If no guns, would a 'mass stabbing' be as deadly anyway?

[Saz]

[exploited]

[britboy4321]

Safety is no substitute for liberty. Again, this comes down to a fundamental difference between you and I. You have no concept of rights or liberties.


- But you must know I have more rights and liberties than you! You can't even enjoy a single bud light on your 20th birthday! You have less than 25% of my voting power when choosing your leaders. You even have daft crimes like 'Jay walking'. Your police instigate cerfews kinda' when they fancy it. Your NSA seemingly does whatever it wants. Ours equivelents simply don't, we simply don't have those rules. Yet YOUR the guys whose citizens are carrying around desert eagles because they think that will stop exactly the behaviour you already have (ho ho - because some guy 900 miles away has some small arms the NRA thinking 'er .. better respect his privacy then ... even the concept kinda makes me lol ).

You will literally do ANYTHING in the name of what's "best."

- I thought about this sentence for a while and I think I agree. I DO reckon I will always try and do whats best. For example, if someone 200 years ago invented that I had a god-given right to punch orphaned kids, I'd actually choose to not exercise this right, instead doing whats 'best'. I am trying to fathom any circumstances where trying to do what is best is a bad thing!

Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security. - Ben Franklin

- Quotes arn't de-facto right because someone important said them.

'I am not a crook' - Richard Nixon.

Rights cannot be subjugated to common cause or the demands of the masses.
You are a short sighted fool. Less than a century ago you enlightened europeans were slaughtering each other and exterminating entire races. You truly have no appreciation for rights and liberties.

- The idea that civilians having light-arms would have stopped any European wars is misguided to the point of easy humour:

Hitler 'lets send 9200 panzers into France'

Generals 'Are you mad? Mrs Miggins at number 32 has a pistol'.

Hitler 'Dammit retreat .. RETREEEEAAAAT'

Besides, I am not prepared to compromise my liberties by spending my life thinking I have to drag an AK47 aroud with me otherwise they will go away! because they haven't gone away in the first 100 ODD YEARS we haven't had firearms!!

Liberty and freedom in america are innate, they form the foundation of this country.

- But even you must admit you have less freedom and liberty than most of Europe. You want freedom - go to Amsterdam. Sort drugs legal forever (not just recently), in fact (and this will shock you), you can even marry a person that doesn't have government-approved genetalia. We are enjoying more liberty AND more freedom than you! You've got M16s though - what on earth is going wrong?

For foreigners, it's simply a matter of convenience. Yes, you can have this liberty if it's not to inconvenient for the rest of society. Yes, you can have this liberty so long as the government doesn't change it's mind.

- As a general rule in this place where we don't have guns you can kind of do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. For example, and this will shock you, a citizen can marry another citizen even if their intended partner doesn't had government approved genetalia. Because if it hurts no-one else. I understand it's probably hard for you to comprehend, but you certainly don't enjoy that fundamental right. To spend your life married to someone that loves and wants to be married to you is government-banned, unless they happen to be the opposite sex. Brilliant defence of your rights hey gun carriers. I mean how damm 'innate' a right is marrying the person you love, yet your M249 hasn't even made that happen, perhaps THE biggest human right (I can think of).

Besides, if you're bringing god into it, Firstly we should decide if GOD really did sit on his fluffy cloud and think 'I reckon my creations should be allowed M14s, but not allowed grenades. They should be allowed .50s, but not allowed anti-personnel mines' and then they should decide if the founding fathers just happened to have a direct tie-in to god's thoughts, where other people (like, say, the pope - WHO IS GOD'S MOUTHPEICE ON THIS EARTH so the crazies tell me) actually disagree .. ! God-given right to have a DMR and all the popes have been, er, mistaken? Come on man, be serious! Or even better, don't play the religeon card, as magic and fairy tales never wins an argument

We have GOD GIVEN RIGHTS laid out in the constitution, that shall not be abridged.

- If they were god-given the vatican (where gods mouthpeice LITERALLY STATES THE RULES) would allow small arms. He doesn't (beyond their police). If you're a Christian BY DEFINITION you have to believe he is right. Er, sorry. The pope says god disagrees with this right your founding fathers invented.


Ignorance is bliss. I'm not going to deny there is a burden in vigilance. You prefer to be blind, deaf and dumb, so when the fatal stroke comes you won't have the slightest fear. I prefer to be alert, vigilant and full of hope, confident that with the right tools I am the captain of my destiny. Again, it's a cultural thing. Americans shape their reality and influence their environment. The british close their eyes and hope for the best.

- We have more voting power, more rights, more transparancy in government, and less government abuse than the US. I don't want to turn this into a US vs UK thing as the US, all in all, is probably a better place. but saying 'the US has some form of liberty that we don't' BEYOND being able to go and shoot 'cop-killers' at melons at a gun range, is just naive.

[eynon81]

[Saz]

[The Dharma Bum]

Industrial society forces human beings to adhere to an environment and attendant social pattern that are completely alien to the environment and social pattern to which this organism was adapted to survive.

However, instead of creating an environment that accounts for the human organism's natural traits we attempt to mechanize human behavior with conditioning and drugs.

The myriad acts of vengeance against dehumanization signify something far greater than what most people realize. The human being is inherently uncontrollable our attempts to do so are creating a population of psychotics.

Technology and industrialization is simply not compatible with human freedom.

What is technology?
http://edge.org/conversation/the-techni ... om-of-life
quite different than what many suppose.

[The Dharma Bum]

Consider this, our leader sits at a desk all day signing assassination orders and deciding who to kill and who not to kill.

Is he not a serial killer as well?

Every time we choose not to reject state violence we are complicit in the crime. That is an undeniable fact.

[The Dharma Bum]

[britboy4321]

The why are you poorer than us? Why are you less relevant? Why do you still not get the concept of rights? Again, enjoy this moment, I will completely agree your governments have been good and benevolent for a while. But you don't have rights. It's only a matter of time until you revert back to your barbaric authoritarian ways.

God Bless.


Well, a country's wealth has very little to do with rights at all. Saudi Arabia is MINTED, but their human rights arn't great. Iraq is minted and they have virtually NO gun control laws at all -- Saddam still kept it as a dictatorship and kept his population dirt-poor until foreigners came and helped out the indigenous 'already armed with AK47' folk! Guess the whole 'small arms keep us free' thing kinda' didn't pan out there, especially when he started dumping nerve gas on his population's villages from AIRCRAFT that would be nigh-on IMPOSSIBLE to down with small arms.

We are (significantly) poorer than you for a variety of factors, brainstorming:

1) You have vastly more natural resources
2) You have good trade agreements with a number of nations
3) Larger population means more wealth - its especially helpful for wealth that you let your women work.
4) Your laws are anti-individual, pro-big business, and your culture generally scorns striking, not paying bills or other civil disobediance. This all improves wealth.
5) You are a predominantly English speaking nation, again making trade easier
6) Believe it or not your education system is relatively good, meaning you end up with quite a skilled workforce.
7) The US has a work ethic that is quite good. Not the best, but at least you're prepared to put in a 60 hour week if the work demands it, which is 22 hours more than your average Frenchman.
8) You are prepared to allow your immigrants (inc illegal) to form an underclass, who do all the scummy jobs for peanuts, and don't give them the right to vote for leaders that will save them. Whilst being morally dubious and not the way many coutries would roll, certainly helps the wealth of the nation.

As for why we are less relevent - well I hate to be your history teacher here, but during the last few hundred years we've gone from owning a third of the whole world, to owning 600 * 400 miles of it, as basically everyone decided they didn't like us and kicked us out. When you own a third of the world and can beat anyone up, people listen. When you are a little island, not so much!

I'll answer the rest later possibly. The idea however that we're about to slip back into authoritarianism because I don't own a SAR-21? Seems far-fetched.

I personally don't understand the concept of god given rights because I think god is made up by man (hey, just my opinion!), therefore by definition god-given rights are actually 'man invented rights'. Simple as that really. Doesn't it seem wierd that the forefathers were the first to state that 'god had decided on some rights about guns btw and sorry no-one mentioned it earlier'? I mean, if I was god, I'd have burnt these rights into a mountainside or given the forefathers lazer eyes or something at least then there wouldn't have been debate on the matter - otherwise someone could state that those forfathers just actually made up these god-given rights as they went along (and even DEBATED them in assembly. I mean, DEBATED god-given rights? Thats what they did, debated what these 'god given rights' should be in assembly then announced them afterwards! wtf, yea?)

[The Dharma Bum]

It is simply mistaken to believe that US society is in anyway a free society.