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Using a rocket launcher as home defense? Little on the deep end are we?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Then by all means try and do that. You will fail of course.

I asked you what you will accept as proof. And you just say I will fail. Which I think if anything just shows how pointless it is to try and reason with you.

And I think it odd that you don't think that self-preservation to be a basic human right.

No one said that.

 Smacks wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Can you prove that having a gun in the home makes the person less safe from their spouse than it does to protect them from a burglar?

Haha, I believe I could put it beyond reasonable doubt, to a reasonable person. What exactly would you accept as proof?

And can you prove that it is significant enough to make infringing on a basic human right worthwhile?

Weapon ownership is not a basic human right, It's not a right in any developed country apart from yours. I can't think of any internationally recognised bill of human rights that includes the right to own guns. Pretty much the only place it appears is in the American constitution.

Getting drunk isn't a basic human right, yet despite that doing so results in 3 times more the number of people dead than in gun related incidents(8 times the number if you discount suicides), most of the same people who use alcohol yet call for the abolition of gun ownership would fight tooth and nail against alcohol being abolished.

Relapse wrote:
Getting drunk isn't a basic human right, yet despite that doing so results in 3 times more the number of people dead than in gun related incidents(8 times the number if you discount suicides), most of the same people who use alcohol yet call for the abolition of gun ownership would fight tooth and nail against alcohol being abolished.

Here we go with whataboutism again. At least people who drink alcohol are willing to admit that they just enjoy getting drunk and having fun. They don't feel the need conceal it behind "I get drunk in case I need to fight a burglar".

Also the vast majority of alcohol related deaths are self inflicted. If gun-rights people only wanted guns to shoot themselves, than I doubt so many people would take issue with them. The problem is that people with guns like to shoot other people (whether those people are pro-gun or not) which takes a lot of the "personal choice" out of it.

 Smacks wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Then by all means try and do that. You will fail of course.

I asked you what you will accept as proof. And you just say I will fail. Which I think if anything just shows how pointless it is to try and reason with you.

And I think it odd that you don't think that self-preservation to be a basic human right.

No one said that.

Weapons are merely tools to serve that end.

No they aren't. For centuries weapons have been used to intimidate, control and kill people. They are implicit in all manner of crimes, wars and atrocities. Even in America it's impossible to argue that the proliferation of firearms has made society better, when you also factor in illegal weapons. The only reason they're even considered an option in America is because firearms are already so insanely out of control there. To connect them with basic human right like free speech and a fair trial is obscene. Any developed society would want free speech, no one wants America's gun problem, not even America.

1) I can't say what I will accept. Thats not how you make a case. You make what you can. I was simply stating the obvious since all the reputable data will stack against your case. But please, do show what you have.

2) You just admitted that weapons are used by people. Therefore how they are used is what matters. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Weapons are not villains like you, and all the anti-gun nuts, try to portray them as.

As for America, I can confidently say that we wouldn't exist without them. America was made free, and is kept free, by weapons.

Sure, they have been used throughout history to cause pain and suffering. But they also end pain and suffering.

WW1, WW2, the Civil War, etc... All ended by weapons in the hands of people willing to stop evil atrocities. They couldn't have done that with flowers and kind words.


There will always be evil people. And they will always find a way to be armed. If good people are not armed, they will simply be forced to kneel. The only way to prevent this is if people can defend themselves.

People have a right to defend themselves. Thus they have a right to the tools necessary to accomplish that task.

 Smacks wrote:

Relapse wrote:
Getting drunk isn't a basic human right, yet despite that doing so results in 3 times more the number of people dead than in gun related incidents(8 times the number if you discount suicides), most of the same people who use alcohol yet call for the abolition of gun ownership would fight tooth and nail against alcohol being abolished.

Here we go with whataboutism again. At least people who drink alcohol are willing to admit that they just enjoy getting drunk and having fun. They don't feel the need conceal it behind "I get drunk in case I need to fight a burglar".

Also the vast majority of alcohol related deaths are self inflicted. If gun-rights people only wanted guns to shoot themselves, than I doubt so many people would take issue with them. The problem is that people with guns like to shoot other people (whether those people are pro-gun or not) which takes a lot of the "personal choice" out of it.

I beg to differ that last part

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Can you prove that having a gun in the home makes the person less safe from their spouse than it does to protect them from a burglar?

And can you prove that it is significant enough to make infringing on a basic human right worthwhile?

Can you prove that having a rocket launcher in the home makes the person less safe from their spouse than it does to protect them from a burglar?

And can you prove that it is significant enough to make infringing on a basic human right worthwhile?

Who has a rocket launcher in their home again?

 Smacks wrote:
The problem is that people with guns like to shoot other people

Wow.

Any shred of a point it might have had about anything in this thread so far is destroyed by that amazingly wrong statement.

edited for rudeness, motyak

 Smacks wrote:
No they aren't. For centuries weapons have been used to intimidate, control and kill people. They are implicit in all manner of crimes, wars and atrocities. Even in America it's impossible to argue that the proliferation of firearms has made society better, when you also factor in illegal weapons. The only reason they're even considered an option in America is because firearms are already so insanely out of control there. To connect them with basic human right like free speech and a fair trial is obscene. Any developed society would want free speech, no one wants America's gun problem, not even America.

You realize that America is just about the least violent it's ever been, right? And that even the most conservative estimates place the number of legally justifiable uses of firearms for self defense at significantly higher than the number of people murdered or wounded with firearms? And that several of the nations with the lowest violent crime rates in the world have extremely high gun ownership rates*? Or that the ability to wage war on the scale of WW1 and 2 has effectively stopped warfare between modern western industrialized nations, though there are a lot of nonindustrialized or nonwestern nations that haven't figured out that killing each other simply isn't worth it? The numbers simply don't match your political message.

*keep in mind, I'm not saying gun ownership prevents crime. It simply has nothing to do with it, one way or another.

 Grey Templar wrote:
1) I can't say what I will accept. Thats not how you make a case. You make what you can. I was simply stating the obvious since all the reputable data will stack against your case. But please, do show what you have.

You won't accept anything, because finding the truth is not your objective. You objective is to keep your guns, which is why your arguments will always be dishonest. You talk about reputable data, but then you try to pass off millions of burglaries as "home invasions", when actually the number of Burglary-Homicides (the kind of crime that comes to mind when you say "home invasion") is on a par with the number of deaths from spree killings (which you argued are too rare to be significant)

Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

This has been shown over and over again to be untrue. Spontaneity aside, the vary presence of weapons can provide an impetus for people use them.

There will always be evil people. And they will always find a way to be armed. If good people are not armed, they will simply be forced to kneel. The only way to prevent this is if people can defend themselves.

I think most changes for good have historically come about because of shifts in ideology, and political pressure, rather than violence. The pen is mightier than the sword etc... Most occasions I can think of where militias have taken over government, they've ended up worse than the governments they deposed.

 Alex C wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
The problem is that people with guns like to shoot other people

Any shred of a point it might have had about anything in this thread so far is destroyed by that amazingly wrong statement.

Oh, no argument would be complete with out the obligatory "pretending to be outraged" post (a conservative favourite). By "like" I meant that they have "a tendency" not that they enjoy it. So no need to get you knickers in a twist over it.

I suppose you have proof that owning a gun makes you more likely to commit murder?


https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-16/table_16_rate_by_population_group_2013.xls

in 2013 there were 13,000 murders/non negligent manslaughter across all agencies. and 681,000 cases of aggravated assault.

https://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012

This data shows that the number of people getting harmed in ASEs is incredibly small. 80 people was the highest number reported. That makes 80/13,000 murders being attributed to an ASE. 0.6% of all murders.

That is a negligibly small number.

 Hordini wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Can you prove that having a gun in the home makes the person less safe from their spouse than it does to protect them from a burglar?

And can you prove that it is significant enough to make infringing on a basic human right worthwhile?

Can you prove that having a rocket launcher in the home makes the person less safe from their spouse than it does to protect them from a burglar?

And can you prove that it is significant enough to make infringing on a basic human right worthwhile?

Who has a rocket launcher in their home again?

Apparently the people of Hyperboleville.

 DarkLink wrote:
You realize that America is just about the least violent it's ever been, right? And that even the most conservative estimates place the number of legally justifiable uses of firearms for self defense at significantly higher than the number of people murdered or wounded with firearms?

America probably is safer, but life is improving in lots of places. Some people have connected falling crime rates to abortion legislation decades ago. If gun ownership really made society safer then America should already be the safest place in the world by quite a margin, but it actually trails behind most devolved nations.

As for firearms being used in self defensive, I think that is highly debatable. Further research has unveiled that a lot of so called "self defence" stats have been inflated, and many cases would actually be better described as intimidation, and many more would also be technically illegal, not the "protecting my family" image we're lead to believe. This page has a lot of interesting data on the subject.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

 Smacks wrote:

 Alex C wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
The problem is that people with guns like to shoot other people

Any shred of a point it might have had about anything in this thread so far is destroyed by that amazingly wrong statement.

Oh, no argument would be complete with out the obligatory "pretending to be outraged" post (a conservative favourite). By "like" I meant that they have "a tendency" not that they enjoy it. So no need to get you knickers in a twist over it.

Silly me. I thought that when it said "like", it meant "like".

edited for rudeness, motyak

 Smacks wrote:

Relapse wrote:
Getting drunk isn't a basic human right, yet despite that doing so results in 3 times more the number of people dead than in gun related incidents(8 times the number if you discount suicides), most of the same people who use alcohol yet call for the abolition of gun ownership would fight tooth and nail against alcohol being abolished.

Here we go with whataboutism again. At least people who drink alcohol are willing to admit that they just enjoy getting drunk and having fun. They don't feel the need conceal it behind "I get drunk in case I need to fight a burglar".

Also the vast majority of alcohol related deaths are self inflicted. If gun-rights people only wanted guns to shoot themselves, than I doubt so many people would take issue with them. The problem is that people with guns like to shoot other people (whether those people are pro-gun or not) which takes a lot of the "personal choice" out of it.

As are the majority of gun related deaths. 60% of gun deaths are suicides. As many or more people are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered by people with a gun. The same week the theatre shooter made his attack that resulted in the deaths of two innocent people, a drunk driver hit a limo carrying a wedding party killing four of the limo occupants. I don't recall any pictures of them being posted or news reports going into the drunk driver's history. Just a news blurb that was gone inside of two days.

 Smacks wrote:

 DarkLink wrote:
You realize that America is just about the least violent it's ever been, right? And that even the most conservative estimates place the number of legally justifiable uses of firearms for self defense at significantly higher than the number of people murdered or wounded with firearms?

America probably is safer, but life is improving in lots of places. Some people have connected falling crime rates to abortion legislation decades ago. If gun ownership really made society safer then America should already be the safest place in the world by quite a margin, but it actually trails behind most devolved nations.

As for firearms being used in self defensive, I think that is highly debatable. Further research has unveiled that a lot of so called "self defence" stats have been inflated, and many cases would actually be better described as intimidation, and many more would also be technically illegal, not the "protecting my family" image we're lead to believe. This page has a lot of interesting data on the subject.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Just because there is some minor abuse of a law doesn't mean there aren't legitimate cases of self-defense.

And even then, violent crime is still going down while gun ownership is going up. That shows they are at the very least unrelated.

Again, it comes down to denying people a basic human right to self-defense.

Relapse wrote:
The same week the theatre shooter made his attack that resulted in the deaths of two innocent people, a drunk driver hit a limo carrying a wedding party killing four of the limo occupants. I don't recall any pictures of them being posted or news reports going into the drunk driver's history. Just a news blurb that was gone inside of two days.

edited for rudeness, motyak

 Alex C wrote:
That's because slow-minded leftists enjoy cars and alcohol like many of us normal people do, and don't have an interest in flinging gak over it because it might result in infringing upon things that they enjoy.

 Alex C wrote:
Perhaps when it has a better grasp of human languages it might be able to pull itself out of the gibberish it's currently speaking.

Reporting you for abuse. This is a touchy subject, but most of us are able to argue about it in a polite manner. It's people like you that spoil OT for everyone.

So do you actually have any credible evidence?

 Smacks wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
That's because slow-minded leftists enjoy cars and alcohol like many of us normal people do, and don't have an interest in flinging gak over it because it might result in infringing upon things that they enjoy.

 Alex C wrote:
Perhaps when it has a better grasp of human languages it might be able to pull itself out of the gibberish it's currently speaking.

Reporting you for abuse. This is a touchy subject, but most of us are able to argue about it in a polite manner. It's people like you that spoil OT for everyone.

LOL it thinks I give a gak.

Such is the mindset of the ultra-PC types. Anything they can't deal with, they seek to ban.

Fine, fine, I'll let you enjoy living in your land of career welfare leeches and TV licence fees, how about you STFU trying to tell us what's wrong with America?

Now, back to cuddling my AR15 (which has miraculously never shot anyone) and relishing not having to live in the UK any more.

 cincydooley wrote:
Maybe I mistook his comment, but I read it as thinly veiled effort to interject more gun control comments in this thread.

Reading his post again I see what you mean. Fair enough.

Sorry for the late reply, I completely forgot I was in this thread.

Relapse wrote:
As are the majority of gun related deaths. 60% of gun deaths are suicides. As many or more people are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered by people with a gun. The same week the theatre shooter made his attack that resulted in the deaths of two innocent people, a drunk driver hit a limo carrying a wedding party killing four of the limo occupants. I don't recall any pictures of them being posted or news reports going into the drunk driver's history. Just a news blurb that was gone inside of two days.

This is still whataboutism though. If I kill two people and someone else kills four, it doesn't get me off the hook just because they are worse.

I'm not going to defend drink driving. I don't really like cars or drinking... Well actually I do like drinking, but I don't think it's necessarily good for society. Would I ban drinking? Not right away... But then I wouldn't outright ban guns either. In Scandinavian countries they have tried to curb drinking through high tax, and it's had some success.

I think the best way to curb problem drinking is to look at the reasons why people drink irresponsibly and then tackle them. Public transport issues might be a factor in drink driving (as an example of the top of my head).

The problem with guns in America is that any kind of control is resisted by the gun-rights lobby as unconstitutional. There is a lot of middle ground between unrestricted and banned which could be described as "controlled", but it's difficult to even find a compromise if one side sees their position as a god given right.

 Smacks wrote:

The problem with guns in America is that any kind of control is resisted by the gun-rights lobby as unconstitutional.

Geee, that might be because it is.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

The problem with guns in America is that any kind of control is resisted by the gun-rights lobby as unconstitutional.

Geee, that might be because it is.

He cannot wrap his mind around the concept that you don't have to be given the ok by an authority to take steps to protect your own life.

Hence he cannot fathom that the founding fathers saw this concept as self-evident and God-given, and wrote the second amendment to protect this notion from government infringement. It doesn't GIVE people the right, it recognizes that everyone has it innately and that nothing, not even a ruling government, has authority to deprive someone of this essential liberty.

I don't care if this comment gets me a ban.

edited for rudeness, motyak

Well, this thread was productive for a few pages at least.

My closing thougths on the new points:

1) having guns around increases the risk that you will die due to a gun related injury. Arguing against that is just blind denial at this point. You are more likely to die inside a car if you get inside a car, you are more likely to get testicular cancer if you have testicles, and you are more likely to have a gun related injury if you have guns. There are lots of different arguments about what we can do about that, or if we should do something about that, or if we are willing to simply accept that as a risk we are willing to take, or whatever. But pretending that fact isn't true just shows us that we shouldn't even bother to convince those people otherwise.

2) I don't like my guns because I like killing people. I like my guns because it makes it easier to defend myself if it ever comes to that situation. Yes they make it much easier to kill someone, no I don't ever hope that I will have to. Of course I also like that they to "pew pew" and chew through paper targets, I like the physical challenge of improving my marksmanship, and I also like the mechanical aspect of taking them apart and putting them back together.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

The problem with guns in America is that any kind of control is resisted by the gun-rights lobby as unconstitutional.

Geee, that might be because it is.

Nothing is unconstitutional until 5 out of 9 people say it is

SO many Rule #1 violations in such a short span of time...

Knock it off everyone - or your ability to post here - and possibly elsewhere too - will be severely curtailed.

Thanks!

 Grey Templar wrote:
Fair enough, but really thats not improving the system. Its just making sure its working as intended.

Oh Grey Templar you do make me laugh.

But that's "you" and quite a few like us who do the same thing you do. We're responsible law abiding weapon owners who likes exercising our 2nd Amendment Right. We just get lumped into the mix.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Except this right is actually extremely important. Its the right that guarantees all the others. The fact you don't need to exercise it all that much is proof that it works. That is why it will never be obsolete and should always remain.

It is a safeguard against tyranny, and as a bonus it also protects you from criminals.

Except that other countries exist, and we maintain strong freedoms despite having strict firearm controls.

I really just have to plead with you to please just look outside the borders of your country and fething learn something about how the world works.

 Smacks wrote:

Relapse wrote:
As are the majority of gun related deaths. 60% of gun deaths are suicides. As many or more people are killed by drunk drivers as are murdered by people with a gun. The same week the theatre shooter made his attack that resulted in the deaths of two innocent people, a drunk driver hit a limo carrying a wedding party killing four of the limo occupants. I don't recall any pictures of them being posted or news reports going into the drunk driver's history. Just a news blurb that was gone inside of two days.

This is still whataboutism though. If I kill two people and someone else kills four, it doesn't get me off the hook just because they are worse.

I'm not going to defend drink driving. I don't really like cars or drinking... Well actually I do like drinking, but I don't think it's necessarily good for society. Would I ban drinking? Not right away... But then I wouldn't outright ban guns either. In Scandinavian countries they have tried to curb drinking through high tax, and it's had some success.

I think the best way to curb problem drinking is to look at the reasons why people drink irresponsibly and then tackle them. Public transport issues might be a factor in drink driving (as an example of the top of my head).

The problem with guns in America is that any kind of control is resisted by the gun-rights lobby as unconstitutional. There is a lot of middle ground between unrestricted and banned which could be described as "controlled", but it's difficult to even find a compromise if one side sees their position as a god given right.

Here's a question, then, since you say you like drinking. At parties, do you get drinks for people or serve them out? You are putting someone at risk whenever you do.