This is how we do things here in not Yankeeland, boy

Politics US Politics
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61

Oh please. The purpose of a government is to deploy tyranny. It might be calibrated tyranny with a bit of give-and-take, or gonzo tyranny with a lot more taking than giving, but governments are governments.

If the Tienanmen protesters had had tanks, the government would have had bigger tanks. Surely you realise that Americans are only allowed to have certain types of guns? You are not allowed to own anything that might be even marginally bigger and better than what the government has.

Why is it so hard for you guys look at countries awash with guns, and other countries that aren’t awash with guns, and compare the actual levels of gun violence? You’re just making up fantasies in your head.

The irregular people DO obey gun laws. Not necessarily because they want to but because it’s a lot less effort than trying to do otherwise. The average Taiwanese or British criminal doesn’t carry a gun because he can’t obtain one. The police almost never shoot to kill because they can be 99.9% certain that the perp isn’t carrying.

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[quote=“finley, post:61, topic:165831”]
The average Taiwanese or British criminal doesn’t carry a gun because he can’t obtain one.[/quote]

I agree, most criminals don’t have a gun here. But some gang members do and i guess there are quite a lot out there but the police isn’t thinking of stepping up their gear.

Even if, officers would be hesitant to shoot just like in most developed countries because it would be the final solution. However the us judicial system keeps on reinforcing this kind of behavior again and again.

I know there’s a grey line between what a cop has to do to protect his life within a fraction of a second and consequently harm someone else. In this case, where they outnumbered the suspected and had all the right tools available(i suppose even tasers), they still stuck to their AR-15 just for the sake of it.

If even breitbart rowland can’t argue the facts, i’d say it’s time to overthink the us police standard procedures.

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exclusively for breitbart rowland. why are you conservatives so open and liberal about gun law and the other way around so closed and resistant to any other law that causes much less danger to society as a whole such as cannabis legalization, pro gay, abortion etc etc.
never heard of any of such type of person going randomly off amok.

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Gang members have guns for the same reason policemen have guns: they’re important “tools of the trade”. Violence is what they do for a living.

The slogan “when guns are outlawed, only criminals will have guns” assumes that there’s a generic criminal who is always a violent criminal. There are all kinds of criminals, and bizarrely most of them would recoil at murder like any other normal person, even if they might be happy enough to beat the crap out of someone or otherwise injure them. A gun is for killing, and most criminals simply don’t consider that a necessary part of what they do.

All criminals take calculated risks, and if they’re in any way rational they’ll assume the minimum possible risk necessary to get the job done. Even getting caught with a gun, whether you’ve used it or not, will land you in a world of pain in places where guns are outlawed.

To be fair, if a gun-licensed officer is called to a gun-related incident, in any country, then shoot-to-kill will be on his list of options. The problem here as I see it is that the police had (a) failed to establish what was actually going on and (b) were not following any police procedures except the shoot-to-kill bit. It looked to me as if it wasn’t a case of bad training, but no training at all.

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With life experience - sometimes - there comes a knowledge of what does and does not work in a society.

Liberals are all about bright shiny things. They can’t see past that.

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And taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens will fix this how, exactly?

Can we all agree that an incompetent and reckless police force is a bad thing?

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It’s the above average criminal that makes all the trouble.

There’s already a thread about a questionable police action recently in Taiwan. I think that’s overblown, but you can’t have it both ways. Now about the UK…

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/266809-uk-police-brutality-burrell/

…seeing as someone has already brought it up.

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I already explained how and why, above.

TL;DR: because by happy coincidence it also takes guns out of the hands of non-law-abiding citizens, with a very high level of effectiveness. The rate of criminal gun ownership in the UK is miniscule. The number of actual shootings is something like 50x lower than in the US.

If almost nobody has guns then people cannot get shot. They might still get knifed, beaten up, or raped, but they’re a lot less likely to die. I think only Americans have trouble grasping this concept.

As for police brutality: well, that’s exactly why UK police aren’t allowed to have guns either. Some policemen, as someone pointed out earlier, are assholes. Best option, then, is to limit their options for assholery.

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Or maybe we know something about the likelihoods that you don’t.

When one guy has a gun and one guy has a knife, the guy with the gun usually wins. When both bring knives, both are likely to bleed to death.

This is why the NRA says shoot to stop. To cause your enemy to die slowly is the worst of both worlds. He dies, and so do you.

The best fights are the shortest ones. And the shortest ones involve guns.

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Somehow they seem to manage.

Bottom line: you’re full of theory. Stinky, brown theory.

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i really don’t get this argument. civilians should have guns so they can kill police?(and get away with it?)

i know the guy in the video didn’t have a real gun but even if he did he did what difference would it have made?

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I think you can extract instances of individual Police brutality in ,most countries.
Any individual, including the Police make a choice , in each situation. We have to remember that it must be a really shitty job to do and potentially life threatening.

You can not cherry pick these instances when they screw up . Even a non racist Policeman in London must be aware that (2009) 67% of all those caught in the Capital for gun crimes were black . Muggings/assault in London 54% black.
Of course the facts will alter their perception of potential danger, which , in part, accounts for discrimination but there are deeper issues you can not ignore here. Similarly , when trying to confront Terrorists, they are less likely to be as worried by , for instance a Chinese individual. That is just common sense , based on statistics without trying to virtue signal.

I do not condone this Police behaviour, but simply put forward some of the reasons behind it . The USA have allowed guns for 200 years, whether its sensible or not , they have had two centuries to vote it out, (in spite of the power of the NRA.) They want to keep the right to bear arms. I may not agree with it but i have not had to live with the possibilty of facing violent crime . Anyway, the World is a shitty place and we have to realize that , sadly.
Damn, I promised myself not to discuss Politics !

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It it weren’t for cherry picking, threads like this wouldn’t exist.

Apples to apples just gets everyone’s bowels in an uproar.

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The point is to keep the police honest.

They’re the enforcement arm of the government, and someone needs to watch the watchmen. Checks and balances, at ground level.

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keep them honest how? this guy got away with murder. according to you some gun owners should use their guns to shoot this cop right in this situation. but that ain’t gonna happen. whats the point in having the guns if you can’t do anything with them?

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I’ll grant that those who can’t figure out what to do with guns are better off without them.

Just as those can’t figure how to tie shoelaces are better off with velcro.

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Back in the day when the government was armed with muskets and the populace was armed with muskets the idea was that if the government ever pushed the people far enough they would rise up en masse and overthrow that corrupt government. That horse, of course, left the barn 150 years ago when the government acquired its first Gatling gun. Today, armed insurrection against a corrupt government armed with stealth bombers, smart bombs, heavy artillery and Hellfire missiles is a fatuous pipedream.

What’s left of the right to bear arms ethos is that the U.S. is awash in guns and if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. There’s truth in that, particularly in those parts of the U.S. with a lot of gun crime, but the price for arming oneself for self-protection is dealing with edgy police and accidental shootings. Fear of violent criminals will always trump those costs though.

I got my first .22 rifle when I was 13 and spent long hours hunting with my friends in the woods during summer breaks. One died when he was shot in the head with a pumpkin ball round by a teenager who claimed he was shooting at birds. Another lost an eye when a bullet ricocheted and debris damaged his eye. Later when I lived in a high crime area and witnessed two gun crimes I got a concealed carry permit and often carried a handgun so I’m quite familiar with gun culture in the U.S.

Guns and gun violence are everywhere in the U.S. and I suppose you have to experience it to know the fear that engenders. Even reasonable people have trouble choosing to remain defenseless when it’s happening to people they know.

I much prefer living in a place like a Taiwan though where guns are rare and even those who have them don’t know how to shoot straight. It’s hard to see how the U.S. will ever get to that better place though without a long, painful period when only outlaws have guns and know how to use them

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It’s nothing to do with likelihood. Look at what happens in the real world instead of the made-up one in your head. Are you actually arguing with the statistic I quoted? Are you saying it’s fake news?

It might be stinky and brown, but at least my theory is the one that accords with experiment. All of the countries with strict gun controls (controls that are actually enforced) have murder rates well below 1/100,000. The US statistic sits within a cluster of failed states and third-world countries.

If that were true, the UK would have 50x as many knife killings as the US, ie., those situations where someone is involved in a knife fight and isn’t allowed to bring a gun. It actually is higher (about 2x) presumably because enthusiastic killers have to be armed with something. Nevertheless, that still translates to fewer people being killed.

Obviously I’m not suggesting that banning guns makes a population nice and peaceable. Filipinos are always hacking each other to death for the amusement value. Taiwanese mafia apparently favour the watermelon knife. That’s a whole different issue. My modest proposal is that, if civilians don’t have guns, then policemen have a lot less to worry about, and are therefore less likely to shoot first and ask questions later. If you think this is just “theory”, perhaps you’d like to advance an alternative one.

As BHL4Life said, that doesn’t seem to be how the world actually works. The whole POINT of the police is that they should have a violent advantage over civilians (bearing in mind that criminals are civilians). If they don’t, they can’t do their job when it all turns to shit.

And quite frankly, having met a lot of “the people”, I don’t want them watching anything more complicated than the TV, because they’ll probably cause mayhem by mistake.

What’s hilarious about this whole argument is that you don’t even realise your supposed “freedom” to protect civilisation against tyrannical government is a carefully-crafted illusion. A smart government knows that as long as it keeps the lapdogs on a long leash and throws them a few bones, they’ll put up with a good kicking now and then.

That’s the point, isn’t it? If everyone else has a gun, people are compelled to arm themselves.

OTOH I spend a lot of time in a country with an official homicide rate roughly 2x higher than the US (in reality it’s probably more like 3-4 times because a lot of murders go unrecorded). I’ve been in a couple of situations that typically end in casual murder.

I could easily acquire a gun if I wanted to and have occasionally considered the option. I have plenty of time for target practice. However, I do not intend to ever shoot anyone. So I don’t want one.

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That’s some serious winknudgery there from Sir Rowland of Anglia-Saxony. :wink: :wink: :roll:

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And that, my friends, is today’s Daily Rowlandism™.

Thanks for your many contributions over the years, btw. :slight_smile: :rainbow: