71 replies to this topic

[Manoka]

I really do want a force field...

Me too D:

It would like solve all of life's problems.


You could get into a car crash, have entire schools protected even, have cars as your generators etc.

It would be amazing.


You could have armor on all the time but just wear normal clothes, like abrasion resistance.

I want to write a book "non-lethal weapon", and in part talk about how force fields would have changed wars and made everything nicer.


We're talking potentially 0 accidents.

That being said you've still got diseases but we can work out that kink.

Edited by Manoka, 17 December 2012 - 10:11 PM.

[Chancellor Gunn]

And Then I could yell REROUTE POWER TO THE FORWARD FORCE FIELDS and be awesome

[Redezra]

Yes, that'd be grand.


And Manoka, the guns would no longer be relevant. Police with guns would protect you. This is what happens in... well... basically every dev'd country on earth

And hey, if guns are nearly impossible to acquire, the odds of someone getting a gun, being trained with its use (without being caught and arrested for the crime of carrying a gun), and then using it is very low.

[Manoka]

The problem is we have a lot of rural areas, and sub-urban, we're a pretty big country with 1/9th the total population density of Britain and easily 1/30th of that when compared to London, possibly even England.

Our most population density, in New York, still falls behind places like London, and Geneva in Switzerland, and even paris I believe, whom don't have sky scrapers. O_o


The thing is, you'd have to bring in a lot of police officers, to make sure every area is covered.

Either 50% of the population needs to be police officers, or...


Well, we in a sense all become police officers, by being able to defend ourselves.

We could be more like Switzerland and enroll everyone in the military and arm them with assault rifles while getting rid of hand guns, but that still wouldn't stop illegal imports which would be frequent since we aren't an Island.

Edited by Manoka, 17 December 2012 - 10:41 PM.

[Redezra]

No. You just need to be like Australia everyone else in the bloody world, and trust your government.

[Manoka]

That sounds a bit too silly.

We'd need a ton more police officers and we really don't have that kind of ability at the moment.


In 10 minutes you'll already be dead.

It wouldn't really matter if you called the police. :/

Edited by Manoka, 17 December 2012 - 11:14 PM.

[PrinceVegeta]

Well, let's say we did get rid of guns, for civilian use, left them hunters or whatever. Criminals will then turn to using knives, poisons, and if they're smart enough, perhaps explosives. But mainly knives and poisons.

Knives are a bit limited. You can kill a few people, if you're close enough, or know how to throw one correctly. But lets look at poisons. It can distributed silently, without anyone knowing. It's also numerous, and can be put in more than one persons food, or beverage. And, there's a lower possibility of surviving it. A gun shot to certain parts of the body either cause bleed out deaths, or hits a major organ. Poison hits the vital organs, all the time, and ensures a kill most of the time, since you don't know it's in you until you feel it, or in some cases don't feel it.

Can anyone recall the Jonestown mass suicide? Killed over 900 people. They didn't know what was in it. Cyanide Laced Kool Aid. Now it wasn't here in the USA, however, it could be done again. And it wouldn't be hard to either. More people could die from mass killings using poison or gas then guns.

I will agree, that something does probably need to be done about the guns, but, hopefully the government would take into consideration, that not all criminals are stupid. They'll kill someone any way they can. And I've said it before, the gun is only part of the problem. Without the criminal, no crime is committed, right?

So stop producing criminals.

[Manoka]

Force fields and stun guns, with 90% of the population having them.

Even if it's abused no-one gets killed.


We'll create a secret culture where it's cooler to stun people instead of kill them in gangs.

Also we'll start a counter fitting program buying up all the crack and when they try to spend their money, boom, it's counter fit, drug cartels dead.

[Haflinger]

Do you honestly think a ban on handguns would of stopped this?

Yes.

Countries which have bans on handguns don't have deadly attacks in schools regularly.

Actually it's only your country which does. China also has a problem with a lot of attacks in schools, but in China most of the attacks seem to be conducted by people with knives and you know what?

The death toll is much, much lower.

This is a weird problem that's pretty much unique to the US. Since it's a problem and not a benefit you need to figure out what makes your country so much different from the rest of the world and change to be more like the rest of the world.

Citing Jonestown is missing the point entirely. The people at Jonestown were killed by cyanide. You know what though?

The compound was patrolled by armed guards. If it hadn't been for, yes, firearms in private hands, at least some of those people would have left before the tragedy and not been killed.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

It's all well and good to say "stop producing criminals," and I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. But that takes money, time, and social investment, none of which the American people have shown they are willing to put in. Now, there has been a lot of talk lately about how the incident in Newtown is different because the victims are so young. Maybe. Maybe the national conversation thus sparked will start us down a road that leads to fewer guns in circulation. But that is a very long road indeed.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

No. You just need to be like Australia everyone else in the bloody world, and trust your government.

This really strikes at the heart of the matter. Americans in general are suspicious of our government; the gun culture is straight up paranoid. They are also deluded, because they think that their owning of any number of private firearms will somehow enable them to fend off the black helicopters and tanks that are surely coming to get them when the New World Order is implemented.

It's time for a reality check:

1. The government of the United States is not interested in instituting a totalitarian dictatorship or "taking over" people's lives (whatever that means).

2. If they were interested in doing those things, there is nothing you could to stop it, no matter how much ammunition you have stockpiled. Your guns are no match for the United States Army.

And, for that special breed of crazy...

3. As much as you might wish it were otherwise, civilization is not going to collapse into a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style wasteland where good citizens will have to fend of roving bands off biker cannibals and/or flesh eating zombies.

[Killman4]

Police with guns would protect you.

I'm sorry but I could never trust police officers, they don't even know how to use their guns properly. For example, the SPD ( Seattle Police Department) Has not had a very good track record this year. One instance, earlier this year they pulled over a guy for drunk driving he wouldn't get out of his car (you all know how stubborn drunk people are) So they tazed him twice, while being tazed, which caused convulsions, the car drifted backwards a few feet. One of the SPD officers shot the man 9 times in the back because he thought his life was in danger. A car rolling a few miles an hour? Life threatening?

Also, saying that I should trust my government? Maybe I don't believe the U.S. government because it's just a bunch of corrupt politicians. I'm not as much of a conspiracy nut as others, but I'll always doubt the government. end of my discussion in this thread.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

Having spent some time in the Third World, I can tell you with confidence that you don't know what corruption is. American politicians are far from perfect (they are still politicians, after all), but the United States remains one of the least corrupt countries in the world.

Should you believe everything the government says? No, of course not. But remember, politicians want happy citizens. It is in their interests to see that government is both responsive and responsible. We sometimes get so carried away with political rhetoric we forget that, for the most part, it generally is.

Killman, you're a teenager -- your relationship with police is by definition adversarial. That will start to change once you hit about 25.

[Haflinger]

The other thing to note about police officers is that it's the sucky ones that stand out. The sensible cops out there who just do their jobs normally don't make news headlines. I know, I used to live in Halifax, which in many ways was the epitome of terrible police. I was a white teen in Halifax in the 80s and the fact that I was white was the reason I have a clean record with no arrests on it.

But there were plenty of decent cops there too. I've even met some of them. Just a crappy system.

Now, I think cops should be held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens because when they do screw up the results are catastrophic but that doesn't mean that all cops are incompetent. If they were, then we probably would be living in a Galaxina-type world already.

Which is the movie I think of when you mention biker cannibals. Dammit, lol.

[Octavian]

And Then I could yell REROUTE POWER TO THE FORWARD FORCE FIELDS and be awesome

Force fields and stun guns, with 90% of the population having them.

Even if it's abused no-one gets killed.


We'll create a secret culture where it's cooler to stun people instead of kill them in gangs.

Also we'll start a counter fitting program buying up all the crack and when they try to spend their money, boom, it's counter fit, drug cartels dead.

Lol.

[PrinceVegeta]

It's all well and good to say "stop producing criminals," and I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. But that takes money, time, and social investment, none of which the American people have shown they are willing to put in. Now, there has been a lot of talk lately about how the incident in Newtown is different because the victims are so young. Maybe. Maybe the national conversation thus sparked will start us down a road that leads to fewer guns in circulation. But that is a very long road indeed.

I was just about to rant about how I feel about money but I decided not to topic drift this, and or get patronized for my views.

And Haf, yes, I said it was cyanide laced kool-aid. I was talking about poisons. Without guns, the criminals/lunatics would end up finding new ways to kill people, and poison is MUCH more dangerous than bullet wounds.

So something needs to be done to prevent that as well, and I don't think another law would cut it. The USA is in need of plastic surgery in some areas. I could care less about what the "Constitution" says about this. If people are dying because they don't know how to use their freedom like civilized people, then either the freedom needs to be taken away, as Red wants, or it needs to be temporarily taken away, and then given back after a nice "country reform".

I don't even want to go outside much anymore. I don't use guns to defend myself. I use martial arts and melee weapons. A gun is the bane of me. I'm not a fucking Jedi. There is no deflecting shit. It's get hit, and possibly die.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

Most crimes are crimes of passion, PV. Guns are weapons of passion, they make it terrifyingly easy to translate anger into murder. If they were not available, in most cases the moment would pass and no one would get killed.

We're not talking about getting rid of the 0.0001% of people who are genuine sociopaths. Nothing will stop them. We're talking about preventing the gun deaths that wouldn't have happened if the gun were not in the picture. That's a lot. The overwhelming majority, in fact. Basically every shooting not committed by professional hit men. And my guess is there aren't as many of those as Hollywood would have us believe.

[Haflinger]

The best way to avoid getting murdered in any human society, including the United States of course, is to not get married. You are far more likely to be murdered by your spouse than by anyone else. The spouse is always the first suspect in any homicide investigation.

This is why it's significant that homicide rates in DC are basically the same as those in the Sudan. It indicates that, although DC is a much more affluent place than the Sudan (really, DC isn't the richest part of the US but anywhere in the US is going to be so far ahead of the Sudan as to well not be worth discussing the comparison) and in general has far fewer problems with things like civil wars and racist militias roaming the countryside, people are still killing each other at pretty much the same rate. That seems to suggest that it's much easier to kill someone in DC compared to the Sudan. And an obvious reason why that might be is because DC is full of guns and the Sudan, being incredibly poor, doesn't have very many at all.

[Redezra]

Most crimes are crimes of passion, PV. Guns are weapons of passion, they make it terrifyingly easy to translate anger into murder. If they were not available, in most cases the moment would pass and no one would get killed.

We're not talking about getting rid of the 0.0001% of people who are genuine sociopaths. Nothing will stop them. We're talking about preventing the gun deaths that wouldn't have happened if the gun were not in the picture. That's a lot. The overwhelming majority, in fact. Basically every shooting not committed by professional hit men. And my guess is there aren't as many of those as Hollywood would have us believe.

This. Holy shit this.

Here's something I tried to say in the other thread, I'll try and say it better here.


Sociopaths (correction, psychopaths), are not psychotic fuckheads. They are cold and calculating. The dumb ones are career criminals who rob and sell drugs. The smart ones ran your country into the ground during the GFC.

This kid was a schizophrenic, or at the very least highly delusional, he was not calculating, he was literally off his rocker. If he did not have a gun right next to him, he would have used a knife, or a crowbar, or something. But there is no way he could kill 20 kids and 7 teachers before the armed police showed up and took him down (probably non-lethally).

Banning guns would does stop massacres. And I point at my country before gun reform and after. There's your golden standard, don't any bloody one of you tell me it's impossible. Cause you're wrong.


Now, as for your need for guns at all.

Career criminals have need of guns, sure. They use them to maintain their power in a situation where they use it over others. They do not want to kill. Cops are gonna chase you a lot harder for triple homicide than three counts of armed robbery. Even the dumbest gangster knows this. If nobody but the robber had a gun, you'd all survive. Maybe with a little less cash, or no jewelry, but your life is far more important. Your feeble excuse that "I'd defend myself" or anyone else is irrelevant, and incorrect. You'd start a shootout. People would be injured, or die. You become the threat, not the criminal. This is why police hate vigilantes, they just increase the pressure on the criminals, and they'll do something stupid.

Murders are, as Jorost has so kindly put it (<3), things of the moment. They are not mass killings. The only time they aren't, are when they're gangland killings, and let me put it this way, whoever dies in that sort of killing had it coming to them, cause they're in a gang themselves. Back to spur of the moment killings, if you didn't have a gun, that spur of the moment killing becomes a lot harder, a lot less likely. Your murder rate would drop like a stone.

Final case? Serial killers. And honestly, as PV has said, they're always gonna find sick, innovative ways to kill. But they do it one at a time, and want to avoid being caught. So, this is what your mental health system is for, to find them early. It's what your police are for, they should be well funded and trained, capable of hunting them down quick and efficiently. And it's what your Government is for, they institute laws that make it as tough as possible for such people to operate, and try to manage the education of young people, to try and fix the problem before it begins.



And I swear, if any of you start complaining again that your government is somehow apart from the people, I'm going to have a fit (again). You fucking made yourselves a republic, if you don't like it, be a bloody democracy!!!!

[Manoka]

Great, he would have ruthlessly knifed 10 kids to death instead of shot 20.

Fantastic.


No, the only real way to stop it would be to screen everyone at the age of 18 for mental problems, maybe younger.

But of course, that would be an invasion of privacy, which is against the constitution.


Not to mention if we started carting people away at random just because they were a little crazy, even if they could handle themselves, it wouldn't exactly be fair, seeing as how they did nothing wrong, at that point.

But when you wait until they do something bad, it's all over.


So?

We need protection afforded to all civilians, so they can defend themselves.


Also, almost all sociopaths and psychopaths are almost invariably dumb assess.

Never found a smart one.

Edited by Manoka, 19 December 2012 - 05:47 AM.