14 killed as truck loaded with 23 passengers slams into trees in Texas
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/23/12899324-14-killed-as-truck-loaded-with-23-passengers-slams-into-trees-in-texas?lite&__utma=238145375.1028364815.1335499891.1340772152.1343093268.6&__utmb=238145375.1.10.1343093268&__utmc=238145375&__utmx=-&__utmz=238145375.1343093268.6.6.utmcsr=msn.com|utmccn=%28referral%29|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/&__utmv=238145375.|8=Earned%20By=msnbc|us%20news|usnewsfranchise=1^12=Landing%20Content=Original=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=usnews.msnbc.msn.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Internal%20to%20Original=1&__utmk=30633596
Traffic Deaths Surge in First Quarter of 2012
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost-ros.aspx?post=5ae78c49-bccc-46b1-8b17-71e517dfbf97&icid=autos_3221
Regulate cars! Ban cars! Cars are dangerous! If cars are outlawed, only outlaws will have cars! A home with a car is 3x more like to be killed by one!
There will always be death. By someone from something. If you enjoy firearms, great enjoy them. If you are not particularly fond of firearms, great, don't shoot or buy one.
We romanticize guns. Guns and rebellion. We have to have guns, because we're going to fight the next rebellion against the inevitable coming tyranny. We have to have guns because we're self-empowered cowboys out on the range, and we can't count on anyone but ourselves to protect our own. We are the action hero who will make the difference. We will blast that mugger, that psychopath, that rapist, and our guns will never ever be used against us, and we will never shoot the neighbor's kid or our spouse or a stranger by mistake in the dark.
Also, we're the good guys, and we will always be the good guys. We will righteously use our powers for good, unlike those people over there, the drug dealers and psychopaths and rapists, those guys who are easily recognizable by their ski masks, who all found their weapons on the widespread black market for guns that would most certainly exist even if there wasn't a never-ending supply of legal and quasi-legal fire-arms readily available. We shoot the bad guys before they can shoot us. We don't ever commit crimes of passion or desperation.
Also, if you're trying to take our guns away, you're a bad guy and it's okay to shoot you, or threaten to shoot you. You may be Hitler. You probably own a ski mask.
Little know fact... Mexico has gun control laws. Look how easy it is to get a gun in Mexico. To say "Gun control will fix all of the U.S's crime problems" is naive. It's easy to control firearms in the UK because it is significantly smaller then the U.S... and an Island... Gun control would never work in the U.S. because of it's size and geographical location. And, tbh, I prefer to ensure the safety of me and my loved ones with the shotgun I keep locked up in the attic.
Better example would be Brazil that HAD strict gun laws and was geographically isolated from a country like the United States that has lax gun laws. The thing was the criminals got guns en mass and the people spoke that if the criminals and vagabonds were going to be armed regardless of the law, then they should legally be allowed gun for self-defense.
You took the words right out of my mouth. I expect you know damn well that you are cornered and that your opinion is far less substantial than my experience. I hope you will one day be able to debate me without feeling the need to save face at a loss.
Its interesting. I had originally intended to have a whole paragraph at the end of my last post, predicting this very behaviour.
I decided not to for 2 reasons.
1. I mistakenly thought you had the integrity to not pull the "your leaving, that means I won" card.
and
2. I figured if I did put it in there, and you were that kind of person, that you would instead pull the "I would never do that, you're just paranoid and accusing me of trolling" card. And thus attempt to claim a moral high ground over me.
So you go ahead and enjoy your *cough* "victory".
I'll take comfort in the knowledge that if anyone decides to read through our exchange, they'll eventually see your lovely little post which does an absolutely brilliant job of exposing your true colours.
why do we need guns? first off many people here in the good ole' U.S of A think the police are here to protect us which is a complete fallacy the police have no obligation to protect the public look at cases like Riss v New York or Warren V District of Columbia and there are many more cases brought to the supreme court which affirmed that there is no obligation to protect the public in Riss they outright said that it was her fault for not having a way to defend herself
second is the second (couldn't resist)was added to the bill of rights because the founders did not want the government to become too powerful and oppress the people it was a way of keeping the government working for the people and not the other way around and to those who say the amendment was only intended for a militia there are two arguments to be made the militia traditionally was every able bodied male capable of fighting and in the past it was a requirement of every citizen to supply their own weapon and also in a recent supreme court case District of Columbia v. Heller it was affirmed that the second amendment is referring to the individuals right to own a firearm
now with assault weapons there seems to be a large miscommunication somewhere there is literally NO difference between how a so called assault weapon and a semi auto rifle function why you may ask because assault weapons are just semi auto rifle that look "scary" people see an M1Garand and go that's a rifle show someone an M14 or M1A and they will probably say its a rifle put an AR15(note: the AR stands for ARmalite the company that holds the patent for it not assault rifle) there and its an assault weapon they function nearly the same but the AR15 is constantly villainized
In Britain gun control is incredibly tight so criminals have a tough time getting them. They also become phenomenally expensive (that's banned guns, not shotguns/rifles) so the chances of you getting mugged by someone with one is very slim.
The richer criminals can probably get hold of them but if they're that big it's easier for the police to track them. It helps that we're a small island.
I'd trust a trained policemen more with a gun than I would myself. Do you really believe that a mainly unarmed populace is more dangerous than a mainly armed one.
If a shit police force is the problem surely the best solution would be to improve it, rather than arming the civilians. It's quite regressive for each individual member of the population to equip itself for defense. Do you grow all of your own food?
Please reply, I am not dying to know thanks to strict gun control and the NHS!
Your island is tiny, USA is LARGE with large parts of it barely inhabited (im not saying that to insult you, I like Britain). Where im sent for work in Alabama im a hour away (if not longer) from any town or city with a police force that consists of more than just a sheriff.
The only way your suggestion would work would be to spend a shitload of money that we dont have that would make our wars look like a hiccup and to force people from their homes into more populated areas.
It is pretty easy to suggest this when you do not have to pay for the costs nor deal with the consequences.
Why do we have to have these threads, they are mostly based on stereotypes of American culture.
Trying to liken us(in the US) to barbarians because we can legally own guns when apparently people in the UK were so barbaric and irresponsible with guns that you had to ban them outright is pretty absurd, look at the death rate verses the amount of people that own guns between the US and the UK and it kills the issue of guns causing more death.
Gun ownership in the US is an individual right and carries the individual responsibility that comes with it.
One thing I'm curious about is the idea that gun controls won't stop criminals from obtaining guns to harm a just society, but will prevent patriots from obtaining guns to harm an unjust society.
The ONLY reason why guns are legal in the US is because there's money to be made from selling them. The same way that here in the UK, they have the double standard of labelling cigarette packets with warning messages but still want the tax off the products. If the governments really cared about people developing lung cancer or being killed in a rampage, they'd ban the products.
Another reason is that the federalists would not sign the Constitution without certain provisions made with regard to limiting the power of government. The right to bear arms was one of those provisions, a provision upheld by the highest court in the land time and again.
Unless you're suggesting (and hopefully have proof) that the Supreme Court is on the take, then: NO, that is not the only reason.
No. It's all about money dear boy. No need to delude yourself with fanciful romantic notions like that.
The reason it is a "right" (meaningless term, I quite like this commentary on the idea:
) is because they can make money from it. If the best quality heroin could be produced in the US you can be damn sure that would be a "civil right" as well....
You know what else he said in those videos? It is hard to import. He is using an older model Mini-14. The older versions suck (the modern versions do as well but they are at least more accurate). What he said was that importation is extremely difficult. Because of that buying them is expensive and you get far lower quality than you get in the US.
You are using the numbers from the cities. There are 5,000 people in my area. Less than 1/100th of 1% of my areas population is enough to control the pig population. In other words about 30 people. Are you saying you cannot find 30 people to hunt pigs in an area of about a hundred square miles? If so, then the pig population is irrelevant there anyway.
You also have a culture of shooting anything that moves, one that has largely been replaced by drunkenness in rural Australia.
You my friend are quibbling and that's fair enough given the inaccuracies in my post, however that does not mean you've won the main point of contention which is that Australia is just too damn big. You don't seem to be getting it so I've made you a picture.
This is a map of Australia showing human population density, overlayed on Queensland is a colour code indicating pig population density/type. (Map sources below) For humans, the darker the more dense. For pigs yellow is "Occasional/Widespread", orange is "Common/Widespread" (this looks more like salmon pink due to photoshop opacity changes) and red is "Abundant/Widespread". I've included your state mostly for intuitive comparison as the scales are judged by eye based on your state being 875 miles wide at its widest which I got off answers.com so don't trust that too much at all.
[HEADING=2]Map Interpretation[/HEADING]
This is a very busy and confusing image so lets do a tour from left to right of QLD. Starting at the border it's mostly yellow here with splotches of red, in the middle you can see a blob of grey corresponding to "0.1-1 people per square km". That's 10-100 people per 100 square kilometers or 25.8-258 people per 100 square miles. That blob is surrounded by a lighter grey which is "Less than 0.1 people per square kilometer". For the entire Western part of the state we'd be hard pressed to find 30 people per 100 square miles, let alone 30 hunters. As we press East we can see occasional blobs of "0.1 people per square kilometer" amongst a veritable lake of sweet fanny adams. If you look up towards the red peninsula you'll see almost all of it matches the human density of Western QLD. That peninsula has the highest density of pigs in the country.
Once we get to the centre of the state it becomes entirely "0.1/sqkm" with a single blotch of "1-10 people" which would give us about 2580 people per 100 square miles in the best case. Finally on the East coast it becomes "1-10" with spatterings of large towns and cities so relatively small you can barely make them out.
Contrasting this with your state we see that you have occasional patches of "< 1/ square mile" with most of it being "1-10 / square mile" or "0.6-6.25 / square kilometer". [HEADING=3]So basically most of your state has a population density approximately an order of 10 higher than most of Queensland.[/HEADING]
Pig Density Source [http://www.feral.org.au/feral-pig-distribution-national-map-200607/]
Australia People Density [http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/1301.0~2012~Main%20Features~Geographic%20distribution%20of%20the%20population~49]
Furthermore read this document [http://www.feral.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/FPFS3_feralpig-control.pdf] which claims that ground shooting is inherently very much a secondary means of population control due to factors beyond the hunter's control (pigs are sneaky) and is far behind aerial shooting (done by professionals with semi automatics), trapping and poisoning. If valid this presents another blow to your claim that Australia would have much less of a pig problem if we had more relaxed gun laws.
[HEADING=2]In response to your secondary points[/HEADING]
I'm allowed to be elitist to rural people in my country when talking to a foreigner because that's how patriotism works.
Your state with your cowboys were the ones harping on about open prairies, not my fault it's a stereotype. Also you could well live in a pretty area so congrats.
I don't care how many automatics you own, I'm trying to be something that was once known as "on topic" but has long been lost to us. The point is they may be tightly regulated but they're not illegal for civilians in America and that seems quite crazy to me. In Australia only collectors can have them provided they have been permanently disabled.
True blue mate, the pigs need to be dealt with. However I don't think the blokes up in Jigalong need assault weapons and support assault weapons to do it. We don't need an assault rifle with 200 round drum capacity to drop a few pigs, though if we had a mind to turn them into goop it could be useful. Mind you the shooters and fishers party would probably push for anti materiel rifles if they thought they could get away with it but the point is gun dissemination is unnecessary to conservation.
As a side note all the justifications for widespread gun ownership fall flat when it comes to automatics. A young student doesn't pack an assault rifle to uni each day to protect herself from rapists. A hunter doesn't need to suppress a buck so that his partner can flank the buck's position. This is tangential I know but it's the one form of gun restrictions I think the US really does need.
Automatic weapons, including assault rifles, are very heavily restricted in the US, you can't get ones that weren't registered before 1986. Assault weapon is a stupid term, and they are heavily restricted in the parts that use that definition. You don't get 200 capacity drum mags, though I know that was hyperbole.
The AR-15 mentioned by farson is a semi-automatic rifle, not an assault rifle. They are legal in Australia, but very rare. They happen to be the rifle used in both the Aurora and Port Arthur massacres, BTW.
Only occupational shooters can have working semi automatic weapons in Australia. As for the automatic weapon restrictions, it all seems to check out but what I can't understand is why a news report in Australia on one of the few reputable channels had video implying that Americans were purchasing modern looking assault rifles at some gunshow somewhere.
Only occupational shooters can have working semi automatic weapons in Australia. As for the automatic weapon restrictions, it all seems to check out but what I can't understand is why a news report in Australia on one of the few reputable channels had video implying that Americans were purchasing modern looking assault rifles at some gunshow somewhere.
Hmmm...my first thought is they might have been semi-auto civilian versions of military assault rifles. Those are common enough, the AR-15 is one, for example. They look almost identical to the military ones, just with a slight modification of the mechanism to remove selective fire capacity.
Alternatively...well, the Steyr AUG or the L85 are both very modern looking, but had been developed in time to be registered before 1986 (though AFAIK, the L85s weren't made privaately available).
I've always assumed we've had more deaths by firearms and gun crime because we (Americans) are just a great deal more violent and stupid than, say, some other places on the planet. It's just our culture. Our dumb, dumb culture.
Hmmm...my first thought is they might have been semi-auto civilian versions of military assault rifles. Those are common enough, the AR-15 is one, for example. They look almost identical to the military ones, just with a slight modification of the mechanism to remove selective fire capacity.
A question for somebody who knows more about guns. How did the branch Davidians modify the civilian versions of the AR-15 to include fully automatic fire?
Where the rifles different then and it was easier to restore the full functionality or would it take a really skilled gunsmith?
A question for somebody who knows more about guns. How did the branch Davidians modify the civilian versions of the AR-15 to include fully automatic fire?
Where the rifles different then and it was easier to restore the full functionality or would it take a really skilled gunsmith?
Technically, it doesn't take a lot of expertise to take most semi-automatic weapons and make them run on full-auto.
However.
The slightest mistake in that process and you typically wind up with a weapon that will fire full-auto... whether you want it to or not. A tiny bit too much off the wrong part, or wrong tension on a given spring, and the gun will run away whenever the trigger is pulled.
So yeah, it'll fire full auto. It'll also dump the magazine ever time you pull the trigger, and if you screwed up badly enough, that can have all kinds of unpleasant secondary effects.
The homicide rate for the UK is lower (1.23 per 100,000 people) compared to the US (4.8 per 100,000 people).
The rate of rape is 24.1 per 100,000 for the UK and 28.6 per 100,000 people for the US.
I always knew that stupid imperial system you had made you bad at math.
That said its too late to ban guns in the USA. You're not an island so regulation is hard and there are guns EVERYWHERE in your society already. A "hand in" wouldn't work. Its safer to leave things how they are. England prevents a lot of criminals from getting guns by regulating our ocean borders, thus guns are fucking expensive EVEN if you have the right connections and EVEN if they can evade border control and guards and such. Our society didnt have to be taken down to remove guns and put back together again. It was a preventative measure. The USA would have to be overhauled, economically as well. As such its far safer to leave guns in american hands.
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