More reasons why bush is a scary, scary man.................

[Trollax]

Ha. Pretzels.

Memorable Doco. Bowling for Columbine.

Moore - Genius.

Sure. The way he ambushed mr. heston is golden, really. Though his rhetoric is golden, he fails to realize one crucial detail... he's canadian.

Americans should never relinquish their right to own firearms, and the reasons are all explained in writings by our founding fathers. Remember, we are a country that won our independance from an oppressive empirical government by force, and all of the founding fathers knew that the dynastic cycle was doomed to repeat itself.

I gladly risk the possibility that I will get shot, on a street corner, just because thats the price I pay for having the right to defend myself.

Hey seppo! Learn karate!

[Z³]

Ha. Pretzels.

Memorable Doco. Bowling for Columbine.

Moore - Genius.

Sure. The way he ambushed mr. heston is golden, really. Though his rhetoric is golden, he fails to realize one crucial detail... he's canadian.

Americans should never relinquish their right to own firearms, and the reasons are all explained in writings by our founding fathers. Remember, we are a country that won our independance from an oppressive empirical government by force, and all of the founding fathers knew that the dynastic cycle was doomed to repeat itself.

I gladly risk the possibility that I will get shot, on a street corner, just because thats the price I pay for having the right to defend myself.

Hey seppo! Learn karate!

Read the previous post.
I'm fine with open debate, as long as it is debate, and not "lets gang up on ZZZ... because he's expressing a stereotypically american viewpoint, and we all think he's wrong."

If I'm wrong, tell me why I'm wrong, dont insult me.
Or insult me. Its just doing one thing will earn you my respect, and the other wont.

[Guido Finucci]

I disagree with somethings (a good portion of things, actually) that you also disagree with, but I agree with some things (also a large portion of things) that you dont.

Law of averages says that we won't agree on everything but I'm not sure that what I've said tells you enough about me for you to make a statement that is as strong as I read the one above as being.

To summarize, I will put it thusly. Gun control, when its been successfull, hasnt been successful at all.

When it has been successful, it has been extremely successful. I offer the Antipodes as an example. But I don't think that the availability of guns is actually the issue. The gun culture in the States is (IMO) makes it the sort of place where people are very willing to use those guns to shoot other people. In my experience (which is limited in a couple of important ways) everywhere else, people carry and use guns to shoot critters - people rarely get shot at.

Thirdly, stripping guns away from the citizens does not take them away from the government and police. I'm more scared of them then I am of gang members. (I'm serious).

If I were in the States, I'd want to be armed too. I'd also be working towards making the States a place where I wouldn't want to be armed. If things got so bad that there was a violent revolution in the US, it'd only be because many, many people had missed many, many opportunities to avoid it.

[Z³]

I disagree with somethings (a good portion of things, actually) that you also disagree with, but I agree with some things (also a large portion of things) that you dont.

Law of averages says that we won't agree on everything but I'm not sure that what I've said tells you enough about me for you to make a statement that is as strong as I read the one above as being.  

I'd say the same of anyone, really, because its not a strong statement at all. We probably agree on tons of crap, like the fact that we enjoy breathing, for example. We probably disagree on tons of stuff too, based on the fact that we are different people. When I wrote the statement I thought it was extremely broad.

To summarize, I will put it thusly. Gun control, when its been successfull, hasnt been successful at all.  

When it has been successful, it has been extremely successful. I offer the Antipodes as an example. But I don't think that the availability of guns is actually the issue. The gun culture in the States is (IMO) makes it the sort of place where people are very willing to use those guns to shoot other people. In my experience (which is limited in a couple of important ways) everywhere else, people carry and use guns to shoot critters - people rarely get shot at.

I agree, actually. I was speaking specifically of the US, although I might have neglected to mention (my apologies). There are places where getting shot isnt a common thing at all. Gun crime isnt a big deal everywhere, but its a problem here.

Thirdly, stripping guns away from the citizens does not take them away from the government and police. I'm more scared of them then I am of gang members. (I'm serious).

If I were in the States, I'd want to be armed too. I'd also be working towards making the States a place where I wouldn't want to be armed. If things got so bad that there was a violent revolution in the US, it'd only be because many, many people had missed many, many opportunities to avoid it.

Once again, I agree. We have missed our chances, because the united states' population is, at large, ignorant and uneducated. We are also extremely apathetic. Nobody really thinks about elections, we just make decisions on the final runners based on who gets hyped in the media. We dont write letters to our congressmen, only a small portion of us protest (although we're all willing to complain). We're a capitalistic society thats become complacent and selfish, and we look to the media for our instruction (which leads us into lives where we simply work and mass consume.) We are being manipulated. We are no better than cattle and livestock for the hideous machine that drives us.

It makes me sick.

I get disgusted when I watch television.

I hate my culture.

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

But being underpaid workers who have to keep working to survive and consume is the place where the Rich want us to be. Many Americans aren't stupid, they have just been dumbed down by depression. That is what a lot of non-Americans don't get. We have an entire population of misinformed citizens and it is precisely what Business wants.

As to the firearms issue. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to keep that right to bear them. If guns are outlawed, then only criminals and the State will have them. Frankly, the right to bear firearms was not placed in the Bill of Rights so that citizens could defend themselves against criminals or Indians (which were to two main obstacles to peace back then). Our right to bear arms was placed there specifically as a counter to the threat of the State becoming authoritarian. It is the right of all people to engage in armed resistance to oppression.

I protest, and I organize. Sometimes I vote, but you have to know that most Americans don't abstain from voting because they are apathetic, they abstain because they know a con job when they see one. They don't have to be leftists at all to feel that way.

[Trollax]

BEARING ARMS
SECOND AMENDMENT

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of
a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
shall not be infringed.

In spite of extensive recent discussion and much legislative action
with respect to regulation of the purchase, possession, and
transportation of firearms, as well as proposals to substantially
curtail ownership of firearms, there is no definitive resolution by
the courts of just what right the Second Amendment protects. The
opposing theories, perhaps oversimplified, are an ?´?´individual
rights???? thesis whereby individuals are protected in ownership, possession,
and transportation, and a ?´?´states?? rights???? thesis whereby
it is said the purpose of the clause is to protect the States in their
authority to maintain formal, organized militia units. 1 Whatever
the Amendment may mean, it is a bar only to federal action, not
extending to state 2 or private 3 restraints. The Supreme Court has
given effect to the dependent clause of the Amendment in the only
case in which it has tested a congressional enactment against the
constitutional prohibition, seeming to affirm individual protection
but only in the context of the maintenance of a militia or other
such public force.

Taken from: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/pdf/con013.pdf

Ok so common interpretation of the second amendment (by the legal types) is that citizens have the right to bear arms as part of a state-sponsored (not federal) militia force.

I take your point about the populace (both hugh and Z3) you meet most people one on one and they can be quite knowledgeable, but put them in groups and the IQ level drops quickly

Personally I'd prefer if nobody had guns at all... the Bobbies in england don't normally carry handguns apparently. I do not believe that I am safer with a gun in my house than without one, anywhere. The more guns there are the higher likelyhood that they will be used.

But what would I know I'm from a foreign country, there's obviously something about the gun debate that I'm missing? I may not like cops I may not like the government but that doesn't mean I'm going to start an arms race with them.

Do you honestly believe that if they change one line on a piece of paper it changes your status as a human being? Are the police a different class of person? if it was half bricks would you be defending your right to those too?

The state is a voluntary organisation anyway, but for some reason everybody forgets that when it comes to the issue of personal safety... well I've got news for you, your safety is forever in peril because the line in someone's mind may be crossed and there will be no amount of guns knives or martial arts moves that will save you. You have no rights, just group concessions that we make toward individual preferences...
I've said it before and I will say it again, it's fucking amazing that we even have rights. If they wanted to our rulers could simply decimate one in ten of us for every terrorist we fail to dob in.

Life is a wilderness and the delusion is that just because we can act in complicated fashion that we cease to be animals. You're a hairless ape... get used to it "human." Unlike most animals however, we have the ability to regulate our behaviour consciously that is all a constitution is...

I don't care about my rights... there's no such thing, the minute you make a law there is womeone who will find away around it... the minute you take away a law there is somebody who will exploit that. It's the same thing as affirmative action: reverse racism.
If for one moment you could just forget about defending your rights maybe you'd fail to remember about causing more aggression towards the state and justifying their actions toward you in their own paranoid minds. It's a vicious cycle, and the only reason it continues is that people are too afraid to give up the very reason for it, and their protection from it.

Give me nothing I will create everything...
Give me everything and it will collapse into nothing...

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Legal rights and human rights rarely square up, but at least the idea that a population is just in defending itself from its own government is there.  Guns don't make a society any more violent...

As to an arms race with the State...guerrilla warfare and urban action tactics have proven to work effectively in resistance to large modern armies in many cases. Unless the army is willing to destroy entire regions, city and country, such a strategy can bog down entire governments and economies.

[Z³]

Regarding the legal interpretation of the second amendment, it has been debated, but the right to bare arms has been contested in this country for some time.

Now, when I want to understand the mindset of the bill, I go back and re-read the writings of the people who helped create it. Looking into the american revolution, reading Thomas Locke, reading about Thomas Jefferson... etc. These people were extremists, and people who were willing to fight and die for their power over themselves. This is something that I can respect, and wouldnt entirely mind emulating, due to a rather over-inflated martyr complex.

I get the impression that they put it (the second amendment)1 there for the purpose of future revolution, which they seem to see as being inevitable.

The thing is, for americans, the Bill of Rights is pretty much set in stone. The constitution and the bill of rights (subsequently) are the philosophical basis for our entire system of government. For good or for ill, its pretty much a static thing... but if one thing on that bill is taken away, it means that the rest of the things can be taken away as well (IE: free speech, free assembly, free religion, etc).

So for americans, thats a pretty scary thought.

Btw, most of the reason I oppose bush is because he's been eroding the system of checks and balances (where the Judicial, Legeslative, and Congressional branches of government are equally balanced) all in favor of the Executive branch having complete reign... and this is scary, because its pretty close to being a monarchy (or a dictatorship).

In other countries, guns dont exist, and thats fine... but America, in its current incarnation, is a different thing. I get the impression that other nations dont trust the american government, or its military, and thats fine and deserved... but If our people (domestic citizens) didnt at least have weapons, I assure you that our tyranny as a nation would (at least have the potential to) become much more blatant much faster.

We are a young nation, and we are violent and reactionary, as europe was at one time... and japan, and virtually any other nation on earth. The nations that have been able to curb violence within their domestic borders and become more enlightened and bohemian are, for the most part, nations that worked off all of their aggression several hundred years ago.








(edit)

As a footnote, I agree with Hugh on guerilla tactics. To a degree. I dont think american citizens would ever be truly helpless, for we could always resist, if need be... but the reason that guns are such an integral part of america isnt really rooted in our modern culture or our politics, it goes back to our inception as a nation.

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Here's a quote from Colin Ward

"the system makes its morons, then despises them for their ineptitude, and rewards its 'gifted few' for their rarity."

And another by some anarchist

As the human brain is a bodily organ, it needs to be used regularly in order to be at its fittest. Authority concentrates decision-making in the hands of those at the top, meaning that most people are turned into executants, following the orders of others. If muscle is not used, it turns to fat; if the brain is not used, creativity, critical thought and mental abilities become blunted and side-tracked onto marginal issues, like sports and fashion.

These may be of interest in this thread.

[B23.77]

Speaking of Bush, how about those Dolphins eh?
And I just bought a new hat.  It's blue.

[B23.77]

Anyhoo, here's another reason why Bush is one scary boy:
http://www.guerrillanews.com/counter_intelligence/doc808.html

[Phantom Trollax]

Here's a quote from Colin Ward

"the system makes its morons, then despises them for their ineptitude, and rewards its 'gifted few' for their rarity."

And another by some anarchist

As the human brain is a bodily organ, it needs to be used regularly in order to be at its fittest. Authority concentrates decision-making in the hands of those at the top, meaning that most people are turned into executants, following the orders of others. If muscle is not used, it turns to fat; if the brain is not used, creativity, critical thought and mental abilities become blunted and side-tracked onto marginal issues, like sports and fashion.

Hagbard celine
These may be of interest in this thread.

[psychaotic]

[EvilPoet]

Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers. The school invites recruiters to participate in career days and job fairs, but like most school districts, it keeps student information strictly confidential. "We don't give out a list of names of our kids to anybody," says Shea-Keneally, "not to colleges, churches, employers -- nobody."

But when Shea-Keneally insisted on an explanation, she was in for an even bigger surprise: The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

"I was very surprised the requirement was attached to an education law," says Shea-Keneally. "I did not see the link."

Source: MotherJones, November/December 2002 Issue