“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

[Valador]

As to the "disarming of America" it wouldn't be necessary to change the way that you think about firearms, if you weren't killing each other with them in ridiculously high numbers.

Because banning or restricting something really makes it impossible for people to obtain said things. Tell me how well that has worked out for the people in Paris. You know what stops a bad guy with a gun? A good guy with a gun. Not laws taking away their guns, because people will still get them illegally.

A person could take their car for a spin and drive over dozens of people if they so desired. Should we start banning cars now too? Should we ban the sale of every day household items that in proper combination create bombs? While we're at it, let's ban the internet for teaching us how to create weapons. I have never seen a gun grow legs and go around killing people on its own. I own weapons for personal protection and the ability to protect my family in our home. This is my constitutional right.

The REAL problem is not gun access. The real problem is that people are crazy. Since the beginning of time until the end of time. You cannot hope to successfully control the majority because of the actions of a few. Take guns away and people will find other ways to murder people. Whether that's on a smaller or larger scale will simply depend on that persons commitment.

 

[Valador]

I can tell a lot of people here have never been shot at or had dealings with REAL people from these troubled parts of the world. Also all of the non-Americans here apparently have masters degrees on all things relating to the USA. Maybe the next time a war rolls around in your backyard America won't be there to come save the day, since you know we're all too busy fighting ourselves while sending our money to people who have no right to it.

No one likes America until they need help.

As much as I'd love to waste my work break arguing, I really need to go do something productive, which as you may find surprising, is not senselessly shooting people.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Says the man who has not been displaced from his life and job by war, and spent years living in tent cities and/or as an indigent, while people drop bombs back on the homeland that each cost the equivalent of several years of your income...

As if that kind of life wouldn't, over *years* not make someone rather angry? Really?

I think it's a tad disingenuous to claim that those effects are solely because the US didn't take you in as a refugee.

I think we should take the refugees. I also think that, by doing so, we will expose ourselves to increased risk, so there are valid arguments on the other side that shouldn't be dismissed casually. I think that the advocates of bringing in refugees are doing themselves an active disservice by being dismissive and insulting of people who have legitimate, even if unlikely, fears. A better approach would be to do what's reasonable and necessary to assuage those fears while still bringing in refugees. I think the Administration's approach of simultaneously admitting that they cannot vet the refugees thoroughly, admitting that ISIS will likely infiltrate the refugee population to some extent, and then treating people that are upset over those two facts as hateful and stupid is counterproductive. Instead they should be advertising their focus on how they're improving the vetting methods, how refugees will be added to the country, working with governors that have issues to solve them rather than railroad them, and be as open as possible that the need to accept the refugees is central to a combine and rational set of policies for defeating ISIS and solving the issues of radical Islam. Of course, that would also involve a plan to deal with ISIS, which I think the administration was avoiding while hoping ISIS would solve their Assad problem, but that ship has sailed and they need to get to it.

 

[Ryujin]

Because banning or restricting something really makes it impossible for people to obtain said things. Tell me how well that has worked out for the people in Paris. You know what stops a bad guy with a gun? A good guy with a gun. Not laws taking away their guns, because people will still get them illegally.

A person could take their car for a spin and drive over dozens of people if they so desired. Should we start banning cars now too? Should we ban the sale of every day household items that in proper combination create bombs? While we're at it, let's ban the internet for teaching us how to create weapons. I have never seen a gun grow legs and go around killing people on its own. I own weapons for personal protection and the ability to protect my family in our home. This is my constitutional right.

The REAL problem is not gun access. The real problem is that people are crazy. Since the beginning of time until the end of time. You cannot hope to successfully control the majority because of the actions of a few. Take guns away and people will find other ways to murder people. Whether that's on a smaller or larger scale will simply depend on that persons commitment.

Let me first state that I am a firearm owner (two rifles and a pistol), under Canadian law.

Ah, yes. The oft repeated meme of "the good guy with a gun." The only problem is that, in practice, this does not actually occur except in a tiny minority of cases. How do you really stop the bad guy with a gun? Perhaps by doing some basic checks to see if he's a bad guy, before he can get a gun? Background checks? When I was in grade 5, back in 1975, a kid named Michael Slobodian went to a school just a couple of miles away and opened up with the guns he had brought to school in a guitar case. Canada's response? Basic checks on people who wanted to buy firearms. America's response to similar issues? "More guns!" Which way seems to have worked better?

Sure, a person can jump into their car and start driving over people, just 'cause. It even happens once in a while. We haven't seen a radical rise in people driving over someone who they want to kill, because that person couldn't get a gun instead. We haven't seen a huge rise in kitchen knife murders as a result of our basic controls on firearms. People aren't cooking up bathtub explosives because the corner gun shop wouldn't sell them a Glock. That logic is demonstrably fallacious.

If the real problem is that people are crazy, stop allowing the sale of firearms to crazy people. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

I can tell a lot of people here have never been shot at or had dealings with REAL people from these troubled parts of the world. Also all of the non-Americans here apparently have masters degrees on all things relating to the USA. Maybe the next time a war rolls around in your backyard America won't be there to come save the day, since you know we're all too busy fighting ourselves while sending our money to people who have no right to it.

No one likes America until they need help.

As much as I'd love to waste my work break arguing, I really need to go do something productive, which as you may find surprising, is not senselessly shooting people.

It has nothing to do with "a masters degrees on all things relating to the USA." It has everything to do with having experience with things that are not based on American stereotypes, that have actually worked elsewhere.

 

[Valador]

If the real problem is that people are crazy, stop allowing the sale of firearms to crazy people. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

One more before I take off...

I fully agree, to an extent. It's HARD to tell who's crazy. Can you walk around Wal Mart and successfully identify every person who is crazy that you walk past? A lot of "crazy" people have no criminal records nor have they shown any extreme warning signs. I fully agree that guns should be heavily regulated, but it's not going to stop people obtaining guns illegally. It's not going to stop the guy from the movie "Falling Down" who just loses his mind one day and goes on a rampage. It's not going to stop the bullied kid who breaks into his dads gun cabinet/safe and goes and shoots up all the people who picked on him at school.

Without profiling or blatant discrimination, you can't really deny someone because they could POSSIBLY turn crazy some point in life.

I don't think we have the best means available right now to regulate illegal gun usage. Hopefully in the sci-fi future we have some kind of smart gun with a computer in it to regulate situations, have a remote kill switch, etc. Something to physically disable a gun that's being used illegally. Even then, people will find a way around it.

Guns are deeply embedded in American law/culture. I cannot see a feasible near future where there are no guns.

PS - To the OP, I apologize for getting off topic. I'll stay on topic now.

 

[Morrus]

I can tell a lot of people here have never been shot at or had dealings with REAL people from these troubled parts of the world. Also all of the non-Americans here apparently have masters degrees on all things relating to the USA. Maybe the next time a war rolls around in your backyard America won't be there to come save the day, since you know we're all too busy fighting ourselves while sending our money to people who have no right to it.

No one likes America until they need help.

As much as I'd love to waste my work break arguing, I really need to go do something productive, which as you may find surprising, is not senselessly shooting people.

Address the argument, not the personality of the poster, please.

 

[Ryujin]

One more before I take off...

I fully agree, to an extent. It's HARD to tell who's crazy. Can you walk around Wal Mart and successfully identify every person who is crazy that you walk past? A lot of "crazy" people have no criminal records nor have they shown any extreme warning signs. I fully agree that guns should be heavily regulated, but it's not going to stop people obtaining guns illegally. It's not going to stop the guy from the movie "Falling Down" who just loses his mind one day and goes on a rampage. It's not going to stop the bullied kid who breaks into his dads gun cabinet/safe and goes and shoots up all the people who picked on him at school.

Without profiling or blatant discrimination, you can't really deny someone because they could POSSIBLY turn crazy some point in life.

I don't think we have the best means available right now to regulate illegal gun usage. Hopefully in the sci-fi future we have some kind of smart gun with a computer in it to regulate situations, have a remote kill switch, etc. Something to physically disable a gun that's being used illegally. Even then, people will find a way around it.

Guns are deeply embedded in American law/culture. I cannot see a feasible near future where there are no guns.

PS - To the OP, I apologize for getting off topic. I'll stay on topic now.

Generally speaking if someone spends more than 30 minutes in a Wal-Mart, I'm going to assume that they're crazy. I think that the RCMP background checks and the conversation I was required to have with my local Firearms Officer, who was a highly trained and experienced member of my local police department, has a much better chance of determining if I might be lococookoo, or prone to violence. It works. America needs to realize that it's the Culture of the Gun, that enables the ability of criminals to obtain firearms so easily. We have guns. We have basic controls. As a result we have a fraction of your per capita murder rate (and not just from gun crime).

Our biggest issue up here is with illegal firearms, most frequently in the hands of gang members who have brought them up from the US. Some were legally owned firearms that are stolen from their owners, but smuggling from the US is a larger concern.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

Yeah. That difference is in why they left their county and our inability to deport them.

Great OTTering up, brosef. The links you posted are fairly good at showing the differences between immigrants and refugees. I guess you'd rather make provocative statements rather than reading the articles you linked and understanding the differences.

 

[Morrus]

I can tell a lot of people here have never been shot at or had dealings with REAL people from these troubled parts of the world. Also all of the non-Americans here apparently have masters degrees on all things relating to the USA. Maybe the next time a war rolls around in your backyard America won't be there to come save the day, since you know we're all too busy fighting ourselves while sending our money to people who have no right to it.

No one likes America until they need help.

As much as I'd love to waste my work break arguing, I really need to go do something productive, which as you may find surprising, is not senselessly shooting people.

After thinking about it, starting an argument by posting a xenophobic screed, followed by a post insulting and disparaging half the people in the thread, and then running off claiming you're too busy to argue is not debate; it's pretty much the definition of a drive-by trolling. Do not post in this thread again, please.

Everyone else, please do not respond to those posts. Move on with the conversation. Thanks.

 

[Nagol]

*edit post removed -- started before Morrus' request, posted after.