This guy destroys the "Intellectual Elite"

[Luissa]

And [MENTION=11865]Luissa[/MENTION]: calls me a troll. The rest of her argument (if she had one) is invalidated by her need to call people names and ad hom them into oblivion. I shall not waste my time.

How many times have you called me a troll?
I guess your whole time at USMB is invalidated.

 

[NightFox]

I must be more influential than I thought. You two must be scared of me.

It's your avatar, very scary, I'll admit that when I first saw you in this thread instinct took over and I pulled my .357 magnum, thankfully reason kicked in before the shooting started.

 

[candycorn]

You mentioned one party rule; not me.

Yes I "mentioned" it followed immediately by "Police State" which you conveniently left out, a bit disingenuous on your part, no?

Debateable...but if you brought it up, comment on it.

Sure we have compatible cultures...what is different besides the eating of beef?
Development?

You do of course understand that India is a Hindu culture with a caste system and how that might lead one to the conclusion that our cultures are dissimilar, right ?

Hindu is a religion...not a culture. The Caste system speaks to diversity, does it not.

That's true, however it doesn't change the fact that economically India is still emerging from third world status.......

So it should be quite violent if the rest of the 3rd world is any indication...somehow they don't have mass theater shootings, mass school shootings, mass shootings on their military bases, like we do here.

Why?

CULTURAL DIVERSITY as in a multi-cultural society as in it has a tendency to create societal conflict, why you would choose to bring up skin color is a mystery....... culture != skin color.

All other factors being equal yes however as has already been demonstrated all other factors are NOT equal, that's why a valid comparison isn't possible.

According to you they have a caste system which should be conflict on a much larger scale than we have here in the US.

What is different about those ghettos and our ghettos?

Do I really need to go over it AGAIN? scroll up and review the criteria for apples to apples comparisons.

Yes, you do. What is different between their ghettos and our ghettos. Just come out and say it...

I'm all for making any gun crime a federal crime where there is no parole. One and done, 20 years in the hole; no parole.

Would that work?

I can't say whether or not it would be an effective strategy, however incarceration hasn't proven all that effective a deterrent up to this point,

Yes because court ordered releases for over crowding, parole, time off for good behavior, etc... Federal pens don't have those overcrowding issues and no parole...

that being said it's a better strategy than impeding the right to gun ownership of law abiding citizens.

Yeah, okay.

 

[candycorn]

[MENTION=43268]TemplarKormac[/MENTION]

Stay on topic? I think I responded to exactly what you posted. Were you on topic?
Of course instead of responding you play the victim.

You made the claim that with our gun laws including Chicago we should be the safest country in the world. I just pointed out that countries have stricter gun laws than even Chicago and less gun violence.
And you must give a shit about other countries, because you made the claim. I figure someone who makes that type of claim can back it up.

Or were you just trolling?

He follows you around looking to pick a fight. Usually I just ignore him.

And how do I follow anyone around? Luissa made the mistake of tagging me in her comment. Are you two paranoid? Damn. I must be more influential than I thought. You two must be scared of me. I don't make a habit of following anyone anywhere. If you can't take a good debate, don't say stupid shit that can be easily countered.

Did I touch a nerve?

 

[candycorn]

You mentioned one party rule; not me.

Yes I "mentioned" it followed immediately by "Police State" which you conveniently left out, a bit disingenuous on your part, no?

Debateable...but if you brought it up, comment on it.


Hindu is a religion...not a culture. The Caste system speaks to diversity, does it not.


So it should be quite violent if the rest of the 3rd world is any indication...somehow they don't have mass theater shootings, mass school shootings, mass shootings on their military bases, like we do here.

Why?


According to you they have a caste system which should be conflict on a much larger scale than we have here in the US.


Yes, you do. What is different between their ghettos and our ghettos. Just come out and say it...

I can't say whether or not it would be an effective strategy, however incarceration hasn't proven all that effective a deterrent up to this point,

Yes because court ordered releases for over crowding, parole, time off for good behavior, etc... Federal pens don't have those overcrowding issues and no parole...

that being said it's a better strategy than impeding the right to gun ownership of law abiding citizens.

Yeah, okay.

Seriously,

How are the poor in Moscow, Berlin, London, Singapore, New Dehli, different than the poor here?

Again, are our poor just more homicidal?

 

[NightFox]

You mentioned one party rule; not me.

Yes I "mentioned" it followed immediately by "Police State" which you conveniently left out, a bit disingenuous on your part, no?

Debateable...but if you brought it up, comment on it.

Actually it's not debatable to those that have the ability to scroll back and read what I actually wrote.

Hindu is a religion...not a culture.

Yes Hindu is a religion and the Indian CULTURE is centered around it.

The Caste system speaks to diversity, does it not.

Are you for real?

So it should be quite violent if the rest of the 3rd world is any indication...

It is most unpleasant, however Indian culture and the interdependency of people required in order to satisfy the need to find something to eat tends to put a dampening effect on peoples desire to attack one another.

somehow they don't have mass theater shootings, mass school shootings, mass shootings on their military bases, like we do here.

Umm.. yes they do, apparently you've never heard of Kashmir, the Seven Sister States or Jammu just to name a few places where walking about can be particularly detrimental to ones health.

According to you they have a caste system which should be conflict on a much larger scale than we have here in the US.

No according to YOU the caste system (which is in fact a part of Indian culture not a source of cultural diversity) should be a source of conflict on a much larger scale, what I ACTUALLY wrote was that CULTURAL diversity has a tendency to create societal conflict, just so we're straight, you do know how to read & comprehend English, right?

Yes, you do.

Yes apparently I do have to repeat what I've already written for a third (and probably fourth, fifth, sixth,..... two hundredth....ten thousandth....) time in order for you to understand why, but I won't since apparently you aren't interested in understanding the differences and are only interested in whatever confirms your pre-existing beliefs.

 

[rdean]

This very video is directed at you.

If so it was wasted. I don't have 50+ minutes to spare on an interview of an author pumping his merchandise. Nor do I have that much time to spare for a partisan monologue on a subject that so many of us have already spent so much time thinking and writing about. The post is introduced as a criticism of intellectual elitism attacking the second amendment argument. There is really only so much sensible that can be said about the basic 2nd Amendment argument, and the rest quickly gets into polemics (name calling and flaming). I don't have 50 minutes to spend listening to name calling. At its root the 2nd Amendment argument is simple. Either you agree or disagree. I have been a shooter for 50+ years and I disagree with where the current 2nd Amendment adherents have gone. IMO it is all about corporate greed and gun sales now. Freedom and decency are the last thing the NRA and the industry are interested in. In my opinion.

So, you don't have time to watch it and listen to his words? How intellectually starved you must be.

It's a lesson. See if you can learn from it.

One thing it teaches is that when a nation cannot meet the needs of its people through its unlegislated culture the law can be used to fill necessary gaps. To the uneducated such laws often invite criticism. Study reveals that without laws to intervene an economy will regulate itself into feudalism or its equivalent, where people who are not born wealthy literally can never become anything but what they were born as. America's right wing is trying to go there now - the middle class has shrunk by 40% since Reagan.

Not having watched it, you now can tell us what it teaches?

BTW, There are people here that were not born wealthy but became so by their own hard labor and determination. Methinks your suffer from wealth envy. Likely nobody in your family has amassed wealth for you to inherit.

Like President Obama. Is he the only president that has ever been on food stamps?

 

[tubig]

You're picking out the Swiss to suit your own purposes there pal...

No, I picked out the Swiss to illustrate to you what an INVALID comparison looks like and I specifically pointed that out.

Certainly the Chinese are not "neutrally" oriented nor are they homogeneous speaking several different languages and dialects.

The Chinese culture is fairly homogeneous (especially compared to U.S. culture) not to mention they live under a one party rule, police state with little to no political, economic or civil liberties. Do you really think Chinese society bears any significant resemblance to U.S. society?

You seem to have little information about Chinese culture. Your opinion merely mirrors US propaganda. One big reason China has always been so difficult to govern is the diversity of cultures and languages within the geographic boundaries we call "China". China is not homogenous compared to America.

The country that appears to be closest in culture to America is Canada. Canada today is cleaner, freer, has overall better education and health care and far less violence. The Canadian government tried a gun grab and the usually obedient Canadian population rejected it. Handguns are still controlled - Canada has strict handgun control.

 

[tubig]

Hindu is a religion...not a culture. The Caste system speaks to diversity, does it not.

Not to disagree with your positions overall, but the caste system as I understand it stifles diversity, it does not create diversity. Under the caste system a child born to a caste is expected to live at that socio-economic level the rest of their life, and their children and children's children.

 

[NightFox]

You're picking out the Swiss to suit your own purposes there pal...

No, I picked out the Swiss to illustrate to you what an INVALID comparison looks like and I specifically pointed that out.

Certainly the Chinese are not "neutrally" oriented nor are they homogeneous speaking several different languages and dialects.

The Chinese culture is fairly homogeneous (especially compared to U.S. culture) not to mention they live under a one party rule, police state with little to no political, economic or civil liberties. Do you really think Chinese society bears any significant resemblance to U.S. society?

You seem to have little information about Chinese culture.

You seem to have missed certain realities relating to China:
How long has China been a nation?
Is China an amalgamation of imported cultures or unified whole with a majority of commonality of cultural attributes, attitudes, history and values?
Do most Chinese citizens consider themselves Chinese or do they consider themselves <fill in the blank>-Chinese?
The only recent exceptions I can think of are Hong Kong and Tibet and given the other measures they are insignificant with respect to making comparisons to the U.S. on the topic under discussion.

Your opinion merely mirrors US propaganda.

And your opinion merely mirrors that of somebody that hasn't thought things through.

The country that appears to be closest in culture to America is Canada.

With 1/10 our population .... next.

 

[candycorn]

You're picking out the Swiss to suit your own purposes there pal...

No, I picked out the Swiss to illustrate to you what an INVALID comparison looks like and I specifically pointed that out.

Certainly the Chinese are not "neutrally" oriented nor are they homogeneous speaking several different languages and dialects.

The Chinese culture is fairly homogeneous (especially compared to U.S. culture) not to mention they live under a one party rule, police state with little to no political, economic or civil liberties. Do you really think Chinese society bears any significant resemblance to U.S. society?

You seem to have little information about Chinese culture. Your opinion merely mirrors US propaganda. One big reason China has always been so difficult to govern is the diversity of cultures and languages within the geographic boundaries we call "China". China is not homogenous compared to America.

The country that appears to be closest in culture to America is Canada. Canada today is cleaner, freer, has overall better education and health care and far less violence. The Canadian government tried a gun grab and the usually obedient Canadian population rejected it. Handguns are still controlled - Canada has strict handgun control.

He doesn't know what he's talking about; anyone who has seen a college catalog that offered language courses could tell you that the Chinese culture alone is anything but homogeneous.

 

[tubig]

No, I picked out the Swiss to illustrate to you what an INVALID comparison looks like and I specifically pointed that out.


The Chinese culture is fairly homogeneous (especially compared to U.S. culture) not to mention they live under a one party rule, police state with little to no political, economic or civil liberties. Do you really think Chinese society bears any significant resemblance to U.S. society?

You seem to have little information about Chinese culture. Your opinion merely mirrors US propaganda. One big reason China has always been so difficult to govern is the diversity of cultures and languages within the geographic boundaries we call "China". China is not homogenous compared to America.

The country that appears to be closest in culture to America is Canada. Canada today is cleaner, freer, has overall better education and health care and far less violence. The Canadian government tried a gun grab and the usually obedient Canadian population rejected it. Handguns are still controlled - Canada has strict handgun control.

He doesn't know what he's talking about; anyone who has seen a college catalog that offered language courses could tell you that the Chinese culture alone is anything but homogeneous.

I have noticed he has a tendency to argue for the sake of being contrary regardless of the merits. For instance in his answer to my post he replied to my statement that America is closest to Canada in culture by noting that Canada has 1/10th the population. So what? He didn't suggest any point other than that difference. Many Internet discussions seem to be of that nature.

 

[rdean]

Fancy education leaves you stupid. Dumb is smarter. The stupid people are actually the smartest and the people who are intellectual "elites" are really stupid.

If you follow the Republican way of thinking, ditch diggers and berry pickers are the smartest people on earth.

Wow, connect the dots. Why are Republicans trying to keep immigrants and fruit pickers away? Bring them here and swell the ranks of the GOP brain trust.

 

[NightFox]

For instance in his answer to my post he replied to my statement that America is closest to Canada in culture by noting that Canada has 1/10th the population. So what?

It would be understandable if you bothered to read the entire conversation, instead of picking up where the other party was attempting to deflect from the salient point.

 

[francoHFW]

How dumb and GOP is it to compare ourselves with the Third World? USA! USA! Well, compare us to the rest of the modern world. After 30 years of Voodoo, we have the worst rich/poor gap, upward mobility, min wage, mean pay, health care, see sig.... to the point where our lack of demand is ruining the economy.

Time to listen to the intellectual elite again. We have a hand gun/ broken nonrich problem. Thanks greedy idiot Pubs and dupes.

 

[candycorn]

You seem to have little information about Chinese culture. Your opinion merely mirrors US propaganda. One big reason China has always been so difficult to govern is the diversity of cultures and languages within the geographic boundaries we call "China". China is not homogenous compared to America.

The country that appears to be closest in culture to America is Canada. Canada today is cleaner, freer, has overall better education and health care and far less violence. The Canadian government tried a gun grab and the usually obedient Canadian population rejected it. Handguns are still controlled - Canada has strict handgun control.

He doesn't know what he's talking about; anyone who has seen a college catalog that offered language courses could tell you that the Chinese culture alone is anything but homogeneous.

I have noticed he has a tendency to argue for the sake of being contrary regardless of the merits. For instance in his answer to my post he replied to my statement that America is closest to Canada in culture by noting that Canada has 1/10th the population. So what? He didn't suggest any point other than that difference. Many Internet discussions seem to be of that nature.

He never explained what the difference is between our ghettos and the ghettos in Berlin. Apparently the poor in America are just more homicidal than those in other countries. The elephant in the room that he doesn't want to talk about is that the poor here see an easy way to get what they don't have--firearms. The poor in Berlin don't have access to firearms so you don't have the wholesale slaughter taking place.

You're right about Canada, there didn't seem to be a response.

 

[FA_Q2]

Time to dust off the old fact book again and bring back a post that I used a while ago with some slight change to update.

So, here we go again.

Clearly I am going to have to remake this argument in a few places so I am going to rework another post I did in one of these other threads. For those of you that heave read this from me, skip it. For the rest of the slow class: gun control advocates have no evidence supporting their demands. I ask the posters here that support gun control laws, how are the gun advocates on the 'wrong' side when you have no data to support your point where they have tons.

All over the place on this board I am seeing people demanding gun control and making a wide variety of claims about what we need or do not need but one thing is utterly lacking IN EVERY FUCKING THREAD: facts. I can count the number of facts used in the dozens of threads calling for gun reforms on one hand. Get educated, we have passed laws already and we have metrics to gauge their effectiveness.

First, common misinformation techniques must be addressed because you still find all kinds of false claims about higher 'death' rates with lax gun laws that are outright false. The metric we need to be looking at is homicides. Lots of people like to use 'gun' deaths but that is a rather useless term because you are not really measuring anything. That term is not fully defined and it is not as easily tracked and compared with different years as a solid statistic. I also hope that we can agree that what instrument kills the victim is irrelevant. If gun deaths are cut by 25% but knife deaths increase the same number by 50% we have not made progress. Rather, we regressed and are worse off. The real relevant information here is how many people are killed overall and whether or not stricter gun laws results in fewer deaths or crimes. That is what the gun control advocates are claiming.


Another common misinformation tactic is to compare US deaths to those on other countries. Comparing international numbers is also utterly meaningless. Why, you ask. Well, that's simple. Scientific data requires that we control for other variables. Comparing US to Brittan is meaningless because there are thousands of variables that make a huge difference. Not only the proliferation of guns that already exists and the current gun laws but also things as basic as culture, diversity, population density, police forces and a host of other things would need to be accounted for. That is utterly impossible. Mexico and Switzerland can be used on the other side of the argument of Brittan and in the end we have learned nothing by doing this. How do we overcome this? Also, simple. You compare the crime rates before and after gun legislation has passed. We can do that here and in Brittan.
Gun Control - Just Facts

Here we see virtually no change after gun laws are strengthened and then a VERY sharp increase later and no real increase after they are removed. Washington apparently did not get the memo that homicides were supposed to decrease after they passed their law.

Here we have Chicago where there is no discernible difference before and after the ban. There was a spike in the year the law was passed but directly before and directly after, homicides were rather flat. Again, we are not seeing any real positive effects here. As a matter of fact, the rate has worsened as compared to the overall rate in the country even though it has slightly decreased. Form the caption:

Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the Chicago murder rate has averaged 17% lower than it was before the law took effect, while the U.S. murder rate has averaged 25% lower.

Then we can use this same tactic in measuring the effectiveness in Britton. Lets actually look at the real numbers over there as well:

Oops, even in Brittan, when we account for other factors by using their OWN crime rates, we find that gun laws have NOT reduced the homicides they have suffered. Seems we are developing a pattern here.


Then, you could always argue, what happens when we relax gun laws. If the gun 'grabbers' were correct, crimes rate would skyrocket (or at least go up). Does that happen?

Guess not. The homicide rate in Florida fell rather rapidly and faster than the national average. In Texas we get a similar result:

Then there are other statistics that do matter very much like the following:

* Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,[17] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.[18]

* A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 3.5% of households had members who had used a gun "for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 1,029,615 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[19]

* A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]

* A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]

&#8226; 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
&#8226; 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"
&#8226; 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]

Clearly, claiming that gun control leads to better outcomes is blatantly false. Look at the data, it is conclusive that gun laws most certainly do not have any positive impact on homicides or any other meaningful metric. If you have information that states otherwise then please post it. I have yet to see some solid statistical evidence that points to gun control as being a competent way of reducing deaths. I hope I have not wasted my time getting this information. Try reading it, it will enlighten you.


In conclusion, over dozens of separate threads have simply ceased to continue because not a single lefty here has any response to the given facts. I have serious doubts that this time will be any different but I wait with bated breath for one single person to actually support their demands with something that resembles fact. So far, I have received nothing.

I have done this for both Canada and Australia as well BY THE WAY with very similar results. I am not going to dig those up though as it will be ignored like the rest of this. The thread was not about guns anyway but I tire of people making blanket statements about gun control here and other places that are blatantly false as has been done through this thread.