Sorry, I forgot I wanted to address this point, too. Yes, there is lots of room for thought. What if I had been married at the time, with my wife in bed with me and a couple of children in the other room, maybe one of them a little cutie, and a robber/rapist broke in, and due to guns having been made illegal I didn’t have one. And what if, as you say, the intruder not only has a gun but knows how to use it. Maybe he’s even used it on someone else and/or their family. What then?
I would rather risk a society in which untrained people may bring a firearm into a break-in situation than one in which the peaceful, law-abiding citizen and his family finds themselves totally at the mercy of an armed intruder because the law has deprived him of the right to own a gun.
Well, Mike tends to focus on the same old things each time: the stupidity of Bush, the stupidity of Republicans, the stupidity of whitey, corporate greed, his own derring-do, the plight of darkey.
Did anyone else note that when Moore went after the vanity, callousness and profit-driven nature of the visual media (as exemplified by the “hairspray” segment), there was no self-reflectiveness? Just the normal trick so beloved by individuals who make their money in the media of trying to con the viewer into believing that he himself stood apart from all that stuff; that he wasn’t a member of the media himself.
Just because he doesn’t use hairspray and lets his shirt-tail hang out doesn’t make him any less full of himself than the bozo with the slicked hair. Nor does putting his arm round a black elementary school principal make him any more compassionate than the bozo who doesn’t even enter the gates of the school he’s reporting on.
That’s exactly my point, you fucking moron, his earlier work hasn’t got shit to do with those things.
Why do I get the sense that you’re mad because you fell for this? People know who he is and where he stands.
Yes, he’s full of himself.
I disagree, since Moore at least gets himself involved with what’s going on. The news guy was just there to pretend to be earnest and get his Breaking Story[sup]TM[/sup].
I’ll say one thing for him: he knows his stuff, and you don’t.
First of all, our military in Iraq is being laid out by a ragtag bunch of poorly-armed insurgents. (Yes, with huge casualties on the opposing side as well, but still! If I was an average Iraqi I’d probably think Iraq was winning the war, given the beating the Coalition has taken despite our ‘superior’ military.)
Secondly, riots and large-scale attacks are not the only way to win insurrections. Assassinating leaders, terror tactics, and the like also factor in. And a trained sniper or team of marksmen well-hidden can decimate men from hundreds of yards away and force a retreat.
Keep in mind that the American military fighting an innsurection on its own ground would not be able to use daisy-cutters and “blow it all to hell” tactics. The entire US Army and Marines couldn’t be taken out, but they could be chipped away at and their morale could be eliminated…
Sure they could. In Iraq, we’re attempting to fight the insurgency without causing further problems (more insurgents, more hatred of the US in Iraq and elsewhere, not too much political blowback, etc). If the government was really tyrannical and felt it was threatened at home, it wouldn’t worry about that crap. Pockets of resistance in New York? Have the police kill some civilians and family members. Then level a few neighborhoods and see what that does to the insurgency. Saves you from losing men you need, and it’s not as if the military will run out of bombs. And a resistance will not likely have aircraft, a navy and tanks.
Lest you think that this is true, I should probably point out that in World War II we lost 291,000+ men to take over Europe, with even larger losses amongst our allies, In Korea a draw cost us 50,000+ men, in Vietnam we outright lost and sacrificed 58,000+ men, and now we have defeated and occupied an entire country for a year and a half and are only now approaching 1,000 men (and women) lost. Either your expectations are stupendously high or this has been by far the most successful war ever, politics and viewpoints on war notwithstanding.
To Airman Doors: I’m not quote certain that we have taken over and occupied Iraq yet. I think our troubles there have just begun. Nor am I sure that we have really defeated them. Who have we defeated? Saddam is out of the game, but his loyalists still remain, fighting us tooth and nail; who can forsee what acts of terror may come up in the future, further complicating the whole issue.
Aside note: compared to our superiority, militarily, over the Iraqis, our losses seem more proportional. The Germans and Japs, with scientists, R & D, military bases, aircraft and navies, and what have you, and the Iraqi militias and insurgencies are a world apart.
To Marley: You are right, if the government decides to use truly tyrannical tactics. I have somewhat more optimistic outlooks about what our politically-correct government can and will do in the event of an insurgency. I am not talking about a US Government-turned-dictatorial police state (were I, you would be correct.) I was referencing our current administration.
It does depend on what you’re envisioning. I think if there was a serious insurgency, that goes out the window. If it’s today’s government this happens tomorrow, no, they won’t start slaughtering civilians. But then again, in the current climate I don’t think an armed insurgency would happen.
Is Moore right in suggesting/implying that black people (with the exception of black gangs and other alienated members of society) tend to possess guns less than their white counterparts. So, do black folks in the suburbs tend to possess guns less than white folks in the suburbs? Do black folks in the country tend to possess guns less than white folks in the country?
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is no longer the Iraqi Minister of Information, I’m afraid, so I don’t think the avarage Iraqi thinks that anymore.
And gosh darn it Marley, everytime I have a response, you’ve beaten me to it by the time I press the preview post button. But I disgress. Thanks for the assist.
Marley made some very good points. Since I was referring to a point in time where the government had become oppressive enough to stir up a significant insurgency, your point, Paul, is moot.
Could you provide a quote or something from the movie to explain this? If I remember what you’re talking about, he’s saying that white people in the suburbs own more guns than black people in the city, not that black and white people in the same area economically have really different numbers of guns. I may be wrong, but since you seem to misinterpret or misunderstand everything the guy says, for the moment I’m going to guess I’m not.
In Stupid White Men (p. 78), Moore writes that ‘the vast majority of guns in America are purchased and owned…by white people’. In the film, the cartoon segment looking at the history of guns and violence from the Pilgrim Fathers to the present day portrayed the black people (both as slaves and as free people) as peace loving and forgiving of the white person’s bigotry.
So he’s not talking about counterparts, then. He’s talking in sheer numbers- and if that’s all he means, it’s stupid. Of course white people own more guns than black people; white people outnumber blacks in this country by about 13:1.
Oh, I think I see what he’s doing now. :smack: He’s countering the assumption (or what he feels is the assumption) that it’s violent urban blacks who have the most guns.
Well, the impression given by the cartoon was that black people - for whatever reason, that wasn’t mentioned - are in general more peaceable than the average white person in the States. Contrast this with his Canadian segment, which functioned to demonstrate that Canadians as a whole (whether black or white) are more peaceable than white Americans.
So, would it be reasonable to assume that gun ownership was lower, pro rata, among black American adults than among white American adults? Any stats for this? Or comments from people who have discussed this with black friends? Or, best of all, from black people themselves?
What was STATED by the narration is that a number of times, the white populace was in fear of a violent black uprising- which never happened. THAT was the point. Why do you always ignore a stated point to present your own interpretation?
Statistics don’t come from black or white people, so I’m not sure why you’re so desirous of having a black 'Doper answer this. Anyway, while I don’t know any stats about it, it’s not reasonable to assume that based on what Moore says because that’s not what he’s trying to say.
No, he’s not. Moore himself makes the point in Stupid White Men (p. 78) that many of the guns that are bought by white people end up in the hands of black youths in the inner city, many having been stolen from ‘white people in the suburbs’.
