Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

Changes definately need to be made, and this incident im sure will move us closer to preventing this kind of thing.

I do think public safety should supercede a persons privacy rights, but only supercede them enough to inform family and health professionals when someone is exhibiting such behaviors. Its rediculous a Institution should have to worry about lawsuits in a situation like this, when peoples safety is concerned. This guy was clearly a cause for concern.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

-There is no "Free Buffet" in a lot of states that have nearly sensible gun control laws. Virginia's very liberal laws (easy to get, easy to carry) are not representative. People need to learn that there is a middle ground between parking a gun-filled trailer on the street and yelling "COME 'N GET 'EM" and banning them or doing DNA fingerprinting on them.

-GUN CONTROL DOES NOT MEAN BANNING GUNS. Gun control means a reasonable (important word there for you absolutists) policy on who gets what kind of guns. I'll say it again: not everyone should have a gun. It's not a question of "who needs a gun", but "who is fit to have a gun." I don't care if it's a .22 pistol or a heavy machine gun. We do this with cars, planes, medical licenses, why not with guns?

-I drive an Audi TT. I use it to get to work. It's not a completely sensible car, but it does the trick, is easy to park, doesn't use a ton of gas, lets me move stuff, and is FUN. I own guns because I enjoy shooting them AND because I believe that they help safe-guard my essential liberties against thieves, tyrants and other evil-doers. To use another example, I also own a hammer; I like fixing things with it but I know that some day I will have to work on a toilet.

I don't see any need to justify my choice of car to anyone, but if some of my green friends had their way, I'd earn a living weaving eco-friendly baskets in my back yard, not polluting at all on my way to work. Fun is not a bad thing, and does not have to be explained or excused. If you have a problem with my way of having fun, if that way of having fun does not hurt you or others in any way (I have yet to see an argument how my gun ownership and target shooting hurts anyone) then, too bad.

I don't exactly realize the issue with "having fun" with a gun. I also don't see why I am being pushed into a corner to justify this. I go to a shooting range, I lock the guns up when at home, etc. I also enjoy Kendo and Iaido, and occasionally, bow and arrow shooting. My dad also enjoys gardening, which uses fertilizer. Pointless, but fun. I don't go out stabbing or shooting people on the street. Just because some asshat does, or because some asshat runs over people with a car in a psychotic episode, or builds a fertilizer bomb that kills 100 people doesn't mean you should ban swords, bows, fertilizer or cars. It means you should deal with psychotic asshats better.

And as stylie says, an armed citizenry might (probably would) lose against a determined, armed and oppressive government, but they'd make it a much greater investment for a government to get to that point anyway, if they know that out of n trained, armored thugs, n-x wouldn't walk out. Note that, after Ruby Ridge and Waco, the ATF became a whole lot more careful about deciding to throw their weight around. Furthermore, if I ever ended up under a fascist or communist dictatorship determined to wipe me out for some reason, it'd be my particular kind of vanity to be remembered in history like the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 rather than the citizens of Phnom Penh in 1975.

Tas, nice straw man (seems to be a favored tactic these days) about the "barren land." It appears to me that you think anyone who believes that it is possible for even the most stable civil society to degenerate into tyranny if not sufficiently watched is a paranoid lunatic who deserves to be locked up. That's not a solid foundation to have a debate on gun control.

Oh and Tas, no, the majority does not always know what is best. That is why the US (and most countries) have a constitution, a basic outline of rights, and separation of powers. These serve exactly to keep the majority from doing the frequently stupid things it tends to do, like electing nasty little men with mustaches to office without reading their book first.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

You my beloved gringos must be kidding us.

You live in one of the longest and best democracies of world, with tons of fantastic systems to avoid and control the abuses of power (even if in the last times the bloody neocons are trying to limit that with all the War on Terror bullshit) and you still use this crazy argument you need guns to avoid a "future" tyrany of your gobernment.

I think this is a joke, a fancy excuse to keep your toys don't caring about the consecuencies of these toys in the wrong hands...and there will be always wrong hands, no matter the thousand systems you invent. Today I was speaking with a friend about this issue and he told me he heard in the radio about a stadistic about teenagers killed by firearms by country and year, I don't know if the stadistic was acurate or what: Japon 0 (total ban of weapons), USA 5000 aprox...now please, don't talk about the Yakuza killings and finger cuttings, I beg, it's apples and oranges.

Whatever, on a side note Fuzzy, I am very fan of America with all its incomprehensible contradictions, and my favourite photographer of all times is a swiss, Robert Frank and his way to see America with his curious eyes. And the next ones, maybe Lee Friedlander and William Klein, America also as main theme

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

Of those 5000 an extremely small precentage is from whackos, the rest are gang related or accidental.

Edit: There's no question that some areas are behind in their gun laws compared to others, but it constantly improving. And i do agree that proper gun handling guidelines need to be inforced better. And more responsibility for gun storage. I just dont think an outright ban is necassary. Theres still room for proper, legal, gun ownership.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

And?

1: gangs get weapons easily, they use them. Accidental, more weapons more accidents

2. Japon 0

In Europe guns are not totally banned, but they are not so easy to get, and some kind of weapons are banned because those weapons have absolutely no legitime use in the hands of a civilian

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

Gangs mostly get weapons from the black market, from mexico, canada, where ever.

No ones argueing that illegal gun trafficing needs to be cracked down on.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

I am always amazed when, otherwise completely rational Americans, tote out that, "we need guns to preserve our democracy" argument. Fuzzy, I am saddened to see that you too seem to somewhat subscribe to it.

I know it probably useless to point this out but:

1) No other democracy in the world has needed to arm its citizens to protect it from tyranny.
2) You have one of the best systems of checks and balances in the world to prevent tyranny.
3) There are nations, in East Africa for example, with high gun-citizen ratios and it has not protected them from dictatorship.

Democracy is preserved by the will of the citizens to see it survive, not by the threat of armed insurection.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

Tsk, tsk. Such condescenscion. Some of our Euro brethren have unfortunately taken quite a patronizing stance in their lectures to their dullard American cousins about guns and violence. Before they mount that high horse once again, they might do well to consider the following by the eminent James Q. Wilson:

AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.

Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident ata German public school;14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland,and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.

Sound familiar? And for our Aussie lecturers let's not forget the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, in which 35 persons were gunned down. (Leave it to good ol' Prime Minister John Howard to try to blame even that on the US.)

From the lectures we've received one would think that the answer to murder and violent crime is a simple firearms ban, or at least strict gun control. Isn't it? But it seems that in places where firearms are not just strictly controlled, but banned entirely, deadly violece still occurs regularly. How do we account for gun murders (mayor of Nagasaki shot to death this week), or the risning rate of murder by knife in Scotland? (I'm particulalry fond of the deadly danger presented by those jackknives in Scotland, "where authorities are enacting knifecontrol laws because violent crime has continued to climb (with knives as a weapon of choice) in the wake of the nation's gun bans." Wait, I thought the violence was supposed to stop once the guns were locked up and in prison..???

Perhaps one of the reasons Europeans have a difficult time understanding American reluctance to ban firearms (hell, firearms are in our Constituion, guys), is due to the fact that central to the governments of almost all Western Europe is a high degree of direct governmental control and/or involvement (not just taxes and laws, but even names of children fer chrissakes) in their citizens' daily lives ...such a high degree that it would shock most Americans were they to actually live under such systems. Yes, the US is apparently hellbent for leather to catch up with Europe in having a nanny instead of a representative government, but the tradition is still "don't tread on me" throughout the vast majority of the country. We're just not as used to asking, "Mother, may I?" as our more civilized cousins.

Besides, once any country in Europe gets a population which is as heterogenous as that of the US, and then mixes as 10% of its population the descendants of an incompletely assimilated former slave class....then its citizens can come preach to us about how to handle social tensions. Oh, wait...you've got Muslims from all over the East moving in to your countries and establishing entire populations; you'll have plenty of opportunity in the next generation to experiecne it yourself. The only difference is that population trends show that what are today the hereditary inhabitants of (and the majority in) Europe, will be the minority within fifty years. So let us know how that turns out for you. I'm sure you'll be completely safe even though the only thing you'll have to defend yourself or your family is a tree limb. Good luck with that.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

let's see if i'm right :

Freedom of speech :
- in usa you have the freedom of speech, you have the right to be racist, anti-semist, islamophob , preaching hatred etc ... but on the other side if you have some good feeling with alquaida or you are suspected to be a terrorist, you won't have the same treatment in front of law.

Privacy:
- not talking about patriot act or other law some US industry want to apply to the world (like the non-reproduction) , my main trouble is quite simple :
marijuana :
in usa you haven't got the right to smoke marijuana , or even plant marijuana for your own ... isn't supposed to be a violation of privacy ?
For drugs like heroin or cocaine i can understand why they ban - because they finance illegal activity - but they coud also be count as being you privacy if you only bought them ...

- about porn, until 2003 the supreme court doesn't tolerate the sodomie ( anal penetration) even in a woman-man relation ...

- the lack of laicity in the american institution : religion is supposed to be part of your privacy , so you can't be judge because of your religion , right ?
What's going to happen when a muslim(or an other religion or a laic) is going to be president , you're all going to turn the writting into "allah bless usa" and the president is going to do his serment on the coran ?
I mean normaly because of the human right and the privacy law, you can't force someone to recognize something...



human right:
- let's return to the guns law:
you are allow to have a weapons which has been created and is used to kill an other people.
This mean that you decide who must live and who doesn't.
If you own a weapons for your protection/defense, since you are in a democraty and so you're supposed to be respectfull of human right , you would buy rather a non-lethal weapons which doesn't endangered the life of everyone else.
If the weapons is considered as an antiquity, since you are in a democraty and take care about human right, you wouldn't be worried to registred the weapons and get a licence via a shooting club ...


Of course they are some more points but it's enough and those can also be applied to the other "liberal" state.

Re: Thoughts on Virgina Tech
 

freedom of speech:
-We''ll, yes, it are some faults in the fact that you can be racist, anti-preacher, preacher, islamic-hater, so on. But then again thats the great thing about the system. If you have something to say, you can say it. But if it is going against another religion or something, everyone is also created equal. SO though you can say all you want, its not like you can still say it. Ex. I'm sure if you are walking down the street yelling you hate black people and say there reason of all problems, everyones also equal, so you can still get cracked down on. Sometimes it varies, where the freedon of speech gets out of hand or people use the equality thing to their advantage.

privacy:
-Our system allows us privacy true, in fact, we highly respect that. The cops can't bust a house reported to have marijuana in it. There are other laws in the factor, such as they need to lay a case, investatgate, get evidence, search warrant, and then the person may even be able to get out of it in a court case, which does happen. But, especially with drugs, it balnces out. They have the right to privacy, but there are also laws that need to be made against stuff like that to balance the system. I mean, we know these drugs can cause deaths or be the reaason for death, like dirving high and causing a accident. So privacy does need a balance.
-for the anal penetration, thats when religion or someones own ethics get thrown in. When politicians start think about their religion and stuff, they go to far. Thats why that law was passed in 2003, cuz think about it. Lot more tolerance than like im sure the chirstian, jewish, ethic government officials who made the system and that law were.
- for the Islim thing, it happens, it happens. Its aloud to happen, our system, we deal with it.(and i dont think majority would aqllow it becuz they wouldnt want him, cuz they profile, as theyre aloud)

What weapons nonlethal again?