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US Says Canada Cares too Much About Freedom, Liberty
- Thread starter Phaedrus
- Start date
No barred windows here.
No triple dead bolt -- in fact I sometimes forget to lock the door at all.
My cable bill is $ 39.99 a month; I seldom watch the tube though. I quite frequently go out, being an avid watcher of both movies and plays, and enjoy art shows and casinos as well (although I have to leave town to do so due to my somewhat rural living. )
I seldom eat pizza and never have it delivered, but not due to any fear of the pizza boy -- there are only three pizza places here, one of which delivers and whose pies taste exactly as I would imagine cow patties would.
I often enjoy the colours and overall ambience of the leaves turning in autumn, but I must admit that I am more fond of the spring time. In a similar vein I prefer sunrises to sunsets; a tie-in to the sense of awakening. I find it invigorating.
Trying desperately to find your point Grantt.
Phaedrus
No triple dead bolt -- in fact I sometimes forget to lock the door at all.
My cable bill is $ 39.99 a month; I seldom watch the tube though. I quite frequently go out, being an avid watcher of both movies and plays, and enjoy art shows and casinos as well (although I have to leave town to do so due to my somewhat rural living. )
I seldom eat pizza and never have it delivered, but not due to any fear of the pizza boy -- there are only three pizza places here, one of which delivers and whose pies taste exactly as I would imagine cow patties would.
I often enjoy the colours and overall ambience of the leaves turning in autumn, but I must admit that I am more fond of the spring time. In a similar vein I prefer sunrises to sunsets; a tie-in to the sense of awakening. I find it invigorating.
Trying desperately to find your point Grantt.
Phaedrus
That last phrase alludes to a danger that by any rational calculation deserves top billing on Americans’ lists of fears. So gun crazed is this nation that Burger King had to order a Baltimore franchise to stop giving away coupons from a local sporting goods store for free boxes of bullets with the purchase of guns. We have more guns stolen from their owners-about 300,000 annually-than many countries have gun owners. In Great Britain, Australia, and Japan, where gun ownership is severely restricted, no more than a few dozen people are killed each year by handguns. In the United States, where private citizens own a quarter-billion guns, around 15,000 people are killed, 18,000 commit suicide, and another 1,500 die accidentally from firearms. American children are twelve times more liked to die from gun injuries than are youngsters in other industrialized nations.
Yet even after tragedies that could not have occurred except for the availability of guns, their significance is either played down or missed altogether. Had the youngsters in the celebrated schoolyard shootings of 1997–98 not had access to guns, some or all of the people they killed would be alive today. Without their firepower those boys lacked the strength, courage, and skill to commit multiple murders. Nevertheless newspapers ran editorials with titles such as "It’s Not Guns, It’s Killer Kids" (Fort Worth Star–Telegram) and "Guns Aren’t the Problem" (New York Post), and journalists, politicians, and pundits blathered on endlessly about every imaginable cause of youthful rage, from "the psychology of violence in the South" to satanism to fights on "Jerry Springer" and simulated shooting in Nintendo games
In America, we live in a culture of fear. Fear of violence. Fear of disease. Fear of war. Fear of the weather. Fear of our neighbors. Fear of the unknown. Television news drives a lot of this fear. Most people believe what they see on TV. Television, a such a pervasive medium in American society, has impact on fashion and lifestyle. It also has impact on attitude and knowledge. If it's on TV, it's got to be true!
Yet even after tragedies that could not have occurred except for the availability of guns, their significance is either played down or missed altogether. Had the youngsters in the celebrated schoolyard shootings of 1997–98 not had access to guns, some or all of the people they killed would be alive today. Without their firepower those boys lacked the strength, courage, and skill to commit multiple murders. Nevertheless newspapers ran editorials with titles such as "It’s Not Guns, It’s Killer Kids" (Fort Worth Star–Telegram) and "Guns Aren’t the Problem" (New York Post), and journalists, politicians, and pundits blathered on endlessly about every imaginable cause of youthful rage, from "the psychology of violence in the South" to satanism to fights on "Jerry Springer" and simulated shooting in Nintendo games
In America, we live in a culture of fear. Fear of violence. Fear of disease. Fear of war. Fear of the weather. Fear of our neighbors. Fear of the unknown. Television news drives a lot of this fear. Most people believe what they see on TV. Television, a such a pervasive medium in American society, has impact on fashion and lifestyle. It also has impact on attitude and knowledge. If it's on TV, it's got to be true!
Grantt, it sounds like you live in this irrational cult of fear ... er, <culture> of fear.
Why is it so very hard for you to understand: guns exist. Guns ... exist. They ... are. They are tangible things. Three dimensions, mass, etc.
What they are not, is sentient. No gun has ever killed anyone, shitwit.
You are apalled by gun violence in America; I can understand being apalled at some of the tragic and often shocking acts which p-e-o-p-l-e who coincidentally have guns carry out. But your advocacy of gun control, or complete outlawing of guns, does not solve the problem. Most[/] (mind you, not all) gun violence is carried out by violent criminals. That's criminals ... who are violent ... they don't get the sort of press that a ten-year-old who blows his sister's brains out with his grandfather's rifle, because violent criminals are old news. But it is .. criminals ... who are violent ... and possess guns ... who commit most of the gun violence in this country.
You surely seem to be lacking in objective view-formation for a person who criticises others for being weaned on the glass teat that is American television, Grantt.
Regarding your statistics (for which you do not cite source) has it occurred to you that the numbers are meaningless if you do not figure them in the context of saturation? It's one thing to say Americans have 300,000 guns stolen per year; but in the same breath you say we own 250,000,000 guns. That amounts to 0.12 % .. not "twelve per cent" but "twelve per cent of one per cent" ... it really does not seem like a particularly staggering number of stolen guns, but given the seriousness of the issue I will sleep better knowing that there are 249,700,00 other guns out there being taken better care of than those 300k, some of which might well be responsible for blowing a potato-sized exit wound in the body of a gun thief about to shoot some innocent bystander.
But back to my core argument: in countries where guns are prohibited ... guns still exist. They just exist in the hands of violent criminals only, plus the occasional brave soul who defies the magistrate and carries for the defence of himself and his family. There is no such thing as "gun control" in the sense that you and other advocates of this perverse legal concept pursue ... all you can hope to accomplish is the control of those who comply ... that's called sheep herding, and you and your ilk are welcome to it.
One last thing: every time I cite some rational, verifiable information which seems to suport my argument for private gun ownership (as in the case in NY posted yesterday, or the discrepancies between crime rates in areas with strict gun control vs. lenient gun control the last time you went gun control happy) you seem to develop a blind spot. If you need the number of a good optometrist, Grantt, let me know.
Hey, since you sometimes seem intelligent enough to see a humourous point, isn't it almost laughably ironic that we argue even in a thread which started out with a post on which we are apparently in agreement?
Phaedrus
Why is it so very hard for you to understand: guns exist. Guns ... exist. They ... are. They are tangible things. Three dimensions, mass, etc.
What they are not, is sentient. No gun has ever killed anyone, shitwit.
You are apalled by gun violence in America; I can understand being apalled at some of the tragic and often shocking acts which p-e-o-p-l-e who coincidentally have guns carry out. But your advocacy of gun control, or complete outlawing of guns, does not solve the problem. Most[/] (mind you, not all) gun violence is carried out by violent criminals. That's criminals ... who are violent ... they don't get the sort of press that a ten-year-old who blows his sister's brains out with his grandfather's rifle, because violent criminals are old news. But it is .. criminals ... who are violent ... and possess guns ... who commit most of the gun violence in this country.
You surely seem to be lacking in objective view-formation for a person who criticises others for being weaned on the glass teat that is American television, Grantt.
Regarding your statistics (for which you do not cite source) has it occurred to you that the numbers are meaningless if you do not figure them in the context of saturation? It's one thing to say Americans have 300,000 guns stolen per year; but in the same breath you say we own 250,000,000 guns. That amounts to 0.12 % .. not "twelve per cent" but "twelve per cent of one per cent" ... it really does not seem like a particularly staggering number of stolen guns, but given the seriousness of the issue I will sleep better knowing that there are 249,700,00 other guns out there being taken better care of than those 300k, some of which might well be responsible for blowing a potato-sized exit wound in the body of a gun thief about to shoot some innocent bystander.
But back to my core argument: in countries where guns are prohibited ... guns still exist. They just exist in the hands of violent criminals only, plus the occasional brave soul who defies the magistrate and carries for the defence of himself and his family. There is no such thing as "gun control" in the sense that you and other advocates of this perverse legal concept pursue ... all you can hope to accomplish is the control of those who comply ... that's called sheep herding, and you and your ilk are welcome to it.
One last thing: every time I cite some rational, verifiable information which seems to suport my argument for private gun ownership (as in the case in NY posted yesterday, or the discrepancies between crime rates in areas with strict gun control vs. lenient gun control the last time you went gun control happy) you seem to develop a blind spot. If you need the number of a good optometrist, Grantt, let me know.
Hey, since you sometimes seem intelligent enough to see a humourous point, isn't it almost laughably ironic that we argue even in a thread which started out with a post on which we are apparently in agreement?
Phaedrus
Honestly Grantt, I'm not 100% if that statistic is correct or not, but because I have not researched it I won't argue it. Take it as correct on your assertion for now.
And it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Not being a political bandwagoneer, I am capable of considering numbers in their context, rather than rattling off the ones convenient to my point.
I would imaging (again, I would need to back this up with some research) that the US has one of the highest per-capita gun ownership rates in the world. Considering this, plus our fairly large population of more than 280 million persons, it comes as no suprise to me at all that we would lead the world in death by firearm, whether in actual number or as expressed on a per capita basis.
Put in another light, the fact that New York City leads the world in buildings knocked over with commercial airplanes does not make me think any less of the place. It's just another statistic, factual on it's face, irrelevant outside of forced application by someone trying to prove a point without having to come up with an argument with merit.
Phaedrus
And it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Not being a political bandwagoneer, I am capable of considering numbers in their context, rather than rattling off the ones convenient to my point.
I would imaging (again, I would need to back this up with some research) that the US has one of the highest per-capita gun ownership rates in the world. Considering this, plus our fairly large population of more than 280 million persons, it comes as no suprise to me at all that we would lead the world in death by firearm, whether in actual number or as expressed on a per capita basis.
Put in another light, the fact that New York City leads the world in buildings knocked over with commercial airplanes does not make me think any less of the place. It's just another statistic, factual on it's face, irrelevant outside of forced application by someone trying to prove a point without having to come up with an argument with merit.
Phaedrus
