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#201 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 11,214
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I remember him quite well. I also remember commenting at the time that the best possible outcome would be Horn in jail for murder and two burglars still dead.
I'm not sure how this Quarrell X guy equates Castle Doctrine as being racist. The Grand Jury decision? Possibly. I wouldn't see it as impossible that the jurors saw the case and thought "I would hope my neighbor blows away anybody robbing me when I'm on vacation". |
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"There's vastly more truth to be found in rocks than in holy books. Rocks are far superior, in fact, because you can DEMONSTRATE the truth found in rocks. Plus, they're pretty. Holy books are just heavy." - Dinwar "Let your ears hear this beautiful song that's hiding underneath the sound," Ed Kowalczyk. |
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#202 |
Becoming Beth
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Central Vale of Humility
Posts: 20,927
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"It never does just what I want, but only what I tell it." ![]() *********************************************** "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." - Saul Bellow |
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#203 |
a carbon based life-form
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 39,049
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#204 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 11,214
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__________________
"There's vastly more truth to be found in rocks than in holy books. Rocks are far superior, in fact, because you can DEMONSTRATE the truth found in rocks. Plus, they're pretty. Holy books are just heavy." - Dinwar "Let your ears hear this beautiful song that's hiding underneath the sound," Ed Kowalczyk. |
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#205 |
Suspended
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Patriot Nation
Posts: 21,645
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I lol'd...
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#206 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: WA USA
Posts: 8,969
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#207 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 2,154
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"Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefullness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another."-Epicurus Freedom of Speech is a right recognized in the First Amendment. Freedom from consequence is nowhere to be found. -Bstrong |
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#208 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 2,154
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"Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefullness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another."-Epicurus Freedom of Speech is a right recognized in the First Amendment. Freedom from consequence is nowhere to be found. -Bstrong |
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#209 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6,387
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Other differences:
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#210 |
Uncritical "thinker"
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: UK
Posts: 17,199
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OECD healthcare spending Expenditure on healthcare http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm link is 2015 data (2013 Data below): UK 8.5% of GDP of which 83.3% is public expenditure - 7.1% of GDP is public spending US 16.4% of GDP of which 48.2% is public expenditure - 7.9% of GDP is public spending |
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#211 |
Uncritical "thinker"
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: UK
Posts: 17,199
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]Other differences:
And it is worth pointing out that Tunisia had strict gun laws yet started the Arab Spring. Egypt was mainly brought about by civil disobedience and the army refusing to crush the rebellion. Many successful overthrows of tyranny have depended on free speech, but not on gun ownership. |
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OECD healthcare spending Expenditure on healthcare http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm link is 2015 data (2013 Data below): UK 8.5% of GDP of which 83.3% is public expenditure - 7.1% of GDP is public spending US 16.4% of GDP of which 48.2% is public expenditure - 7.9% of GDP is public spending |
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#212 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 4,177
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I would love to get rid of it completely.
In the US, it is entrenched in the political ecosystem. A gun is a fetish item for beat-down people who are too stupid to understand the forces that shape their lives, much less exercise any real control over those forces. But they can pick up a gun and pretend that they're in control. Of course that makes them easy marks for political demagogues. Congressman Teabagger can stand up on the podium and bloviate about how he supports the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, and the drooling sycophants are beside themselves with joy, completely unaware that their elected rep has a completely different agenda, one that is directed by his big money sponsors. So, the US is stuck with the 2d Amendment. |
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#213 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 1,468
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Burglars may not even have a gun. Nearly twice as many burglaries as violent crimes all put together. Most burglars are avoiding confrontation. Any indication that someone is home and they're gone!
Burglary and armed robbery after a forced entry into a dwelling are different in impact, intent and frequency. There is evidence that availability of guns, especially handguns, increase the rate of successful suicides. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full Lax gun laws and strong gun culture leads to more guns. More guns means more suicides. This is rather like the weak arguments made by people attacking self defense advice such as "Try not to walk around alone" and "avoid secluded areas" and "don't leave your drink unattended". Why should you? Because doing so is more likely to lead to a positive outcome, which is you surviving uninjured. Leaving means two things: 1. You're out of harm's way 2. The intruder knows the clock is ticking, their time is limited before the authorities arrive. Sure, having a pistols at dawn shoot-out might make for a cooler scene in a Western. It's just going to suck for the person who lives next door or the person across the street whose house is peppered with your crossfire. That's if you survive. |
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#214 |
Cythraul Enfys
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 57,068
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Not to pick nits, but: I am not beat down, I loathe the teabaggers and am not a fan of republickers or the NRA. I like the people in my neighborhood and get along fine with all of them I know/of and voted for Obama. But I still have guns where I can reach them (as can my wife), I have not fired any (except at targets and gun range locally) recently and they are just here in case of naughtiness from externals.
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There is no problem so great that it cannot be fixed by small explosives carefully placed. Wash this space! We fight for the Lady Babylon!!! |
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#215 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 10,581
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Audiophile/biker/sceptic |
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#216 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 11,214
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Actually any intruder would have to kick down my door and find themselves blinded by a flood light as I point a riot gun at their neck from behind my bed, offering as small a target as possible. And the police will be on their way (like I said before, I've thought this out). But I'm in a somewhat unique situation where I will likely be unable to leave based on physical impairment and the actual layout of the house.
All the same, I wouldn't fault someone who doesn't leave - because at that point if you can't be secure in your own house where else can you be secure? |
__________________
"There's vastly more truth to be found in rocks than in holy books. Rocks are far superior, in fact, because you can DEMONSTRATE the truth found in rocks. Plus, they're pretty. Holy books are just heavy." - Dinwar "Let your ears hear this beautiful song that's hiding underneath the sound," Ed Kowalczyk. |
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#217 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 10,581
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My plan is not to be anywhere where I need a plan.
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Audiophile/biker/sceptic |
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#218 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 11,214
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__________________
"There's vastly more truth to be found in rocks than in holy books. Rocks are far superior, in fact, because you can DEMONSTRATE the truth found in rocks. Plus, they're pretty. Holy books are just heavy." - Dinwar "Let your ears hear this beautiful song that's hiding underneath the sound," Ed Kowalczyk. |
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#219 |
Uncritical "thinker"
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: UK
Posts: 17,199
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There is other evidence - this concerns the change in the suicide rate in the UK during the period when moving the gas supply from toxic "Town Gas" to non toxic natural gas
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00022-0018.pdf I won't copy as this is a 1976 paper, and not sufficiently well scanned for text browsers, although perfectly legible.. On Page 88 (it starts at page 86, don't worry) there is are two key graphs. In the UK, the main form of suicide used to be using the gas oven which was "town gas " and rich in Carbon monoxide. On the change from that to natural gas, this suicide rate fell for males, but other rates remained roughly the same so the overall suicide rate fell sharply. With Females the rate also fell sharply as this method became unavailable, but there was some compensation with other methods rising. Looks as if removing easy access to methods of suicide reduce suicide rates. |
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OECD healthcare spending Expenditure on healthcare http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm link is 2015 data (2013 Data below): UK 8.5% of GDP of which 83.3% is public expenditure - 7.1% of GDP is public spending US 16.4% of GDP of which 48.2% is public expenditure - 7.9% of GDP is public spending |
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#220 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 2,154
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We could just remove all people's rights to do anything which could lead to dangerous behavior the moment they first show they cannot control their temper.
Regardless of extremes this is an epic concept for the worlds biggest slippery slope slide. I believe outside of tightly defined objective standards no one should have the ability to preemptively remove another persons rights, no less permanently. Anything else sends you down the slip n slide of making government everyone's parent, no one grows up, permanent children who need to be watched all day for any signs of trouble. No thanks. I would rather accept the reality that people can be unpredictable at times and focus on the big stuff and leave these niche cases to the exceptions and not try to make a rule for everything restricting all possible freedom in order to marginally increase my perceived safety. The REAL problem is that as individuals we have lost our personal responsibility. No one is responsible for your safety but you. I am not responsible for your lack of safety even if my guns are stolen and they are used to kill you. YOU are responsible for preventing your own death, for protecting your family, for protecting your wealth and happiness. I am not responsible for protecting any of those things for anyone else. My principles are such that if some person was slaughtering helpless people I would feel compelled to get involved and stop it, but that is not the same as being responsible to stop it, no more than being responsible to prevent someone from killing you or anyone else no matter what the circumstance regarding the perpetrators decisions to use a given weapon or not. Trying to blame everyone in the world for your own lack of responsibility is the hallmark of all such protectionist legislation. |
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"Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefullness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another."-Epicurus Freedom of Speech is a right recognized in the First Amendment. Freedom from consequence is nowhere to be found. -Bstrong |
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#221 |
Becoming Beth
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Central Vale of Humility
Posts: 20,927
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I think that should read "effective methods". An awful lot of suicide attempts fail because the method chosen is not sufficiently lethal or speedy. (Didn't some celeb's daughter recently try to suicide with some homeopathic cold remedy?)
Guns generally (Yes, I know. Not always.) work pretty well. If nobody is around to stop it, the old 'head in the oven' trick could be pretty effective as well. Both have the advantage of little or no expectation of extended suffering. Potential suicides who are not firmly committed to their course of action can be deterred by such things when access to a quick and largely painless solution is easily available. Overdoses frequently fail because the people don't understand what is lethal, and what is not. I suspect that the ratio of successful to attempted suicides is much higher when a firearm is the method employed. |
__________________
"It never does just what I want, but only what I tell it." ![]() *********************************************** "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." - Saul Bellow |
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#222 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 1,468
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This reads like pure fantasy.
Quote:
Well what if the intruders were bulletproof? For anyone who is able to leave their property during a home invasion leaving the best course of action is to leave the property. It's by far the safest course of action.
Quote:
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#223 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 2,154
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Quote:
Pre means before. Its not before, it is not a contingent factor. A militia is not a centrally organized group of armed men, it is the people themselves, armed to protect individual liberty by coming together as a community. It does explain its need, to prevent tyranny, but it is not exclusive, it is not restrictive, it is explanatory. |
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"Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefullness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another."-Epicurus Freedom of Speech is a right recognized in the First Amendment. Freedom from consequence is nowhere to be found. -Bstrong |
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#224 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6,387
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And if you're a truck driver, and you fail to maintain your brakes, lose control, and hit me, I suppose (a) it wasn't your fault, because the car was out of control at the time, or maybe (b) it's my fault for not getting out of the way?
If you're an electrician, and you miswire my house so there's 120V on the handrails, am I responsible for choosing to touch them? Nice try at the libertarian slippery-slope rant, but here in the real (crowded, multiply-intersecting) world we use lots and lots of layers of laws to keep things running well. Lots of those laws constrain some people to protect other people. Lots of those laws try to balance the costs and benefits of these constraints, and this has been true for hundreds of years without resulting in the end of "personal responsibility". Gun laws have done and will continue to do the same. 100+ years of this sort of practical, goal-oriented, not-written-by-armchair-philosophers regulation have not invoked the bizarre slippery slope you mention. 30,000 deaths per year. Big number. Worth trying to stop before it happens. |
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#225 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 4,177
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#226 |
Suspended
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Patriot Nation
Posts: 21,645
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#227 |
Cythraul Enfys
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 57,068
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__________________
There is no problem so great that it cannot be fixed by small explosives carefully placed. Wash this space! We fight for the Lady Babylon!!! |
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#228 |
Cythraul Enfys
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 57,068
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__________________
There is no problem so great that it cannot be fixed by small explosives carefully placed. Wash this space! We fight for the Lady Babylon!!! |
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#229 |
Cythraul Enfys
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 57,068
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__________________
There is no problem so great that it cannot be fixed by small explosives carefully placed. Wash this space! We fight for the Lady Babylon!!! |
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#230 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 1,906
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So you are readily admitting that irresponsible people have ready access to deadly weapons, yet you're in favor of continuing said policy (assumption, based on your postst)
and back the NRA which has opposed studies on gun related violence for decades and continues to activily fight ANY regulation that would better determine competency of said folks. Wonder what the limit is on "single rouge" before loonies accept that it actually represents the norm? |
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#231 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 13,961
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#232 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 13,961
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Me personally, I keep one tucked in between the mattress and the bed frame, in a specially made holster. (at night of course, not during the day. During the day, it's stored in the safe linked later.)
If someone kicks in my front door, I've got my gun read in about as much time as it takes me to wake, (which isn't much, I'm a light sleeper) and grab it. (less than about 5 seconds? Maybe? Also, if you keep a gun for self defense, keeping it locked and the ammo separately also locked, it's no longer a self defense weapon IMO. But, I won't go so far as to say that everyone should keep a gun like I do. People with small children should use a quick open lock box. Like this one. http://www.hayneedle.com/product/gun...tbiometric.cfm |
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#233 |
Skepticifimisticalationist
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Gulf Coast
Posts: 21,780
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"¿WHAT KIND OF BIRD? ¿A PARANORMAL BIRD?" --- Carlos S., 2002 |
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#234 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 13,961
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False equivalence LF.
Both of those situations are caused directly by someone's actions. If someone breaks into my secured home and takes my gun and shoots the neighbor, I am in NO way responsible because they were secured in my HOME. Someplace that the bad guy shouldn't have been to begin with. Plain and simple. Now, if I left the item out in public, or within easy access of someone, and something happens, then I am partially responsible. What you're trying to say is that if someone steals my car and wrecks it, killing a guy on a bike, then I am responsible. Which, of course, is not supported by logic, or any law that I am aware of. Unless you can point me to such a law (here in the US of course, since we're talking of US gun control) your comparison is of course, wrong. |
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#235 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 13,961
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1- It's not under my pillow and
2- Florida. Did I suggest everyone do as I do? No. Is it advisable? Sometimes not. A quick open safe, such as this http://www.hayneedle.com/product/gun...tbiometric.cfm is a good option for a SD weapon. |
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#236 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6,387
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Ah, so you're in the "prevent tyranny" camp. Let me say this: if the 34% of Americans who own guns got together and decided to take over, the other 66% (including me) would say that gunners were imposing tyranny, not preventing it.
The handful of "militiamen" taking over northern Mali are not, for example, "preventing tyranny". They probably think they are, just like the Even as an explanation, it illustrates what the Founding Fathers were thinking of. They were thinking of the Minutemen. They were thinking of the Green Mountain Boys. They were not thinking about Nancy Lanza or George Zimmerman or FPSRussia or Whatsizname From Aurora. Their next sentence, "shall not be infringed", which they thought was specifying some detail of national defense, accidentally gave these people an incredibly stupid, useless, and costly "right". But it's not a necessary right, it's not a democracy-preserving right, it's not a tyranny-preventing right, it's not a natural God-given right, it's just a stupid 1776-specific sentence in an otherwise-mostly-timeless document. |
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#237 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 13,961
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Ben,
Have you read "The Federalist" papers? Perhaps you should. It helps explain what their intention was. I'll give you a hint: you won't like it, because it goes against what you want to believe. |
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#238 |
Orthogonal Vector
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 42,156
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Re: Another Responsible Gun Owner Stands His Ground
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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#239 |
Banned
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 13,961
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Huh? I'm not sure I follow ponderingturtle. Can you elaborate as to what you mean?
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#240 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 4,116
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100% Cannuck! |
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