I have nothing against small planes. I was just trying to point out that for most people they are not that conveinent. And on top of that, they get worse mileage and are more expensive than cars (biggest understatement I have ever made).
Hey, I drive and SUV. Who am I to talk?
Anyway, yep I live in the Colorado Rockies, and the closest airstrip that has fuel and such is about 50 miles.
Bu bu bu But. For short hops, and even long ones it’s more economical to DRIVE. Anything under about 100 miles is going to be just as fast in a car.
Did you mis-speak? A year? 30-50g a year?
I used to be in the CAP. I have nothing against small aircraft.
You really need to preview. From you - “And a gun is only of value if it is in your hand”
I saw that on TV too.
Gaaa. If someone breaks into my house I will wake up. I wake up when a car drives down our road. I will tell my wife to call the cops and the intruder to leave. That’s it. I will try to determine the intentions of the intruder. Is he armed. Does he need help. Why is he here. If he presents a threat to my Wife or I, I will respond accordingly. If he has any type of weapon (including a broad sword or rapier :rolleyes: ) I will shoot him immediately.
I believe I am going to print this thread out and give it to my Beginning Debate class as an assignment: Identify all of the debating mistakes made by Iamme99. I think my students will find it very educational.
A short list: Non Sequiturs, Begging the Question, Ad Hominem Attacks (both sides guilty of this, me included), Anecdotal Evidence (both sides guilty), Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc, Argument by Analogy (both sides guilty), False Dilemma, Appeal to Emotion, Inductive Fallacies (Fallacy of Exclusion), Straw Man, Composition Errors, Division Errors, and others too numerous to mention.
We have managed to get down several irrelevant alleys here. Iammme99 doesn’t believe in equal protection for all. He thinks that there are acceptable alternatives to owning a gun, feels that gun owners have serious psychological problems, wants to confiscate private property without compensation, and wants the death penalty for possession of said private property. GawnFishin’ places a very high value on human life, and therefore would like to restrict the loss thereof as much as feasible. The rest of the posters disagree with Iammme99, and are vocal in their opposition. Iamme99 continues to dodge answering counter-questions that could demolish his “case,” and fails to prove his case by any means.
Yep, the kids are going to learn a lot from this one!
More than 250 million privately owned firearms. 776 accidental deaths. That is very, very few.
That link got much of its information from the 1993 Arthur Kellerman NEJM study, which showed correlation but not causation. It also found a stronger correlation between living alone and/or renting a residence and being killed, than it did between owning a firearm and being killed. (not to mention that about half these deaths were not by a firearm)
Therefore, for the greater good of society, no one should be allowed to rent a residence or live alone. :rolleyes:
Whoa, yeah, I did - a good, used C172 costs about $30-50k to PURCHASE (that’s a one-time fee) and about $1500-3000 per year to maintain assuming no major repairs.
Maybe I should start posting after the caffeine kicks in the AM, huh?
I suppose it depends on where you live. I have lived in St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, and Gary, Indiana - ALL of which have held the title “murder captial” at one time or another and I very much felt the need for self defense. I also worked at a clinic where much of our population was convicted felons. Again, I really did feel the need to be able to defend myself. Not necessarially with a gun, but with something.
As I have said, I have actually had to use physical force to defend myself, It is not a theorectical problem to me. And, frankly, size and strength DOES matter a great deal for all your alternatives. In fact, it can even matter with guns. I find it MUCH harder to hold, aim, and control a shotgun or heavy rifle than my over-six-foot-tall male friend who occassionally takes me out to a shooting range for practice. He has better aim with the big rifles in part because he is better able to hold them steady and his much greater mass absorbs the kickback far better than little old me. You can’t aim if it’s too heavy to hold steady.
So, again - size DOES matter. So does age. 80 year olds are just not as fast as 20 year olds. They may *appear * faster because greater experience allows them to anticipate things better, but they are not faster.
What are you saying here? A gun is TOO effective a weapon?
I suppose one could argue there are NO defensive weapons - all weapons are intended for inflicting injury, which is an offensive manuver, and if we were serious about self-defense Kevlar would be a major textile used in fashion.
As far as I’m concerned the only legitimate reason for taking a human life is self-defense - and when possible it’s morally better to avoid it even then. Yes, I’ve used force to defend myself, but I have never killed, hope never to have to, and certainly don’t condone it.
Huh - me pro-gun and anti-capital punishment, you anti-gun and pro-killing. Isn’t life strange?
Well, YEAH - we like to call ourselves the “Land of the Free, home of the brave” but looks more and more to me like the nation of restricted, sniveling cowards.
The assumption when the 2nd ammendment was written was that the average good citizen had a legal right to arm himself. In other words, as long as you were a law-abiding member of society you retained the freedom to arm yourself - or not - as you chose.
Now, no one is advocating giving guns to crazy people or children or career criminals. But by elminating a traditional right in our society you are treating everyone as if they were crasy, infantile, or criminal whether they actually are or not.
And you can’t see what’s wrong with that?
Right. And one of the rules of OUR society is that if you’re a law-abiding good citizen without psychological illness you are permitted to own firearms. Not required, permitted. If you don’t want guns in your life fine - don’t buy 'em or use 'em.
Holy crapola! Don’t tell me you’re in favor of that excremental garbage called “The PATRIOT Act”?!?
You think it’s OK for the government to break into your home or business when you’re not there, riffle through your belongings, and not have to have a search warrant or tell you about it?
You think it’s OK for the government to tap your phone? I’m not sure you realize this, but if Ahkmed the Terrorist dials your phone just once by mistake, you can be considered a “contact” and every phone you own can be tapped without your knowledge or permission.
You think it’s OK for the government to ask booksellers and libraries what you’re reading?
You think this is OK? You think this is somehow “protecting” us? Good Lord!
Here’s a thought, from one of our “Founding Fathers”:
Someone who would trade liberty for security deserves niether.
Crossbows were long banned in Europe as being UNsporting and too horrible to use against people in warfare - and it’s not like Medieval Europe was squeamish.
You can NOT use a crossbow to hunt in many states of the US. It’s ILLEGAL.
A modern crossbow is every bit as dangerous - if not more so - than any high-power rifle. My (admittedly limited) experience has been that it’s a hell of a lot easier to unjam a gun than a crossbow, and probably less dangerous.
A crossbow is also a lot quieter than any gun I’ve ever heard of, so the potential for stealth mayhem in many circumstances is greater.
I am beginning to think you actually know jack about weapons, real-world situations, or defense. You are certainly ignorant about guns and crossbows - why should I take you as an authority on anything else?
Now there’s a catch-22: if you own a gun, or want to, you are automatically psychologically messed up and shouldn’t be permitted to own one.
YOU think this is the case - now prove it by citing a study that the AVERAGE gun owner is someone who could be diagnosed as “paranoid” by a professional mental health authority and mentally unfit to be trusted with potentially dangerous objects.
Huh. I don’t think I have a “right” to kill another human being, and certainly I have no desire to - but I DO have a right to prevent someone else from harming me, and reserve the right to defend myself if necessary.
What, you never took a class on unconventional weapons?
OF COURSE a fire extinguisher can be used as a weapon! It’s a hard, metal object, isn’t it? Whack someone over the head with it, it’s going to cause damage. You might even kill them, if you hit them hard enough.
This board being about fighting ignorance and such, I think you are kinda blurring the ability to exert lethal force with the ability to project that force over an area.
If I interpret many anti-gun posters insecurities its with the fact that a sword or club allows one to project force only a few feet. A handgun extends that radius to about 100 feet, a rifle 300 or so feet.
Personally I think just about every anti-gun poster on the planet needs to go play paintball for a day. If for no other reason to learn the basics of how gunfights work. It does take skill and discipline to shoot effectively under pressure. Even knowing you are not going to die from a paintball hit, the rules and methods are the same. Its quite humbling to see just how fast gunfight situations unfold, running is not an option, hiding is not an option, pulling the trigger first is all that really matters.
As an ex-IPSC competition shooter, I am pretty well trained in handgun use, but paintball adds the proper perspective. In IPSC I could burn a second to take better aim on a distant target, in paintball or real gunfights you better have 3-4 rounds in the air to make sure you have a chance to hit before one of his shots connects.
Wow Broomstick, that’s a LOT of posting! Couldn’t you have boiled down what you wanted to say to a few of the points you consider most important, instead of extracting individual sentences and taking virtually everything out of context?
Let me try to address some issues you raise.
I don’t have any real problems with hunters using guns. What I’ve tried to say is that their are alternatives (and no, I don’t know if they are all legal in every state or county (like crossbows). If a law was passed (and held up by the courts as constitutional) that banned the private ownership of guns, then my assumption is that these laws, like many we have, should be made the same throughout the country. But back to hunters. If hunters were allowed to retain ownership of guns, then they would also have to assume greater responsibility for controlling them. If a hunters gun was allowed to be stolen, then the penalties for allowing a weapon to be stolen would have to be higher (significant fine on first offense, jail time on second offense, etc.). Police would have the right though some mechanism to ensure that all registered guns that a hunter owns were still in their possession.
Bringing the question of how the disabled are to protect themselves is an off-the-wall example. There is no one general solution that will work equally well for everyone. How about someone who can’t hold a gun? Shouldn’t they be able to “protect” themselves also? Should we then allow them to acquire a “James Bond” type wheelchair with built-in guns and other armaments that they can use via a joy-stick or pushbutton’s?
Hardship as an issue - another off-the-wall example. Sometimes, the good of all society is more important than individual rights and in this case would surely trump such pap as “taking away my guns would be a hardship”.
One more of your many examples of extracting a single sentence from a post and trying to tear the whole proposed idea apart. Please stop this silliness.
If no one owned guns, then people would have to become better at using other weapons, such as knives. The problem is that guns ARE effective, so effective that it is very easy for a criminal, gang member, family member, etc. to pull the trigger and easily kill someone without any thought. This is why the number of deaths and injuries form firearms is so high.
Thankfully, I’ve never had to use any of the training I’ve had in a real fight, although I’ve lived in some pretty mean areas when I was younger. But nothing is ever equal in real life. A big guy may have the advantage in size and strength, but those strengths can be used against them.
And how would your gun help when someone snuck up behind you and whacked you in the back of your head?
Police in Britain don’t need guns because the criminals (at least up until recently) didn’t have guns. So yes, were private ownership of guns banned here, then maybe the police wouldn’t need guns either.
Exactly. You’re again taking statements out of context. Because no one has figured out a way to prevent criminals and such from getting their hands on guns, then EVERYONE has to pay the price to remove guns from everyone, including fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizens!
Again, not reading with comprehension. The example of the Patriot Act was to prove the point that laws can and have been passed where the [supposed] needs of society (at least according to GWB and friends) override any previous protections or rights. And no, I do not agree with the need for the Patriot Act and I don’t even like the name, which basically implies that if you don’t agree and accept it, you are not a patriotic person.
Yes, virtually anything can be used in an offensive manner. Don’t forget keys, an umbrella or even a “broom stick”. So when was the last time you read about a fire extinguisher being used to murder people in a drive-by?
I hope you also teach your kids that debating is not about extracting a single sentence, OUT OF CONTEXT, which due to its pervasiveness here, forces me into having correct these misstatement’s instead of focusing on the big picture question.
You need to choose the proper weapon for the environment you are in. Yes, a sword or knife, along with a slew of other weapons, would be effective in an apartment. A gun, otoh, might just be overkill in the same environment. Did you see the NYPD Blue show a couple of weeks ago where someone accidentally fired a gun in an apartment and the bullet went through the wall of the next door unit and killed an innocent person?
