Guns will protect you from tsunamis.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Popcorn...<munch munch munch>

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by tw

Well now we know. MaggieL no longer enters wet T-shirt contests. She doesn't own a uniform.

Man, I love it when you crack a joke tw.

[Hippikos]

So, ergo conclusio memorandum : Guns make a country more safe, right?

rotflmao tw...

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Hippikos

So, ergo conclusio memorandum : Guns make a country more safe, right?

The same way drugs make a country more healthy.

Once again: it's not das ding an sich, it's the motivations and intents of the people using them.

[Hippikos]

The same way drugs make a country more healthy.

Totally incomparable. In fact it's a grotesk absurdity. Guns do not heal, do not reconcile, do not transport people, do not educate poeple, they are exclusively to kill living creatures, not a single other purpose, no matter what other fancy Kant quote you use.

it's the motivations and intents of the people using them.

That's in fact where the problem lies. It's not about guns itself. A vicious circle, where only violence can solve the problems, as it seems. People buy guns, because others have guns and may use it against you.

Again, do you think guns made the US safer?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Hippikos

Totally incomparable. In fact it's a grotesk absurdity. Guns do not heal, do not reconcile, do not transport people, do not educate poeple, they are exclusively to kill living creatures, not a single other purpose...

No, that's not true, because a gun doesn't have to be fired to be used. In fact most legal firearms usage for self-defense does not involve discharging the weapon. (Even in the rare instances when they are used to kill, the killing isn't necessarily implicitly evil.) I use my weapons every day, and yet I've never hurt anyone with them, nor even tried to. With luck, I never shall. And yet being prepared and willing to use deadly force in true self-defense is a requrement for the weapon to be truly useful.

Your reasoning--and your question--is "grotesquely" simplistic...just like "do drugs make people healthy". Because they don't necessarily, it depends completely on how they are used. Focusing on and demonizing the *thing* is misguided. Do stoves make food taste good? Well, they *can*, but it's not guaranteed. You can make raw food tasty, or you can burn it into inedibility.

Do you not accept the use of deadly force in self-defense?

[Undertoad]

Guns are part of the mix that keeps the US, in personality, a strong, rugged individualist; prepared to address any particular shit that hits the fan, unwilling to automatically cede control to authority, and not falling for the polite fantasy that life can be made perfectly safe.

Addressing problems without calling for help; admitting that we are, in the end, in charge of our own safety and thus our own lives; unwilling to automatically accept any new order thrust upon us. Willing, if need be, to give the federal revenooer an assload of buckshot to keep him off our property. (historical ref: during alcohol prohibition, people fought feds to keep their bathtub distillers running.)

It is this personality that has kept the US entrepreneurial, dynamic, and powerful.

Safe? Most definitely. Safer? Subject to definition. I don't believe I could walk through North Philly at midnight without being in danger. Almost any other part of Pennsylvania, which is about the same size in square miles as England, is absolutely fair game. Since there is nothing that North Philly offers me unless I'm looking for crack rocks at midnight, I am pretty safe.

[Hippikos]

Safe? Most definitely. Safer? Subject to definition. I don't believe I could walk through North Philly at midnight without being in danger. Almost any other part of Pennsylvania, which is about the same size in square miles as England, is absolutely fair game. Since there is nothing that North Philly offers me unless I'm looking for crack rocks at midnight, I am pretty safe.

As you mention guns are a very part of the American life, based on frontier, lawless times, which has been gone a long time. The idea that guns will turn men into a rugged, strong Marlboro man is in many eyes unthinkable. Problem is the numbers of arms is so massive in the US that even the smallest percentage of morons will turn into massacres. The majority of all global school shootings did happen in the US.

The question of a safer US was hypothetical, the problem is already there, 200 Million guns cannot be destroyed, let alone the mindset of the average entrepeneurial US citizin. Maybe it's because I'm from a different culture, but I think guns will contribute to a violent society. Entrepeneurship has a diferent meaning to me, think VOC

Your reasoning--and your question--is "grotesquely" simplistic...just like "do drugs make people healthy". Because they don't necessarily, it depends completely on how they are used. Focusing on and demonizing the *thing* is misguided. Do stoves make food taste good? Well, they *can*, but it's not guaranteed. You can make raw food tasty, or you can burn it into inedibility.

You're at it again, making one silly comparison after another. Guns are for killing and drugs are for healing people. Indeed grotesquely simple, no matter how much smoke screens to try to put up.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Hippikos

You're at it again, making one silly comparison after another. Guns are for killing and drugs are for healing people. Indeed grotesquely simple, no matter how much smoke screens to try to put up.

So...cocaine is for healing people?

And heroin?

Cocaine is used to heal...sometimes. Heroin used to be used medicinally...as a cure for cocaine addiction.

Sodium Pentothal is used for anesthesia induction...or for executions by lethal injection.

Your whole formula of ${x} is for ${y} is deeply flawed. Things simply don't have some nice black-and-while single inherent purpose, subject to your personal judgement as either "good" or "bad".

And I'm still waiting for an answer: do you accept the use of deadly force for self-defense? Because if you don't, and you believe killing is always wrong, this dialogue is pointless.

[Undertoad]

Well there's the cultural difference; I can start my own company to do web development (or make pizzas, or whatever) without feeling connected in any way at all to the "original sin" of the history of the East India Company.

[JayMcGee]

perhaps I was being too subtle.......


Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
Now anybody with half a god damn brain knows what the Constitution framers were talking about. No cutesy dancing about is going to change that, or the Constitutional guarantees it gives Joe, no matter how many times they invoke, it's for the god damn children.



so how come there's a first let alone a second and the dozens that followed, amendment?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Don't be misled by the term amendment.
The Constitution was written and approved by the framers. When they were done they looked at the thing, and decided it's a good outline for running a country, now how does it apply to and effect the people? They then wrote the "Bill of Rights" to spell out the protections of the people from the government. They were written as amendments 1 through 10, so they would never be separated from the Constitution.... so the government couldn't just cast them aside. Only then was the package presented for the approval of the states, of the people.

[Aliantha]

Heroin used to be used medicinally...as a cure for cocaine addiction.

Morphine converts to heroin within 15 seconds of entering the bloodstream. One is legal the other is not. That's the only difference.

Of course, this means that we still use heroin medicinally. It's just that we've learned how to refine it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's all legal for the medical community to use responsibly, no?
Chemical versions of Superman's powers, to be used for good, only.

[Hippikos]

And I'm still waiting for an answer: do you accept the use of deadly force for self-defense? Because if you don't, and you believe killing is always wrong, this dialogue is pointless.

I thought that was bleeding obvious, unless you have a large canon in front of your head. Of course I'm against killing and I'm against the death penalty. And the discussion is not pointless, it's the very essence. But then again all discussions about someting you don't agree with you regard as pointless.

Now, along with the technological advance, in Joe Citizen's weapons, there has been a tremendous, exponential even, increase in the different types of weapons invented, right up to nuke tipped missiles. Virtually none of these were ever intended for Joe Citizen, nor would he have a use for them, other than bragging rights...or drinkin' beer and blowin' shit up. That's why there are laws preventing Joe and his buddies from having those weapons, and I think that's a good idea.

OK, maybe not a nuke, but how about a bazooka? Hand granate? Stinger? M2 Browning? M1 36 Anti Tank weapon? Flamethrower? All portable. Remember according Maggie's Law it's the people who fire them, not the weapons itself.