Poll: Gun Control For or Against?
- Thread starter CIVPhilzilla
- Start date
not really. I was jsut commenting on the methods FL2 described.
Please, you guys, quit trying to read things inot my posts that arem't there. Just because I refuse to see things entirely from one (your) side (isn't that exactly what radicals do?) doesn't mean I am AGAINST you either!
Actually, this trying to polarize my posts just to pick a fight seriously gets on my nerves. Cut it out please. Polarizing makes ANYTHING wrong, as nothing is black and white.
thestonesfan
A Client of Ron Kuby
I came across this while surfing the 'net. It was wriiten by a gentleman named Bill Whittle. I thought it was a very nice piece.
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When I was a little kid, I asked my dad (who had served in the latter days of WW2 in Europe as a U.S. Army intelligence officer) about images I had seen of really huge numbers of prisoners being marched to their execution, guarded by perhaps five or ten men with rifles. I wanted to know why they didn't just rush the guards? I mean, it's one thing if they were heading to another crappy day at work camp, but these people were being marched off to be killed. I mean, for God's sake, what did they have to lose?
I was six. My dad looked at me. He'd been to the camps, seen some horrible things. When I asked him why they didn't fight back or run for the woods, he said, without any arrogance or pride or jingoism, "I don't know Billy, I can't figure that one out myself." Then there was a long moment. "But I can't imagine Americans just walking off like that, either."
Now before the combined military might of the European Union unites against me with a very harshly worded letter, let me clarify something: When he said he couldn't imagine Americans marching off to their deaths, he meant, obviously, Americans like the ones he knew. Kids who grew up hunting, kids who got a BB gun for their fifth birthday (never Christmas though --- you could shoot your eye out!). Likewise, it's impossible to imagine thousands of Brits (circa 1944) or Norwegians.
Freedom is preserved by free people.
Free people know in their heart that they are free. Back to the idea of an unarmed, culturally rich, bathed in literature and opera, non-simplisme culture like 1940s Germany: I also asked my father what would happen if the Gestapo came for us one night. He said he couldn't stop them from taking us, but he could damn sure take a few of those bastards with them, and I decided right there that I'd do the same thing.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulags, in countless other miserable terrifying pits of murder, some people woke up to the idea that resistance is NOT futile.
Addison and David Gulliver have it exactly right. Which is why that old saw, which in my terribly, tragically misspent liberal youth I used to sneer at as the mark of a real idiot - "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers" - suddenly makes a new kind of sense to me.
That is not the statement of someone who doesn't want to give up a snowmobile or a Beemer. That is a statement that draws a line in the sand for the government, or any other oppressor, to plainly see. You want to take this freedom away from me? COME AND GET IT.
Because gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are not willing to be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than by Hollywood celebrities, precisely becuase a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.
I truthfully can say I can't remember hearing of a registered gun owner committing a crime against strangers. Not to say that doesn't happen, but look at the behavior of the average NRA member and I'll bet you there are fewer criminals then there are in, say, the Screen Actors Guild.
To Phillipe and other genuinely interested and open-minded Europeans, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased, uncorruptible teacher: History. Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam. If you hate America so much, then ask yourself why no one ****s with Switzerland.
And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what real options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.
Maybe the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in a place as "civilized" as Germany. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.
Try and understand this about Americans like Rachel and me and most of the rest here: We are not going out like that. Get it? We'll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road. As a general rule, we are quiet, peaceful, decent people with better things to do than referee endless bloodbaths abroad. But it is possible to get our attention. And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, not when it comes time to fight us, because that day will not come, but rather when you once again need the help of people like Rachel and me and my late father, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice.
One last thing, regarding David Gulliver's excellent post:
"The issuing officer was surprised to see that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force."
This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE. Gun control activists don't think they can be trusted, with their guns or their money. They know better. They'll tell us what to do.
Well, as far as the U.S. government trying to disarm America, it won't happen. Not only because the people will resist. Not only because it is in the fabric of the document that limits and legitimizes government. The single main reason why you won't see a police state here, ever, is because American police think it's a crock of ****, too.
Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who - and the first guns they'd have to turn in would be their own. We don't have shock troops here, boyo. No Republican Guards, special or otherwise; no Hussars, no Cossacks, no SS; we lack Preatorian guards, elite Napoleonic bodyguard units - any of that poison. Just kids serving their country, making some money for college. You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens? Think again.
These trust the people freedoms are so deeply engrained in the fabric of America as to be genetic, I think. I used to worry that we'd bred that out of us, and then along comes Todd Beamer and company on United Flight 93, who, first among us that day, realized he was being marched to his death and decided to do something about it.
We are a nation of immigrants, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic idiots and unelected intellectual effete sadists. When Europeans call us idiots, they simply show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table discussion and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.
Our grandparents walked on the moon, man! And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about you than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.
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When I was a little kid, I asked my dad (who had served in the latter days of WW2 in Europe as a U.S. Army intelligence officer) about images I had seen of really huge numbers of prisoners being marched to their execution, guarded by perhaps five or ten men with rifles. I wanted to know why they didn't just rush the guards? I mean, it's one thing if they were heading to another crappy day at work camp, but these people were being marched off to be killed. I mean, for God's sake, what did they have to lose?
I was six. My dad looked at me. He'd been to the camps, seen some horrible things. When I asked him why they didn't fight back or run for the woods, he said, without any arrogance or pride or jingoism, "I don't know Billy, I can't figure that one out myself." Then there was a long moment. "But I can't imagine Americans just walking off like that, either."
Now before the combined military might of the European Union unites against me with a very harshly worded letter, let me clarify something: When he said he couldn't imagine Americans marching off to their deaths, he meant, obviously, Americans like the ones he knew. Kids who grew up hunting, kids who got a BB gun for their fifth birthday (never Christmas though --- you could shoot your eye out!). Likewise, it's impossible to imagine thousands of Brits (circa 1944) or Norwegians.
Freedom is preserved by free people.
Free people know in their heart that they are free. Back to the idea of an unarmed, culturally rich, bathed in literature and opera, non-simplisme culture like 1940s Germany: I also asked my father what would happen if the Gestapo came for us one night. He said he couldn't stop them from taking us, but he could damn sure take a few of those bastards with them, and I decided right there that I'd do the same thing.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulags, in countless other miserable terrifying pits of murder, some people woke up to the idea that resistance is NOT futile.
Addison and David Gulliver have it exactly right. Which is why that old saw, which in my terribly, tragically misspent liberal youth I used to sneer at as the mark of a real idiot - "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers" - suddenly makes a new kind of sense to me.
That is not the statement of someone who doesn't want to give up a snowmobile or a Beemer. That is a statement that draws a line in the sand for the government, or any other oppressor, to plainly see. You want to take this freedom away from me? COME AND GET IT.
Because gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are not willing to be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than by Hollywood celebrities, precisely becuase a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.
I truthfully can say I can't remember hearing of a registered gun owner committing a crime against strangers. Not to say that doesn't happen, but look at the behavior of the average NRA member and I'll bet you there are fewer criminals then there are in, say, the Screen Actors Guild.
To Phillipe and other genuinely interested and open-minded Europeans, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased, uncorruptible teacher: History. Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam. If you hate America so much, then ask yourself why no one ****s with Switzerland.
And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what real options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.
Maybe the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in a place as "civilized" as Germany. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.
Try and understand this about Americans like Rachel and me and most of the rest here: We are not going out like that. Get it? We'll put up with handgun murders if we have to, but we are not going down that road. As a general rule, we are quiet, peaceful, decent people with better things to do than referee endless bloodbaths abroad. But it is possible to get our attention. And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, not when it comes time to fight us, because that day will not come, but rather when you once again need the help of people like Rachel and me and my late father, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice.
One last thing, regarding David Gulliver's excellent post:
"The issuing officer was surprised to see that most of his men would not follow an order to disarm the populace by force."
This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great - but TRUST THE PEOPLE. Gun control activists don't think they can be trusted, with their guns or their money. They know better. They'll tell us what to do.
Well, as far as the U.S. government trying to disarm America, it won't happen. Not only because the people will resist. Not only because it is in the fabric of the document that limits and legitimizes government. The single main reason why you won't see a police state here, ever, is because American police think it's a crock of ****, too.
Who will do the dirty work? Volunteer citizen soldiers, that's who - and the first guns they'd have to turn in would be their own. We don't have shock troops here, boyo. No Republican Guards, special or otherwise; no Hussars, no Cossacks, no SS; we lack Preatorian guards, elite Napoleonic bodyguard units - any of that poison. Just kids serving their country, making some money for college. You think those people would fire on a crowd of American citizens? Think again.
These trust the people freedoms are so deeply engrained in the fabric of America as to be genetic, I think. I used to worry that we'd bred that out of us, and then along comes Todd Beamer and company on United Flight 93, who, first among us that day, realized he was being marched to his death and decided to do something about it.
We are a nation of immigrants, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic idiots and unelected intellectual effete sadists. When Europeans call us idiots, they simply show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table discussion and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.
Our grandparents walked on the moon, man! And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about you than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.
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thestonesfan: In the Pacific, there was an incident of around IIRC 100 or so American construction workers lead off to the beach on a captured island and shot by a handfull of Japanese soldiers. Resignation is surely more common in 'unfree' people, but not restriced to them. 
Akka
Moody old mage.
And you seriously consider that we should stop in awe before this piece of jingoism and arrogance, and praise the freedom and gun ownership that reign in all America ?
My goodness...
My goodness...
thestonesfan
A Client of Ron Kuby
You are free to take from it what you will...
there is a degree of truth to it.
what do you want to do? Send over some B-2s to bombard the guy? ABn him for speaking his mind politely?
Nah, better you reply with a post on
- why you think the NRA is NOT whacko (remember, a LOT of distinguished US military personel left it in dismay)
- why you think US police is NOT inferior to CH one, despite a decidedly lower usccess rate in both prevention of crime as well as catching criminals.
come on, please, explain! Perhaps we will agree, more probably not, but at least we will be able to understand where youa re coming from!
Akka
Moody old mage.
You mean, to take such pieces of crap as :Originally posted by thestonesfan
You are free to take from it what you will...
"Because gun ownership is the truest form of freedom"
"And believe me, you have it now, and I believe the time will come when you will regret calling us cowboys and Nazis and idiots, not when it comes time to fight us, because that day will not come, but rather when you once again need the help of people like Rachel and me and my late father, fighting forces you ignore not from superior sophistication but from sheer moral cowardice. "
"Our grandparents walked on the moon, man! And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about you than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid."
Basically, USA is good, Americans are tough, free-loving and trusting, and Europe is full of over-intellectuallist sheeps that glorify autoritarism and won't lift a finger to defend their freedom. Riiiight...
I'm talking about the blatantly incorrect parts.
"and have to get a licence before you can get a weapon" - He apparently thinks guns in the US are sold over the counter like candy.
"And god forbid we would allow people to walk around with concealed weapons uncontrolled." - No state that I have seen laws for allows that.
No, Yago apparently has no idea what gun laws in the US are.
And when it's Europeans talking, Americans are the stupid fat cowboys who are ruining the world and are good for nothing. If you actually bother to take it seriously, step outside and beat your head against the nearest brick wall.
Yago
came undone
Thestonesfan, in this case, the incidentes were armed average people were crushed by trained soldiers would be interesting. Did they have arms in Dublin 1916 ? Paris 1871 ?
At Speedo:
Speedo, if you read my post again, you will see that in my post is a quote form another post. This quotation alleges things about my country and if you read again careafully, I just rebutted false allegations concerning my country.
"No, Yago apparently has no idea what gun laws in the US are" is completly irrelevant, as I wasn't talking about the US, except for the case that states there alllow weapons we don't.
At Speedo:
Speedo, if you read my post again, you will see that in my post is a quote form another post. This quotation alleges things about my country and if you read again careafully, I just rebutted false allegations concerning my country.
"No, Yago apparently has no idea what gun laws in the US are" is completly irrelevant, as I wasn't talking about the US, except for the case that states there alllow weapons we don't.
well, so do I - here, you cannot just present your social security card and buy a gun. Applications are checked far more carefully. No, not like candy in the US, but a stolen social sec card gets you there mostly. It also has to do with the black market, too, there is hardly any here compared to the US.
Do all states require locked cases in locked trunks for gun transport? I think not.
So the control here is far tougher. He has just exaggerated to make his point
thanx for repling, btw
Yago
came undone
As long as you don't read the whole post through ?
Akka
Moody old mage.
Well, excuse me, but I urge you to reread the text if you did not see the shameless "we're better than you, and it's because we love freedom and we have guns !" blazing all throughout it.
thestonesfan
A Client of Ron Kuby
Well, you are a socialist gun-control advocate.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Yes, and so ?
(gun-banning advocate, in fact, not just gun-control advocate, except if you consider that limiting the guns to police and military is a form of control and not a form of ban)
Marla_Singer
United in diversity
I feel really hurt to say so... but I must admit that today, the USA is more and more a warmongering nation thinking as an imperialistic country who only cares to protect its own dominating interests on the planet . I never expected to say such a statement one day actually. Mostly because I used to consider it as a stupid antiamerican BS for a long time. But the better I know what american people do think, the more I realize there's something true in that.
Come on people ! Wake up ! Where is America going ? Harry Truman restored Peace, Prosperity and Hope to Western Europe. America has never been as strong as when it was helping other nations. What's happening ?
but I must admit that today, the USA is more and more a warmongering nation thinking as an imperialistic country who only cares to protect its own dominating interests on the planet . I never expected to say such a statement one day actually. Mostly because I used to consider it as a stupid antiamerican BS for a long time. But the better I know what american people do think, the more I realize there's something true in that.Come on people ! Wake up ! Where is America going ? Harry Truman restored Peace, Prosperity and Hope to Western Europe. America has never been as strong as when it was helping other nations. What's happening ?
thestonesfan
A Client of Ron Kuby
Socialist = Authoritarian
Gun banning = A loss of freedom
Sinapus
Defenestrated
...who'll probably have a stroke if he ever bothers reading any of Whittle's other essays.
Oh, and:
I'd say limiting something to just government employees would safely fit in the 'ban' category.
