The Dark Knight Rises shooting and Gun Control

I think it is the other way around, your politics led you to make an outrageous comment, more people packing heat in that situation, would have been a good thing.

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yes but Chris back in teh day of teh framing of teh Constitution, America had no standing armies in fact (whoops this is inconvenient) that practise was frowned upon by the founding fathers correct?

Back in those days, it was of vital national security that Americans be armed and good to go fight the good fight if those blasted red coats came back for round 2.

Surely with the Military might of Uncle Sam, that is no longer the case.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Hypothetically Speaking, do you think Jesus of Nazareth would be in favour of guns?

I'd have to say no, seeing as Thou shalt not kill, is right at the top, and while a butter knife by defenition is awesome at slappen together PB&J sammiches in additiion to being used as a tool of death (i mean really any blunt object is a potential weapon), it doesnt hold a candle to the sheer awesomeness of the death and destruction than can be weilded by a firearm.

I'm not American nor a Christian, so really it doesnt matter, but i often wonder about the 3 G crowd.

theres a conflict there, just cant put my finger on it.

This is intellectual cowardice. You make a sarcastic accusation and think the word "maybe" in front of it absolves you of having of having to actually own up to it? Can I say you're maybe a member of NAMBLA?

Ah yes, an outrageous statement like "those people were slaughtered. I wish they had weapons to defend themselves." Clearly, my moral compass is all mixed up here.

When does a bad guy become a criminal in your opinion?

When he breaks the law, or when he is convicted of that crime?

You are the one being obtusre. The operative word isn't even "maybe." It is support. Again, there is a big difference between specualting you support such laws and saying, as you claimed I did, that you actually want to shoot people based on their looks. There is a huge difference between perhaps supporting laws that allow people to kill based on looks and saying you personally want to kill people based on their looks. Why are you having trouble with that?

You've tried to make a few of these WWJD arguments before--about charity, if I recall correctly--and they don't really work, for reasons I've pointed out multiple times. You usually ignore them and then make the same argument a few months later. But I'll do it yet again: Jesus was in favor of us going to Church. Therefore...Christians should support laws forcing people to go to Church, right?

It's Thou shalt not Murder. And there are many examples in the Bible of killing being sanctioned/necessary. Even back then, people recognized that things aren't always that simple.

The butter knife example is intentionally absurd, just like your surface-to-air missile is, because a gun doesn't hold a candle to the destruction that can be wielded by missiles, either. It's a perfectly fair counterargument to your question about where to draw the line. That question is a non-starter, because we all agree there's a line in both directions.

The only conflict here is the idea that you think Christians should apparently be trying to force the tenets of their faith on the rest of society. It's a bad, zombie argument that you keep bringing back no matter how many times I shoot it in the head. Or stab, if you prefer.

Because it's irrelevant. I don't even care about the personal/law distinction, I care about your accusation being based in absolutely nothing. It was just a little sneer or a comment with no connection to any statement I made. It was ridiculous, and it's positively shameful that you think the word "maybe" absolves you of having to account for it.

It reveals how you think. You play free association with people's politics. You hear something you categorize as a right-leaning statement, so you start tossing out careless accusations about other things you categorize as right-leaning. You extrapolate, jump to conclusions, and argue with non-sequiturs. That's messed up. You should stop doing it. And when you get caught doing it, you should own up to your mistake.

Yes Hockey is such a passive sport. Now i get it.



Canada is right besides you. There isnt any influence from TV, movies whatever that you see than we dont.



We also are a gun-lovin culture Per capita i think we actually have more guns per household than you guys do.

Except

They are long guns.

And again (said earlier in PM), the city in which i live is teh Murder Capital of Canada, so i should be afraid and own a ***** ton of guns for protection right?

but im not afraid nor own a gun. How can this be?

Because that's your choice Dex.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

"Ah yes, an outrageous statement like "those people were slaughtered. I wish they had weapons to defend themselves." Clearly, my moral compass is all mixed up here."

The context was your reply to a question asking if you seriously thought more guns would have been good in that situation, and your reply was more "chaos" which could have led to more violence, would have been good. And of course it is unlikely an actual victim could have stopped the shooter by having a weapon. Someone armed would have been someone trying to stop the shooter, not someone he was actually aiming at since the victims would not have had time to react before they were shot.

Er...because people are different? PW pretty much already said this, and much more succinctly than I'm about to.

I don't know if you should necessarily be afraid or not. Depends on the statistics and your own personal habits. If you're not near the worst neighborhoods and don't go out much at night, then it might not make any sense for you to be particularly afraid or armed or anything.

For the record, I've lived in poor (and sometimes violent) neighborhoods all my life, and I've never owned a gun. I might buy one, I might not. But I can see why someone might feel they would need one for protection, and we see lots of examples of it doing that job, so I wouldn't presume to decide that for others.

Also, it'd be useful to point out that we're switching topics here a lot. Sometimes you seem to be talking about something approaching outright bans. Other times you just seem to be talking about more in the way of background checks. It would be helpful to distinguish between the two. I definitely don't favor the kind of setup they have in Japan (I asked a couple of times before: do you think both our countries should have their restrictions on knives of a certain length?), but that's a very different question from whether or not a few specific types of guns should be banned. Or whether or not we need to, say, entirely rewrite the Constitution. These all seem to be getting mashed up into one big argument, and it's only adding to the confusion.

The more I read will's posts the more I realize that will has absolutely no idea what he is talking about most of the time. Sure doesn't stop him from using his keyboard however.

No, the butter knife arguments that Gun Nutters like to trot out is retarded because there exists easily a billion of them in households between Canada but somehow arent the implement of choice those individuals bent on massacre.

i cant think of one instance actually. Can you?


I have no problem with gun ownership, i just think making military grade weaponry easily available and then being all shocked and bothered everytime they get used for the purpose for which they were created except against nice people is silly.

Are Americans just hardwired to be violent? or do guns just get the job done mega efficiently and so it seems that way?



This is from 5 years ago or so give or take :

It's amazing that you think you can spin things so brazenly. I said it'd be better if they could defend themselves, and that the situation was chaotic anyway. You talk about it creating confusion and panic as if they didn't already exist, or as if coherence were the first priority, rather than the preservation of health and life.

If one of them had been one of the initial ones shot, sure. But I presume it was a packed house, and a dozen were killed, and about 50 injured, so a huge portion of the audience was neither. So this is a non-argument. Especially seeing as how before, you amazingly implied that you didn't even support shooting him in self defense because he may not turn to kill them next. I asked you before, and I'll ask again: do you actually stand by that? Or did you just forget to put "maybe" in front of it?

But again, if you're going to play Imaginary Expert, you might as well make up a few Imaginary Doctorates and some Imaginary Books you've authored. If you're willing to just make up probabilities based on absolutely nothing, why not make up some credentials, too?

Yeah, that is it all right, you don't care, so it is perfectly okay for you to deliberate distort what I said because you don't like the comment.

Again, let me emphasize, I didn't say you want to kill people based on their looks, not even remotely. And you don't want to own up to that.

And why are you so upset about this comment? If you had said it would have been a good thing if people experienced with law enforcement was in that theater we wouldn't have this conversation. But you're saying,yeah, more guns, it wouldn't be neat, there will be more chaos, meaning possibly more lives taken, innocent ones, and that I think is pretty irresponsible, and comes out of the same mentality that created the Florida law.

If you want to specifically object to something, why don't you do so?

I was on another board later and other people, apart from myself, had similar conclusions about what guns in that place at that time would have done so i guess we all live in the same imaginary world, far different from the one you live in, where i guess if there were others with concealed weapons there it would have been Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone who would have taken the shooter quickly out.

And what would be the point exactly? How does one argue with someone who already knows everything?

Dex, what is a gun nutter? What actively makes someone crazy about guns with a lust for violence, or whatever kind of definition you haven't given to the rather strange terms you keep throwing around?

Also, what makes a gun military grade weaponry? Do you have any knowledge of the operations or functionality of firearms?

If military grade weaponry means a weapon used by the military, then a pump action shotgun and .308 bolt action rifle are both considered military grade. Do you know what they are used for in the civilian world? Trap shooting and hunting game. Surely, that can't be what you meant by military grade, right? So what makes it military grade? You must be referring to this, the AR-15:



Mannnn, that sure looks scary. So what is it? The color? If it is black, it must be more deadly. The name? Another common misconception. The "AR" in AR-15 means ArmaLite rifle, which is the original manufacturer's company name. It doesn't mean assault rifle, because it simply isn't an assault rifle. It is a semi automatic varmint rifle, that is too small to be suitable for game such as deer and elk. It is also purchased for home defense because it wouldn't be as dangerous as firing a hunting rifle inside of your home piercing through walls and potentially killing neighbors or family.

The military doesn't use that rifle. The military uses the M-4. It's the same platform, except the M-4 is capable of firing in burst mode, accepting grenade launchers on the railing, chambered in 5.56 NATO rounds, and has a shorter barrel for clearing rooms. All of these things being completely illegal for a civilian's rifle. This isn't used for long distance shooting or sniping. It is used for close combat. You know what the military uses for long distance killing? Your everyday Remington hunting rifle. The military has been using standard weaponry forever. If a man wants to commit mass murder, a hunting rifle and trap shooting shotgun are going to be just as devastating. So, what are you against? All of these guns are deadly, no one is disputing that. I just want the right to stand a chance when someone uses their weapons for evil. I don't expect you to understand that, it's fine. I've seen you argue plenty around here, and it's rarely fair or even on topic. I just thought I would try and clear misconceptions.

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