7 year old girl shot dead while selling some lemonade
- Thread starter idarkphoenixi
- Start date
You're always right, Lord Daystar.Daystar Clarion said:I was only foretelling the decline of this thread into one about gun control.fix-the-spade said:
I was right
Obviously it's not working great, maybe they should look to other countries with different programs for help, the gun amnesty thing might be a good idea, maybe they should give it a try. No need to get defensive.Sheo_Dagana said:
USA #1.
Seriously though, when shootouts are common occurrences in an area, you've got to ask what the police and other authorities are doing to try and fix it.
Seriously though, when shootouts are common occurrences in an area, you've got to ask what the police and other authorities are doing to try and fix it.
We don't have anything like that, as far as I know, because it would probably impeded the Second Amendment in some way.Treblaine said:
Second, you can't just raid houses at random, or in a given area, because someone got shot. You need a lot of probable cause to get a search warrant, to raid a particular house, to look for a particular item, related to a particular crime. By the time all of that is said and done, the homies have all warned each other.
Third, Americans don't trust the government. It's not in our nature. If you say, 'turn in yer guns, and we won't arrest for ', you're going to get a very negative back-lash.
Fourth, you clearly don't understand the gang banger mentality. There are three paths every 'gangsta' (stupid term, by the way. What the hell is a 'gangsta', and why does it not summon the red squiggly line?) accepts into their life. They will end up in prison, a hospital bed, or in a box. You cannot leave most gangs, or they will kill you. You have to be a douche, to hang with the douches. A lot of gangs have you commit crimes, and then get beat in, to join. Alternatively, some gangs will allow female members to get sexed in. Yes, they are exactly like what they sound to be. Lastly, they just aren't very good shots. Have you ever seen how a gang banger holds a gun? Not practical.
How do you combat this? Better education systems would be a start. Wouldn't make much a dent in the problem, but it's a start. Second, you'd have to find a way to make a short life of bitches, bling, and cars look less appealing then a long life of hard work, and moderate success.
You can't really make harsher laws, with a lot of states out-lawing the death penalty, and anything that doesn't involve a prisoner getting to sit in an air conditioned cell, with cable TV, being seen as 'cruel an inhumane'. Maybe send their asses into a field to work 16 hours a day would do some good. Give 'em bologna sandwiches and water, their only day off is Sunday, and they have to work to get their TV time. I'm willing to bet doing that would solve a lot of problems, actually.
Here in Arizona, there would be a lot more cotton being picked off the plants, which would bring the farmers more money, especially since they could contract out the convicts for much less then even an illegal migrant worker, which would be good for the economy. The tax payers would have to pay less for the prison system, and a life of hard labor might deter a lot of future criminals.
Sorry, kind of got off track there.
Really, though a lot of it is going to come down to personal accountability. It seems to be a dying trend in America, these days. In times past, I'm told, each person was expected to look after themselves. They knew that they could fail, and that it would be their fault.
No, bad Faraja, you're going off topic again.
Alternatively, we can just invade Russia and start WWIII.
Considering that emergency services seem to be second only to education is things to get cut to pay for...whatever it is we seem to need more of, there probably isn't a lot they can do.smithy_2045 said:
Secondly, a proactive police force is kind of a scary thing here.
While that's worked for Western Europe, we aren't Western Europe. I'd get very pissy if someone told me I couldn't own a gun anymore because ass-clown #1176542 decided to be a prick. Why? Good question. It's not something I think I can every truly answer. I don't own a gun. I live in a state where I can carry a concealed fire arm without a permit, but I don't. I used to carry a knife, and found that it just made me paranoid. That said, if three men broke into my house, and planed to do terrible things to myself, and hypothetical family, I would readily shoot them until they're little more then jam on the floor.Res Plus said:
If all I have for defense was a baseball bat, well, three men could easily over power one dude and a bat. If, by chance, I survived, I would be angry. Very angry. At them, and at the government who said I could arm myself because of aforementioned ass-clown #1176542 shot someone else, by mistake.
So, I guess it has a lot to do with personal empowerment. I know people who would take their guns anywhere, unless it said they couldn't (because of Arizona's laws regarding the right to carry, you have to specifically post a notice saying that no fire arms are allowed on the premises). Some of these people who jack-offs, who had no business carrying anything more dangerous than than a peeled, boiled, egg.
We don't need the citizenry to have their guns taken from them, giving more power to the criminals, and to the government. What we need are people who respect the power that those weapons provide.
You have an odd sense of fear, then. The people who would be likely to drop you because you wear the wrong color clothes, didn't give them your wallet, or they just don't like you, weren't boasting their weapons in public.Madgamer13 said:
What it is an equalizer, maybe not in practice, but in theory. It can help people feel more secure, knowing that they can better respond to threats like "gimme yo money, *****".
Because killers fall into one of two groups:royohz said:
1. The people with a specific target. If you're one of these people, you want to make sure they die. The less passion and connection in the crime, the more likely you are to use something more efficient.
2. The gang banger. They're largely cowards who won't put themselves into a position where their own weapons can be turned against them, or they can be overpowered. They also tend to move in packs.
The fear I speak of is having to resort to firearms to equal the field, at least if they have a knife I can run away, but if a robber has a leathal ranged weapon, I'd be forced to retaliate. Most firearms, including pistols, fire rounds of caliber that can drop you in one shot, higher caliber weapons, including pistols yet again, can drag your guts out through an exit wound. Dont even get me started on shotguns.Faraja said:
No, I really do not want to be carrying a weapon 'just in case' I have to kill someone who has the fool notion that it is ok to take my small change.
SO you mean if the police start handing out fliers saying they have a legal protection if they hand in any kind of weapon, they simply won't believe it? Intriguing. I guess it makes sense, really the extraordinary thing is how British criminals trust the police enough for gun amnesty. From how "driven" I've seen US Cops I can see how they'd think they were so smug if they tried a gun amnesty but just arrested every guy who walked in with a weapon.Faraja said:
OK, how about this, the Gun Amnesties are NOT run by the police, they are run by a neutral third party who has no power to arrest yet a responsibility to destroy (or merely temporarily deactivate if the gun is of particular historic merit like an original P08 Luger) the weapons turned in. Maybe a local church could be convinced, a church who was known to cooperate with police but would not allow such a sting, that if it was an amnesty then they would support it.
I suppose British gangsters are quite a different breed, to spite the high level of violence and criminality in UK gangs there is commonly the expressed belief that they will go straight when the time is right and don't particularly intend to die young or spend the rest of their life in prison. They seem to see this as a rebellious stage of youth that they can discard when it doesn't suit them any more, not a way of life.
Well the "bitches and bling" thing you need to emphasise that you CAN get those but through hard work. You think Dr Dre or P Diddy got where they are by selling crack cocaine to dead end bums? No, they WORKED HARD building an unassailable position in the billion dollar music recording industry.
But it's obvious not many can follow the way of rappers of record industry producers, you need steel workers, accountants, mechanics, writers, artists, and so on. Are those jobs there? Do these posing gangsters (I refuse to use the term "gangsta") really see that as an option? Are they so used to a hierarchy of violence and threats that they couldn't even get a job in McDonalds without truly accepting that you can't become the new manager of McDonalds by shouting down and threatening the current manager.
They key word there is "gang". A gang mentality is completely incompatible with any kind of career, even in the military, and prison only reinforces this where prison officers rule by force first. I have noticed from looking at documentaries of British prisons versus American prisons, US prisons seem to be run like the military, British prisons are run like boarding schools.
If the gangsters work 16 hour days by force that will not prepare them for a life in the real world. Because McDonalds will not threaten them with beatings or being thrown in solitary confinement if they don't work, it works by meagre rewards of minimum wage and basic medical coverage, and the chance of progress by proving you can hold down a job and not punch that annoying ass McManager no matter how much you might be tempted to.
I think cotton is now picked by large expensive machinery and sorted with machinery. I don't think anyone would want mass numbers of unreliable convicts using such machinery, especially if they realise that if the machinery is "somehow broken" then they won't have to work. They aren't getting paid any appreciable amount either way, so they have every incentive to fuck everything up. What you are talking about is Slavery, only works by the threat of summary torture and death. They get fed either way, but if they don't work then they get whipped though I think nowadays a tazer would be used and if that doesn't work then they get murdered.
Personal responsibility is paying the convicts a WORTHY WAGE to do work. It's not personal responsibility to work because a large organisation tells you to. I'd rather pay employees to give inventive them not to sabotage the enterprise than ignorantly think they can be threatened to work as self-less autonomatons.
It's not that guns don't exist in Western Europe, it is that they exist as a privilege, not at a right.Faraja said:
The army and police are of course regularly armed, but also rich and legally educated individuals, Western Europe often have gun laws saying you must be an active member of a gun club that are universally conservative and elitist.
A very similar thing could happen in America, saying you have to buy guns through a private gun range, and the gun range had the right to kick out anyone who played obnoxious rap music, wore trousers with the belt line below the buttocks or ever without intending satire wore a baseball cap on their head any other way than with the cap pointing forward.
But a by product of the trend in Western Europe "Gun Club Laws" is it forces private gun ownership to be a niche activity. It's one thing to own a gun, it's another thing to go to some sort of shooting range that may be very remote at least every fortnight that you'd have to do to maintain your membership and also retain your guns. And when gun ownership fell the a critically low level in the population it was then without political consequence to put more and more restrictions on what kind of guns that a private citizen can own.
In Britain you can in fact own weapons like a Pump Action shotgun with an 8-shell tube magazine, a semi-automatic .22 rimfire rifle with a 50-round magazine, and a .50 BMG bolt action rifle, all with special licence. You'll notice, all of these have mainly sporting use. Hollow point and expanding bullets are explicitly banned with only explicit exceptions for hunting certain animals like deer where expanding bullets are mandated. How did almost all weapons that had self-defence application end up banned? Even for within the home.
That farmer, Tony Martin, who shot two intruders with a shotgun, he was not convicted because he used a shotgun at all, but for the details of the case, like repeatedly shooting them while they were running away, though it was changed from murder to manslaughter on appeal when it was revealed how he had clinical paranoia where he was mentally impaired in his ability to distinguish when he was under real threat to his life. The same thing could happen in the USA and I believe many Americans have been convicted in American courts for shooting violent intruders when shooting was not necessary, like after they are on the ground shot and disarmed, shooting them again. Mr Martin might have been entitled to shoot at the burglars as they were climbing up his stairs going past his valuables and up to where he hid, but not to shoot them in the back as they were running away. He only served 3 years in prison for deliberately killing a 16 year old who prosed no threat to him, which he never expressed any regret for and said he'd do again.
There was a case in the UK of a burglar who was caught and tied up by a large group... he was then thrown in a pit, had petrol poured over him and was burned to death. This is what British legislators have to grapple with when writing gun laws and self-defence laws, how many will so savagely take things too far beyond a reasonable remit. If you say they can do something in self-defence then suddenly they don't care about the details like where self-defence ends, once they start they violence they so often don't show the restraint of when to stop.
The problem is how paranoid people are with intruders thinking they are crazy serial killers, when in all likelihood they just want money or what they can easily sell for money. People who want to attack you in your home tend to resort to methods like petrol bombs, not sneaking in. People get mad, so mad.
Everyone carrying firearms everywhere for self-defence does not sit well with me, as what if two people who are legally armed have a minor altercation like a fender bender and both notice each other are armed. They'd both think at the same time "He's got a gun on him, better go for MY gun" then "Oh my god, he's going for a gun, better shoot him to save my life". Who was right, who was wrong? Well the law was wrong. This only works with police drawing on citizens by police being automatically given the benefit of the doubt that they earn by being part of a highly accountable organisation with the convention to trust the police being armed. Castle doctrine doesn't work outside the home, there must be a duty to retreat or disengage so that two "self-defenders" don't inevitably end up killing each other.
While I'm against publicly carrying guns unless you are part of some sort of codified entity, such as a police man or a regulated militia or security guard that cannot function with a duty to retreat and most people have a duty to cooperate with, I can under some circumstances find is is acceptable to have firearms for self-defence in your residence.
See if it is illegal to carry arms on your person but legal to wield them in your own property, then it is very clear that if an intruder surreptitiously enters your property while armed then it is clear who is in the wrong. The problem is the paranoia of assuming all intruders are armed killers or perverts and that you have to shoot first. This is not solved by saying people can have guns and use them against intruders because how often they zone out with the "only in direct defence to your person" they just look for an excuse to get retribution on those who trespass against them.
People too often see self-defence as "licence to kill" rather than a last-ditch effort to preserve yourself from serious unprovoked harm.
That's better than I expected at least. I thought she may have been shot for her lemonade or something, and that would have been really bad. Somebody getting shot for any reason is horrible, but a little girl being shot for lemonade?