A Bowling for Columbine Review

Oh, but wait… some of the homicides, unintentional, and undetermined shootings were also bad guys getting shot… it was just not law enforcement doing the shooting that time…

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Ay fair play. I was being a little bit facetious

Hard to distinguish the good from the bad, as it were, in all those other cases tho. That's one of the things the 'stats interpretation' report was saying, i'd guess. (IE if the distinctions were readily available, they'd probably turn up on lists like that, for a start).

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Just in: Michael Moore is still an idiot. Only difference is that his 15 minutes of fame are up.

Har, har, har.

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Michael Moore probably isn't the greatest researcher in the world, but I got to give him cudos for releasing the kinds of documentaries that he does. At least he is trying to bring attention to things that are important and controversial. he is being heard, and I applaud it! It is still a free country isn't it?

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http:www.ourviewsonthenews.com

Huh? Of course. He is free to be an idiot, and I am free to say he is an idiot.

Nice to see you Karl

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

this movie is sooo sad, i cried like the whole time

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Just a dog? Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he's just a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, "He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man", or "That's not a diamond, it's just a rock." Just.

Me too, though probably for a very different reason.

^^^^^

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I've just finished reading the gun crime, USA/UK debate and I feel compelled to voice my opinion on the matter.

As a knee jerk reaction against the terrible Dunblane massacre handguns were outlawed completely. As predicted only criminals have the guns now and they're using them against an unarmed population. All the current laws do is restrict legitimate users of firearms rather than the criminals.

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"You smell that? Do you smell that?... Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end..."

Eh?

(a) Most articles i've read suggest the majority of UK gun crime is criminal-on-criminal. (The individual incidents are rarely reported - but the cases of bystander-death certainly are. And you know they ain't common).

(b) The gun carriers who've been affected by the handgun ban are sporting enthusiasts. They had no right to carry in civil situations (to the extent that they could have fired off wild retaliation shots in the case of a drive by, for example. Or defended a classroom, to pick a nastier one).

In what way has the standard population become more vulnerable due to that change in the law?

We don't have the 'deterent' factor in the UK that the US has, coz gun ownership was never widespread in the first place. As far as i can see nothing much has changed. (The black-market flood of handguns that followed the law-change has died down - replicas and high-end imports are the continuing concern).

Farmers have still got their shotguns and rifles as tools of the trade. But that's beside the point. Gun-clashes seems to be mainly confined to internal drug-dealing 'debates' - amongst the urban furore.

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And yes, Yoda crying is funny

Link: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/c...d-894aa3017d43

What's happening in Great Britain right now, between the massive rise in youth violence and the ensuing unwillingness to address it, and the gross violation of personal privacy (public security cameras, traffic monitors on every vehicle), surely has Churchill vomiting in his grave.

Socialism has a horrific track record, and Britain has become a pathetic Orwellian nightmare.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s01-woeu.html




Do you feel safe enough yet, Golgot?

Oh, woe is the UK - roughly 43 drug dealers shooting themselves a year. For shame.

See my previous post for why the UK's handgun ban has got precious little to do with it incidentally.

And for a more rational explanation for the rise in gun crime, you might want to note that many gun-happy Eastern Block states have gained immigration rights to the UK over recent years. Which entails criminals coming too... and trying to bring their own rules.

(Now, if you knew about the EU's 'soft power' expansion technique, and how it's helped prevent further war in the Balkan/E-Block regions, and made things prettier for the eurozone as a whole, you'd struggle to have a problem with the situation. Or at least, you should. But perhaps you'd prefer the 'nuke em all' solution instead? It'd certainly fit with your creed )

Personally, given the context, i can deal with 43 (mainly-crim-on-crim) deaths a year. Porous borders, genocide reductions, and all.

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But oh dear, I'm off topic.

How will we ever control those rampaging teenagers? That was the next question, wasn't it.

I know! Let's give 'em widespread access to guns! That'll fix everything. We know they won't use 'em on other upstanding armed citizens. Coz, like, they're so level-headed, to a man.

But damn. There's a truly evil alternative in place. Keeping tabs on street violence and robberies with surveillance cameras means criminal activity can be tracked and punished effectively, providing a workable deterrent. It's salacious human-rights robbery. That's what it is.

(And just think of all the innocent flashers who are going to get prosecuted along the way!)

I would address your astonishingly balanced and perceptive post further, but i'm compelled to go and practice my syncronised dance routine for Chairman Mao Day. It's a 'socialist' thing.

(PS, if I don't come back I'll probably be in Room 101, having my tongue cut out for shouting 'fire' at a State execution. Either that or I'll be queueing up to fertilise the Queen. Damn my inbred sense of duty)

.

I don't necessarily disagree with this. But I had this in mind when I posted it. Har har.....

The point, Dear Subject of the Crown, is why enact a blanket handgun ban on all gun civilians, including all those pesky law-abiding ones, when scumbags are still going to use their guns to shoot people? It doesn't matter whether they shoot each other or decent law-abiding people, because they are scumbags and they are driving up the rate of murder.

Your "defense" does nothing to prove your point, mostly because you don't have one. You even stated earlier, "The gun carriers who've been affected by the handgun ban are sporting enthusiasts."

So why does your paranoid and bed-wetting government feel the need to ban handguns from those who have no inclination to use them violently? Meanwhile, street thugs continue to carry them in public and use them violently. And don't tell me innocent people are not sometimes the victims. They might not have been inclined to defend themselves before the ban, but now they surely have no choice.

Your position makes no sense; not that I expect better from a Subject of the Crown.

The proper adjective would be "detailed," not rational. There may be a detail that needs to be specified, as to where the guns are coming from, but a degree of rationality has nothing to do with it. It only proves my point that outlawing guns CANNOT prevent gun possession among those who are inclined to use them illegally.

Again, your information, be it factually correct or not, is detrimental to your position. This is because your position is illogical.

Instead of being flippant, why don't you try to address the question? Is it because you don't acknowledge the problem exists, or is it because you don't have an answer? If it's the former, then I will educate you and everyone who continues to read this meaninless thread in a later post. Bet on it. If it's the latter, then admit it and I will pat you on your pointy little head and send you on your way.

Oh, I get it! Guilty until proven innocent? That's an excellent solution. If your government doesn't trust you, how can you trust your government?

I thought there were still a fair amount of Brits who gave a damn about their privacy rights. You're obviously not one of them.

Ha ha! At the rate your country is going, Chairman Mao's regime looks like a Libertarian Utopia. Nice try. Right now, he's giggling and pissing his grave, saying "Sheet! I wish I had thought of that!....Those Brits are getting down right clever!!"

I'm just checking: do you guys still get to keep your hands? Or have they been surgically removed? After all, they can be made into fists.

Dear raving lunatic,

The points would be:

1) Crims aren't shooting law-abiding citizens - or at least, only very rarely. They're shooting each other almost exclusively.
2) Widespread gun ownership in the US doesn't seem to stop them doing this, or shooting innocents either.

So in short - what need do we have for guns in this situation?

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Look, i don't endorse surveillance cameras without some reservations, but in the current climate [of social stability and an absence of apparent attempts or motivations to start a totalitarian state] they bring a lot more pros than cons.

When they work, they can help convict perpetrators of crimes after they've commited the crime. That acts as a deterrent to repeat offending. [Did you notice the after? As in - innocent first, guilty if proven guilty. By evidence. Strange system i know]

What are the cons? If we were living in a tin pot dictatorship, sure, they could be abused. But at the moment we're not, and don't look liable to slide into one soon - despite what some hysterical people seem to think. (Yes, i mean you).

Yes, oh slave to the gun. We use them for settling arguments. Normally by writing and that - but hey, they have many uses. Many of them non-fatal

I think the manufacture of guns should be banned world wide

Again, how does this defend your position of a handgun ban? If the only group of people who have been affected from such a ban are "sporting enthusiasts" who have no inclination to public carry and, therefore, misuse, then how does the ban prevent crime?

Furthermore, last time I checked, bad guys killling bad guys with guns is still considered murder. The murder rate has risen since the ban, not fallen. Your point is meaningless.

Again, meaningless. Even if there didn't exist a single case of a law-abiding citizen defending himself or herself with a firearm, your point would be illogical-- because bad guys still have the guns and are killing other bad guys or other innocent people. Here in the U.S., we have a fair portion of both bad guys killing innocent people, and law-abiding citizens preventing violent crime with their legally owned firearms.

"On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property. Three-fourths of the victims who used a firearm did so during a violent crime; a fourth, during a theft, a household burglary, or motor vehicle theft."

Notice I was conservative and truthful and included the last part of that statistic. It's important because most sane people would realize that those "lesser" crimes are also potentially violent. Anyone willing to break into your home or business or hijack your vehicle is performing a very personal invasion and is therefore ALWAYS violent.

Even the U.S. department of justice, from where these statistics come, try to minimize the role of the law-abiding citizen and his/her willingness to use a legally owned gun to prevent violent crime.

The evidence is damning, isn't it?

So if guns were outlawed here in the U.S., the violent crime victims log (including murder, rape, violent assault, and robbery) would increase by 83,000 cases. Meanwhile, the murder rate would stay relatively the same amongst the bad guys who are going to illegally carry their firearms and use them to break the law.

Of course, this doesn't take into account the perhaps thousands of instances where self-defenses were not even reported, due to fear of gov't or criminal retaliation. Many people defend themselves with guns each year who cannot legally own firearms because of a past felony conviction.

Furthermore, here is something else to chew on:

"A fifth of the victims defending themselves with a firearm suffered an injury, compared to almost half of those who defended themselves with weapons other than a firearm or who had no weapon."

Again, you lose. Big time. These statistics are from the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

Your ridiculous inability to grasp logic has resulted in an "argument" so circular it would make the Hubble Telescope look like a prehistoric wheel.

You claim that gun bans are good for everyone, then say that gun bans do nothing because only bad guys kill each other with guns. This is ridiculous because a) many people wish to own guns other than self-defense, and the gov't has no right to prohibit their ownership and lawful use for non-violent purposes. (And gov't has no right to ban them anyways, but that is besides the point.)
b) The U.S., as well as every other nation state, has a problem with violent individuals owning guns, and using them in violent fashion, as demonstrated by the above statistics. Therefore, every human being has a sovereign, inalienable right to defend oneself against such violent human elements.

I think stupidity should be banned worldwide. Actually, I don't. People have a right to be stupid.

Congratulations.

Look, let’s clear some things up – coz your love of shouting hyperbolically while shooting at strawmen doesn’t make straight talking easy.

The most important thing is this:

I don't know what the best policy on private gun ownership is, for the UK, the US, or anywhere else. And the point is – neither do you.

Because, as this previously mentioned study suggests, there’s a lack of conclusive data at the moment. Which makes arguing about best-action pretty damn tricky.

But hey, what the hell ...


---The 1997 UK handgun ban---
I never said it did. What I have been saying is that the ban didn't remove a significant crime deterrent.

The UK hasn't had widespread gun ownership for almost a century. Only 162,198 handguns were handed over in 1997 after the ban. Even if each came from an individual owner, that’s still a drop in the ocean amongst the UK’s population of 60 million or so. There was no widespread deterrent in place that was subsequently removed.

Clear?

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I do agree, however, that the UK's long-standing 'gun free' status might well be facilitating or exacerbating all sorts of crime.

But...


---UK Crime Levels---

I don't agree with your hysterical assessment of the UK crime situation. The latest government statistics suggest that gun crime as a whole has fallen by 8% over the last year in England and Wales, and that crime as whole is 'stable'.

The obvious area where things are getting worse is street crime - but it's hardly the surge of blood-letting you suggested earlier. It certainly is something CCTV can help with tho


---The US 'role model'---

Furthermore, the US doesn't provide a very inspiring role model when it comes to these things. This doesn't really help your case.

For example, the (death by) homicide rate for 10-29 year olds is 0.9 per 100,000 in the UK, but 11.0 for the US.
World Report on Violence and Health (2002) - p54

That's a huge difference. It's hard to get broad, up-to-date comparative stats, but let's use this one to illustrate the point i want to make:

There's a hell of a lot more death-dealing done in your country than in mine.

This doubtless has numerous causes - and the homicide rate as a whole does seem to be consistantly dropping in the US, along with many other crimes - and this seems to have gone hand in hand with a general uptake of gun possession.

But... you're still streets ahead on the violent-death front.

It's very hard for me to believe that the UK should pursue the same strategies as the US, given that backdrop. It's still thoroughly tempting to see a link between your historical embrace of guns and your ongoing situation.

Now if gun crime starts to shoot up in the UK, and violent theft etc continue to be worse here than Stateside, I'll certainly start reconsidering how i feel about all this. Especially if some solid 'holistic' studies show gun ownership having an overall positive influence.

But until then...

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These were the two areas I was trying to get you to go into further with my '2 points'. You did a good job on the deterrent aspects of US gun-ownership. And there's plenty of sturdy stuff out there that make gun-enfranchisement seem like a good idea.

But frankly, the race is still far from over in both our ongoing social experiments.

Plus, it really doesn't help that you’ve got such a hard on for gun enfranchisement that you can barely see round it. Time will still tell if it's the panacea for everything from world wars to chapped lips - like you seem to think it is.

But i ain't sold yet.

Ok?

Oh, and leave Nebs alone. She's a force for good