Bush to send troops to border
POSTED BY: rklenseth
UPDATED: Friday, May 19, 2006 00:56
VIEWED: 8734
PAGE 6 of 8
"If a burglar knows they're likely to be confronted with a gun they're going to carry one and be far more likely to use it.
Guns don't make you safer, they make you feel safer."
If a burglar knows they're likely to be confronted with a gun, they're going to go elsewhere. Burglars operate on the hope and assumption that they won't be confronted with a gun. They carry a gun, not out of worry about the other guy carrying a gun, but because it is an effective weapon to control and subdue others.
If I lived in a country (and I don't, despite stereotypes) where every common citizen could be assumed to be armed at all times, then I would expect planned crimes against persons to see a sharp decrease.
Criminals arm themselves to confront unarmed victims. It's a well established fact. They do this so that they are in the superior position. Few are the criminals who go into a situation expecting a firefight... Or any fight at all.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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Well then maybe you can explain to me why in countries where guns are legal home invaders are more likely to be armed, because that runs counter to what you just said.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
And as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.
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Not knowing anything about that little factoid, where you got it, or how this international statistic was collected, I couldn't really give you an answer. Here in the US we have statistic factories that can prove anything you like, including statistics that conclusively prove that a gun in the home definitely IS, or IS NOT, more likely to be used against the resident. (Depending on which statistic you like better.)
Let me ask you a question, Citizen. If someone was breaking into your home, or if they were assaulting you, would you really prefer to be unarmed? Would you really prefer to balance your life on a smile and the criminal's good will?
And do you really believe that posession of a weapon doesn't serve to protect a citizen?
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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Quote:Burglars don't carry over here because they don't need to because the home owners don't, so this really isn't an issue.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Let me ask you a question, Citizen. If someone was breaking into your home, or if they were assaulting you, would you really prefer to be unarmed? Would you really prefer to balance your life on a smile and the criminal's good will?
Quote:Do you really believe proliferation of deadly weapons makes people safer?
And do you really believe that posession of a weapon doesn't serve to protect a citizen?
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
And as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.
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"Do you really believe proliferation of deadly weapons makes people safer?"
I believe parity makes people safer, Citizen. And you just can't achieve a no-weapon parity. Criminals will always have access to weapons because they don't mind violating the law. Because of this, I believe in achieving parity by arming myself.
Now, you have asserted that criminals in England don't use weapons, because the citizenry isn't armed. Unfortunately that's just not the case. What astounds me is that you think it IS the case, which leads me to wonder if British propaganda is as effective as American propaganda. I thought we had the best, but I guess not.
Here's an interesting article for you, which you are free to dispute. It does contain those pesky statistics which you will find defending positions on every side of every debate.
********************************************
November 2002
Gun Control’s Twisted Outcome
Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.
By Joyce Lee Malcolm
On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article’s battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."
In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year’s Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.
None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and 1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America’s Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.
The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by the world’s gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a 1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England’s low rates of violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."
In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.
The illusion that
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There were 73 gun murders in the UK in 2004/2005. That's 1 for every ~827,965 people.
I couldn't find numbers for 2005 but in 2002 there was 10,800 gun murders in the US, or 1 for every ~27,382 people.
Not 'statistics' just the raw data.
EDIT:
Oh and one last thing, I plainly said burglars and home invaders don't use guns and they really don't. There may have been one or two incidents last year, I'm not sure, but it's certainly nothing in comparison to the US.
Quote:No American propeganda seems to have won the day, since you think it IS NOT the case.
What astounds me is that you think it IS the case, which leads me to wonder if British propaganda is as effective as American propaganda.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
And as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.
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"Let me ask you a question, Citizen. If someone was breaking into your home, or if they were assaulting you, would you really prefer to be unarmed? Would you really prefer to balance your life on a smile and the criminal's good will?
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Burglars don't carry over here because they don't need to because the home owners don't, so this really isn't an issue."
See, here's where we disconnected. I thought you were telling me criminals invading homes weren't armed. You meant they don't carry guns. (most of the time.)
So let me clarify your position.
Is it that while you are more likely to be robbed, burgled, or assaulted than I am, you are less likely to be shot?
That the gentlemen robbing, burgling, or assaulting you are more likely to have a knife or club?
Is your position that, while your country has more crime than mine, it has fewer deaths from that crime?
That's a valid argument. It's okay to argue that trading 1 murder for 6 robberies is a good trade.
And it's okay to say that you'd rather be unarmed when an attacker beats the tar out of you with a pipe... because, you know, at least he didn't shoot you.
These are all logical arguments. They make perfect sense. You are looking at a world with fewer deaths in it. I can see the world through your eyes.
But I still don't like the picture.
Is it okay if I'd rather be armed? Maybe I'm a bit of a coward. I don't want to be the guy who 'takes one for the team' and is subjected to more assaults and batteries. I want to have that one extra option, that little bit of control in my hands, about my fate.
What does surprise me (and it surprises me a lot) is that the British citizenship have let themselves be disarmed of all weapons, not just guns. I mean, if you believe the criminal won't have a gun, but will have a knife, wouldn't you want to be able to carry... Something?
But no. You have not made any suggestion that you'd like to be armed with anything. You'd prefer to be utterly unarmed, and that's a concept I just can't wrap my brain around. I suppose you feel the same way about me.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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Quote:
Originally posted by rklenseth:
Nothing officially confirmed yet but it appears Bush is sending troops to guard the borders and that as well as the immigration problem in general is what Bush big speech is about tomorrow.
Just thought some of you might be interested to know.
Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.
yeah!! no mention of doing anything to employers, just as I thought, This administration just wants to create a permenant slave wage under class in this country and their using immigrants to make it happen and so far it looks like its working.
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Quote:
But no. You have not made any suggestion that you'd like to be armed with anything. You'd prefer to be utterly unarmed, and that's a concept I just can't wrap my brain around. I suppose you feel the same way about me.
Sort of.
In fact home invaders don't ussually have much in the way of weaponry over here, most of the time home owners are attacked with their own weapons.
I'm also pretty sure we don't have as much violent crime over here per capita.
I've been attacked with a pipe, the bruises healed within a week, and I was drunk enough that I could of had a small armoury down my trousers and it wouldn't of done any good.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
And as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.
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Well, we agree on that point, Citizen.
I believe that armed persons have a responsibility to remain sober. A drunk man with a weapon is a bad idea.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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