(February 23, 2018 at 11:23 pm)wallym Wrote:

(February 23, 2018 at 7:19 pm)KevinM1 Wrote: My brothers and cousin and their friends own, between them, somewhere around 15-25 AR-15s in different configurations.  And all that firepower is going to do jack shit if a Predator drone is pointed their way.  Or if tanks actually roll down the street.  Or if a few Apache gunships decide to have some fun with them.  Or if an F-22 drops some ordinance on them.  Or any of the other sudden, no-way-to-defend-against-it ways the government has at its disposal to kill people.

Weekend Rambos would have absolutely 0 chance in a revolution against the US if the government was actually tyrannical.  And it's absurd to think that their weaponry, rather than the moral choices of the government, is what's stopping it from happening.

Yeah, if it was 1740, and your brother lined up in a field across from the US Army, best team wins situation, it'd be nothing.  Just like we'd have been out of Iraq in a week playing by those rules.  Using Iraq again as an example, there's never any doubt the US could conquer Iraq.  The insurgency wasn't thinking "Maybe we'll kill all of them before they kill all of us!"  It's about the price.  Can you make it so expensive that it's not worth it.  And if the US had a rough expensive go of it in Iraq, imagine trying to deal with the continental United States filled with millions of reasonably well armed civilians.  Where would you even begin? An urban gorilla war in a 3.8 million square mile expanse of land?  Iraq was 170k for comparison.

You're assuming conventional warfare. I'm envisioning chemical and biological warfare.

Back to reality: the Florida attack was successful because Cruz exploited his knowledge of the school.  I don't see how armed guards or teachers change that calculus.

Again with the "freedoms" and "rights", in the rest of the world we are all enslaved by the state because we don't own guns, I wish al other countrys could be as "great" as the US,oh wait , there are a lot more civilized countrys than the US. Btw , we are living in the 21 century , the governments don't have that much power over the people .

Canada

Right to bear arms zero 

Probability of our government becoming tyrannical . Because we actually have a working  government with proper balances to prevent such an event  . zero

If my teachers were armed Mrs Brown would definitely have shot Colin Savage.

(February 23, 2018 at 11:23 pm)wallym Wrote: Yeah, if it was 1740, and your brother lined up in a field across from the US Army, best team wins situation, it'd be nothing.  Just like we'd have been out of Iraq in a week playing by those rules.  Using Iraq again as an example, there's never any doubt the US could conquer Iraq.  The insurgency wasn't thinking "Maybe we'll kill all of them before they kill all of us!"  It's about the price.  Can you make it so expensive that it's not worth it.  And if the US had a rough expensive go of it in Iraq, imagine trying to deal with the continental United States filled with millions of reasonably well armed civilians.  Where would you even begin? An urban gorilla war in a 3.8 million square mile expanse of land?  Iraq was 170k for comparison.

True but who would actually try invading the US even if the population had no guns whatsoever? Not only does it have the largest military forces in the world, it would take the rest of the world to match it, but even if the military was a normal size, as you say, the landmass is so large.

So because you guys have such a large army and navy and so much land, there is even less need for the population to be armed to the teeth in case of a land war. If you're going to have everyone owning such weapons, you might as well put the money that would otherwise go to the military into something more useful like health care. Or if you're going to fund the military at the expense of the population's quality of life, then at least get rid of the weapons that you don't need and be safer.

At the moment the US has the worst of both worlds. All its money goes to the military yet it still isn't a safe place to live.

(February 23, 2018 at 6:43 pm)Wololo Wrote: Ireland has one of the most restrictive gun regimes in the world, a fact I can personally attest to (no, I don't own a gun, but as part of my job I've been involved in processing a fair few applications).  It's gun death ratio (2012 figures, due to a feud between Dublin based criminal gangs that rate is a bit higher but not by that much) is 0.8 deaths per 100,000 people.

The US gun death rate in 2014, by contrast was 10.54 per 100,000.  Outside of failed states and states with tiny populations (e.g. two gun deaths per year in Iceland will massively raise the rates).

Nobody can say that the fact that it's way harder to get a gun here is the main reason why there is such a lower ratio of  people being killed by guns in Ireland than in the US.  Not without showing themselves up as massive liars anyway.

Bleh, forgot to finish my second paragraph, that should conlude ".... the US has one of the worst ratios on record".

(February 24, 2018 at 1:16 am)KevinM1 Wrote: Back to reality: the Florida attack was successful because Cruz exploited his knowledge of the school.  I don't see how armed guards or teachers change that calculus.

That is guessing on your part. I am sure that knowledge helped, but the most important factor was his access to a spray weapon.

(February 23, 2018 at 6:43 pm)Wololo Wrote: Ireland has one of the most restrictive gun regimes in the world, a fact I can personally attest to (no, I don't own a gun, but as part of my job I've been involved in processing a fair few applications).  It's gun death ratio (2012 figures, due to a feud between Dublin based criminal gangs that rate is a bit higher but not by that much) is 0.8 deaths per 100,000 people.

The US gun death rate in 2014, by contrast was 10.54 per 100,000.  Outside of failed states and states with tiny populations (e.g. two gun deaths per year in Iceland will massively raise the rates).

Nobody can say that the fact that it's way harder to get a gun here is the main reason why there is such a lower ratio of  people being killed by guns in Ireland than in the US.  Not without showing themselves up as massive liars anyway.

Number Of Mass School Shootings In New Zealand (a country of less than 5 million people with 1.4 million firearms in private hands)

2000:  nil
2001: nil
2002:  nil
2003:  nil
2004:  nil
2005:  nil
2006:  nil
2007:  nil
2008:  nil
2009:  nil
2010:  nil
2011:  nil
2012:  nil
2013:  nil
2014:  nil
2015:  nil
2015:  nil
2017:  nil
2018 (year to date):  nil
2019 (projected):  nil

The above figures are confounding researchers, as New Zealanders are purported to have access to violent video games and violent films.  Even more puzzling is the fact that New Zealand has mentally unstable citizens, schools that do not resemble armed caps, and teachers who do not bring firearms into classrooms.

Boru

(February 24, 2018 at 6:52 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(February 23, 2018 at 6:43 pm)Wololo Wrote: Ireland has one of the most restrictive gun regimes in the world, a fact I can personally attest to (no, I don't own a gun, but as part of my job I've been involved in processing a fair few applications).  It's gun death ratio (2012 figures, due to a feud between Dublin based criminal gangs that rate is a bit higher but not by that much) is 0.8 deaths per 100,000 people.

The US gun death rate in 2014, by contrast was 10.54 per 100,000.  Outside of failed states and states with tiny populations (e.g. two gun deaths per year in Iceland will massively raise the rates).

Nobody can say that the fact that it's way harder to get a gun here is the main reason why there is such a lower ratio of  people being killed by guns in Ireland than in the US.  Not without showing themselves up as massive liars anyway.

Number Of Mass School Shootings In New Zealand (a country of less than 5 million people with 1.4 million firearms in private hands)

2000:  nil
2001: nil
2002:  nil
2003:  nil
2004:  nil
2005:  nil
2006:  nil
2007:  nil
2008:  nil
2009:  nil
2010:  nil
2011:  nil
2012:  nil
2013:  nil
2014:  nil
2015:  nil
2015:  nil
2017:  nil
2018 (year to date):  nil
2019 (projected):  nil

The above figures are confounding researchers, as New Zealanders are purported to have access to violent video games and violent films.  Even more puzzling is the fact that New Zealand has mentally unstable citizens, schools that do not resemble armed caps, and teachers who do not bring firearms into classrooms.

Boru

Part of the problem is not just the firearms but the sort of firearms and how they are perceived. In the US they are fetishized, elsewhere they are a tool for hunting. Its very strange and has the rest of the world perplexed.