While I'm at it

[madialex]

edit

[David Schwab]

I was a latch key kid. It's not that my parents were busy trying to make as much money as they could, just trying to make a living. Actually my dad was home during the day, but he worked nights, so part of the time he was sleeping. Of course things were different back then.

Do you have kids? Childcare is very expensive. My wife stays home with our 2 year old daughter, because it's cheaper than day care! Any additional income she would make wouldn't be worth it. We get to leave our 15 year old home... he's old enough. He hasn't shot anyone yet!

But yes, seems these kids might not be getting enough attention, but sometimes that's not the case either.

I think the real problem is the availability of guns. These shootings wouldn't happen otherwise.. you never heard of a kid going to school with a kitchen knife and attacking a dozen people...

[DrStrangelove]

chill pill

I do not seek to diminish the tragedy of the Virginia Tech
shootings but would place them in perspective. These shootings
are aberrations, rare, and made more visible by their very scarcity.
There are many more people in the US than a generation ago
and that guarantees the higher occurrence (not rate of incidence)
of psychoses.

When a nut case gets a gun and doesn't care if he dies,
most security measures are ineffective. A call for firearm
bans is misplaced considering that Virgina Tech had one in
place since last year.

Our idiot President, when mentioning the right to bear arms,
referred to the students and not the shooter. I would like
to think that Bush had in mind the 2002 Appalachian College of Law
shooter who was quickly halted by three armed students ... but I
doubt that the Preznit is so well-informed.

Don't let yourself get stampeded by the Press. They're playing
this up luridly and it makes a fine distraction from things like the
mishandling of the war in Iraq or the subornation of the American
judicial system by Rove and Gonzales.

-drh

[madialex]

Hi Ds

I am not aiming this at all parents with latch key kids, just the ones who don't give a care about anything but their own personal gain at their kids expense. I applaud the parents who have to work and have their kids come home and by there till a parent gets home because of the enormous child care costs but still teach their kids right from wrong and appreciate the children.

My daughter has friends who fall into the first part of the statement. They get themselves off to school, if they want to, if not there is no one there to make them, they come home to an empty house until almost 9PM, left to fin for themselves just so mommy and daddy can afford the 500 thousand dollar house, the BMW or Mercedes or most times both or the huge SUV. This same person who i wont name is 14, already having sex, tried drugs and generally has a messed up attitude. Can we see where she is heading?? Oh yeah they did give her a cell phone to keep in touch with, like she ever calls her parents. Every time I have been around her she has been on the phone with said boyfriend, making plans to sneak over to his place at night after the parents are asleep.... Maybe i'm just over reacting a bit but that stuff does go on and I see it all over.

[madialex]

I do not seek to diminish the tragedy of the Virginia Tech
shootings but would place them in perspective. These shootings
are aberrations, rare, and made more visible by their very scarcity.
There are many more people in the US than a generation ago
and that guarantees the higher occurrence (not rate of incidence)
of psychoses.

When a nut case gets a gun and doesn't care if he dies,
most security measures are ineffective. A call for firearm
bans is misplaced considering that Virgina Tech had one in
place since last year.

Our idiot President, when mentioning the right to bear arms,
referred to the students and not the shooter. I would like
to think that Bush had in mind the 2002 Appalachian College of Law
shooter who was quickly halted by three armed students ... but I
doubt that the Preznit is so well-informed.

Don't let yourself get stampeded by the Press. They're playing
this up luridly and it makes a fine distraction from things like the
mishandling of the war in Iraq or the subornation of the American
judicial system by Rove and Gonzales.

-drh

Hi Dr. S I whole heartedly agree with you.......

[corduroyew]

I think you are completely off base. I don't think it has anything to do with parents being gone. Most of the kids that have done these type of shootings have been middle class and they had a stay at home mom. I don't know about this last shooting, but it was for most of them.

I think the biggest problem is the kids don't have anything to do. Today it seems like everything is illegal. In the last 20 years I've seen most parks get the good toys taken off the playgrounds. The Elementry School I went to got rid of the tire swing because somebody fell off. The Teenage mutant ninja turtle pizza thrower has been recalled because some kid poked his eye with it. Dance clubs in smaller towns are getting shut down because community leaders don't like all the kids lining up in front of them. In my home town if you have more than 3 kinds hanging out on a street corner then you are a "gang" and can be fined. They even had to take the balls out of the McDonalds ball pits because kids might get hurt. The last thing I saw happen was that they took all the big slides out of one of the local parks because “it was too fast”. Nobody actually got hurt on the thing but it was taken down.

Kids today are being overprotected and they are too sheltered. This messes with their critical reasoning. They have a hard time understanding negative consequences because anything that could have a negative consequence is taken away. Teachers aren’t even allowed to grade papers with red ink because it is seen as “negative”. After all, we wouldn’t want the kids to think they might have done something wrong. So now we have made children numb and board. I think of the South Park episode where the Terrance and Phillip cartoon is taken off the air and the kids say “what are we going to do now… Well, my uncle says crack is pretty cool…”

Because kids are board and told they can’t hang out in large groups it means that they pick a few select friends and find “fun” things to do with them. When there is nothing else to do, you can always make fun of somebody less cool then you right? Unfortunately there are more kids being singled out because the groups of cool kids are much smaller. The kids are also being picked on more often because rather than go skating, or playing at the park, or whatever, they are now given the options of sit around and look at each other, or make fun of somebody. Having more “victims” of the cool kids means there is a greater chance that you do it to a mentally unstable kid that is going to blow up and kill somebody. Most of the time the kid just kills themselves, but sometimes they want to take a few people down with them. Kids are smart enough to know that it isn’t the fault of the 2 or 3 people that picked on them so much. It was the system that failed and so these unstable youngsters take it out on the system. Sometimes the kids don't actually act on this stuff untill they get older. Sometimes they are not kids anymore, but in the end, I think most of this happens because our kids have nothing better to do. We need to let them have a bit more fun and then they might not be so messed up when they get older.


Sorry for going on and on.

[David Schwab]

Our idiot President, when mentioning the right to bear arms...

People love to "quote" the constitution on that one... but they always paraphrase and never give the full amendment.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Note the part about the "well regulated Militia".

In United States v. Miller, the court wrote:

''The significance of the militia was that it was composed of 'civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.' It was upon this force that the States could rely for defense and securing of the laws, on a force that 'comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense,' who, 'when called for service . . . were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.'

So they were referring to a National Guard or Army of mostly civilian volunteers... not Joe Sixpack with a sawed off shotgun in his pickup truck.

There's no reason for anyone to own weapons. Statistics show that most people who own guns for "protection" either get shot with their own gun, or it is stolen and used for another crime, or a family member is accidentally shot with it. Almost no cases where it was actually used to stop a crime.

[Zhangliqun]

People love to "quote" the constitution on that one... but they always paraphrase and never give the full amendment.



Note the part about the "well regulated Militia".

In United States v. Miller, the court wrote:

''The significance of the militia was that it was composed of 'civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.' It was upon this force that the States could rely for defense and securing of the laws, on a force that 'comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense,' who, 'when called for service . . . were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.'

So they were referring to a National Guard or Army of mostly civilian volunteers... not Joe Sixpack with a sawed off shotgun in his pickup truck.

There's no reason for anyone to own weapons. Statistics show that most people who own guns for "protection" either get shot with their own gun, or it is stolen and used for another crime, or a family member is accidentally shot with it. Almost no cases where it was actually used to stop a crime.

Allow me to be the skunk at the picnic.

The statistics are false. They include overwhelmingly incidents where the gun in the home was never even touched, either by the assailant or the owner; the gun used was the one brought in by the assailant and for whatever reason, the victims could not get to the "family gun" in time. Misleading to the extreme.

You've also uprooted the 2nd Amendment from its context. Even more so than today, most people then did not live in big cities and firearms were pretty much a household appliance, both for hunting and for protection from wildlife, both 4-legged and 2-legged -- because out in the boonies, which again was most of the country, there weren't cops or sheriffs or soldiers on every farm or at every log cabin to protect you. Either you stopped the bear from eating your wife or the sociopath from raping and killing her, or the bear or psycho was not stopped at all.

In other words, it was ASSUMED that the joe sixpack of the late 1700's had firearms and the 2nd Amendment is very carefully worded in such a way that they had no intention of changing that at all, if anything encouraging it because it was common sense. Note that it doesn't say "the right of select members of the militia who have connections" or "the right of those deemed worthy of gun ownership by those who don't like guns" to bear arms shall not be infringed, it says "the right of the people". So it was from a general population they assumed had the common sense to be already in possession of and very familiar with firearms that they intended to draw this militia.

Some things have changed since then, such as the "need" to hunt -- everybody can go to the supermarket -- and obviously the level of weaponry required for a modern army, so the militia aspect of the 2nd Amendment may need to be revisited in the form of some future amendment.

Some things have NOT changed, though, which is the need for self-protection which lately has gotten more dire. The only place where there's no need for anyone to own weapons is beyond the grave, or among the Amish or any others who have no intention under any circumstances of ever defending themselves or their families against those who intend grave harm. In this world, with all due respect, the idea that no-one needs to own weapons is nuts. Half a million people every year stop would-be violent criminals just by brandishing a firearm, while millions of assault, robbery, rape and murder victims each year who depended on wishful thinking didn't fare quite as well. The way of wishful thinking would add at least a half a million more.

The only way to change the "availability of guns" is to go back in time and un-invent firearms. Anything else only guarantees that firearms will be owned only by those you would least want to have them. Guns are all around us like controlled substances so gun-control laws have had about as much success keeping guns out of the hands of crooks as drug laws have had of keeping needles out of addicts' arms. Hey, Va Tech was a "gun free zone". Or so the wishful thinking went until last Monday.

Even if it were possible make all guns disappear, what would have stopped Cho from taking a machete on campus and hacking up 32 students and profs, Rwanda-style? The police would not have been able to shoot him because remember, there would be no guns. Someone trained in the use of swords or other blades would have had to rush the guy and kill him up close and personal, but Virginia Tech would more than likely have been a "blade-free zone" so by the time the sword-trained cops got there, he would have had plenty of time to kill 32, probably more.

If we continue to be this willfully naive about human nature, the law-abiding will soon be extinct.

[David Schwab]

The statistics are false. They include overwhelmingly incidents where the gun in the home was never even touched, either by the assailant or the owner; the gun used was the one brought in by the assailant and for whatever reason, the victims could not get to the "family gun" in time. Misleading to the extreme.

You are quoting statistics yourself... are those false also? Most of the street crime involving guns is with stolen guns. These guns were originally bought legitimately, but the punks out on the street can't buy guns legally. Or they drive down south to places where the gun control, or lack thereof, makes it easy to get hold of guns. Then they bring them up here and sell them. These guns were not gotten for self protection.

Cho bought his guns legally, and for one purpose alone, and it wasn't for self defense. He bought one 30 days after the other, which is the minimum time period in VA. So name a legit reason for him to have two hand guns? If he was unable to buy them, and in some states he wouldn't have been able (he wasn't even a citizen!), he wouldn't have killed 33 people.

I also doubt most people that have "family guns" would be very good at using them. Nor would they have the time to get them, even if they were readily available. So what good are they? Not very effective as self protection.

You've also uprooted the 2nd Amendment from its context.

How so? Did the court decision I quoted also do the same? The point the court made, and I also made, is that every person who cites the 2nd Amendment does so out of context. They say it gives anyone the right to own firearms, and it doesn't say that. If that's what they meant, and you said it was "very carefully worded" they would have very carefully said anyone can bare arms, and not mentioned clause -- well regulated Militia -- or a purpose-- the security of a free State. You having a gun to protect yourself has nothing at all to do with the "security of a free State". You have to remember that they were revolting against the British. Freedom in this context has nothing to do with your liberties. Liberties are what you are talking about, and liberties are defined as "being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life behavior, or political views" You having a hand gun at home will not effect your liberties. But the government will. And they are starting to do so. Look up the Patriot Act to see how by having a new supposed threat against us, they are clamping down on everyone's liberties! They needed a new Pearl Harbor, so they created one.

Even more so than today, most people then did not live in big cities and firearms were pretty much a household appliance, both for hunting and for protection from wildlife, both 4-legged and 2-legged -- because out in the boonies, which again was most of the country, there weren't cops or sheriffs or soldiers on every farm or at every log cabin to protect you. Either you stopped the bear from eating your wife or the sociopath from raping and killing her, or the bear or psycho was not stopped at all.

People don't hunt with hand guns. How about ceramic hand guns that don't show up on X-Ray? What's the purpose of those? How about body armour piecing bullets? Are those for hunting too?

I'd like to hear of a story where someone used their handgun to prevent a crime.. I have never seen one such report. Why is that? The news is obsessed with reporting violent crime. Surely they wouldn't want to miss a story like that! Neither would the NRA.

In other words, it was ASSUMED that the joe sixpack of the late 1700's had firearms...

You are making an assumption yourself. I was saying that the Joe Sixpack of today uses the 2nd Amendment to justify having firearms for some purpose that was never really there in the first place. But people are filled with fear and convinced they need handguns from "those bad people" over there... where ever the hell that is.

...and the 2nd Amendment is very carefully worded in such a way that they had no intention of changing that at all, if anything encouraging it because it was common sense.

According to whom? Not "United States v. Miller"

Note that it doesn't say "the right of select members of the militia who have connections" or "the right of those deemed worthy of gun ownership by those who don't like guns" to bear arms shall not be infringed, it says "the right of the people". So it was from a general population they assumed had the common sense to be already in possession of and very familiar with firearms that they intended to draw this militia.

Why would it say anything silly like that? That's a circular argument. It does say "well regulated Militia". So tell me how YOU owning a hand gun makes you part of a well regulated Militia? Who do you report to? Who's regulating you? Registering firearms doesn't regulate their use, anymore then having an motor vehicle restoration stops you from being a drunk driver and killing someone.

There was no big government funded army back then, who had firearms made for them, was there? So as the Court sated they had to use "militia was that it was composed of 'civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.'"

Some things have changed since then, such as the "need" to hunt -- everybody can go to the supermarket -- and obviously the level of weaponry required for a modern army, so the militia aspect of the 2nd Amendment may need to be revisited in the form of some future amendment.

The militia aspect needs to be enforced! That's the problem. It says you need a militia, but that's not why the amendment is enforced. Cho wasn't in a well regulated (meaning by the government) militia... OK, but why should a civilian be able to buy weaponry as would be used in the military? You can't hunt with it. And do you need to have an AK-47 to protect your home? What's next, cruse missiles? The arguments by the gun lobbyist are weak at best.

Some things have NOT changed, though, which is the need for self-protection which lately has gotten more dire.

And why is that? Because people had too easy access to guns. The logic is you need a gun, because the "bad guy" has a gun. Don't you see the problem with that?

The only place where there's no need for anyone to own weapons is beyond the grave, or among the Amish or any others who have no intention under any circumstances of ever defending themselves or their families against those who intend grave harm.

That makes no sense. Do you need a weapon in your day to day life today? Where do you live? I work in NYC, which some people seem to think is dangerous. Do I need to cary a hand gun to get to work in one piece? Of course not. What is this, the wild west?

In this world, with all due respect, the idea that no-one needs to own weapons is nuts. Half a million people every year stop would-be violent criminals just by brandishing a firearm, while millions of assault, robbery, rape and murder victims each year who depended on wishful thinking didn't fare quite as well. The way of wishful thinking would add at least a half a million more.

I didn't quite understand what you said here... But I'll ask, do you own a gun? Why do you think you need one? And you are ignoring the face that many of the people committing these crimes that you speak of, used a gun. Two wrongs don't make a right. Are you saying that if every one was carrying a gun that crime would stop? No, you would like have more instances of people shooting each other over something stupid.

The only way to change the "availability of guns" is to go back in time and un-invent firearms. Anything else only guarantees that firearms will be owned only by those you would least want to have them. Guns are all around us like controlled substances so gun-control laws have had about as much success keeping guns out of the hands of crooks as drug laws have had of keeping needles out of addicts' arms. Hey, Va Tech was a "gun free zone". Or so the wishful thinking went until last Monday.

The only way? I doubt thats the only way. If our idiot president and the rest of the government that is in the pocket of groups like the NRA didn't want people to continue to be at odds with each other, they could easily stop guns from coming into this country.

You have to realize that a lot of what's going on at the moment is to keep people fighting with each other, and keep the attention away from what's really going down. The more you are lead to believe that the world is a dangerous place, the more they keep people scared. Look at the news. We never watch it at home. What do they show? Just bad stuff.

Even if it were possible make all guns disappear, what would have stopped Cho from taking a machete on campus and hacking up 32 students and profs, Rwanda-style?

Machetes are easy to get... so why didn't he use one? When did that ever happen in a school? There was one case where a guy chopped off his ex girlfriend's head with a machete... but imagine one person trying to kill 33 people with one. It would never happen. Rob a bank with one? Nope. How about a liquor store?

Rwanda had a vast mob of people yielding machetes. And guns too. Not one lone "macheteman".

As far as the campus being a gun free zone... he didn't buy the guns on campus. That's diverting the attention from the fact that if he was not able to buy the guns so freely, he wouldn't have been able to kill 33 people with them. As I said in my post.. why didn't he use two kitchen knives?

So should all our classrooms be filled with students with guns? You might contend that if that were the case that they might have ben able to stop him, but you also have to see know you have other students that might be unstable, and now they have guns.

The real issue is him being able to get onto the campus with guns. In rougher areas, like where I went to school, they have security guards and metal detectors. Now unless one of the guards passes the guns to the student, which has happened, you don't end up with people in the school with guns, just as you don't see them in court rooms, unless the security guards smuggle them in, which has happened.

So arming everyone is not the answer.

The police would not have been able to shoot him because remember, there would be no guns.

Ummm, I almost don't want to qualify this by responding. First off, the police didn't shoot him. He killed himself before they got in the room. Secondly, THE POLICE WOULD HAVE GUNS! They, like the military, have a reason to be armed! Regular citizens don't. That's taking the law into your own hands, which is vigilanteism, which brings us back to the wild west. We've been there, and done that.

You are not seeing that certain groups want us to have crime, or at least to believe we have a high crime rate. They want to blame certain groups, such as blacks, for the crimes, and this keep people living in fear. This keeps the "peace keepers" in control.

Someone trained in the use of swords or other blades would have had to rush the guy and kill him up close and personal, but Virginia Tech would more than likely have been a "blade-free zone" so by the time the sword-trained cops got there, he would have had plenty of time to kill 32, probably more.

Once again... fighting fire with fire. How about he couldn't get a gun on campus? Hmmmm? And why on earth would the cops have swords??? Go watch Bowling for Columbine.

If we continue to be this willfully naive about human nature, the law-abiding will soon be extinct.

Human nature is fine. Have you had any urges to kill anyone? Was Cho law abiding?

have you, or anyone you know, been a victim of a violent crime?

My mother was murdered in 1998. She was 86 years old. The killer used a box cutter. He also killed a childhood friend's father who lived up the street and was confined to a wheel chair. Also with a box cutter. The killer lived in the neighborhood. His niece was in my son's 3rd grade class. Now the big question is why did this man kill two elderly people? He needed money because he was a crack addict. Now, I'm certainly not making excuses for the vile human action, and I certainly haven't forgiven him, but let's look at the way certain groups of people are treated in the US. he was black. And like many blacks, was disadvantaged due to the present racist culture that is encouraged by the powers that be. The powers that bend people's opinions by leading what they see in the media. People are feed a constant diet of hate and violence on TV, in music, in the movies.

But the media always portrays blacks as criminals. My wife is black, and she never killed anyone!

The news likes to jump all over this stuff.. now they have Cho's bad writing and those videos to glamorize him.. and more copy cats will follow. Don't focus on him. Focus on the victims.

Human nature? There are still parts of the world where this stuff is unheard of. Even in Europe. You don't see so many crimes committed with guns. It's an artificial situation created by forces that love war and hatred. Pick up a copy of the book "Gods of Eden" for an interesting historical perceptive for the reason we wage war against each other.

Do you really think terrorist pulled off 911? The facts are out there.

[SkinnyWire]

I think the real problem is the availability of guns. These shootings wouldn't happen otherwise..

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=55288

That "philosophy" has been proven incorrect more than once. Further, one only has to look as far as our nation's capital to see the negative effect of anti-gun laws - outside of the fact that they're unconstitutional. In Australia, since they banned certain firearms in 1996, assaults have increased. Their government is quick to jerk knee and say you can't link the two and deaths by firearms are down but assault is crime and it's up, FWIW. Anyway, not like folks are too often concerned for facts in these cases.

[black_labb]

i still cant see the logic in having everyone having guns, but i have grown up in canada and then australia so maybe im biased.
imagine i at the university people were able to carry guns, and imagine people heard gunshots, some people would pull out their guns and be scared shitless, creeping around looking for someone who is the shooter, and they see another person doing the same. at least one person is likely to be shot from this, and maybe even be seen shooting at someone and then mistaken for the killer. its kind of hard the distinguish between the killer and someone else when their both carrying guns.

you say that since guns have become outlawed in australia. i live in australia and saying guns outlawed in 1996, assaults rising, guns must stop assaults. there are many issues other that the gun issue that have to be looked at. a different government came into power in '96 in australia, maybe they are to blame for the rising assault rate. personally i think it is probably atleast partly to do with cristal meth becoming a big issue. it was never really an issue in australia so there wasnt much knowledge about it or warnings, which led many people to become addicted due to a lack of knowledge regarding its negative effects. other factors would include things like racial tension since 9/11 and other things. i wouldnt be surprised if the assault rate in america went up aswell.

[David Schwab]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=55288

That "philosophy" has been proven incorrect more than once.

Proven? OK, show me the studies. And who did these studies? Who are their backers, and what are their interests. If there really was a study, and I doubt it, then someone wants you to believe this. Just like the big tobacco companies used to say they did studies that proved that smoking is good for you!

Show me just one study where it was proven. And how can they prove something like that? All they can do is show some statistics, but not the cause. Unless they did a double blind test, where one month the ban was on, and then the next it wasn't. A lot of people believe there were studies and stuff, when there actually weren't. Where and how was it proven? I say it wasn't. The burden of proof is on you.

If someone can't buy a gun, then they can't use a gun. Period. That's logic. Can you buy a surface-to-air missile? You don't see too many people blowing stuff up with those, do you? It's availability. The guns that are not easy to get, like an uzi, aren't used in street crimes very much (don't believe made for TV gang movies). Just the small hand guns that you can buy on the street for cheap. I say stop production of such guns. Some of them aren't useful for anything.. they are so cheap they can't be fired more than once or twice, and they are hardly accurate. The reason they are made is to make money from scared little rabbits, and ciminals.

Further, one only has to look as far as our nation's capital to see the negative effect of anti-gun laws - outside of the fact that they're unconstitutional.

I've been to DC... explain to me how banning guns causes crime to rise. The crime rate is as bad as any inner city. Newark, New Jersey was the car jacking capital of the world for a while... now it's Miami. There was no lack of guns in Newark! Same for Miami. Since they started cleaning the area up, and confiscating guns, the murder rate has gone down.
You are making a statement with nothing to back it up.

How exactly are gun laws unconstitutional? You are sprouting rhetoric. Show me one precedent. You've heard these things said over and over, and you are buying into it. The constitution clearly states that you; may bare arms as part of a well regulated militia, and for the purpose; to protect the freedom of the state.

Explain to me how you having a hand gun is part of a well regulated militia, and is protecting the freedom of the state? Guess what, you aren't, and it isn't. That's constitutional. Just anyone owning a gun, and for what ever reason they see fit, is not protected by the constitution. What people like the NRA do is to "interpret" what is written, as if the words chosen where not what was intended in the first place. This is the same way people "interpret" the Bible to make it say what ever is on their agenda.

In Australia, since they banned certain firearms in 1996, assaults have increased. Their government is quick to jerk knee and say you can't link the two and deaths by firearms are down but assault is crime and it's up, FWIW. Anyway, not like folks are too often concerned for facts in these cases.

I think you are knee jerking to link the two. You haven't explained why they are linked, or shown anything

Let's use some non knee jerk logic to see if it makes sense.

Answer the following questions;

A) What kinds of firearms were banned?

B) How did the ban of those firearms cause, or contribute to the rise in crime?

C) What kinds of assaults are on the rise? Are the rise in assaults NOT better than the decline in murders? Do you REALLY believe this nonsense? Should I give you any credence if you do? Would you rather be murdered or assaulted? (what ever assaulted means) Learn to protect yourself and you wont get assaulted! Guns are for men with small dicks. (and so are Hummers)

D) What percentage of firearms used in crimes were purchased legally? If they weren't legal firearms, and I'd wager most weren't, then THERE WAS NO GUN CONTROL IN EFFECT!

See how easy that is? The government can stop guns and drugs from entering the inner cities.. but they don't want to. They most likely aid in them being there. Why? Let "those people" just kill themselves ... that's why.

Gun control isn't stopping criminals from getting guns. You can ban guns, and they will get them anyway. They are not following the laws, so what difference does it a regulation make? None.

You are implying that when people had these firearms that these firearms protected them. Even though there were more murders. Likely caused by guns. Boy that's protected!

If that's the case, please explain how that was possible, and not from you imagining how it might be, but from news stories from Australia showing how someone had a firearm, such as an assault rifle, assuming that might be the kind of firearm that would be banned, and how they prevented a crime. Did the ban on firearms cause the criminals to get more firearms? Obviously not, if the murder rate is down. That's a good thing. I'd say they accomplished what they set out to do.

What you are doing is known as "begging the question." Saying that because they banned certain firearms, and the crime increasing proves that it's because of the banning of firearms, is like saying "God exists because it says so in the Bible, and the Bible is the realized word of God"

Or, "Santa Clause is proven to be real because I had gifts under the Yule tree in the morning" Don't get me started with the tooth fairy!

A girl I used to live with was robbed, at gun point, in front of our house as she walked up the street from her car. The robber took her hand bag because they had followed her from the bank where she just cashed her paycheck. They followed her in a car, and when she parked one guy hopped out and followed on foot. He grabbed her bag, and when she resisted he put a gun to her face.

So how was a firearm used in this case. Now what if she had a hand gun herself, as protection. How would this scene have been different?

Obviously it wouldn't have been MUCH different.

A) Her gun would have been in the bag, and she wouldn't have gotten it, and the thief would have.

B) If she tried to get the gun out, he likely would have shot her in the face, as she had no time to get the gun, and he had his pulled already.

This is a real life case, and shows that the only use a hand gun has in such cases is as used by the criminal. Does having a gun help you in a drive by shooting?

The rest is stuff like "leaving the lights on uses less energy than turning them off or on"... people hear this un-logical crap all the time, and just repeat it back like a broken record. And that particular myth was busted on Myth Busters.

It only takes common sense to see that a device that's sole purpose is to kill another human being, is going to be used to fulfill its purpose, if it's given to people. If you read the local NYC papers, like the almost-a-tabloid NY Post, you read the police blotter, and here's two guys having an argument, and they both have (illegal) guns, and they start shooting at each other, and kill a few innocent bystanders in the process, and one of themselves. This is what people do when they live in an area where they are downtrodden and feel the only way to have some control over their situation is to have a gun... makes them a big man. And when they get pissed off because they have entitlement issues, they shoot people. That's power. They are ineffectual talkers, but they have a gun. Young punks, wanting to show off... some woman walking with freinds talked back to one and he killed her... just because she insulted him. She was a well known actress. You can look these kind of stories up. I bet she's rather have been "assaulted".

In none of these cases will you read that a crime was prevented because someone had a gun on them. I'm sure it must eventually happen.. somewhere. But those rare instances are far outnumbered by the typical fare seen on the news.

Like I said before, do you need a gun in your day to day life? I've been here 50 years without one, and I've lived in some rough areas... I've been mugged three times over the years (I live in a very safe area now) and I can tell you that in none of those cases having a hand gun would have made a difference. Unless we start wearing holsters like in the wild west days!

As far as these so-called studies... don't believe everything you read. People are easily lead by reading that so-called "experts" have done a study that proves such and such. Many times this didn't even happen. Be careful what you believe. You are being lied to.

Here's a perfect example of non fact becoming fact. We have all heard that a commercial jet liner crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. Now none of us where there, but we have been told this, we saw it on TV, and that's good to be the truth... why would they lie? When you get a chance, look up some photos and video of the scene. There are a lot on YouTube. There's a 16 foot hole in the side of the Pentagon. The windows on either side of that hole are intact. Statements made by Donald Rumsfend stated that a missile caused damage to the Pentagon! A 757 jet liner has a 13 foot cabin, but the wing span is 125 feet, and it's tail is 44 feet high. Where's the damage from the wings, tail section, or engines?

And where was the wreckage of Flight 77? There wasn't any. No bodies of passengers, no big six ton (9 feet in diameter, 12 feet long), jet engines on the lawn... nothing. Just a small turbine, like the ones used in a cruse missile! Titanium, as used in the Prat and Whitney engines from the 757, melts at 1688° C, and kerosene (jet fuel) only burns at 1120 after 20 minutes... so they didn't melt! No plane has ever melted in a crash.

The point of this is you will be told all kinds of things, supposedly said by experts. You are free to believe what you want. I'm not trying to make you accept my values. But you really need to stop and question some of the information you are being told, and think for yourself.

[Zhangliqun]

Here's a perfect example of non fact becoming fact. We have all heard that a commercial jet liner crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. Now none of us where there, but we have been told this, we saw it on TV, and that's good to be the truth... why would they lie? When you get a chance, look up some photos and video of the scene. There are a lot on YouTube. There's a 16 foot hole in the side of the Pentagon. The windows on either side of that hole are intact. Statements made by Donald Rumsfend stated that a missile caused damage to the Pentagon! A 757 jet liner has a 13 foot cabin, but the wing span is 125 feet, and it's tail is 44 feet high. Where's the damage from the wings, tail section, or engines?

Glad you asked. Here are some photos inside and outside the Pentagon, showing airliner debris:

http://rense.com/general32/phot.htm

http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dyn....asp%3Fid=2445

And some info explaining why you don't see an airplane-shaped hole in the side of the Pentagon.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blflight77.htm

http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dyn...com/2002/03/14

You are making the mistake of thinking you would see a hole in the side of the Pentagon that would be the equivalent of a head-on silhouette of the plane.

But the Pentagon was originally built to withstand naval and aerial bombardment, the walls and roofs are very thick. It was further retrofitted before 9/11 to withstand attacks like Oklahoma City or Khobar Towers. Unlike the Pentagon, an airliner -- or any airplane -- is designed to be as light as humanly possible and still hold together under the stress of flight. It is made mostly of aluminum and is mostly hollow. It follows then that upon impact, the wings and tail would collapse and fold up against the fuselage, and follow it into the hole created by the nose. (Also, the height of the tail includes the height of the landing gear.) Even at that, though, as you can see from the internal wreckage photos, the airplane penetrated very deeply into the Pentagon, into the 3rd ring. The skeptics are basing the shallow penetration theory on satellite photos that show the roof intact above the 2nd and 3rd rings, but that tells you nothing about the internal damage.

Also, the photos from the Pentagon security cameras I have seen (sorry, don't have a link -- but it is from CNN) show a massive fireball well above the roof of the Pentagon at the moment of impact. A cruise missile won't do that. In movies, everything that explodes creates a massive fireball but only because the special effects techs use massive amounts of gasoline or other fuels to create them. C4, the plastic explosive in the warhead of a cruise missile or any military bomb, missile or artillery round, doesn't create fireballs at all -- unless the target of the missile or shell has some kind of fuel in it. Compared to an airliner, a cruise missile's fuel capacity is very small and is in any event nearly empty of what little fuel it has by the time it reaches its target. The videos of cruise missiles hitting buildings in the First Gulf War show only debris flying out windows, not fireballs.

An airliner, on the other hand, especially one that just took off from a nearby airport for a cross-country flight, is loaded with tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds of jet fuel. That is the ideal recipe for the kind of fireball seen not only in the Pentagon security camera photos, but in the videos of the 2nd plane hitting the WTC.

As for the size of the hole, no cruise missile would make a hole that big on a building designed withstand naval bombardment, and this means even the windows are very thick and heavily reinforced. Even on conventional buildings, the hole is very tiny, usually because they have it enter the building through a window or door or some other weaker point on the building. Had they aimed a cruise missile to hit the Pentagon wall instead of a window, it very likely would not have even created a hole at all. It certainly would not have penetrated into the 3rd ring.

There are also many, many, many witnesses to the crash, none of whom say it was a cruise missile. One witness said the plane was coming in "like a cruise missile" and some folks have seized on that and the fact that no-one took any video of it to promote this conspiracy theory. (Remember that there's no video of the first plane hitting the WTC either, because no-one was anticipating airplanes flying into buildings that day or any other prior to 9/11.) There is no shortage of witnesses who saw the plane plow into the Pentagon, but the skeptics don't want to talk about them.

Finally, these folks never even attempt to explain what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't crash into the Pentagon. Where is the plane and all its passengers and crew? Area 51? Why do they have no records of it appearing on radar after the incident? One of the passengers was Barbara Olsen, a CNN commentator and wife of Solicitor General Ted Olsen. As with the other 3 hijacked planes that day, passengers' relatives and friends got phone calls from their loved ones not long before impact, including Mr. Olsen from his wife, explaining that they were about to die and why, because they were encouraged and possibly even ordered to do so by the terrorists.

You also have to be careful about how the "Hunt the Boeing" and other conspiracy site questions are worded. One question, which one of the links above deals with, is "Do you see airplane wreckage in this photo?" The link answers, "No. But we do in this one (link), and this one (link), and this one (link)..." Hunt the Boeing & Co. cherry-picked their photos.

Some of the sites draw silhouettes of the plane that exaggerate its size relative to the hole. The list goes on...

***

If you now want to now move over to the WTC and claim that it was rigged explosives that brought the towers down, I've got more bad news, from Popular Mechanics:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...42.html?page=1

I won't go into as much detail as they do, but I will focus on one aspect of the collapse that is probably the most popular with the conspiracy-minded as proof of a rigged demoltion, and that is the video of dust and debris flying out the windows of the tower, one floor after the other in sequence as the tower collapses.

You have the weight of at least a battleship, many tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of tons of the upper portion of the tower falling straight down on the rest of the building. This would compress the air in the building as each floor collapsed on top of the next below it. Past a certain point the air is so heavily compressed that it finds the nearest weak point to equalize the pressure -- the windows -- which, keep in mind, are nowhere near as thick as those at the Pentagon, and boom! The windows shatter because the air pressure on inside of the windows is far greater than the +/-14 PSI on the outside. They shatter one after the other as the collapsing building falls.

The MO and motivation for such a plan is a bit far-fetched too. It makes no sense to fly a plane into a building AND blow it up with rigged charges -- and not merely blow it up, but do it floor by floor. Building demolition doesn't work that way. The explosives would all go off at the same time. And flying a plane into the building would run an enormously high risk of damaging the in-place electrical or radio aparatus that would be necessary to trigger the sequence of explosions.

It also assumes that the planners believed that flying planes into buildings wasn't dramatic enough in and of itself to arouse the public to a level of anger needed to achieve Bush's presumably nefarious goals, to the point that they were willing to risk getting caught. Subsequent events prove otherwise. It would be like German commandos secretly rigging the Lusitania with explosives before it left port in addition to torpedoing it with a U-boat when it got out to sea.

As for Michael Moore, if you believe he is the soothsayer of our times, he has been proven over and over to be a compulsive liar, from Roger & Me to Bowling for Columbine to Farenheit 9/11. He cuts and pastes people's comments to make it appear that they said the exact opposite of what they said, shows newspaper headlines of events that happened months or years later than is implied, shows staged events as real-life video, and plenty of old-fashioned uprooting of comments from context and lies of omission:

http://www.davekopel.org/terror/59Deceits.pdf

Mr. Kopel also has directly engaged Moore in these questions about F9/11, and goes into great detail about Moore's responses.

I respect your knowledge of luthiery and bass pickups and will continue to use you as one of my go-to guys for that kind of info. But contrary to what you might think, I actually have made a genuine effort to look into all these things and much more, and the evidence I have found -- and more importantly the reaction to said evidence by folks with a worldview opposed to mine (mostly sweeping it under the rug or changing the subject) -- has convinced me that it is not me drinking the koolaid. You have asked us to look at who is backing this or that study or article or documentary, etc. Fair enough. I ask you to do the same.

(By the way, gun control laws in the U.S. were originally aimed at keeping black people from having guns.)

[David Schwab]

There are also many, many, many witnesses to the crash, none of whom say it was a cruise missile. One witness said the plane was coming in "like a cruise missile" and some folks have seized on that and the fact that no-one took any video of it to promote this conspiracy theory. (Remember that there's no video of the first plane hitting the WTC either, because no-one was anticipating airplanes flying into buildings that day or any other prior to 9/11.) There is no shortage of witnesses who saw the plane plow into the Pentagon, but the skeptics don't want to talk about them.

Actually some witnesses said they saw what looked like "a 20 passenger corporate jet, with no markings on the side..."

Here's a quote from Donald Rumsfeld to Parade Magazine on October 12th, 2001:

"Here we're talking about plastic knives, and using an American Airlines flight filled with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building, and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center."

What missile is he referring to?

No footage of the first plane hitting the WTC? Sure there is! I thought everyone saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0RdNrZ6CQ8

I saw the second plane hit from about 8 blocks away. It was dark blue and had no markings. Everyone there noticed that. I always thought that was odd.

Finally, these folks never even attempt to explain what happened to Flight 77 if it didn't crash into the Pentagon. Where is the plane and all its passengers and crew? Area 51? Why do they have no records of it appearing on radar after the incident? One of the passengers was Barbara Olsen, a CNN commentator and wife of Solicitor General Ted Olsen. As with the other 3 hijacked planes that day, passengers' relatives and friends got phone calls from their loved ones not long before impact, including Mr. Olsen from his wife, explaining that they were about to die and why, because they were encouraged and possibly even ordered to do so by the terrorists.

Have you ever tried to use a cell phone aboard a commercial jetliner?

In the film Loose Change, 2nd Edition, he points out that there's a record of one of the flights making an emergency landing in Ohio, where all the passengers were taken off the plane. It might have been the other flight though.

My point to all of this is if there's enough evidence to cast any amount of doubt to the official stories, then the whole thing needs to be looked at more closely.

You also have to be careful about how the "Hunt the Boeing" and other conspiracy site questions are worded. One question, which one of the links above deals with, is "Do you see airplane wreckage in this photo?" The link answers, "No. But we do in this one (link), and this one (link), and this one (link)..." Hunt the Boeing & Co. cherry-picked their photos.

Some of the sites draw silhouettes of the plane that exaggerate its size relative to the hole. The list goes on...

I've actually never saw that site before. But I do know how wide the plane is:

757-200 Technical Characteristics
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/757...f_200tech.html

Wing span: 124 ft 10 in (38.05 m)
Overall Length: 155 ft 3 in (47.32 m)
Tail Height: 44 ft 6 in (13.6 m)
Interior Cabin Width: 11 ft 7 in (3.5 m)
Body Exterior Width: 12 ft 4 in (3.7 m)

If you now want to now move over to the WTC and claim that it was rigged explosives that brought the towers down, I've got more bad news, from Popular Mechanics:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...42.html?page=1

I won't go into as much detail as they do, but I will focus on one aspect of the collapse that is probably the most popular with the conspiracy-minded as proof of a rigged demoltion, and that is the video of dust and debris flying out the windows of the tower, one floor after the other in sequence as the tower collapses.

No modern skyscraper has ever collapsed from a fire until 9/11. And then three buildings collapsed in one day!

May 1988, in LA a 62 story building burned 3 hours and didn't collapse.

Feb 1991, a 38 story building in Philadelphia burned 19 hours spread to 8 floors. Didn't collapse.

Oct 2004, a 56 story built in 1978 in Venezuela burned for 17 hours, spread to 26 floors, and didn't collapse.

Feb 2005, the 32 story Windsor Building in Madrid burned for over 24 hours.. the top 10 floors fell, and the building didn't collapse.

The WTC was designed to have a DC-10 hit it. Even the Empire State building had a B-52 bomber hit it. The fuel on the 757 would burn off fairly quickly, and even in a constant burn, kerosene only burns at 2,048° F (1120° C) after 40 minutes of sustained ignition. Stainless Steel has a melting point of 2800ºF (1,537.8° C). So you can't say the fire from the jet fuel make the twin towers collapse. Titainium, which is one of the metals used in the jet engines on the 757, has a melting point of 3,070.4° F (1,688° C)... yet they are saying in both cases that much of the planes vaporized?

Witnesses, including NYC firefighters, and my wife, who was across the street at the time the towers came down (she's one of those people you saw on TV covered with ash), heard multiple explosions. And what made Wold Trade Center 7 collapse? It was 300 feet from the north tower, and wasn't even damaged! And all the buildings around it were untouched. They had just been insured for billions of dollars a few days before 9/11.

And the idea that the pressure blew out windows is silly. Some of those windows were open. Remember, people were jumping out. Then there's the ventilation ducts. And the stair wells. And the central elevator shafts. The floors were not hermetically sealed after all.

The MO and motivation for such a plan is a bit far-fetched too. It makes no sense to fly a plane into a building AND blow it up with rigged charges -- and not merely blow it up, but do it floor by floor. Building demolition doesn't work that way. The explosives would all go off at the same time. And flying a plane into the building would run an enormously high risk of damaging the in-place electrical or radio aparatus that would be necessary to trigger the sequence of explosions.

Motive? The owner had the buildings insured for billions of dollars shortly before the attack. Bomb sniffing dogs were removed shortly before the attack. The explosives would have been needed, because the plane and subsequent fire would not make the building collapse. In the subbasement of the WTC was a large amount of gold, most of which was never recovered.

And lastly, some felt we needed a "new Pearl Harbor". These types of plans had been drawn out a while ago... other countries have done the same thing. Fake an attack so you can clamp down security and get the general public behind things like invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Why are we there again?

I respect your knowledge of luthiery and bass pickups and will continue to use you as one of my go-to guys for that kind of info. But contrary to what you might think, I actually have made a genuine effort to look into all these things and much more, and the evidence I have found -- and more importantly the reaction to said evidence by folks with a worldview opposed to mine (mostly sweeping it under the rug or changing the subject) -- has convinced me that it is not me drinking the koolaid. You have asked us to look at who is backing this or that study or article or documentary, etc. Fair enough. I ask you to do the same.

Hey, I believed like everyone else the official version of the story. I'm not one of these conspiracy nuts, but after a while I have read enough stuff that makes me doubt a lot of what we have been told. Some stuff just doesn't add up, and there have been a lot of obvious contradictions made over and over. For instance, supposedly many of the accused terrorists that were supposed to have died on these planes are still alive and had never been in the US. What's that all about?

I'm as open minded as the next person. I feel it's important to ask questions, and not accept the stock answer automatically.

(By the way, gun control laws in the U.S. were originally aimed at keeping black people from having guns.)

That worked out well!

[NightWinder]

Guns Don't Kill People!!!people Kill People!!
If It Was A Higher Gun Zone, That Motherfucker Would Have Been Blown Away!!! I For One, Surely Would Have. And If You Ever Get Into The Situation, Make Sure You Kill Them, Cause They Will Come Back A Sue Your Ass.
You Have A Right To Bear Arms, And Daily Our Costitution Is Getting Raped, Thinking Guns Are The Problem......fuck That, Sick People Are The Problem.