So… everyone stayed home before the car was invented? Seriously - most of the country is not set up for mass transit because we chose to favor the car instead of something else. That could be changed, if we wanted it to change.
In fact, given that we have dense population centers separated by considerable distances, there’s a lot of good arguments for long-distance mass transit. I believe during the 20th century this was even done by the railroads for a time - you’d book a train from, say, Philadelphia to San Francisco and ride the rails, but your car would be in baggage so when you arrived in San Francisco you’d have your own personal transportation with you. It’s actually not a bad idea, although once the interstate system was built that went by the wayside.
What do you think people DID before 1900? They got around just fine without cars - actually, for most of history they did without trains, too.
Um… yeah, actually I would. Do you have a suggestion for such locales?
Sure. What’s wrong with airplanes for rural travel? They’re utilized extensively in Alaska, as just one example. Hey, I’ve got a pilot’s license. What’s the problem with that idea?
Of course, you’ve sort of missed my point that although SOME people can do just fine without a car, they awful handy to other folks and indispensible to yet another group.
Which brings up back to guns and weapons in general. Yes, many people can live just fine without them. Others find them useful, either for self-defense or hunting for food or just as a way to improve their hand-eye coordination. So why should those who choose to live weaponless impose their will on everybody else, especially since, YES, there are some folks to whom guns are genuinely useful tools or even necessary to their lifestyle?
I think you’re going off the deep end on cars and some of the analogies you try to cobble together in the quoted paragraph above:
You don’t need guns for self-defense. There are many other weapons to choose from such as knives, swords, mace, stun guns, etc. You could also take a martial arts course.
You don’t need guns for hunting. You could use a bow & arrow, crossbow, slingshot, etc.
“improve hand-eye coordination”??? :rolleyes: Now, that’s really off the wall! Try tennis, baseball, video games, etc. if you need to develop better hand-eye coordination.
“necessary to their lifestyle”??? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Please. Are you referring to criminals? What other “lifestyle” depends on a gun?
The point, which has seemingly gotten lost in all of the preceding hyperbole and far-out analogies (like the need for cars), is that guns are responsible for over 11,000 deaths (and who knows how many injuries) yearly. No one, IMO, has made a good case for an absolute need for guns outside of perhaps a relatively few people who live in very rural environments (and for which permits should be available). For the vast majority, removing guns from general ownership would provide no hardship whatsoever.
Therefore, were we a society run with logic, we would ban guns from general ownership, saving a lot of lives and preventing a lot of injuries.
The problem, actually, is that you have missed the point. Guns by themselves do not kill people. How exactly do you propose to get them out of the hands of those who use them to harm others. We already have all the laws we need to do so. It is already illegal to use them in any of the ways to which you object (except self defense which you also seem to object to). What would you do differently so that a gun ban would not simply disarm the innocent while leaving the criminals armed?
No, you are the one going off the deep end here. You are hardly one to talk about what is, and is not suitable for self-defense. I am a trained marksman, and i know the effectiveness of firearms. Besides, if they are so ineffective, then why are you so worked up about them? Huh? I could hunt with my bare hands, too, but a high-powered rifle makes a lot more sense than trying to rassle a moose to the ground. Since you have never fired a gun, you have zero idea of the skill it takes to use one effectively, so let’s not be making any cracks about co-ordination. I believe Broomstick has addressed the “lifestyles” question satisfactorily. If we were a society run by logic, you would never be allowed to express an opinion, because you are not…logical.
Read the first few posts again…nobody has to make a case for guns. You have to make a case against them. You have failed to do so, utterly.
Bye-bye. Thanks for playing. Next contestant, please.
I didn’t raise the coordination issue, Broomstick did. Try learning to read before posting.
I’ve never said that guns are “ineffective”. In fact, they are very effective, unlike a knife or such in most people’s hands. Furthermore, I doubt you could hunt with your “bare hands”. That would take more skill and patience than I think you possess. It’s so much easier for weak people to sit some distance away from their prey and fire a bullet. Real macho bravery there, big guy!
As to making a case for anything, it’s my OP. I think I’ve made my case. If you don’t like it, Tough. If all you can contribute are flippant replies, then please go on to another thread or start your own.
then a gun would be very effective for self-defense, right? More so than say, a knife? So why did you a advocate a knife or self-defense training earlier here…
My wife is a small woman, no matter how much karate she studies, and no matter how many combat knives we leave strewn about the house, she would be no match for a determined thug. When you are older you’ll understand this.
If you could have a magic wish and all the guns disappeared forever, then we’d be back to the strength of a man’s arm being what determines if he’s a victim or not. Slave or free. It’s not a joke that the Colt revolver was called the “great equalizer”. Believe me, if you think that a society that has guns has a problem with violence, you read about what kind of life you would have lived if a sword was your only way to protect yourself and defend your family.
So it takes skill and patience to hunt prey with bare hands, but weakness and cowardliness to shoot something?
Call me inquisitive, but I get the feeling here that you just don’t like guns.
There has been no other poster who feels you have made your case. That’s a stubborn stance. You may feel good about being right and surrounded by a bunch of loonies but from my perspective you just keep contradicting youself.
Well, someone is definitely off the deep end in this discussion, but I am sure we disagree on who it is.
Speaking as a former self-defense instructor, I will attest that this is really, really stupid. Really, really.
Taking as an example, the LA riots after the first Rodney King verdict. Perhaps you could discuss how those under attack by rioters could use a can of Mace to fight off their attackers, or how a good martial arts course could allow them to defeat the mobs a la Bruce Lee. You have been watching too many Jackie Chan movies.
You want to bring down a moose with a sling-shot, go ahead. I’ll be waiting over here with the Band-aids.
Are there other Constitutionally-protected activities you feel qualified to rule out simply because they aren’t to your taste?
On what do you base your claim that this is “really off the wall”? Are you alleging that target practice does not improve hand-eye coordination? Or are you just hoping no one notices that you have dismissed an argument simply because you don’t like it?
Ah yes, both the devastating straw man argument, and the conclusive “argument by rolleyes”. Nice try.
OK, I lied - not a nice try at all. A really, really stupid try. Really, really.
This is not so much a “point” as it is “a ridiculous misstatement”.
As has been mentioned, gun ownership is mandated by law in Switzerland, and they have relatively little gun crime. The idea that guns necessarily cause crime by their presence is thus refuted.
And if you were a poster run by logic, you would not say so many stupid things, saving a lot of bandwidth and preventing a lot of laughter.
Fortunately, we are a society run with the Constitution, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. There is thus no need to make a case for an absolute need for guns. That has already been established. You need to convince enough people to amend the Constitution to remove that right.
Same thing as with the other rights guaranteed there. If you don’t like (for instance) that some group is assembling, you need to make a case that they are doing so for some criminal purpose. If you can’t prove that, you can’t prevent them from meeting.
Even if you could, you would not be able to remove the right “peaceably to assemble” from the citiizenry in general. That right remains until the Amendment is revoked.
Same thing with gun ownership. You don’t like the fact that other people own guns. Tough toenails - you don’t get to say. If you can show that the gun has been used in some individual crime, go ahead. That person then loses his right to own a gun. But the rest of us don’t lose ours, anymore than I lose my right to speak in public because your posts are so simple-minded and silly.
Unless you would like to amend the Constitution, in which case you better come up with some better arguments than this.
Things have change a wee bit in the last few hundred years. Do you think we could go back to the ways of the “Wild, Wild, West”?
Colorado mountains, or front range. See ya soon.
Alaska is a bit different scenario than say, Kansas. It makes sense in Alaska. If it made sense in Kansas you would see it happening.
You’ll get much better mileage in a car than say a Cessna 182. Planes are incredibly expensive to maintain. To say nothing of the purchase price. Roads, conveniently go where you need them too. If you fly, you have a transportation problem when you get to your ‘destination’. As a pilot I’m sure you understand these things.
If there was an airport near my home (closest one is about 50 miles) and if there was an airport near where I work, and if my commute was long, and if I had LOTS of disposable income it may make sense for me to fly to work.
Iamme99, iammme99, iamme99…what to do with you? <sigh>
Let’s lay it out clearly for you. You have attempted to make arguments in this forum on a topic you know nothing about. You have never backed up any of the “arguments” with anything more substantial than “I believe.” You claim logic on your side, but you have obviously never studied logic. Your only “refutation” of an opponent’s argument is an ad hominem attack on their “manhood.” Your opponents have demolished every one of your “arguments,” and yet you keep claiming that they are correct. Why? Because you “believe” they are. Take a debate class when you get to high school, then come back and try again. You’ll still lose, because you are wrong, but you’ll acquit yourself in a manner that is not quite such an embarassment to your species.
I’d favor federal laws defining exactly what the second amendment does and does not provide. Always trying to go back to revolutionary debates seems ludicrous. In those days most of the population hunted for food, and there were no assault rifles. Sometimes I think the NRA would like grenade launchers allowed because “we’re entitled to innocent target practice”.
Huh? Where did riots come into the discussion??? That’s something for the police to handle. It’s off-the-wall replies like this which makes me even more confident that people like yourself should not be allowed near a gun. You’re off your rocker!
re: your quip about a slingshot - you conveniently forgot the rest of the quote, you know the part about the bow & arrow or crossbow. D’oh.
re; coordination - I said nothing about IF target shooting was a means of coordination. I only suggested other ways to achieve hand-eye coordination, if that is your goal. You can’t seriously be resting your case for general gun ownership as a means of hand-eye coordination??? That would be really, really lame. Not to mention funny as all hell.
I believe it was in reference to self-defense, which is not an off the wall question. The police can only clean up the mess afterwards, and the courts have ruled that they do not have a duty to protect individual citizens - so the question of what defensive tool one is supposed to use while one or more nutballs is trying to maim/kill you is a valid question. Enipla simply used a real life example for clarification.
And you still have not given a cite for your claim that “…most people who own guns are weak people who feel like big men/woman when they have their hands on a gun.” My guess is that I won’t get it, since you seem perilously close to doing the message board equivalent of taking your ball and going home.
I did mention something about knives, swords, etc. back in post #16. I wasn’t focusing on alternatives to guns eariler on, but since the self-defense argument was brought up, I provided this possible alternative.
One can always find an exception to everything. So your wife is small. Has she ever used a gun in self-defense? Rather than go into any depth on the false issue of self-defense, I’ll point you to this link Self-Defense: The Great Myth of America’s Gun Industry
Generally, yes.
I’m not sure whether what I like has anything to with the subject. There are many things I don’t like, but I don’t feel that they should be banned. IMO, guns cause more problems than they solve, that’s why I believe they should be banned. No one here has yet to make an intelligent defense of the absolute need for gun ownership by the general populace. So my I stand firm with my opinion.
You can open virtually any daily newspaper and you’ll find at least one and typically many more, stories on people who have gotten murdered in the last day. for instance, here’s one story of 3 separate shootings in a 24 hour period (Link a drive by, a home break-in and a fight). If guns wer enot generally and easily available, then these 3 people would be alive today.
Yes. Just like the draconian drug laws have made drugs “not generally and easily available”. So too a general ban on guns will reduce the availability of them. Especially to the criminals who usually get them through registered gun dealers and other legal channels.
How do you know? There were murders long before there were guns. Even a total ban on guns would not get them off the street. They are too many of them, and they are too easy to make. You can’t uninvent the firearm.
If I were you, I would worry about why people kill each other, not about what tool they use.
Criminals, riots, civil uprising. It seems to the gun lovers see everyone and everything else as a major threat. Sounds awfully paranoid to me.
There isn’t any possible cite to this OPINION. So no, you won’t get any cite on it. As has been said here, a gun is the “great equalizer”. A gun makes some major number of people, but not all, feel stronger and capable than they otherwise would be. People buy courage with a gun. Now while you can argue that this is helpful for someone’s small wife or girlfriend, conversely it operates the same for street punks who get a big dose of courage when they get a gun in their hands, as the previous newspaper story reference I posted shows.
If guns ownership were banned for most people, then yes, some people might feel less safe and might have to find other ways to defend themselves, in the relatively unlikely case that they need to do so. OTOH, a lot of other people’s lives would be saved. For instance, Columbine just had it’s 5th anniversary.
As to taking my ball and going home - don’t hold your breath.
Iamme99, you really need to post worthless stuff like this over in IMHO, not here in GD. One of the defining characteristics of a debate is the use of evidence to back up one’s position. If you will reread this thread, you will see that you have:
a) Proposed that your whims be made law
b) Refused to back up these positions with so mush as a scrap of evidence
c) Dodged answering any of the attacks on your positions
d) Offered up ad hominim attacks and strawmen in place of reasoned debate.
