Now, here's a surprise...

[Romero]

If a disease killed 30,000 a year in one country, you'd expect a travel warning. Not in America.



Between December 2013 and September 2015, the World Health Organization says 28,424 people contracted the Ebola virus and 11,311 died of it.



That outbreak ruined the economies of three West African countries and even shook governments where stray cases turned up: Nigeria, Spain, Italy. Just one case showed up in Dallas, Texas, and threw the United States into a nationwide panic.



Now consider a country where a preventable disease routinely sickens 73,000 people and kills about 30,000 a year, or over 80 daily. It has done so year after year since at least the 1960s, with some outbreaks getting a lot of attention while others don't even make the local media.



You would expect the World Health Organization to issue a travel alert about such a country, if not a full-blown Public Health Emergency of International Concern -- the step just below declaring a pandemic.



You would be wrong.



http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/10/07/Gun-Violence-What-It-Is/">//http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/10/07/Gun-Violence-What-It-Is/

[Frood]

Before I jump down off my soapbox...  I think the Chief Inspector intended to ask a rhetorical question when he asked where the guns come from, but it seems none of you respect him enough to play along.  The answer is that they come from factories with dedicated machine tools and skilled labour.  They don't come from Colombian jungle peasants.  Unlike drugs, guns are a product for which supply chain can be severely restricted without massive, pointless expenditure.  All it requires is the will to do it.

Unscrupulous will.

And finally, the notion that small arms can make the difference in an insurrection against a tyrannical government is woefully outdated.  Control of military assets and control of flow of information are what would matter in today's world.  A thousand peasants with handguns would not be able to overcome a single modern battle tank.  That argument is silly.

Better to die on your feet than on your knees, reel. The woeful outdated argument doesn't hold much water when you take away modern weapons and jump back many hundreds of years. The same thing happened with blades and other modern weapons of the day. Wrongs still managed to be righted but not without a lot of peasants and indigenous peoples with rudimentary tools dying in the act of standing up for what they believed was just.



It's not your communal call to make or anyone else, whether as individuals or as part of a so called moral collective in a position of equally so called authority. People have a fundamental right to protect themselves and their way of life. Once you remove that, it all unravels into shit for everyone and every person.



History 101

You have to be quite the naïve, delusional idealist to believe that even a minority of individuals are capable of being responsible without some degree of social control.  Individualism is the American ideal, but like any ideal, it fails miserably when taken to the extreme.

I'm just an individual who takes care of me and my own, reel. I don't care what you or others think about individualism and will never willingly cede personal autonomy to a planner's social theory except to placate long enough to flee or if necessary, fight.



You'd have to be quite naive or delusional to think I as an individual would do anything less.

[Romero]

Police in Auburn Hills, Michigan are investigating whether or not to charge a conceal carry permit holder who opened fire at alleged shoplifters at a Home Depot store.



According to The Detroit News, the 47-year-old woman was watching from the store's parking lot on Tuesday as a loss prevention officer appeared to be trying to stop a shoplifter. When the suspects tried to flee in a dark SUV, the woman pulled out her concealed 9mm handgun and began shooting.



The SUV escaped but police believed that at least one of the bullets hit the vehicle, flattening a tire. The suspects were described as two men in their 40s, one black and one white. It was not immediately clear if either of the men were shot as they fled.



The Detroit Free Press reported that the woman had a concealed carry permit and was cooperating with law enforcement. Auburn Hills police had not decided if the woman would be charged.



http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/michigan-woman-with-concealed-carry-permit-opens-fire-at-alleged-home-depot-shoplifters/">//http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/michigan-woman-with-concealed-carry-permit-opens-fire-at-alleged-home-depot-shoplifters/

[reel]

Fair enough on your point that it has long been the case that peasants are outgunned by the military.  But then what real difference does it make if we are all toting handguns vs. hunting rifles?  To be honest, if it came down to civil insurrection, I'd rather have the hunting rifle.



And I'm not saying that it should be done, I'm saying that it's untrue to say that it can't be done if the will was there or that the result, if undertaken in this way would be that only criminals would have guns.  I personally have no interest in owning a gun because I think the sense of protection it brings is false barring an enormous breakdown in civil society, plus they are a big pain to get here.  Thus I don't have one and I rest confident in the fact that few people do.



Unless you live autonomously in the bush, you cede personal autonomy to planners every day.  There's a long list of things that you don't have the right to do and my proposal does not add to that list.  You (if you were an American) would still have the right to own a gun.  You would just have more difficulty obtaining it.

[Anonymous]

I get the argument that there are just too many guns in circulation in the US and that they can't all be removed, thus giving people the psychological impetus to feel they need to own a legal gun to protect from the illegal ones.  So you can't ban gun ownership.  Then don't.  



Ban the import and production of guns.  Destroy illegal guns as they are seized.  Increase penalties to and ease prosecution of people owning illegal guns.  People who own guns can keep them to protect themselves from the bogeyman.  People who want to own guns will have to pay an increasingly higher price to buy one from a decreasing stock.  Everyone will be hesitant to use their gun because its use will mean its destruction and a high price of replacement.



There are ways to control guns that overcome this perceived problem of only the criminals having guns.  You just don't want to.



And guns are not drugs.  They don't grow in fields.  A skilled blacksmith could handcraft a gun, but he's certainly not going to flood the market with them before he gets caught.  Banning import and production would rapidly decrease stock.

  Then we need to completely get rid of all weapons evetywhere. How realistic is that?

He's not saying to completely get rid of all weapons evetywhere.



What he's saying is stop importing them, stop making them in factories.



People will still own them, trade them, make them on their property.  Making them won't happen very often and the quality won't be reliable.

Oh. So we just have to eliminate greed.

[Frood]

Fair enough on your point that it has long been the case that peasants are outgunned by the military.  But then what real difference does it make if we are all toting handguns vs. hunting rifles?  To be honest, if it came down to civil insurrection, I'd rather have the hunting rifle.

They both have merits and different necessary applications in peacetime and times of unrest for individuals. They share that bond and it should never be challenged except by personal choice.

And I'm not saying that it should be done, I'm saying that it's untrue to say that it can't be done if the will was there or that the result, if undertaken in this way would be that only criminals would have guns.

Australia is awash in now illegal firearms since Port Arthur gave our assholes in power the much needed excuse to buy back by penalty of criminal law, anything they deemed unnecessary for the greater majority of legal and law abiding peoples. Many simply buried or safely hid whatever they had which wasn't registered. Criminals still act criminally. Not much has changed except the penalties.

I personally have no interest in owning a gun because I think the sense of protection it brings is false barring an enormous breakdown in civil society, plus they are a big pain to get here.

We no longer own any firearms because to do so means you consent to 24/7 warrantless searches of your property by authorities should they get the whim. We were raised to understand that a warrantless intrusion onto your property without reasonable suspicion or probable cause is one of the major reasons why a weapon should be in each home, not an excuse to violate you. On top of that, capacity and design are limited to the point where a cricket bat is an better option to use on a home intruder, since storage rules are also archaic.



I do agree with you in part that for many, a firearm imparts a false sense of security or personal protection though. It's a tool and not a being for fewer and fewer these days but that's what happens when you take a fundamental way of life away from generations and criminalize it.

Thus I don't have one and I rest confident in the fact that few people do.

If it becomes necessary one day, I would acquire one but not before it was absolutely necessary in my mind.

Unless you live autonomously in the bush, you cede personal autonomy to planners every day.  There's a long list of things that you don't have the right to do and my proposal does not add to that list.  You (if you were an American) would still have the right to own a gun.  You would just have more difficulty obtaining it.

That's like an owner saying to a waitress at a seedy diner "You didn't protest too much or quit when past patrons inappropriately touched you or brushed up on you against your will, so shut up, and serve them". It works until she's had enough and does whatever she can to remove herself from the employ or situation. She'll look for a better place to work but it's unlikely she'll be successful. She has the right to work but her work doesn't sustain her rights.

[asal]

Australia is awash in now illegal firearms since Port Arthur gave our assholes in power the much needed excuse to buy back by penalty of criminal law, anything they deemed unnecessary for the greater majority of legal and law abiding peoples. Many simply buried or safely hid whatever they had which wasn't registered. Criminals still act criminally. Not much has changed except the penalties.

When was Australia's last mass shooting (particularly by a weirdo on a crowd of strangers)?  Doesn't happen much, does it?  Not in Canada either.  Weird, eh?  



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia">//https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia



^I looked at this list.  Don't see much since Port Arthur (monash university, 2 killed by one weirdo in 2002).

[Frood]

Lindt Cafe in Sydney last December, wasn't it? Rural Australia gets them somewhat regularly too. Mostly people known to other people but mass murders all the same.



2 teens attempted in the last couple weeks, one in Sydney and the other in Melbourne.



We don't get the numbers that the States do, but they're between 13-15 times our population here in Australia. All relative.

[Anonymous]

You can order illegal guns right off the Internet.  We don't even to stop making them. There are enough is circulation.  It wouldn't matter really.

[asal]

Lindt Cafe in Sydney last December, wasn't it? Rural Australia gets them somewhat regularly too. Mostly people known to other people but mass murders all the same.



2 teens attempted in the last couple weeks, one in Sydney and the other in Melbourne.



We don't get the numbers that the States do, but they're between 13-15 times our population here in Australia. All relative.

mass - but just by numbers.  people known to people = domestic.



also, either of us could look up the per/capita numbers.  I'll state, without looking it up, that the states is phenomenally higher.  It's not culture, it's not mexican cartels,  it's access.

[Anonymous]

Mexican cartels saw people's heads off with chainsaws and hunting knives. I've seen videos. :o

[Frood]

Really asal? Someone killing a family of 4 is just a domestic murderer but the 15 year old kid last week in Parramatta, NSW who shot a police employee in the back at the cop shop before being taken down is a mass murderer?



You're weird.

Mexican cartels saw people's heads off with chainsaws and hunting knives. I've seen videos. :o

They don't need to, though. Bush and Obama regularly had firearms crossing the border for the cartels in the whole Fast and Furious scam. The decapitations were more for shock value.

[asal]

Really asal? Someone killing a family of 4 is just a domestic murderer but the 15 year old kid last week in Parramatta, NSW who shot a police employee in the back at the cop shop before being taken down is a mass murderer?



You're weird.

I didn't read it carefully.  Ok, I'll define carefully, fellow weirdo:  mass murders, when I use the shorthands "mass murders" or "mass killings" are, by the definition I'm intending, maybe not the general definition used by other people, murders of greater than one person by strangers - and in this topic I'm specifically describing murders committed by the use of guns.  I don't want to define guns - all kinds of guns.



So, no, the 15 year old kid who killed one person was not a mass murderer - he was a killer of one person, not a mass of persons.



killing a family of 4 by a person known to the family is a domestic murder, generally - not if it was a robbery, but if the motivation was due to knowing them.  If it was a stranger - that would be a mass killing.  If it was a robbery, it was a robbery.

[Anonymous]

Really asal? Someone killing a family of 4 is just a domestic murderer but the 15 year old kid last week in Parramatta, NSW who shot a police employee in the back at the cop shop before being taken down is a mass murderer?



You're weird.

Mexican cartels saw people's heads off with chainsaws and hunting knives. I've seen videos. :o

They don't need to, though. Bush and Obama regularly had firearms crossing the border for the cartels in the whole Fast and Furious scam. The decapitations were more for shock value.

oh i know.  Just pointing out that if you are a murderous person, you don't need a gun.

[RW]

Armchair social engineers really shit me sometimes. They're always treating the overall quantity of life but avoid the hard questions about the quality of life and self determination. Every problem becomes a rubber stamping opportunity to make more broad policy instead of treating people as the responsible individuals they should be.



Makes me shake my head and worry about the continuance of our species sometimes.

You have to be quite the naïve, delusional idealist to believe that even a minority of individuals are capable of being responsible without some degree of social control.  Individualism is the American ideal, but like any ideal, it fails miserably when taken to the extreme.

Fails miserably period yet it's held onto as if it actually means something.