Again....But it's never the guns!

[Shell B]

It doesn't matter. You said it was a stupid law to write and that civilians never should have had guns. If the government has guns, so should we. A people should always be able to protect itself from tyranny. The framers of the Constitution knew that better than anyone.

.... Lost case ...

Seriously? That is your response to me pointing out that you moved the goalposts? Great argument, bro. By the way, it's lost cause, dumbass.

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Who says the government isn't supposed to have nuclear weapons? Is there some nuclear arms treaty I don't now about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_t...ar_Weapons

Pursue disarmament. In other words, they are supposed to be getting rid of nuclear weapons.

And anyway, to follow your logic it doesn't really matter if government is supposed to have nuclear weapons, it matters that the government actually does have nuclear weapons. Your example seemes to be stating that whatever force the government uses, we should be able to match. The government is able to use nuclear weapons; should we be able to match that?

No. My argument is that if the government is armed, the people should be as well.

Bullets start fires?

Don't be willfully obtuse. You were going on an on about destructive weapons.

Yes, you can do just as much damage with a gun as you can witha cannon which is why I also don't think the public needs to own military artillary. Would you argue that the military should be able to own artillary cannons? You can actually do more damage with a sword than a gun, largely because swords don't run out of bullets, but you don't see these mass shootings happening with swords (and if we did, I'd be calling on us to put regulations in place to regulate sword use).

If you think I am arguing that there should be no regulations, you are either ascribing someone else's argument to me or putting up strawmen. I don't give a shit if gun use is regulated. I'm pointing out the fallacies in all of these, "But, but, guns are more destructive den anyting, eber." retarded ass arguments I keep seeing.

The major technological advances between the revolutionary war and the civil war made guns even more destructive. They used rifles, not muskets. There's a huge difference between the two; after you fire with a musket, you had to turn the musket upside down, pour powder in the top, put another pellet in and stuff them. That took so long to do that it actually would have been faster to reload with a bow and arrow.

The difference is hardly huge. Single shot. Reloading in the midst of battle, etc. You do realize that there was not even a century between the two wars, right? You also realize that the Civil War was also a rebellion where weapons were required for the safety of the country, right? Citizens needed weapons to protect themselves from roaming bands of starving soldiers and deserters, right? Please tell me that you can see the irony of your argument? Deadlier weapons, yet still the Constitution must hold for the good of the people.

And if we're going to consider the civil war, let's take another look at things. The war was bloody and deadly because of a lack of hygenic practices. You got shot in the arm, they responded by cutting the arm off... and then they used the same saw, without cleaning it off, to cut the arm off the next guy. Scores after scores of people died from infection. While the guns were still dangerous, they still aren't nearly as destructive as the body count alone would indicate.

What the actual fuck? Who's talking about the "body count?" Go by casualties. You can get a pretty accurate idea of how many people were shot by that. That's what people are arguing, right? "You jest cain't shoot dat many peoples with anyting short of an automatic weapon."

Kinda disingenious of you to specifically exclude the phrase that I emphasized, isn't it?

Oh, you mean the phrase that is readily available on the internet and included in your post? That one? I wasn't being disingenuous. I was avoiding having a quote within a quote because the tags kept fucking up and I was tired. Ass.

I think that's an important phrase because I don't, and never have, believed that we should just take everyone's guns away; I do believe that they should be 'well regulated,' just like the constitution references. While taking guns away would be unconstitutional, regulating those guns is totally kosher.

I completely agree with that, as anyone who has read my posts would know. I just disagree with assertions of what sounds like a bunch of pussy ass founding fathers. They weren't pussies and they were much more intelligent than your average "ermagerd the Constitution is old" twatwaffle you see on the internet.

[The Grand Nudger]

As a small aside (only somewhat related to the topic) the majority of casualties incurred during the Civil War (the deadliest war the US has ever engaged in-by body count of Americans) were caused by a technology you can replicate with a soda can, a paper bag, bleach, and nails. Maybe we should be regulating those things? Rifles, until the end of the war, weren't all that far from the rifles used by revolutionaries not too many decades prior (though the method of handling rounds was vastly improved - the modern concept of a "round" being vastly different from the loading of previous rifles but not so much different from the concept employed by both sides in this conflict during this time).

[TaraJo]

If you think I am arguing that there should be no regulations, you are either ascribing someone else's argument to me or putting up strawmen. I don't give a shit if gun use is regulated. I'm pointing out the fallacies in all of these, "But, but, guns are more destructive den anyting, eber." retarded ass arguments I keep seeing.

Strawman? Really? You want to talk about strawmen? Every time the NRA sees stuff like this happen, I always hear from them and their people about how I'm trying to take their guns away, even though I've never said that. Every time the government takes steps towards regulating guns, they always rely on that same strawman. It happened with the brady bill, it happened with trigger locks and it's happened with armor piercing bullets.

Much of your case seems to be that guns aren't any more destructive now than they were three hundred years ago. Tell me, were we to release Charles Manson into the public and give him a weapon, which would you rather he have: a 1799 era musket (with powder, pellets and any other accessories he'd need to use it) or a 2012 era assault rifle?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well...the Brady Bill -did- "take guns away" Tara. Granted they didn't march on homes, but criminalizing the ownership of an object allows you to claim legal process if you ever decided to confiscate that object, period, regardless of the situation, the object, or the person in the situation that the object is being confiscated from.

I'd rather they not release a known murderer or hand him any weapon (not that they would need to, mind you, he does have hands for tha-stranglin). Is that unreasonable?

[Napoléon]

I can stop a guy with a gun if I have a gun myself

Stereo-typical yank mentality right here.

[Whateverist]

Don't be willfully obtuse. You were going on an on about destructive weapons.

Obtuse is a good word for it. Apologists for the status quo on gun control are every bit as obtuse as their Christian counterparts. They fail to apply reason and judgement even handedly in exactly the same way. This should serve as a touch stone for any one who has ever honestly wanted to understand the motivation of a Christian apologist. The trick seems to be to compartmentalize the domains in which one applies good judgement.

From today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinio....html?_r=0

More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

.. As with guns, some auto deaths are caused by people who break laws or behave irresponsibly. But we don’t shrug and say, “Cars don’t kill people, drunks do.”

Instead, we have required seat belts, air bags, child seats and crash safety standards. We have introduced limited licenses for young drivers and tried to curb the use of mobile phones while driving. All this has reduced America’s traffic fatality rate per mile driven by nearly 90 percent since the 1950s.

In Australia in 1996 .. (t)he “national firearms agreement,” as it was known, led to the buyback of 650,000 guns and to tighter rules for licensing and safe storage of those remaining in public hands.

The law did not end gun ownership in Australia. It reduced the number of firearms in private hands by one-fifth, and they were the kinds most likely to be used in mass shootings.

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect.

[The Grand Nudger]

How much of the total pie of gun related deaths are mass shootings again? Which types of firearms have the highest representation in mass shootings here in the US?

[Creed of Heresy]

I can stop a guy with a gun if I have a gun myself

Stereo-typical yank mentality right here.

...No, it's based off of past experience, actually. Two, actually. Though I learned the other guy's gun's safety was still on afterwards on the second occurrence. Hindsight is 20/20.

[Shell B]

Strawman? Really? You want to talk about strawmen? Every time the NRA sees stuff like this happen, I always hear from them and their people about how I'm trying to take their guns away, even though I've never said that. Every time the government takes steps towards regulating guns, they always rely on that same strawman. It happened with the brady bill, it happened with trigger locks and it's happened with armor piercing bullets.

Do I look like the fucking NRA?

Much of your case seems to be that guns aren't any more destructive now than they were three hundred years ago. Tell me, were we to release Charles Manson into the public and give him a weapon, which would you rather he have: a 1799 era musket (with powder, pellets and any other accessories he'd need to use it) or a 2012 era assault rifle?

Wow. I don't think you have any idea how bad your arguments are. Sorry. Charles Manson never killed anyone. Not one fucking person. He shot one person, who did not die. Furthermore, the people he got to kill other people used both guns and knives. Read about it. They didn't need the guns.

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Oh, hell, whateverist. Who here is for the status quo? Me? Nope. All I'm arguing are idiotic remarks about the founding fathers. I'm not here to argue gun control. I have already stated numerous times that it needs strict regulation.

[Creed of Heresy]

In other words this thread needs to fucking die. Too much animosity is being generated over everyone saying the exact same fucking same. Arguing semantics is all that's happening, and this kind of venom should not be getting spat around over fucking semantics.