[J m HofMarN]

If everyone in ethnic and racial enclaves across the US had an AR-15, do you honestly believe those areas would be plagued with crime as they are now?

So you're suggesting arming racial and ethnic minorities? We tried that. It was called the Black Panthers and the cops shot that idea down. Literally. While I agree that they have every right to bear arms, I do not agree with just handing guns out to every household in a certain area and letting them go to town. That's a little too anarchic for me and I'm an anarchist.

More guns among law abiding citizens is the solution, not the problem.

Funny thing about citizens is we're ALL law abiding until we stop being law abiding. In an elementary school cafeteria. And just how would you judge law abidingness? For instance, if I have say, got busted for weed, I am no longer law abiding. Am I then subject to destruction by the crack head zombie home invader hordes?

And let's face it, even if the police managed to miraculously get to your house in under 5 minutes, they would still be too late (regardless of what said criminals would be doing at your house). Short of having a police officer on every street corner or turning every house into a fortress, it's not going to work. It's much cheaper and much more efficient if every household is armed.

You indicate twice here that there is an unfavorable alternative to your solution, but you never point out just what you believe we need to protect ourselves from. Now, I'm thinking it's a guy who maybe wants my car stereo and will then bugger off. You seem to be thinking its a group of guys armed with military hard ware who want to kill me, rape me, and then cut off my head and hang it on a pike as an example to any who would oppose them. I don't see much of the latter. Hell, I don't even see much of the former.

It's funny how politicians in Germany believe that they can stop random outbursts of violence by controlling the thoughts of every citizen and impeding their ability to defend themselves. I wonder how they even came to that conclusion.

... Politicians in every country could be accused of that, but then again, you're fond of making accusations of fascism, so I shouldnt bother pointing this out.

Now the reason why you can walk around is because there isn't a lot of crime at your location. Good for you. Many, especially those living in poorer areas, don't have that luxury. Now since your area doesn't have a problem with crime, you don't really need a gun. However, if and when every citizen in the crime ridden areas has an assault rifle then criminals might move onto your crime free paradise.

... Where do you get these statistics? How do you know where Civ lives? How do you know the economic or racial make up of that area? Also, your suggestion that criminals would, would... that they would motherfucking MIGRATE if people were armed... I can't even finish this sentence. Criminals are not migratory animals. When the heat is all of them just go down to Tijuana to wait it out. Indeed many of them have homes and family and so forth. They are not roving murderous viking raiders.

1. Having entire areas of cities engulfed in strife and warfare isn't a "minor problem". Having drugs easily available on the streets in said areas isn't a "minor problem". Having kids drop out of school in order to join gangs isn't a "minor problem". There is a reason why the Black population in the US has decreased by 1/3rd since the end of segregation.

....Are you suggesting that the alleged prevalence of membership in roving murderous viking hordes by african americans has led to an actual net population decline for their race in the US?... Please, by all means, pull your census out your ass.

2. So even though schools don't get enough funds to pay their teachers a decent salary, you believe they are supposed to pay for high tech security measures and security guards?

The police acrtually handle the cost. Civ did not mean armed private guards. Our schools do not yet employ mercenaries because they are still public controlled. Once your economic system comes into effect though I'm sure they will, although by then crime will have been stamped out by the 10 percent flat tax...

Of course if they were armed, then this wouldn't be an issue.

You claim that if mexican citizens were armed, they would do the job that the police and the FUCKING NATIONAL ARMY are barely capable of???

[civilian_number_two]

JM, no he's right: I don't live in a crime-riddled part of Vancouver. Of course, if I did, I would live in a four-block square just east of the downtown business core, Vancouver's skid row, which is probably the worst concentration of homeless poverty in Canada. I could fall asleep on the street there (many do), be robbed of whatever was in my pocket and in rare cases of my shoes (many have been), and I would wake up unmolested (for many, this is a daily occurence). But no, where I live I happen to be surrounded by well-fed people who have lots of conspicuous wealth in their ungated and frequently unalarmed homes. I took the trouble to buy household insurance, but the premiums are low because the crime rate is so low, despite the conspicuous absence of private security or of armed homeowners. NOWHERE in my country nor in the one immediately to the south of it is there any evidence of raoming bands of thugs invading homes street-to-street with their assault weapons.

HOWEVER: If the way to get the criminals to invade my home is to arm all of the poor people with assault rifles, then lo and behold, we have yet one more reason NOT to arm the poor with assault rifles. If arming them would make thugs attack ME, then why would I want that? I paid more in income tax last year than most of those people earned, so to hell with them. No free guns for them. Note my callousness at their terrible fate is mitigated by the fact that the home invasions Deucaon hopes to defend them from DO NOT EXIST.


Deuc:

1. Having entire areas of cities engulfed in strife and warfare isn't a "minor problem". Having drugs easily available on the streets in said areas isn't a "minor problem". Having kids drop out of school in order to join gangs isn't a "minor problem". There is a reason why the Black population in the US has decreased by 1/3rd since the end of segregation.
2. So even though schools don't get enough funds to pay their teachers a decent salary, you believe they are supposed to pay for high tech security measures and security guards?
3. Comparing Dodge City and ethnic/racial enclaves of today is like comparing the War of American Independence and the Vietnam War. The guns of yesteryear aren't the guns of today. Guns back then weren't mass produced thus weren't as plentiful thus weren't as cheap as they are today. Nor was Dodge City plagued by same problems said enclaves are today. Nor is Dodge City or any contemporary city on the same societal, environmental, economical or political pedestal.

1. No it hasn't. The US black population has increased each decade since the 1960s.

1950: 15.0 million or 10.0% of the population
1960: 18.9 million or 10.6% of the population
1970: 22.6 million or 11.1% of the population
1980: 26.5 million or 11.7% of the population
1990: 30.0 million or 12.1% of the population
2000: 36.6 million or 12.3% of the population

These figures are taken from the US Census bureau's website. Your willingness to make a claim that is the complete opposite of the facts indicates that you are a liar willing to make things up in order to support a weak point. And what was your point? That violence has decreased the black population of the United States? I suppose this is in support of some general theory that violence in America is not economic, but racial, or that poverty is all racially-derived or so forth. And this argument no doubt means that we should give everyone an assault rifle, because then things would be more peaceful. I imagine in the country you live, everyone has an assault rifle, and so it is peaceful, or nobody has one, and it is chaos? Please present your made-up stats and interpretation so that I may research the actual facts and call you a liar again.

2. Like JM said, the armed police at high school entrances are paid for by the state, not by the school board. And it is in response to a scenario where easy gun availability empowered some children to kill some other children. By your solution, that would not have worked because all of the children would have hadguns or AR-15s. I suggest that in that environment, in fact more people would be killed, and it would be happening weekly; so frequrently in fact that it would start to get bumped in the news coverage. I have no idea why you believe that fear of being shot would make people LESS likely to use their guns; in my understanding, it is the fear of getting shot that makes people MORE likely to use them. I prefer the method of not forcing kids to carry guns, but rather insisting that they DON'T carry them. That way noone gets scared of getting shot, and noone uses their guns out of hysterical "self-defence."

3. In the days of Dodge City, every household owned at least one gun. Guns were, in fact, produced in great numbers, even if the technology of "mass production" didn't exist. This is post-Civil War, if you recall, so there were a lot of guns out there. It's irrelevant what sort of guns they owned; with the primitive medicine and the extremely slow response time of the law, most altercations ended in death. The solution there was to disarm the population within city limits, and it was a phenomenal sucess. Now of course we don't have the concern of banditos taking over towns, robbing banks in broad daylight, and of having shootouts in the city streets. So we don't need to arm the populace; we have a good police force. In fact, just like with Dodge City, FEWER guns in the hands of civilians will mean FEWER shootings within city limits. It's actually simple math.
As for comparisons between the US War of Independence and the Vietnam War, there are many. In the comparison the US is analogous to the British in the War of Independence: an invading force operating with little support from home, with dangerously low morale owing to a successful propaganda war run by Benjamin Franklin, facing a guerilla resistance that could appear at any time with weapons hidden by the populace. But before you think that this is an endorsement of arming the populace to prevent foreign invasion, remember that the British were not invading. They already occupied the area. And their goal was not to eradicate every possible member of a resistance. A guerilla army is very difficult to defeat without the appropriate green light, and they were not given that green light. The British had the army to hold the colonies, but its leadership ceded the land without taking the fight all the way. Just like the US did in Vietnam, so yes, the comparison is less crazy than you would like to pretend.

Bonus questions:

NAME ONE COUNTRY THAT HAS COMPLETELY ARMED ITS POPULACE AS A DEFENCE AGAINST CRIME.

DESCRIBE HOW THAT WORKED.

[J m HofMarN]

Seeing Civ repost it made me think of something: 1/3rd of the black population... One fucking third... That's, lets say for a low estimate from Civ's real, existing numbers, that they're ten percent for mathematical purposes... Ten percent of, what is the US population? Around 300 million? So, that's.... 3 million black people... Aaaand 1/3rd (you like to use one third, I suppose black people werent included in your shceme for every third house to have an assault rifle?) 1/3rd of 300 million is 3 million. So, segregation ended around, for mathmatical purposes, 1960, that's fifty years. Fifty into 3 million is... 60000. Now, you never claimed that all of this decline was due to violent crime, but you blame at least a good part of it, so I will assume that you only meant maybe half.

Still, your figures indicate that, in fifty years, an average of 30000 black americans have died every single year in violence... That's more than the total death toll of gun violence across all backgrounds, so already you're not making sense even if your figures actually were correct somehow.

Oh, and on my bit about the roving viking criminal hordes, I meant that not all criminals just pack up for tijuana when the heat is on, but the don't got left out. The point stands though that, unlike movie villains, criminals are actually human beings in economic and social senses.

And, Civ, I really don't see any difference what part of vancouver you live in, because the criminals can still come for you. The fact that they haven't yet only indicates that they're preparing an ambush, having lulled you into a false sense of security for forty odd years, now they ready their coup de grace, for revenge is a dish best served cold.

But seriously, what does it matter to any argument where someone lives? Unless you're in an isolation chamber on the moon, then these roving hordes of viking criminals are still coming for you and everyone needs to be armed, because if we only arm the people where criminals are, they'll just get in their longships and row to the next Norman settlement. Assuming they aren't already.

The bit about the homeless makes an interesting question for me though. Should they also be armed? I mean, how does Deuacon's wonderful Ayn Rand Beyond Thunderdome regime determine who deserves a gun and who doesnt?

[civilian_number_two]

Well apparently the best way to reduce gun violence is to make sure that every person (I assume every adult person, but he didn't resist my "arm the schoolkids" policy) has a firearm. And if the real roving packs of well-armed viking thungs are targeting the poorer neighbourhods (source needed), then naturally the homeless need guns. It's guns all the way down!

[Spoon Poetic]

While I don't agree with the Cobnuts here, I will say that I do kinda see his point on one thing - you guys are kind of coming across as trivializing the crime that takes place in gang neighborhoods and the like. I briefly lived in a neighborhood that seemed like it was trying really hard to become a gang neighborhood, as in, a bunch of 12-28ish yr olds were forming gangs and hanging around on street corners doing drugs, fighting and stabbing each other with knives, and messing with us kids who walked to and from school. Granted the experiment to turn my quaint little neighborhood into one ruled by thugs and gangs failed, as it just really wasn't the right place for it (we have ample police and the like).

But the during the time that they were a big presence, it was very scary. In the period of a few months that this took place, there were several shootings that could be heard from my house, and I knew I was walking through the people that were responsible for them every time I walked home from school. Lots of break-ins and burglaries and stuff.

I would have felt safer if my family had had a gun or two and an alarm system.

I can't imagine how scary it might be to live in a place where this kind of thing is an ACTUAL problem instead of just some bored, drugged out lower-middle class kids that wanna seem tough.

---

Another point:

2. So even though schools don't get enough funds to pay their teachers a decent salary, you believe they are supposed to pay for high tech security measures and security guards?

The police acrtually handle the cost. Civ did not mean armed private guards. Our schools do not yet employ mercenaries because they are still public controlled. Once your economic system comes into effect though I'm sure they will, although by then crime will have been stamped out by the 10 percent flat tax...

Like JM said, the armed police at high school entrances are paid for by the state, not by the school board.

Actually, Cobnuts has a point: Schools might not be able to afford cops, because schools are not just paid for from the state. They get a limited amount of money both federally and from the state, and the rest comes from local taxes. So if it's a school in a very poor place, it's not going to have much money. The money it gets from the state is going to go to things like teachers and books and what-not.
The police are also funded locally. Many police stations struggle with not being funded enough to have enough cops, enough equipment, etc. Especially with this economy - mayors are cutting funding to cops and schools both.
TBH I have no idea if the schools pay the school cops or the police stations pay the school cops - I can't find that online. But either way, it might not be possible in a very poor area. The cops might not be able to spare one of their men if they don't have the money to hire someone else to take his spot on the city-patrolling force. The school might not be able to pay for it. Whichever.

--

Buuuuuut even though I have these arguments to make, I still don't believe that we should go and arm anyone who wants one with an assault weapon.

Cobnuts: At some point it was presented that having them illegal means it's harder for the criminals to get them, and you said, no it's not, it's easy for them to get them. If that's the case, then how come so many crimes are committed with handguns?

Many people are killed just by not knowing how to handle their handguns. I can't imagine how many people might be killed trying to clean/put away/show off their friggin' assault rifle.

And also plus most of the other arguments JM and Civ have made - I ditto them.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 24 April 2009 - 01:44 PM
Reason for edit:: fixing my quotes

[civilian_number_two]

Spoon I have to disagree. I have not been trivializing the real problems of violent crime in America. And while I have failed to address the economic challenges facing schools in violent areas where students might come armed with guns, I have spoken to Deuc's proposed solution.

To wit:

1) I do not believe that the solution to the problem in your neighbourhood would have been to arm every man woman and child with an assault rifle: I do not believe that this measure would have reduced potential gun violence; I do not believe that it would have removed the criminal element (they would also have had assault rifles); and I believe it would have been a ridiculous overreaction to and simplification of the real problem, which was a (socially) small amount of crime and violence (which probably only targeted members of the same criminal fraternity). Arming everyone with assault rifles MIGHT be the resolution were your neighbourhood faced with roving acks of assault-rifle-wielding thugs hell-bent on close-quarter-battle from house-to-house. Since this was never and will never be the case, Cobnat's solution is more or less the same as trying to cure acne with an assault rifle.

2) I don't believe that a school unable to afford armed security guards and metal detectors at its entrances should fall back to the option of allowing children to bring guns to use in their own defence. Nor do I think the children should be armed with assault rifles. I'd copy and paste elements of pargraph 1) if I felt they were necessary to illustrate why I hold this side of the argument.

I don't trivialize the problems that Cob/Deuc obliquely refers to. But the problems are clearly not as he describes them, and so the resolution he proposes, of allowing the United States to implode on itself in an orgy of semiautomatic weapons fire, is I feel unnecessary at this time.

I may revise my opinion in the future should the situation change. I don't expect the situation to change. And yeah, that's the view from my backyard.

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 25 April 2009 - 01:15 AM

[J m HofMarN]

I would have felt safer if my family had had a gun or two and an alarm system.

Would you have felt safer with an AK47 hanging over the mantelpiece? Neither Civ nor myself nor, I'm confident, anyone in this thread has talked about taking away rifles and pistols, which could have been used by you or your family to defend against an intruder. Let me put this plainly for you, Spoon:

Your real world scenarios have no relevance to the main debate with Deuc. we might create a side debate wherein facts are employed just for you, but only if you feel like putting forth your solution. You think you're going to make an impact with something that actually happened while for the last 18 pages Deuc has been putting forth the threat of roving hordes of crack head zombies coming to our houses for the sole purpose of doing murder with high powered weaponry and probably artillery support? You're off the edge of the map, boy. Here there be monsters!

As for the school thing, most crime that occurs in schools, and believe me there is plenty of it, is not stuff for the police to be involved in. It's onlt that one percent that gets the headlines though, and that one percent generally involves an easily available automatic or semi-automatic weapon.

I'd like to hear your solution to the problem though, because I'm not even going to begin to associate you with Deuacon's system wherein we arm everyone and our system of government involves pitting the two candidates in a gladiatorial match in which the only rule is that there are no rules, and the winner gets to tell us how we're going to raid the other tribes supplies of gasoline.

Civ- Way it looks to me that's the most dangerous place to live. Any minute some bastard in camouglage paint with a hard on for slaughter is going to pop out of that swamp, interrupt your cow killin festival, and then call in a napalm strike. You don't just need an assault rifle, you need two.



If Kurtz had had an assault rifle......

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 25 April 2009 - 02:32 AM

[Spoon Poetic]

I explicitly said I do not agree with Deuc, sheesh, people.

I just mentioned those other things because of mentions of gang violence being brushed off like it never happens, or like it's irrelevant, which even though it doesn't really support Snake's argument, is still kinda... I dunno. And it is a little off to just assume that crime in schools can be easily solved by putting police in everywhere because frankly it's just not as easy a solution as many people assume.

By brushing it off I mean the arguments that go "there's nothing to protect ourselves from" after Cobby mentions gang neighborhoods and stuff. In those places, there's definitely a need to protect yourself, as random acts of violence are common.

As for a solution to the problem - my proposed solution is that we euthanize all stupid people.

[civilian_number_two]

Yeah, I don't mean to trivialize the real probability of gang violence, nor to suggest that school violence can be completely removed by police presence. I just says that the way to a solution is not through giving everyone from schoolkid to granny an assault rifle. Snake/Cob/Deuc is talking about a fantasy solution to a fantasy problem. He is living in a fantasy world.

[J m HofMarN]

Spoon- If Deuacon provided actual figures or scenarios of actual violence, then it would be treated as such. You can't fault anyone for trivializing the trivial. And, as is typical with Deucobsna, this demands a dichotomy. The people in the debate either have to support full gun rights, no registration, and maybe pipe bombs and ICBMS and tarasques (not sure about that) or they end up appearing to be not taking (fantasy) crime seriously. Between the two approaches, I prefer the latter.

Yes, I live in a material world and I am a material girl.

[J m HofMarN]

Edit: Goddamn my early morning math. The real one goes like this:

black population of 30 million
1/3rd = 10 million
50 into ten million is 2 hundred thousand
50 percent of that is one hundred thousand
that means that for there to have been a 1/3 decline in black population and for a good chunk of it to have been caused by violence, 10 million blacks would have had to die in 50 years, with 5 million of those being violent deaths for a yearly total of one hundred thousand per anum.

Also, Spoon, the definition of gangs is probably what's bothering you. Civ and I have both pointed out that Deuacon's definition is laughable. Even were I to live in the inner city, as I have before for a time, I would still have no fear of roving gangs of assault rifle wielding criminals coming to kill me. Maybe I would steer away from the guys on the block packing 22s in their puffed out boxers and spraypainting gangsigns on the walls, yes, but thats a gang, which is an actual real world entity. Deuacon's gangs are more similiar to the vikings in that they are nomadic, hyperviolent, heavily armed and come to places for the specific purpose of pillaging and murdering. I have some fear of going to a high crime area and being robbed. I have no fear of going anywhere and having a longboat full of men with assault rifles come to murder me. Does that help to clear it up?

It is as though you walked into a 20 page long farse wherein we were trying to inform someone that, no, alien death rays and neutron bombs do not pose an immediate danger to the human race, and from this you gleaned that we do not take the threat of weapons proliferation seriously.

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 26 April 2009 - 03:32 PM

[J m HofMarN]

Ok, I just saw another real life scenario where an assault rifle would be useful against home invaders. Imagine you're just sitting in your house in a bathrobe reading hustler and watching president Nixon, when all of a sudden someone kicks down your door. You MIGHT think a pistol and some kitchen knives would be an adequate defense, but if you think so, you'd get your ass thrown through a plate glass window. Clearly, the only weapon capable of defending against home invaders such as Ozymandias, is either an assault rifle or an intrinsic field subtractor.

[Jordan]

Civ I know EXACTLY where you live! F to the C. Straight baller for real

[civilian_number_two]

Hillarious. Straight baller? I had never heard that one before! God bless urbandictionary.com !

[J m HofMarN]

The secret is out, your location is revealed! Deploy the Tarasque before Jordan and his assault rifle wielding friends come to challenge you to CQB!