (bringing back the fullscreen thread)
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@eViLegion said:
It means that, as well intelligent and educated as you are (relatively, as an individual compared to your countrymen), your country's system has succeeded in brainwashing you regardless.
What I love is retarded foreigners who don't know anything about America telling me what my country is like. You know what, you don't know the first fucking thing about the US. In fact, the only "brainwashing" I encountered growing up was from idiots trying to convince me to hate my country.
@eViLegion said:
So When you ask yourself "Why does everyone hate America?" in a hurt tone of voice...
I would never ask that. I know why people hate America, because they're jealous.
@eViLegion said:
And patriotism is EXACTLY the same madness just at an industrial scale... throwing in your allegiance with MILLIONS of other people you've never met, who care less about you than the players do about their fans, and for what??
Man, your life sounds really pathetic, lonely and empty. The fact that I don't know the people is irrelevant. In fact, it's not even the people themselves I'm swearing allegiance to, it's the ideas and values represented by the culture. I understand that your country's two values are probably something like "murdering Jews/Africans/whatever" and "kissing the feet of some feudal warlord", so I can see why you hate your country. My country values hard work, community, compassion, justice, individual liberty and individual responsibility (although these seem to be falling out of style as of late.)
@eViLegion said:
Well, at least in Europe you get healthcare, decent education, and the right to walk down the street without getting shot.
Your "healthcare" is inferior (although we're catching up to you in terms of shittiness); your education is clearly wanting and I'm more likely to be mugged, stabbed, raped (well, if I was a chick) or murdered in your country than in my own. And what's more, I actually have the right to defend myself against attacks instead of being sent to prison for fighting back. Everyone around me is heavily-armed and nobody ever shoots anybody, because apparently we're not shiftless, untrustworthy scum like your fellow citizens. Once again, you know nothing. Everything you seem to know about the US comes from fictional TV shows. You do realize those are fictional, right?
@eViLegion said:
Your corrupt officials are just as corrupt as everyone else's, just maybe more sophisticated at concealing it.
Yes and no. Once again, your ignorance is really stunning. Americans know their leaders are corrupt, ineffectual crooks. That's the difference between us and you: we know it and we've always known it; our country was founded on the principle that politicians are the lowest form of life.
@eViLegion said:
Your push for democracy across the world is just as self serving as every other nations foreign policy: if some tinpot-dictator-in-all-but-name plays ball with your government then he's country is a fine example of the democracy you're spreading in that region...
Realpolitk. I don't love it, but it's better to support a pro-US dictator than an anti-US one. Look, if I had my way we'd just bomb any country that looked at us sideways until it either got better or stopped moving.
@eViLegion said:
...but if the dictator doesn't cooperate and "shock horror" maybe even instigates some sort of health/education system for his people (almost certainly cutting out American businessmen) then he's a menace, destabilising the world, and he needs to be removed.
Oh, yeah, I forgot what a humanitarian Saddam Hussein was. It just turned my stomach to see him improving the lives of so many Iraqis..
Do you see how stupid you sound? No, of course not. You were brainwashed from birth into throwing the two minutes hate towards the US to distract from your country's crumbling empire, failing healthcare system, rising crime and decline into (further) barbarism.
@eViLegion said:
...now I feel bad for trolling you.
Trolling my ass. Unless you're admitting you just made all the stupid shit you said up to get me to respond, you weren't trolling. There's a difference between trolling and publicly expressing your retarded thoughts and opinions and getting beat-down over it.
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@blakeyrat said:
The best skit is the railway timetable murder mystery. THERE IS NO ARGUMENT.
That is another really great one. Goddamn I love the aspies.
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@eViLegion said:
You have a handful of decent, and very expensive universities, sure, but the vast majority of your populace receive next to no education.
Admittedly, our public education system is shit, but that's because it's run by the government and controlled by teacher's unions. Besides, most of the dumb kids have dumb parents who don't care how they grow up. It's a problem of parents caring enough to see that their kids learn. Unfortunately, the family unit has been decimated here, especially among the poor, mostly due to welfare and a culture of "Do what makes you feel good". Regardless, none of those are particularly traditional American values, it's just a blight we've had for the last few decades and it will probably end somehow.
@eViLegion said:
You guys needed gun control at least a century ago, yet still you cling to this irrational belief that more guns makes you safer, without taking into account that you need to reduce your "fucking mentalist" count in order for that to be true.
Bullshit. I guarantee you're more likely to be murdered than I am and there are guns all around me. The most dangerous places in the US are those where guns are restricted. Besides, our murder rate still continues to plummet while yours is on the rise. Your country continues to descend into a criminal hellhole and you're too fucking stupid to see it. Honestly, I don't care because: 1) loud-mouthed, anti-gun foreigners only make Americans cling to their guns more, so you're doing me a favor; and 2) your continued ignorance of the truth about crime and guns only means your country gets shittier and shittier while mine gets better--eventually you and your loved ones will be murdered by a knife-wielding thug and that will reduce the world's moron population. Win-win. (That's a double win for me, not a win for both of us, just to be clear..)
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@joe.edwards said:
The saner half of us is trying to get gun control in place, at the very least a background check for prospective gun owners.
There already are background checks, unless you're talking about one-on-one private sales. However, that's not going to do anything to lower gun crime (which is already quite low) so it's little more than a burden on law-abiding citizens. I'm opposed to putting more burdens on law-abiding citizens that do nothing to lower gun crime. What they should be doing instead is arresting people who fail background checks but are trying to buy a gun anyway.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
Guiding Light wasn't sci-fi...
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@eViLegion said:
And, er, if you're 100% in favour of lowering your fucking mentalist count by murdering a fellow citizen, you're one decrement of that count.
It's not murder, but I'd be in favor of taking about a million or so select individuals and leaving them on a desolate island somewhere (Britain might work..) The island would be capable of supporting life with hard work (so not Britain..) but these people would just quarrel and end up killing one another, which would really be for the best.
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@blakeyrat said:
if it meant using one of those scary guns to kill John Edward (this one) stone-dead.
Preferably when he's standing next to Fred Phelps, just in case your aim is slightly off.
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@Cassidy said:
...just in case your aim is slightly off.
Not gonna happen. We'll position Phelps behind Edward and use a rifle.
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@joe.edwards said:
@eViLegion said:
yet still you cling to this irrational belief that more guns makes you safer
Actually we're divided along party lines on that issue, with the left becoming more vociferous by the day. The saner half of us is trying to get gun control in place, at the very least a background check for prospective gun owners.
Here's a clue, stupid: you already have to have a background check to buy a gun, and have since the 80s. You know what the "gun show loophole" is? Here's a clue for you: the vast majority of sales at gun shows are by dealers...who do background checks. The "loophole" is that if you personally go to a show with your Glock or AR-15 or Mauser and someone offers to buy it, he doesn't have to have a check, exactly like it works anywhere else that isn't a gun show.
No, really. Private sales between two people are legal without checks. Also, even Slow Joe Biden has admitted that the bills up for consideration in Congress would not have stopped the Newtown shooting. So what were they there for? Turning the "ban all guns so the State doesn't have any competition" ratchet another notch.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I'd be in favor of taking about a million or so select individuals and leaving them on a desolate island somewhere ......but these people would just quarrel and end up killing one another, which would really be for the best.
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@Cassidy said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I'd be in favor of taking about a million or so select individuals and leaving them on a desolate island somewhere ......but these people would just quarrel and end up killing one another, which would really be for the best.
Before clicking I was sure that would be a link to the Wikipedia article on Australia.
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@FrostCat said:
The "loophole" is that if you personally go to a show with your Glock or AR-15 or Mauser and someone offers to buy it, he doesn't have to have a check, exactly like it works anywhere else that isn't a gun show.
No, really. Private sales between two people are legal without checks.
Which is why the only way "background checks on all sales" would work is if there's universal gun registration since there'd be no other way to stop two individuals from having a private transaction. And of course it would do nothing to stop criminals, because they aren't buying their guns legally in the first damn place. You think the Mafia is suddenly going to start doing background checks on its illegal gun sales? Hell, we still can't get Eric Holder to do background checks on his illegal gun sales..
@FrostCat said:
So what were they there for? Turning the "ban all guns so the State doesn't have any competition" ratchet another notch.
Yeah, although I don't think most people are deliberately trying to create a police state. They're just pathetically ignorant about guns and gun crime, so they go for the first knee-jerk response. Also, a lot of the anti-gun thugs just despise anyone who isn't like them. Their stomachs are turned at the thought of law-abiding gunowners, which is why so many seek laws to punish them. Seriously, you talk to these people and you realize they're far more disgusted by a law-abiding gunowner than they are with a hardened criminal who has actually killed someone (after all, it was an unfair society which made him do it.. the gun-owner is probably even responsible for turning him into a criminal.. somehow..)
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@blakeyrat said:
Really? Look up the stats. It's not the best in the world, but it's not even remotely close to the bottom. (Or "appalling" level.)
Not to mention that we have three times as many Nobel Prizes as his piece-of-shit country. And this isn't the American Prize For Awesome Americans which you'd expect us to dominate at, it's a prize by, of and for Europeans. This is a committee so fucking anti-American they gave one to both Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter. But when you get to scientific achievements and it's "Hey, France made a clock powered by a potato.. again," versus "Holy Shitballs the US put a man on the Christ-humping Moon and he had time to sequence the entire human genome on the way back down!", well, even the Nobel Committee has to begrudgingly admit Europe sucks.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Yeah, although I don't think most people are deliberately trying to create a police state. They're just pathetically ignorant about guns and gun crime, so they go for the first knee-jerk response.
Really? While I won't deny that such people exist, nor that they can be quite vocal, the most convincing arguments I've seen come from the informed anti-gun folks. You know, the ones who look at actual data and point out that the US has much higher rates of death and serious injury from guns than any nation with strong gun control laws, by a few orders of magnitude. (And that's per capita, not simply by virtue of having a larger population than most of those nations.)
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@Mason Wheeler said:
...informed anti-gun folks.
No such thing.
@Mason Wheeler said:
You know, the ones who look at actual data and point out that the US has much higher rates of death and serious injury from guns than any nation with strong gun control laws, by a few orders of magnitude.
And shockingly, we're more likely to be in auto accidents than countries where everybody rides donkeys! And we're more likely to have toilet-paper-related injuries than people who wipe their asses with their bare hands! And we're more likely to slip and fall in the shower than the French!
It's called civilization. Suck it up, buttercup. Sometimes technology kills you. Here are some things that kill more people than guns: cars, booze, tobacco, food that tastes good, television, video games. But, hey, let's get rid of all of everything awesome because some pussified foreigners are afraid they might break a nail.
Look, I'm sorry your mother was too busy hanging out at the OTB getting hammered to spend any time with you growing up, but trying to mother the rest of us to death isn't the solution.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
...informed anti-gun folks.
No such thing.
@Mason Wheeler said:
You know, the ones who look at actual data and point out that the US has much higher rates of death and serious injury from guns than any nation with strong gun control laws, by a few orders of magnitude.
And shockingly, we're more likely to be in auto accidents than countries where everybody rides donkeys! And we're more likely to have toilet-paper-related injuries than people who wipe their asses with their bare hands! And we're more likely to slip and fall in the shower than the French!
I've always maintained that resorting to mockery in a debate is the surest sign that one's position is untenable and they know it, hence the employment of an obvious diversion.
What the statistics actually show is that the loudly-repeated claim that "if you criminalize gun ownership, only the criminals will own guns," thus leaving law-abiding citizens at the mercy of armed criminals and leading to more violence, not less, is false. Where gun ownership is strongly restricted, you don't have lots of criminals killing people with guns. In fact, the only place that that happens (among civilized nations, at least; not counting failed states, etc) is here in the USA, where we have the 2nd Amendment to "keep us safe."
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@Mason Wheeler said:
I've always maintained that resorting to mockery in a debate is the surest sign that one's position is untenable and they know it, hence the employment of an obvious diversion.
But like a cigar, sometimes making fun of idiots is just that.
@Mason Wheeler said:
Where gun ownership is strongly restricted, you don't have lots of criminals killing people with guns. In fact, the only place that that happens (among civilized nations, at least; not counting failed states, etc) is here in the USA, where we have the 2nd Amendment to "keep us safe."
And in the places where guns are common among law abiding people, there's a lot less than in those non-failed states that don't allow guns.
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@boomzilla said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
I've always maintained that resorting to mockery in a debate is the surest sign that one's position is untenable and they know it, hence the employment of an obvious diversion.
But like a cigar, sometimes making fun of idiots is just that.
@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
...informed anti-gun folks.
No such thing.
You're both falling into the same trap--an unfortunately common one in the modern world---of conflating intelligence with holding the same views as you. That's (dare I say it in this context?) a really stupid thing to do in an argument. It's possible for idiots to agree with you, and it's possible for smart people to disagree with you, even if you're smart too.
@boomzilla said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
Where gun ownership is strongly restricted, you don't have lots of criminals killing people with guns. In fact, the only place that that happens (among civilized nations, at least; not counting failed states, etc) is here in the USA, where we have the 2nd Amendment to "keep us safe."
And in the places where guns are common among law abiding people, there's a lot less than in those non-failed states that don't allow guns.
Yeah, that's the claim. It's not supported by actual data, though.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
I've always maintained that resorting to mockery in a debate is the surest sign that one's position is untenable and they know it, hence the employment of an obvious diversion.
Just like when I chuck beer bottles at handicapped children it's really because I am unable to walk, either.
Or, wait, maybe I just like making fun of people who suck at life.
@Mason Wheeler said:
Where gun ownership is strongly restricted, you don't have lots of criminals killing people with guns.
No shit, they use knives and lead pipes (and sometimes guns.)
@Mason Wheeler said:
In fact, the only place that that happens (among civilized nations, at least; not counting failed states, etc) is here in the USA, where we have the 2nd Amendment to "keep us safe."
The funny thing is, where there are lots of law-abiding gun owners, crime is virtually unheard-of. It's just in the shithole cities and blue states where gun ownership is criminalized that you have to fear being raped to death by packs of teenagers. And honestly, I don't give a shit: more gun control in Chicago means more dead anti-gun liberals. I am okay with this.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
Yeah, that's the claim. It's not supported by actual data, though.
"Rural Texas: murder capital of the world. Washington D.C.: so safe you can leave your doors unlocked at night."
Do you even listen to the stupid shit that dribbles out of your mouth?
Do I care? You're a lot more likely to be murdered than I am, even with the "safety" of restrictive gun laws in your shithole city or state. I have guns, you have none and your family is more likely to die. Who's winning here?
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
Yeah, that's the claim. It's not supported by actual data, though.
"Rural Texas: murder capital of the world. Washington D.C.: so safe you can leave your doors unlocked at night."
Do you even listen to the stupid shit that dribbles out of your mouth?
Do I care? You're a lot more likely to be murdered than I am, even with the "safety" of restrictive gun laws in your shithole city or state. I have guns, you have none and your family is more likely to die. Who's winning here?
Yeah, I just looked up the data. Murder rates in Texas are impressively low... for the United States. But they're about 10x higher than the numbers for Canada, Australia, and most of Europe.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
Murder rates in Texas are impressively low... for the United States. But they're about 10x higher than the numbers for Canada, Australia, and most of Europe.
Which proves what? The US has always had high murder rates compared to other countries, even back when no countries had gun laws. The more interesting fact that you seem so willing to ignore is that even while gun ownership is skyrocketing in this country, murder rates continue to drop. Also, compared to the UK, the US has a lower rate of violent crime. So, shocker: making it impossible for UK citizens to protect themselves has led to an increase in violent crime, while the US, which overall has experienced a gun renaissance, has a dropping violent crime rate. Our murder rate's still higher, but the difference between us and the UK is a lot smaller than it was 100 years ago.
And I'm being generous here and accepting the bullshit numbers generated by the Home Office. See, in the US if a body turns up and there's suspicion of foul play, that's a "murder". In the UK, it's not officially a murder until there's a conviction for homicide. This results in the "official" UK murder rate being less than half of the rate you'd get if you used the FBI's methodology.
In short: you are dumb. Be sure to print out those statistics you found so you'll have something to soak up the blood after your kids are killed because of your ineptitude and ignorance.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
Murder rates in Texas are impressively low... for the United States. But they're about 10x higher than the numbers for Canada, Australia, and most of Europe.
Which proves what? The US has always had high murder rates compared to other countries, even back when no countries had gun laws. The more interesting fact that you seem so willing to ignore is that even while gun ownership is skyrocketing in this country, murder rates continue to drop.
Correlation does not imply causation, especially when that correlation is vague, like "both happen to be trending in the expected directions at the same time." Actual data on the decline in crime rates, though, paints a very different picture: the nationwide decline in violent crime since the 90s has nothing to do with lead bullets, and (almost) everything to do with leaded gasoline, or more specifically the absence thereof.
Try again.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
You're both falling into the same trap--an unfortunately common one in the modern world---of conflating intelligence with holding the same views as you. That's (dare I say it in this context?) a really stupid thing to do in an argument. It's possible for idiots to agree with you, and it's possible for smart people to disagree with you, even if you're smart too.
There's no trap here. Sure, idiots can agree, and otherwise smart people make mistakes. You've made a mistake here, and are being called on it.
@Mason Wheeler said:
Correlation does not imply causation, especially when that correlation is vague, like "both happen to be trending in the expected directions at the same time." Actual data on the decline in crime rates, though, paints a very different picture: the nationwide decline in violent crime since the 90s has nothing to do with lead bullets, and (almost) everything to do with leaded gasoline, or more specifically the absence thereof.
Maybe it's the lead. Or we're just aborting the miscreants before they can cause trouble. It could be more than one thing. Either way, places where people legally own guns in the US are safer than the other places. There are lots of reasons, and guns don't explain it all, but no one has suggested that.
But if you'd rather be like a Colorado liberal and tell women that they couldn't defend themselves with a gun because their rapist would just take it from them, well, who am I to tell you otherwise? Maybe you just care less that your wife, mother, sister, daughter or granddaughter is able to defend herself. I don't care much about your relatives, either, but I get upset when people tell me that they should just sit back and take it. Feel free to disarm yourself and your loved ones. Go fuck yourself if you want to do the same to me and mine.
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@boomzilla said:
But if you'd rather be like a Colorado liberal and tell women that they couldn't defend themselves with a gun because their rapist would just take it from them, well, who am I to tell you otherwise? Maybe you just care less that your wife, mother, sister, daughter or granddaughter is able to defend herself. I don't care much about your relatives, either, but I get upset when people tell me that they should just sit back and take it. Feel free to disarm yourself and your loved ones. Go fuck yourself if you want to do the same to me and mine.
I'm not from Colorado, nor am I particularly liberal. You've fallen into another trap of human nature here: assuming that other people are like yourself except as otherwise noted. We all tend to think of ourselves as basically normal, even when we simultaneously think we're special for some reason. And so you can tell a lot about someone by watching the conclusions they immediately jump to in judging others. The fhief fears theft, the liar is suspicious of others' honesty, and so on.
You assume, with nothing to back it up, that my position is ideologically driven and that I care less about the safety of real people than about Being Right because what I believe in must be right because it's ideologically driven. Nothing could be further from the truth, and since that's not coming from me, I can only assume it's coming from you.
I'm a computer programmer. I have a very scientific, rational mindset--you have to, in order ot be any good at coding--and my position on most issues for which facts and hard data are available is based on facts and hard data. If the facts and hard data favored the position that guns make you and your loved ones safer, I'd go out and get a gun and a concealed carry permit tomorrow. But they don't; they favor the position that more guns causes more people to get shot, both on purpose and accidentally, and therefore I see reducing the availability of guns as the rational course of action.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
Actual data on the decline in crime rates, though, paints a very different picture: the nationwide decline in violent crime since the 90s has nothing to do with lead bullets
I never said the crime decline was due to guns, merely that crime declined while gun ownership surged. Once again, you've attacked a straw man in the hopes of distracting from the real conclusion, which is that crime has had an inverse correlation with gun proliferation. Your entire fucking thesis is that guns are causing high murder rates, but that's blown out of the water.
@Mason Wheeler said:
...and (almost) everything to do with leaded gasoline, or more specifically the absence thereof.
Bullshit. The Reyes study couldn't even find a link between property crime or murder and lead. And, as you know, correlation is not causation--lots of things correlate to the trend in violent crime. Oddly, what does not correlate to the use of TEL in gasoline are IQ scores or rates of mental retardation and ADHD*, two other prominent symptoms of lead exposure in children that show up more frequently than aggressive and violent behavior. In other words, if TEL was causing crime, it would also cause an epidemic of retardation, but that isn't the case.
Nor does it account for the fact that the violent crime rate in the US surged in the early 20th century, despite the fact that lead paint was being phased out and TEL wasn't being used widely enough yet to attribute the increase to lead.
The truth is, the drop in crime rates had a lot of causes: from a much more scientific approach to policing, to the fact that we now are locking up millions of violence-prone young men. There's also evidence the legalization of abortion played a role. But there's fuck-all for evidence that TEL caused high crime. And by saying so you're revealing your own ignorance and the fact that all of your knowledge on the subject apparently comes from highly-biased sources who have an incentive to tell you easy-to-swallow lies.
Don't get me wrong, TEL is bad shit and it's good we stopped using it. I'm sure some kids ended up retarded or criminal because of it, but in numbers far, far too small to account for high crime throughout the 20th century.
(*Of course, I think ADHD is a fad illness, like autism is becoming. Obsessive parents hear about it and start thinking their kids have it and doctors are all-too-happy to take their money and diagnose their kids and start shoving pills down their throats. So the recent rise in ADHD is probably nonsense, but there was no massive rise during the 50s, either, which there would have to be if TEL was making kids into criminals.)
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@boomzilla said:
But if you'd rather be like a Colorado liberal and tell women that they couldn't defend themselves with a gun because their rapist would just take it from them, well, who am I to tell you otherwise? Maybe you just care less that your wife, mother, sister, daughter or granddaughter is able to defend herself. I don't care much about your relatives, either, but I get upset when people tell me that they should just sit back and take it. Feel free to disarm yourself and your loved ones. Go fuck yourself if you want to do the same to me and mine.
Exactly. Honestly, I think it's sick to leave your loved ones defenseless*, but there's a lot of stupidity in the world, and I can only shout profanities so much..
And regards your tag about the police: isn't it funny that most police are strongly in favor of law-abiding citizens having guns? It's because they know we're not going around holding up liquor stores, but that having armed citizens helps them do their job keeping the peace. It also makes it all the more likely that if they get called to the scene of an attempted burglary, the corpse they'll see shoved into the coroner's van will be the burglar and not the homeowner. And that's bound to make anyone smile, except maybe for a sick, gun-owner-hating freak like Mason Wheeler.
(*I'm actually of the opinion that as a law-abiding citizen I have a duty to society to be armed, and that shirking that duty is somewhat cowardly. Letting criminals get away with it only makes it more likely they'll do it again, and eventually some innocent person will die. If I can put an end to their miserable lives and prevent that, then good. And if I can ever be of assistance to my neighbors, then that's also good. But considering I live in a place with very little violent crime, I'll probably never have to use a gun in anger, and I'm glad. Of course, guns have other uses, like hunting, target practice or putting a stop to a criminal government. Plus, they're just fun.)
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@Mason Wheeler said:
You assume, with nothing to back it up, that my position is ideologically driven and that I care less about the safety of real people than about Being Right because what I believe in must be right because it's ideologically driven. Nothing could be further from the truth, and since that's not coming from me, I can only assume it's coming from you.
@Mason Wheeler said:
The fhief fears theft, the liar is suspicious of others' honesty, and so on.
Huh, I wonder what's wrong with the guy who thinks everyone else must be psychologically projecting...
@Mason Wheeler said:
I'm a computer programmer. I have a very scientific, rational mindset--you have to, in order ot be any good at coding...
Bullshit. If this site has taught you nothing else, it should have been that programmers are as irrational and as prone to groupthink and cargo cult antics as anybody, if not more so.
@Mason Wheeler said:
If the facts and hard data favored the position that guns make you and your loved ones safer, I'd go out and get a gun and a concealed carry permit tomorrow. But they don't; they favor the position that more guns causes more people to get shot, both on purpose and accidentally, and therefore I see reducing the availability of guns as the rational course of action.
Also bullshit. Obviously, if you never encounter a gun in your life, you won't get shot. But guess what, criminals don't care what you want: even if you made it impossible for criminals to have guns, they'd just use baseball bats and you'd make it so the only people who could fight back were those stronger than the criminals. The truth is, you are more likely to get shot than I am. This is because, despite the prevalence of guns around me, you have chosen to live in a higher-crime area. And that's your choice, I don't care, but don't for one second pretend that your pathological fear of guns has made you safer.
Now, if nobody ever murdered anybody, then people who owned guns would be more likely to be shot accidentally, of course. But people do murder and by arguing for the forcible disarming of law-abiding citizens you reveal yourself not only as a fascist, but you show that you'd prefer to give the upper hand to criminals than to permit people to fight back. You sicken me.
@Mason Wheeler said:
...nor am I particularly liberal.
Anybody who argues in favor of gun control has the liberal impulse: you want to control everybody's life and you are working off incorrect facts, mindless ideology and sheer ignorance.
I find it interesting that you've never addressed my earlier point about more people being killed by cars, alcohol, etc.. Why are you okay with people driving when so many people are killed by it? What about TV? Shouldn't it be outlawed so people don't sit in front of it, get fat and develop heart disease? I mean, you've very self-righteously claimed you're just trying to save lives, right? Or are you afraid of saving too many lives? C'mon, I know the fascist impulse beats deep inside your diseased little heart, I want you to tell us all the things you'll ban for our own good!
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
...and (almost) everything to do with leaded gasoline, or more specifically the absence thereof.
Bullshit. The Reyes study couldn't even find a link between property crime or murder and lead.
Umm... what? I'm not sure what you've been reading, but that's exactly what it found.
And, as you know, correlation is not causation--lots of things correlate to the trend in violent crime.
Yes, but I also know that the more tightly two things correlate, the more likely it is that some sort of causal link exists. And the correlation between the rise and fall of TEL and the rise and fall of crime rates a generation later is around 90%, a lot better than any other factor I'm aware of.
Oddly, what does not correlate to the use of TEL in gasoline are IQ scores or rates of mental retardation and ADHD*, two other prominent symptoms of lead exposure in children that show up more frequently than aggressive and violent behavior. In other words, if TEL was causing crime, it would also cause an epidemic of retardation, but that isn't the case.
Huh? I've never heard anyone suggest that ADHD has anything to do with lead or environmental (of that variety) concerns at all. In fact, the biggest contributing factor tends to be environmental factors of the emotional variety: ADHD behavior is almost invariably a direct result of poor parenting, and when parents are made aware of this and clean up their act, the "disease" tends to disappear like magic. It's also strange to see you lumping it in with diminished IQ, as kids diagnosed with ADHD tend to be smarter than average.
Nor does it account for the fact that the violent crime rate in the US surged in the early 20th century, despite the fact that lead paint was being phased out and TEL wasn't being used widely enough yet to attribute the increase to lead.
No, but that can be directly attributed to Prohibition and we both know it, so there's no need to introduce ridiculous strawmen to sidetrack the discussion.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
I'm a computer programmer. I have a very scientific, rational mindset--you have to, in order ot be any good at coding...
Bullshit. If this site has taught you nothing else, it should have been that programmers are as irrational and as prone to groupthink and cargo cult antics as anybody, if not more so.
See above, re: having to be rational "in order to be any good at coding" This site is mostly dedicated to the antics of bad programmers, when it's not ripping on irrational management at least. Again with the silly strawmen.
@Mason Wheeler said:
If the facts and hard data favored the position that guns make you and your loved ones safer, I'd go out and get a gun and a concealed carry permit tomorrow. But they don't; they favor the position that more guns causes more people to get shot, both on purpose and accidentally, and therefore I see reducing the availability of guns as the rational course of action.
Also bullshit. Obviously, if you never encounter a gun in your life, you won't get shot. But guess what, criminals don't care what you want: even if you made it impossible for criminals to have guns, they'd just use baseball bats and you'd make it so the only people who could fight back were those stronger than the criminals.
So what are the rates of baseball bat crime like in countries with stricter gun control laws? See, this is what I find irritating about your position. You keep saying about what "would" happen, as if it's all hypothetical, when in fact we have real data about what does happen in places where the rules are different.
The truth is, you are more likely to get shot than I am. This is because, despite the prevalence of guns around me, you have chosen to live in a higher-crime area.
Again with the pulling of arguments from your nether regions. You don't know where I live. If you happen to have been paying very close attention to my past posts, you might know I'm from the Seattle area, but I'm not actually in the city, and violent crime is exceptionally low where I am.
Now, if nobody ever murdered anybody, then people who owned guns would be more likely to be shot accidentally, of course. But people do murder and by arguing for the forcible disarming of law-abiding citizens you reveal yourself not only as a fascist, but you show that you'd prefer to give the upper hand to criminals than to permit people to fight back. You sicken me.
Wait, first you call me a liberal, and then you accuse me of fascism? OK, I've been trying to avoid the S-word, particularly in light of what I said earlier about it, but isn't it kind of stupid to call someone a liberal far-right extremist? Or do you just not know what "fascist" means? Here's a hint: it's a real word with a real, specific meaning, not a generic insult for "this person has political views that I don't like."
I find it interesting that you've never addressed my earlier point about more people being killed by cars, alcohol, etc.. Why are you okay with people driving when so many people are killed by it?
I'm not. I happen to agree with Eric Schmidt's assertion that it should be considered a bug that cars were invented before computers. And, being from the Seattle area, I've seen first-hand the negative effects of putting more cars on the road. (Look up Tim Eyman and I-695 sometime. Conservatism at its worst. It was supposed to cut taxes and save people money, but it ended up gutting public transportation funding, leading directly to more cars on the road, leading directly to a doubling or even tripling of common commute times. Which means that all the money you save from the tax man in a lump sum, all that and more gets burned away over the course of the year, due to gasoline wasted waiting in traffic. No one wins except the oil companies.)
However, cars aren't a problem that anyone can do much of anything with at the moment. There's a lot more car owners than gun owners out there, and most people don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's not a problem anyone (except Google) is trying to solve. The same can not be said of guns.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
...and (almost) everything to do with leaded gasoline, or more specifically the absence thereof.
Bullshit. The Reyes study couldn't even find a link between property crime or murder and lead. And, as you know, correlation is not causation--lots of things correlate to the trend in violent crime. Oddly, what does not correlate to the use of TEL in gasoline are IQ scores or rates of mental retardation and ADHD*, two other prominent symptoms of lead exposure in children that show up more frequently than aggressive and violent behavior. In other words, if TEL was causing crime, it would also cause an epidemic of retardation, but that isn't the case.
My pet theory is that there was a surge of piracy that pleased the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
@boomzilla said:
But if you'd rather be like a Colorado liberal and tell women that they couldn't defend themselves with a gun because their rapist would just take it from them, well, who am I to tell you otherwise? Maybe you just care less that your wife, mother, sister, daughter or granddaughter is able to defend herself. I don't care much about your relatives, either, but I get upset when people tell me that they should just sit back and take it. Feel free to disarm yourself and your loved ones. Go fuck yourself if you want to do the same to me and mine.
I'm not from Colorado, nor am I particularly liberal. You've fallen into another trap of human nature here: assuming that other people are like yourself except as otherwise noted. We all tend to think of ourselves as basically normal, even when we simultaneously think we're special for some reason. And so you can tell a lot about someone by watching the conclusions they immediately jump to in judging others. The fhief fears theft, the liar is suspicious of others' honesty, and so on.What the hell are you talking about? I said you were being like a Colorado liberal. And I was pointing out some consequences of the sort of policies you'd like to see implemented.
@Mason Wheeler said:
If the facts and hard data favored the position that guns make you and your loved ones safer, I'd go out and get a gun and a concealed carry permit tomorrow. But they don't; they favor the position that more guns causes more people to get shot, both on purpose and accidentally, and therefore I see reducing the availability of guns as the rational course of action.
I understand your rationalization. Except that if you look at the people being shot, it's generally not from people who are acting within the law, both in how they acquire and own their guns or in how they use them.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
Wait, first you call me a liberal, and then you accuse me of fascism? OK, I've been trying to avoid the S-word, particularly in light of what I said earlier about it, but isn't it kind of stupid to call someone a liberal far-right extremist? Or do you just not know what "fascist" means? Here's a hint: it's a real word with a real, specific meaning, not a generic insult for "this person has political views that I don't like."
Yes, and you have shown yourself to be ignorant of fascism and American liberalism. In the early 20th century, American Progressivism was the cousin of European fascism, which was born of socialism, the main change being nationalism as a replacement for class identity. It seems that people assume leftists hate their countries (they do) and fascists don't, but that's only one aspect. There are a lot of similarities between American liberalism / progressivism / leftist politics and classical fascism.
A very famous socialist author even said that progressive leaders must become liberal fascists or enlightened Nazis in order to implement their ideas. You need to rise above your ignorance of political philosophy and its history.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@FrostCat said:
The "loophole" is that if you personally go to a show with your Glock or AR-15 or Mauser and someone offers to buy it, he doesn't have to have a check, exactly like it works anywhere else that isn't a gun show.
No, really. Private sales between two people are legal without checks.
Which is why the only way "background checks on all sales" would work is if there's universal gun registration since there'd be no other way to stop two individuals from having a private transaction. And of course it would do nothing to stop criminals, because they aren't buying their guns legally in the first damn place. You think the Mafia is suddenly going to start doing background checks on its illegal gun sales? Hell, we still can't get Eric Holder to do background checks on his illegal gun sales..
@FrostCat said:
So what were they there for? Turning the "ban all guns so the State doesn't have any competition" ratchet another notch.
Yeah, although I don't think most people are deliberately trying to create a police state. They're just pathetically ignorant about guns and gun crime, so they go for the first knee-jerk response. Also, a lot of the anti-gun thugs just despise anyone who isn't like them. Their stomachs are turned at the thought of law-abiding gunowners, which is why so many seek laws to punish them. Seriously, you talk to these people and you realize they're far more disgusted by a law-abiding gunowner than they are with a hardened criminal who has actually killed someone (after all, it was an unfair society which made him do it.. the gun-owner is probably even responsible for turning him into a criminal.. somehow..)
Stupid or ignorant people (believe it or not I don't actually mean that to be a pejorative term right there) aren't trying to deliberately create a police state, no. The thought leaders, though, like Slow Joe Biden and President ObamAA+ and that execrable cow Dianne Feinswein, though, absolutely DO want a police state, or at least a partial one.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Yeah, although I don't think most people are deliberately trying to create a police state. They're just pathetically ignorant about guns and gun crime, so they go for the first knee-jerk response.
Really? While I won't deny that such people exist, nor that they can be quite vocal, the most convincing arguments I've seen come from the informed anti-gun folks. You know, the ones who look at actual data and point out that the US has much higher rates of death and serious injury from guns than any nation with strong gun control laws, by a few orders of magnitude. (And that's per capita, not simply by virtue of having a larger population than most of those nations.)
And almost all of those are caused by a core of inner-city criminals[1]. Doesn't it seem the solution is not "get rid of guns" but "get rid of the criminals?"
To be clear, I'm not advocating actually killing or even necessarily locking 'em all up in jail forever. Convincing them to quit, and future generations not to take up lives of crime would be sufficient.
[1] this is not a euphemism for "black people." Lots of inner-city non-black criminals, especially in previous times.
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@Mason Wheeler said:
What the statistics actually show is that the loudly-repeated claim that "if you criminalize gun ownership, only the criminals will own guns," thus leaving law-abiding citizens at the mercy of armed criminals and leading to more violence, not less, is false. Where gun ownership is strongly restricted, you don't have lots of criminals killing people with guns. In fact, the only place that that happens (among civilized nations, at least; not counting failed states, etc) is here in the USA, where we have the 2nd Amendment to "keep us safe."
Really? Really? Odd that the most crime is where the most criminals with guns are, then. It's almost like you're talking out your ass. If what you were saying were true, then it certainly would not be the case that as gun law restrictions have been eased in the last few decades in the US, crime would go down. Or that the crime rate among, oh, let's say people with concealed carry permits would be far lower than the rest of the population.
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@morbiuswilters said:
And regards your tag about the police: isn't it funny that most police are strongly in favor of law-abiding citizens having guns? It's because they know we're not going around holding up liquor stores, but that having armed citizens helps them do their job keeping the peace.
Remember Robert Peel's rules of policing. The police is us. One reason I despise hearing cops call citizens "civilians." Hey, asshole, unless you're in the military right now, you're a civilian too.
@morbiuswilters said:
(*I'm actually of the opinion that as a law-abiding citizen I have a duty to society to be armed, and that shirking that duty is somewhat cowardly.
The police is us, right? Under Robert Peel's rules, the general citizenry delegates it's duty to protect society to a certain subset of itself, but not exclusivity. Stand your ground laws, among other things, are a recognition of that.
All you idiots who think SYG/Castle Defense means people killing people for the fuck of it should educate yourselves. Having actually taken the time to take--and pass--a concealed carry safety class, I have engraved in my memory the lecturer's anecdote about a guy who shot a robber when that state still had a duty to retreat. Guy in his store is robbed--he flees out the back door and is cornered in the back stairwell, and shoots the robber. Robber sues him, and successfully argues that the duty to retreat was not met because 8 feet up there was a little window the guy could've attempted to somehow reach and squeeze out of. (And because someone's going to say "well that's just made up" I'll point out that in this state, every aspect of the course must be approved by the state police.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
If the facts and hard data favored the position that guns make you and your loved ones safer, I'd go out and get a gun and a concealed carry permit tomorrow. But they don't; they favor the position that more guns causes more people to get shot, both on purpose and accidentally, and therefore I see reducing the availability of guns as the rational course of action.
Also bullshit. Obviously, if you never encounter a gun in your life, you won't get shot. But guess what, criminals don't care what you want: even if you made it impossible for criminals to have guns, they'd just use baseball bats and you'd make it so the only people who could fight back were those stronger than the criminals. The truth is, you are more likely to get shot than I am. This is because, despite the prevalence of guns around me, you have chosen to live in a higher-crime area. And that's your choice, I don't care, but don't for one second pretend that your pathological fear of guns has made you safer.
Mason Wheeler doesn't want people having guns. That means that he in the case of the woman in West Virginia a while back, who ran from a guy breaking into her house and hid upstairs in a closet, and he followed her and he found her and she shot him five times, and he walked away, only to be arrested away from the scene, Mason objectively thinks it's better for her to have been beaten, raped and/or murdered. Because I know Mason's going to say "no I don't," I'm going to say that's untrue. You don't want people having guns. The gun is the only thing that got him to leave her alone. In your oft-stated worldview that she should be without a necessary tool for her own self-defense, the inexorable conclusion is that that's better than her having the gun. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and all.
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@FrostCat said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Mason Wheeler said:
If the facts and hard data favored the position that guns make you and your loved ones safer, I'd go out and get a gun and a concealed carry permit tomorrow. But they don't; they favor the position that more guns causes more people to get shot, both on purpose and accidentally, and therefore I see reducing the availability of guns as the rational course of action.
Also bullshit. Obviously, if you never encounter a gun in your life, you won't get shot. But guess what, criminals don't care what you want: even if you made it impossible for criminals to have guns, they'd just use baseball bats and you'd make it so the only people who could fight back were those stronger than the criminals. The truth is, you are more likely to get shot than I am. This is because, despite the prevalence of guns around me, you have chosen to live in a higher-crime area. And that's your choice, I don't care, but don't for one second pretend that your pathological fear of guns has made you safer.
Mason Wheeler doesn't want people having guns. That means that he in the case of the woman in West Virginia a while back, who ran from a guy breaking into her house and hid upstairs in a closet, and he followed her and he found her and she shot him five times, and he walked away, only to be arrested away from the scene, Mason objectively thinks it's better for her to have been beaten, raped and/or murdered. Because I know Mason's going to say "no I don't," I'm going to say that's untrue. You don't want people having guns. The gun is the only thing that got him to leave her alone. In your oft-stated worldview that she should be without a necessary tool for her own self-defense, the inexorable conclusion is that that's better than her having the gun. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and all.
She's also a perfect argument against limitations on standard-capacity magazines. Five shots didn't kill this guy, they merely got him to leave her alone. Imagine she missed once or twice, or there was a second guy there. Now she's probably going to get beaten extra for fighting back and failing.
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One of the skills that you actually have to have on the internet is learning when (or rather, where) not to argue with someone. A quick heuristic is: imagine a good argument in favor of what you're saying, even if it's not real (just as a thought experiment). Now try to imagine your "opponent"'s response to it . If it still seems very unlikely that the other person will reply with something like "hmm, good point, I hadn't thought about that" or "I didn't know that" as opposed to "no, that's wrong because of [reason] you dumbass", it's time to stop posting.
Like a red button labeled "do not press" it can be difficult to resist, but it pays out.
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You guys just want guns. Play shoot 'em up. Pretend you're all heroes.
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@dhromed said:
You guys just want guns. Play shoot 'em up. Pretend you're all heroes.
Every one's a super hero, every one's a Captain Kirk.
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@blakeyrat said:
Every one's a super hero, every one's a Captain Kirk.
I'm going to hum that all night now, you bastid.
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@spamcourt said:
One of the skills that you actually have to have on the internet is learning when (or rather, where) not to argue with someone.
He's clearly too fucking stupid for that. But if he was smart, I wouldn't be berating him in the first place.
@spamcourt said:
If it still seems very unlikely that the other person will reply with something like "hmm, good point, I hadn't thought about that" or "I didn't know that" as opposed to "no, that's wrong because of [reason] you dumbass", it's time to stop posting.
The only reason I'm even bothering to reply to him is because I enjoy telling off dumb people. There's clearly no edification on my part since he has nothing intelligent to say (he's linking to Mother Cunt Jones (there's someone who deserved a mouthful of buckshot), for fuck's sake--he may as well put on a hat that says "I'm incapable of rational thought and should be forced into a prison camp where my bodily nutrients will be extracted for the benefit of superior humans").
Obviously he's too ignorant to change his position and I'm not ignorant enough to adopt his position, so did you really think anything useful would come out of this? Debate is pointless. Most people aren't swayed by facts, they're just knee-jerk emotional trainwrecks. The only thing to be gained from my arguing with them is payback for having to live in a world surrounded by their retarded brethren.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Most people aren't swayed by facts, they're just knee-jerk emotional trainwrecks.
Like you, mister "civic duty" wilters.
Now let's talk about the right of well-regulated brothels to keep bare dildos. Or something.
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@dhromed said:
You guys just want guns.
Well, yeah, I thought I made that painfully clear. If it's a choice between my guns and the lives of a billion anti-gun freaks, well, fuck 'em, they shouldn't have tried to take my guns.
@dhromed said:
Play shoot 'em up.
Guns are fun, but they aren't play-things. And I certainly don't want to end up in a shoot-out if that's what you're implying.
How about this: I think video games kill more people than guns in the US due to shit like heart disease from a sedentary lifestyle (actually, I'll allow that they may not kill as many people until today's pudgy gamers end up a bit older, but if you want a good investment tip: put money into companies that manufacture XXL coffins.) That being the case, shouldn't video games be outlawed? If not, then why do you love heart disease? Why won't you just admit that you like seeing people die of coronary illness?
@dhromed said:
Pretend you're all heroes.
This is flimsy reasoning. You might as well say that somebody who buys homeowners' insurance wants to pretend his house is burning down. I don't ever want to have to shoot somebody. It's pretty awful to kill a person, even if you are in the right. But if the choice is between killing someone bad or letting innocent people become victims, well, that's not a difficult decision for me at all. And while I would still try to stop a rapist with my bare hands, I'd much prefer to just put some holes in his lungs from a safe distance. I see no reason why I shouldn't have every reasonable advantage over someone who is trying to harm innocents.
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@morbiuswilters said:
he's linking to Mother Cunt Jones (there's someone who deserved a mouthful of buckshot), for fuck's sake--he may as well put on a hat that says "I'm incapable of rational thought and should be forced into a prison camp where my bodily nutrients will be extracted for the benefit of superior humans".
I linked to the people who reported on the study that I found relevant to the discussion. This happened, in this case, to be a publication with a liberal slant. When conservative organizations publish relevant stuff, I use them as references. When middle-of-the-road organizations publish relevant stuff, I use them as references.
But by all means, don't let that get in the way of a good ad hominem attack if it gives you an excuse to not have to actually engage in a bit of critical thinking.
Debate is pointless. Most people aren't swayed by facts, they're just knee-jerk emotional trainwrecks.
Pot, meet kettle.
BTW do you know what happens when a criminal wants to victimize someone and they have reason to believe they might be armed? Here's a hint, the answer is not "they think better of it and leave them alone."
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The easiest, and most effective way to reduce gun deaths in the US would be to leagalize recreational drugs.
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@dhromed said:
Like you, mister "civic duty" wilters.
Nonsense. I am swayed by facts. The thing is, there is not a single thing anybody in this thread has said that I haven't heard a million times before. There's not a single fact brought up by the anti-gun folks that I haven't considered and rejected a dozen times over. The shit they're spouting--those are the same weak, flawed arguments I was making when I was a dumb 13 year-old. Seriously. I have over a decade of meticulous reasoning on them; thousands and thousands of hours I've thought about this stuff. And what are they offering me? Some shit they saw on a goddamn blog written by some politically-motivated hack who gets paid by how many comments he spawns and not by the strength of his arguments?
This is like a newborn baby trying to wrestle, I dunno.. a dinosaur. And I'm not saying I'm inherently better than them: if they had actually devoted any time to thinking about these issues, they could have well-reasoned arguments, too. But they took the lazy way out and just got their arguments when they purchased the whole Partisan Fun Pack. Oh, and I'm not blind to the fact that many people who agree with me have flimsy arguments, too. The difference is, those people don't want to fuck up my life, so I have no desire to see them suffer for their ignorance.
But this anti-gun shit again? The same tired, easily-debunked claims? The same fecklessly-compiled statistics? I'm supposed to lower myself to debating them when they showed up to my dinner party with their own shit smeared all over their hands? Fuck that. I've got better things to do, like looking up synonyms for "stupid" in the thesaurus and then calling them those synonyms..
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@bgodot said:
The easiest, and most effective way to reduce gun deaths in the US would be to require recreational drugs.
