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  • #31
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    Your comment about "island countries" leaves me scratching my head as to whether you think the massive cross-border illegal smuggling of guns from Mexico (presumably not from Canada?) would somehow become a thing if the US increased gun regulations... that seems rather unlikely. I would tend to think that to the extent that any illegal gun market were to thrive that the guns would be more likely made in Texas rather than smuggled in from Mexico. And trying to smuggle drugs in inside various other objects is one thing... trying to bring in millions of guns secretly disguised as something else is giving my imagination some rather improbable pictures of crazily shaped cargo packed with guns and would seem rather unlikely in general. There are certainly plenty of countries in the world - e.g. in Europe - that have plenty of land borders but which choose to regulate guns and do it successfully. Being an island vs not (is Australia an 'island' btw by whatever definition is relevant to you here?) would seem to have little to do with it.
    Hamas manages to smuggle rockets into Gaza, across a rather more heavily fortified border than the US (where in many places one can simply walk across - hence the desire for a border barrier). Smugglers apparently have much better imaginations than you do.
    Enter the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. Do not be ashamed to enter the Church; be ashamed when you sin, but not when you repent. – St. John Chrysostom

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    • #32
      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
      It's kinda soothing to hear you patiently explain how my country (and Roy's) as it is now, can't possibly exist.
      Your countries never had as many guns as the USA or a constitutional right to them. Guns are an integral part of American history. There are already so many black market guns out there, they could never get them off the street by passing some legislation.

      You seem to think that if only you explain your logic clearly enough, that Roy and I will come around to your point of view - and be convinced that our entire life experiences of living in our countries are false and realize that countries can't possibly be the way we've experienced them, and that it would just never work to have a country like our ones.
      I don't think any of us are under the delusion that logic will change your minds about anything.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        Yes, but your arguments about "if law X was passed, Y would happen" are fact-checkable because there are other countries in the world who have passed law X and not had Y happen.
        The US is unique in a number of respects, and we saw what happened in prohibition. Tell me - how did prohibition work in your little hamlet?

        Your foolish and willful ignorance of the rest of the world results in you making arguments about US political policy that are false and dumb.
        And your envy and jealousy of the US is quite entertaining -- but, please, stay home.
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
          Your countries never had as many guns as the USA or a constitutional right to them. Guns are an integral part of American history. There are already so many black market guns out there, they could never get them off the street by passing some legislation.
          Well, yeah, but other that, his country is exactly like ours regarding guns.

          I don't think any of us are under the delusion that logic will change your minds about anything.
          He's special.
          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by Sparko View Post
            Your countries never had as many guns as the USA or a constitutional right to them.
            Gun ownership remains pretty pervasive in rural areas here, and going back a few decades to before the country had urbanized so much and before modern gun laws were brought in, gun ownership was pretty sky-high here. People had a legal right own guns (which is loosely equivalent to the US's constitutional right to them given we don't have a written constitution).

            Guns are an integral part of American history.
            When my country was being settled one of the first things that happened was that the natives bought muskets off the Europeans and then the natives promptly genocided each others' tribes using the muskets. That was kinda an integral part of our history, especially because it then led the surviving natives to be quite welcoming of European immigrant governance and peace-keeping in order to stop them killing each other.

            There are already so many black market guns out there, they could never get them off the street by passing some legislation.
            It wasn't a problem in Australia. They just did a compulsory buy-back and it worked fine...

            Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted.

            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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            • #36
              Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
              The US is unique in a number of respects
              Sure, large prison population, doesn't provide paid maternal leave, doesn't use the metric system, etc.

              Tell me - how did prohibition work in your little hamlet?
              I know you like to try and wind me up by mocking my country's size, but I'm left wondering if you actually are deluding yourself about our alleged small size. We have the population of an average sized US state, and twice the land area of an average sized US state (although much of it is uninhabitable mountainous terrain). My country is quite long and narrow, and is about the length of the US Eastern Seaboard. Are US states "little hamlets" in your mind? Are two average US states put together tiny?

              Anyway, to answer your question, we never had national prohibition, but in those regions where it was enacted locally it was generally not considered to be particularly effective in achieving the policy goals (though neither did it have the serious negative consequences that the occurred in the US as a result of prohibition).

              Your analogy between prohibition and gun control seems rather silly since internationally prohibition has generally proven to be an unsuccessful political policy and gun control has generally proven itself to be a successful policy. Your apparent gut belief that the one policy should have similar outcomes to the other seems to just rely on your feelings and completely ignore the facts which are an empirical reality.

              I do, personally, think that illegal drugs should be analogized to prohibition. But beyond my gut feeling that they are similar things - alcohol after all is simply one potentially illegal consumable consciousness-affecting drug among many - that would have similar policy outcomes, there is the empirical realities that the War on Drugs has been incredibly unsuccessful and seems to have destabilized South America to boot, and countries that have legalized drugs (The Netherlands, Portugal, and quite a few with marijuana) seem to have found legalization a perfectly successful policy.

              All evidence we have appears to show that gun regulation does not result in the same outcomes as regulation of alcohol and other drugs has. We could dwell on "why is a lethal weapon not analogous to an enjoyable consumable substance?"... but the lack of similarity between them seems rather self-evident to me.

              your envy and jealousy of the US
              Last edited by Starlight; 02-20-2019, 10:05 PM.
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                Gun ownership remains pretty pervasive in rural areas here, and going back a few decades to before the country had urbanized so much and before modern gun laws were brought in, gun ownership was pretty sky-high here. People had a legal right own guns (which is loosely equivalent to the US's constitutional right to them given we don't have a written constitution).

                When my country was being settled one of the first things that happened was that the natives bought muskets off the Europeans and then the natives promptly genocided each others' tribes using the muskets. That was kinda an integral part of our history, especially because it then led the surviving natives to be quite welcoming of European immigrant governance and peace-keeping in order to stop them killing each other.

                It wasn't a problem in Australia. They just did a compulsory buy-back and it worked fine...

                Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted.

                Again, you are showing a lack of understanding of our culture. Most Americans would never voluntarily give up their guns and if they were made illegal, they would hide them and there would end up being a huge black market in guns. In most buy back programs over here, people usually give up broken and trashed guns to get some money, or an old widow will give up her husband's guns, and I have even heard that some of the police departments will later sell off the guns to make money!
                Last edited by Sparko; 02-21-2019, 07:49 AM.

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  Sure, large prison population, doesn't provide paid maternal leave, doesn't use the metric system, etc.
                  • The large prison population is in part the penalty of the sins we committed with respect to slavery, and we're still paying for that.
                  • Trump is working on the family leave thing, so hold what ya got!
                  • I was SO AGAINST the metric system when I was a kid, but having worked both in medical and science fields, and being forced to use the metric system, I was incredibly pleasantly surprised how much easier it was to convert units of measure just by sliding a decimal point back and forth.
                  • Next?


                  I know you like to try and wind me up by mocking my country's size,
                  And, obviously it worked, cause here you are with your defense....

                  but I'm left wondering if you actually are deluding yourself about our alleged small size. We have the population of an average sized US state, and twice the land area of an average sized US state (although much of it is uninhabitable mountainous terrain). My country is quite long and narrow, and is about the length of the US Eastern Seaboard. Are US states "little hamlets" in your mind? Are two average US states put together tiny?
                  You have, from everything I have seen, a very BEAUTIFUL country, and who can complain about a country that produces women like XENA THE WARRIOR PRINCESS?

                  Fact is, however, I leave your country to run its own affairs, and I don't try to meddle.

                  Anyway, to answer your question, we never had national prohibition,
                  Yeah, I know, I looked it up.

                  but in those regions where it was enacted locally it was generally not considered to be particularly effective in achieving the policy goals (though neither did it have the serious negative consequences that the occurred in the US as a result of prohibition).
                  Texas has "dry counties" which, though not aggressively enforced, simply mean that you can go to the next county over and buy as much booze as you want. I imagine "enacting it locally" in your country would have pretty much the same effect.

                  Your analogy between prohibition and gun control seems rather silly since internationally prohibition has generally proven to be an unsuccessful political policy
                  Yes! And it failed miserably, because Americans gots to hasta have their booze.

                  and gun control has generally proven itself to be a successful policy.
                  Well, then, problem SOLVED!!!!

                  If it's such a successful policy, why are guns so easy to obtain? Because our current 'gun control' situation is NOWHERE NEAR what prohibition was.
                  And, the point is, that if the liberals had their way, we'd have something more like prohibition, THEN you would see what a mell of a hess gun control really was.

                  Your apparent gut belief that the one policy should have similar outcomes to the other seems to just rely on your feelings and completely ignore the facts which are an empirical reality.
                  I know America and Americans better than you do, Star - I live here. And, Texans. Just TRY to set up a policy like prohibition in Texas where we can't have guns in a similar manner as prohibition did to booze.



                  I do, personally, think that illegal drugs should be analogized to prohibition.
                  The problem there is the same with guns and booze -- we have a major problem on the DEMAND side of the "Supply and Demand". I think we have learned our lesson with prohibition about trying to control the SUPPLY side when the DEMAND side simply increased. I wish we would learn the same thing about "the drug war". And, perhaps you hadn't thought through the problem that if we took a more "prohibition" attitude toward drugs, the FIRST problem you complained about in your little screed - the prison population - would expand exponentially. Good thinking!!!!

                  But beyond my gut feeling that they are similar things - alcohol after all is simply one potentially illegal consumable consciousness-affecting drug among many - that would have similar policy outcomes,
                  Prohibition was a failure.

                  there is the empirical realities that the War on Drugs has been incredibly unsuccessful and seems to have destabilized South America to boot, and countries that have legalized drugs (The Netherlands, Portugal, and quite a few with marijuana) seem to have found legalization a perfectly successful policy.
                  Because, like prohibition, the problem is the DEMAND.

                  All evidence we have appears to show that gun regulation does not result in the same outcomes as regulation of alcohol and other drugs has.
                  Because, so far, we haven't been STUPID enough to try a "prohibition" approach.

                  We could dwell on "why is a lethal weapon not analogous to an enjoyable consumable substance?"... but the lack of similarity between them seems rather self-evident to me.

                  What IS similar is the DEMAND. Try focusing on that aspect for a bit.
                  The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                    Again, you are showing a lack of understanding of our culture. Most Americans would never voluntarily give up their guns and if they were made illegal, they would hide them and there would end up being a huge black market in guns. In most buy back programs over here, people usually give up broken and trashed guns to get some money, or an old widow will give up her husband's guns, and I have even heard that some of the police departments will later sell off the guns to make money!
                    In many jurisdictions, the gun "buy back" program has been such a dismal failure, even causing people to break into homes and STEAL guns to "sell back". And the rules of the "buy back" are such that there can be no criminal prosecution of persons "selling back" guns, because a fundamental principle of the program is absolute amnesty.

                    Locally, we had a guy "sell back" a gun that was rather unique, and it didn't take a genius to know that it was the very gun that was taken from a break-in at a city councilman's home. The gun was easily worth over $1500, and the doper who "sold it back" got $100 for it. (I happen to know that some strings were pulled to keep that gun out of the "destroy these" pile for which all "bought back" guns are destined) The program is a "make liberals feel good" program of no real impact on 'gun control'.
                    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                      In many jurisdictions, the gun "buy back" program has been such a dismal failure, even causing people to break into homes and STEAL guns to "sell back". And the rules of the "buy back" are such that there can be no criminal prosecution of persons "selling back" guns, because a fundamental principle of the program is absolute amnesty.

                      Locally, we had a guy "sell back" a gun that was rather unique, and it didn't take a genius to know that it was the very gun that was taken from a break-in at a city councilman's home. The gun was easily worth over $1500, and the doper who "sold it back" got $100 for it. (I happen to know that some strings were pulled to keep that gun out of the "destroy these" pile for which all "bought back" guns are destined) The program is a "make liberals feel good" program of no real impact on 'gun control'.
                      And that is the voluntary buyback programs. Can you imagine if they tried to implement a compulsory buyback program like Starlight was talking about?

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                        And that is the voluntary buyback programs. Can you imagine if they tried to implement a compulsory buyback program like Starlight was talking about?
                        In an episode of Blue Bloods, they dealt with the thorny problem of the gun buyback program, where a police officer overseeing the program happened to notice a particularly unique handgun being turned in that was used in a number of murders. She sneaked (snuck?) a cellphone picture of the guy turning it in, and it turned out to be....

                        Well, it turned out to be quite a conundrum involving the whole family - the Police Commissioner Dad, the police officer and detective sons, the daughter ADA, etc.... (But what episode of Blue Bloods doesn't?)
                        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                          In many jurisdictions, the gun "buy back" program has been such a dismal failure, even causing people to break into homes and STEAL guns to "sell back". And the rules of the "buy back" are such that there can be no criminal prosecution of persons "selling back" guns, because a fundamental principle of the program is absolute amnesty.

                          Locally, we had a guy "sell back" a gun that was rather unique, and it didn't take a genius to know that it was the very gun that was taken from a break-in at a city councilman's home. The gun was easily worth over $1500, and the doper who "sold it back" got $100 for it. (I happen to know that some strings were pulled to keep that gun out of the "destroy these" pile for which all "bought back" guns are destined) The program is a "make liberals feel good" program of no real impact on 'gun control'.
                          Yeah, they have a "no questions asked" policy which means that these buyback programs actually create a safe place for criminals to sell unwanted, stolen guns, thus inflating the market for such illegal weapons.

                          And overall buy-back programs in the U.S. have all proven to be well intentioned wastes of money.

                          University of Pennsylvania professor Lawrence Sherman, who headed a wide-ranging assessment of crime prevention programs, called gun buybacks "the program that is best-known to be ineffective" in reducing firearms violence, while lecturing at a U.S. National Institute of Justice conference. This view was echoed by Dr. Garen J. Wintermute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis who has stated that, "The continuation of buyback programs is a triumph of wishful thinking over all available evidence." To make the point even clearer, Dr. Wimtermute also said that, "Gun buybacks or exchanges do not reduce violent crime rates."

                          As Ralph Fascitelli, the Board President of Washington CeaseFire, a Seattle-based pro gun control group, said of gun buy-back programs, "[Studies show that] the guns you get back are nonfunctioning, that we’re paying money and we’re not getting real benefits. They’re just feel-good things that don’t do much real good."

                          A report released by the Police Executive Research Forum, a group of big city police chiefs, released in the 1990s when buyback programs were all the rage, clearly showed that these programs don’t work. After evaluating programs in several major cities they found that none had any effects in the cities’ homicide rates.

                          This was later confirmed by independent follow-up studies in Seattle, Sacramento, St. Louis and Boston found no evidence buy-back programs reduced crime. Interestingly, during what is thought to have been the first gun buy-back program in the U.S., in Baltimore in 1974, homicides involving firearms actually rose during the two-month program, and it was deemed a failure.

                          In the first instance a check of coroner’s records and hospital admissions data in that city for the 6 months after a major buyback found no evidence whatsoever of an effect on firearms-related deaths or injuries. Probably not a surprise considering that nearly a quarter of the guns collected were inoperable.

                          Another study in Seattle uncovered the fact that 66% of sellers admitted that they owned another gun, which they didn’t surrender making it questionable just how much disarmament is actually accomplished. The same sort of thing was found in the other cities. According to a study by criminologist Richard Rosenfeld of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, 59% of buy-back participants in Sacramento said they had additional guns at home. In St. Louis it was 62% with 14% of the participants there saying they planned to buy a new gun within the next year, and an additional 13% said they might.

                          The gun buy-back conducted in New Albany, Indiana in 2012 was declared a success by city officials although they noted that over half the firearms they got were old hunting rifles which as police Maj. Keith Whitlow noted "aren't the problem."

                          In Boston a Harvard University study of gun buyback programs found that 75% of the firearms gathered were several decades old. Similarly a study of Milwaukee-area buyback programs by the Medical College of Wisconsin Firearms Injury Center in the mid 1990s discovered that the firearms turned in are not the types generally linked with gun deaths. They tend to be older, small caliber revolvers whereas those used in homicides and suicides tend to be newer, large caliber semi-automatics.

                          "The main drawback to gun buyback programs is that they tend to get junk guns or guns that have been with a family for a long period of time," explains James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. "They’re not catching the nine-millimeter and forty-caliber semiautomatic handguns that are so prevalent in violent crime today."

                          Moreover those turning in the firearms are often the widow of hunters, or other older people (in the Seattle study the mean age of those turning guns in was 51), rather than teenage gang members who have suddenly decided to abandon a life of violence. IOW, most of those voluntarily surrendering their firearms are very unlikely to commit a violent gun crime meaning that the public safety benefit is minimal at best.

                          This is also what Mike Scott, a former police chief and director of the Center for Problem Oriented Policing concluded after reviewing a 2013 analysis of studies done over the years on gun buyback programs. Scott noted that recovered firearms were "disproportionately old, broken, of low caliber and ammunition capacity, and differed from the firearms most frequently used in crime." He added that many who turned in firearms were "middle-aged gun owners and not older adolescents and young adults, who are at highest risk for involvement in criminal activity."

                          Finally, at a Hartford Connecticut buyback program about a decade ago they offered $100 for each firearm turned over. It turned out that residents were legally buying handguns at local pawn shops for about $60 to $75 and turning them in for the $100. One man came in with 39 Chinese-made rifles and made a profit of about $1200.

                          This is what happened in the aforementioned first buy-back program in Baltimore back in 1974. People went out and purchased firearms that cost half of what the government was offering and turned them in for a profit.

                          Similarly, at a gun buy-back program in New Jersey, a man turned in 18 guns, some that couldn’t even be fired, and collected $1350 in certificates for food, clothing and furniture. “Had this guy sold the stuff to a gun dealer, he would have gotten maybe $75 for the lot,” a police officer remarked.

                          Also in New Jersey (Camden), a teenager turned in a shotgun and received $50, which he used to buy a handgun that he later used in a homicide. In Brooklyn, New York, after the D.A. raised the “reward” for turned-in guns from $100 to $250, the largest percentage of the guns turned in were .38 police service revolvers from court officers who were allowed to keep their revolvers after they were issued 9mm semiautomatics the previous year. Not exactly taking the guns out of the hands of criminals.

                          A 2006 Boston buy-back program attracted out-of-state gun dealers looking to offload some of their old inventory. It became such an issue that when the city relaunched its buyback program in 2014, police began questioning donors to make sure they really were from Boston.

                          And in a buy-back program in Oakland, California in 2008, police bought handguns and rifles for $250 each. This caused local gun dealers to buy cheap guns out-of-state and sell them to the government for a profit.

                          Several years ago here in Atlanta one of the local news outlets (which owns the biggest TV station, AM radio station and the city newspaper) offered tickets to a Janet Jackson concert in exchange to anyone who turned in a firearm. During the 6:00 news they had an ecstatic reporter on live next to a line of people ready to participate and started interviewing them. Of the three people she interviewed one said that they just bought a derringer for about half of what the tickets would cost him, another said that they were trading in an old rusty firearm and the last one said that she was exchanging her grandmother's pistol for tickets (no indication if the grandmother was aware of this). The crestfallen reporter quickly cut the interviews short.

                          I'm always still in trouble again

                          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                            The gun buy-back conducted in New Albany, Indiana in 2012 was declared a success by city officials although they noted that over half the firearms they got were old hunting rifles which as police Maj. Keith Whitlow noted "aren't the problem."
                            Yeah I noticed in Starlight's photo, while the guy is holding an AR-15, there doesn't seem to be any in that pile he is standing on, or handguns. Just old hunting rifles and shotguns.

                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post

                            also looking at the URL it seems to be a stock photo image from Getty
                            Last edited by Sparko; 02-21-2019, 10:00 AM.

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