Virginia Tech : Hindsight 20/20

12357…13

Comments

  • dunkman
    dunkman Posts: 19,646
    farfromglorified wrote:
    There were about 16,000 murders in the United States in 2004. About 2/3 involved a firearm. Hence the 10,000 number. None of these statistics count suicides or accidents.

    no.. there were 16000+ suicides... plus those murders makes 32000.. all with a firearm

    it was you who said this
    There are roughly 250,000,000 guns in America. About 10,000 people are killed a year using firearms, roughly.

    32000 people killed per year isnt 10,000 as you first indicated... far from it
    oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.
  • farfromglorified
    farfromglorified Posts: 5,700
    soulsinging wrote:
    but we've placed limits on that all over this country. what makes guns any different?

    It really is no different. I'm not trying to make the point that it's different.
  • jeffbr
    jeffbr Seattle Posts: 7,177
    Byrnzie wrote:
    Typically moronic comment from you.

    Yes, rather than blame the perpetrator like I tend to do, it makes much more sense to deflect that and blame American society as you tend to do. Moronic indeed.
    "I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
  • soulsinging
    soulsinging Posts: 13,202
    farfromglorified wrote:
    It really is no different. I'm not trying to make the point that it's different.

    ok, you just seemed a bit more concerned about guns than anythings else. some of your comments recalled charlton heston's "from my cold dead hands" nonsense. i wondered why you lacked similar passion when it came to the war on drugs, or pharmaceutical regulation, or whatever else.
  • dunkman
    dunkman Posts: 19,646
    jeffbr wrote:
    Yes, rather than blame the perpetrator like I tend to do, it makes much more sense to deflect that and blame American society as you tend to do. Moronic indeed.


    most of the gun school shooters are a product of your society... guns have a high place in your society and so you kill each other a lot with them.. they are not in our society so we tend to twist nipples when someone fucks us off... it still hurts but no-one has actually died yet... yet!!!
    oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.
  • redrock
    redrock Posts: 18,341
    farfromglorified wrote:
    . Rights precede democracy.
    Then you're in an anarchy.. every one decides what his/her right is regardless of other individuals and the rest of society and what would be beneficial to the community... my right to use my gun to shoot and kill you in the process.. oops... forgot about your right to live in peace.. damn.. too bad for you! I stood my ground and I was stronger or crazier than you...
  • Heineken Helen
    Heineken Helen Posts: 18,095
    farfromglorified wrote:
    Not really, no. Why would I want you armed with nukes? Furthermore, why would my idea of what you should or should not be armed with have any determination over what you are actually armed or not armed with?.

    See you just contradict yourself there. Would it not bother you if I have nukes... and I'm not a particularly stable person! You literally don't know who's living nextdoor to you... as, unfortunately, many parents of small kids have found out. So if that person has access to a gun it gives them a much better chance of doing wider damange than otherwise... how hard is that to understand?
    farfromglorified wrote:
    No. You can do whatever you want, so long as it is not violent. If you want to be violent, that actually is your right as well. But at that point you've declared that aggression is your chosen medium of exchange. And what goes around tends to come around there.

    Anyway, owning a gun is not violent. Shooting someone with it is..

    Hmm... so what uses do guns have that AREN'T violent? Unless it's an antique you put on the wall to look at. Guns are destructive and their sole use is destruction.
    farfromglorified wrote:
    No. Your choice to own a gun need not supersede someone's choice to live. Millions of gun owners prove this everyday.
    If you are tempted to use a gun, it's easier to give into temptation when there's one sitting in front of you :rolleyes: Ah, I'm not getting into riddles with you again
    The Astoria??? Orgazmic!
    Verona??? it's all surmountable
    Dublin 23.08.06 "The beauty of Ireland, right there!"
    Wembley? We all believe!
    Copenhagen?? your light made us stars
    Chicago 07? And love
    What a different life
    Had I not found this love with you
  • baraka
    baraka Posts: 1,268
    You know, I got to thinking while in the shower that Byrnzie may be on to something. I can't remember which gun thread he expressed his ideas, but it concerns the underlying problem. Earlier, I posted some stats on Switzerland. Their citizens are armed, like the US, but somehow they don't have these mass shooting like we have in the US. Perhaps removing all guns will only be a temporary band-aide to a bigger underlying problem (although the ease to obtain a gun is quite unnerving). We need to get to the heart of the matter, as to why children and young adults resort to mass shootings.
    The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance,
    but the illusion of knowledge.
    ~Daniel Boorstin

    Only a life lived for others is worth living.
    ~Albert Einstein
  • farfromglorified
    farfromglorified Posts: 5,700
    dunkman wrote:
    no.. there were 16000+ suicides... plus those murders makes 32000.. all with a firearm

    it was you who said this

    I never said anything about suicides, prior to my last post. Look, your numbers don't even add up. You have 16,000 suicides with a gun in 2004. You have 10,000 murders with firearms in 2004. That's 26,000 total. Assuming a 1:1 ratio between guns and murders (which would not be the case), you still have 26,000 of the 250,000,000 involved in a willful killing. That's 0.0104% of the active firearms in 2004 being used in a killing, meaning that 99.99% were not used in a willful killing.
    32000 people killed per year isnt 10,000 as you first indicated... far from it

    I'm not considering a suicide a relevant statistic. A suicide is not a crime.
  • Byrnzie
    Byrnzie Posts: 21,037
    jeffbr wrote:
    Yes, rather than blame the perpetrator like I tend to do, it makes much more sense to deflect that and blame American society as you tend to do. Moronic indeed.

    I was trying to find answers.
    This person didn't exist in a vacuum. He was affected by his environment, as we all are. As the 2 lads at Columbine were, and as every other perpetrator of a school or college massacre in the U.S has been.
  • redrock
    redrock Posts: 18,341
    farfromglorified wrote:
    You cannot claim a "god-given" right so something that involves someone else's labor, no. Do you have no "god-given" right to dunkin donuts, crack or heroin, unless of course you can make them yourself. In that case, yes, you do have a right to those things.
    So if we take your argument further.. do I really have the right to donuts if I make them myself? After all, I am using flour (the result of someone else's labour), using sugar (also result of someone else's labour), etc. Can these people claim my right to the donut? Unless of course I grow and process my own cane, wheat, etc. But then I would assume I outright own the land it was grown on.. then.. what about materials used?

    See.. this argument could go very far and be very farfetched....
  • Pacomc79
    Pacomc79 Posts: 9,404
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I was trying to find answers.
    This person didn't exist in a vacuum. He was effected by his environment, as we all are. As the 2 lads at Columbine were, and as every other perpetrator of a school or college massacre in the U.S has been.


    In that case this kind of thing is extrodinarily rare then. Absolutely amazing this dosen't happen every single day.
    My Girlfriend said to me..."How many guitars do you need?" and I replied...."How many pairs of shoes do you need?" She got really quiet.
  • RolandTD20Kdrummer
    RolandTD20Kdrummer Posts: 13,066
    Given the statistics, there is a whole lot of responsible gun ownership going on.

    It's the 5-10% in society that cause 100% of the problems. Obviously background checks are wise but not foolproof.

    If guns are to be abolished it has to be a globally unified approach. Even then, underground manufacturing will be in high demand. Pretty much identical to the war on drugs at the moment.

    All you can do is make people responsible for their actions, and hope they behave responsibly. You can't really prevent much of anything.
    Progress is not made by everyone joining some new fad,
    and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
    over specific principles, goals, and policies.

    http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg

    (\__/)
    ( o.O)
    (")_(")
  • jeffbr
    jeffbr Seattle Posts: 7,177
    Byrnzie wrote:
    I was trying to find answers.
    This person didn't exist in a vacuum. He was effected by his environment, as we all are. As the 2 lads at Columbine were, and as every other perpetrator of a school or college massacre in the U.S has been.

    I don't believe you were trying to find answers. You simply jumped in with an accusation of racism. Even if there were racism, why did he flip his lid? Plenty of people of all races, genders, sexual orientation, etc... experience discrimination at some level and very few of them resort to mass murder.

    Of course he didn't live in a vacuum. Of course society has an influence. But it has an influence everywhere on everyone. That is a given. That's like suggesting oxygen was responsible for his pulling the trigger.
    "I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
  • dunkman
    dunkman Posts: 19,646
    farfromglorified wrote:
    I'm not considering a suicide a relevant statistic. A suicide is not a crime.

    well then why is attempted suicide a crime :confused:

    In 2002, there were 30,242 gun-related deaths - 83 people each day;
    oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.
  • farfromglorified
    farfromglorified Posts: 5,700
    Heineken Helen wrote:
    See you just contradict yourself there. Would it not bother you if I have nukes... and I'm not a particularly stable person! You literally don't know who's living nextdoor to you... as, unfortunately, many parents of small kids have found out. So if that person has access to a gun it gives them a much better chance of doing wider damange than otherwise... how hard is that to understand?

    It isn't hard to understand. What is hard to understand, however, is why you think someone having a "much better change of doing wider damage than otherwise" somehow gives you an arbitrary right to control people's behavior.

    Sorry, fear-mongering really isn't going to accomplish much with me. If you want to be afraid of people with guns, you have every right to do so.
    Hmm... so what uses do guns have that AREN'T violent? Unless it's an antique you put on the wall to look at. Guns are destructive and their sole use is destruction.

    Target shooting is not violent. Self-defense, depending on your philosophical view, is not violent.

    Sure, guns are primarily destructive. So are bull-dozers. So is dynamite. What's your point? Just because something is destructive doesn't make it wrong.

    You're trying to pull this back to "guns have no justifiable purpose", which seems pretty ridiculous when you're proposing rules and regulations that, of course, would require guns to enforce.
    If you are tempted to use a gun, it's easier to give into temptation when there's one sitting in front of you :rolleyes: Ah, I'm not getting into riddles with you again

    These aren't riddles. These are basic concepts. Just because "it's easier to give into temptation" again does not give you the right to bar access to guns. It's a ludicrous argument. You might as well start chopping people's trigger fingers off.
  • farfromglorified
    farfromglorified Posts: 5,700
    dunkman wrote:
    well then why is attempted suicide a crime :confused:

    Sorry, I meant "crime" in the more philosophical sense than the legal one. Yes, suicide is technically against the law.
    In 2002, there were 30,242 gun-related deaths - 83 people each day;

    Ok. There were also 800,000-2,500,000 gun-related instances of self-defense - 2,191 people each day. How many car-related deaths were there? How many stabbings?

    These statistics are simply that: statistics. You cannot use a statistic to dissolve people's rights.
  • farfromglorified
    farfromglorified Posts: 5,700
    redrock wrote:
    So if we take your argument further.. do I really have the right to donuts if I make them myself? After all, I am using flour (the result of someone else's labour), using sugar (also result of someone else's labour), etc. Can these people claim my right to the donut?

    If you stole that sugar or stole that flour, yes. If you freely exchanged for it, however, no.
    Unless of course I grow and process my own cane, wheat, etc. But then I would assume I outright own the land it was grown on.. then.. what about materials used?

    What about them? How did you acquire those things?
    See.. this argument could go very far and be very farfetched....

    How so? Seems simple to me.
  • Byrnzie
    Byrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Pacomc79 wrote:
    In that case this kind of thing is extrodinarily rare then. Absolutely amazing this dosen't happen every single day.

    If you read my earlier posts you'll see what I've been driving at here. I could be wrong of course, but no-one here has yet given me any reason to believe I am. I've been talking about the peculiar nature of the overly clique ridden, and pressure ridden school system in the U.S which I've seen portrayed in film and literature. I wasn't raised in the U.S so I don't have first hand knowledge of it. I was asking what it's like. What effect does the regimented, tiered cliquey system have on people there? It seems to be a tad ugly and exaggerated. Am I wrong about this?
    Obviously somethings not quite right about it, right?
    Excuse me for asking questions! :rolleyes:
  • soulsinging
    soulsinging Posts: 13,202
    farfromglorified wrote:
    Ok. There were also 800,000-2,500,000 gun-related instances of self-defense - 2,191 people each day.

    huh? that's a pretty broad range...

Categories