Political Soapbox
 

Please Take Time To Read This History Lesson. Then consider spreading this History Lesson Around.
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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In 1911, Turkey established gun control. >From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Germany established gun control in 1938. >From 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others, who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

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China established gun control in 1935. >From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million "educated" people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of gun control: 56 million.

It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in:

Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent!) In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that, while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns!) While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the ELDERLY. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in "successfully ridding Australian society of guns."

The Australian experience and the other historical facts above predicted it. You won't see this data on the American evening news or hear our president, governors or other politicians disseminating this information.


Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens. Those that think gun-control laws will take guns out of the hands of criminals and power crazy fanatics are unfortunately living in a dream world.

Take note family, friends,and fellow Americans.....before it's too late!

The next time someone talks in favor of gun control, please remind them of this history lesson.

With guns, we are citizens. Without them, we are subjects. You don't have to be a gun owner to be in support of your right to own and use firearms.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

If you want to start a decent debate on a certain topic then you should open the thread with something more inspiring than an email forward.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

we're mostly British here you idiot.

We have gun control and no one has ever been rounded up.

Your statistics are uitter bollocks

why am I bothering to type to you ...

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I am with the multi with this one

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tony martin lol

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if i had a gun i would be sorely tempted to shoot qazokrouge5 and put the planet out of its misery

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It's because Americans have guns we can't round 'em up and exterminate them. I'm sure if they hadn't we'd have already done so a long time ago.
And now this mail encourages them. Bah!

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I especially like these two:

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he's turning into texan ...

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Tick "post hoc ergo propter hoc" and "strawman" off on your bingo cards now!

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:(

Studying these statistics was really enlightening. It seems Norway's way overdue for an uprounding.

I'm doomed :(

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It would be more effective if anyone had to hand the figures for gun crime in the UK before and after the handgun ban was introduced. (I can't be bothered to go and look for them myself although I'd like to think that there is less now than there was before)
Our chances of winning a medal in any event involving shooting at the Winter Olympics were allegedly diminished though.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

And this has nothing to do with the regime change in China to communism during that period. I note that you say gun control was established in 1935, yet your extermination figures only cover from 1948 onwards. You would have a point if the numbers for 1935-48 were similar year-on-year to 1948-52.

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Again your figures for people being rounded up are for a different set of years to when gun control was introduced. I have no idea when it comes to Cambodia whether or not they had a significant government change around 1975 but I'd guess that it was likely that an extremist government or a military junta took over around then. If this is not the case then please provide figures for the 1956 to 1974 period as well as something to compare them against from before gun control was established.

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You've not heard of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

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It's twenty to one and I was at the pub all evening :p

(thanks for linking it) :)

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listen to the Dead kennedys song ... Holiday in camboda

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They had guns in Germany between 1939 and 1945. Lots of people all over the world died. Once gun control was established in 1945, millions less died.

Statistics are great when they are manipulated for your own purposes.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

In direct response to the original post:
Genocide has nothing to do with gun control and everything to do with government. What good would a gun have been to anyone faced with 10 heavily armed Russian soldiers?

I can see the arguments for gun ownership for defense of property and person from other civilians (although I may not agree with said arguments), but are you seriously suggesting that if Hitler had said "ok guys, let's be fair - all you Jews can have a gun each" then that particular genocide would have turned out any different?

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you know, he would have got a much more measured response if he had just posted the bit about australia i think

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I think that might be misunderstanding the argument slightly. Obviously a government will "win" in a fight against disorganised poorly armed citizenry. However, I believe what people are implying is that a population having guns would raise the cost (or make it harder) to "round people up". It's a bit like having a lock on your door - clearly it's not going to stop someone who really wants to get into your house, but it might act as a sufficient detterent to make someone think twice / not bother.

Of course, there's a very real argument that having everyone armed probably increases the overall violence by the state. The police seem to shoot more people in the United States than they do here, to use a crude comparisons and I suspect everyone having a gun probably escalates things like evictions, repossesions, minor arrests, etc.

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Not necessarily, look at Iraq for instance. If a significant portion of the population is armed and actively resisting the government, then theres going to be pretty serious problems.

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Im just two away from a full house.

Alas, one of them is "I am rite cos i argue on teh intarweb".

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That's the worst correlation implies causation argument I've ever seen. Why didn't you just go all out and argue that the rise of handcream is responsible for the existence of nuclear weapons?

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It's arguably not even a correlation, because it's selective at best, and chooses badly even then.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

QazokRouge5 explain this one thing for me

Why did you pick, from all the existing countries
Stalin's Russia, Turkey, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Guatemala, Uganda and Cambodia
as comparison for the USA?

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Hand cream was around for hundreds of years before nuclear weapons and didn't undergo any major advances in technology until quite recently afaik.

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Gun control was around for years before the massacres in china!

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Just as a heads-up cumming on your hands and rubbing it in doesn't count as handcream for most other people dude.

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Also, what exactly is gun control? Which countries don't have any gun control?

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It counts for 49% of the population. Hey look, cookie monster is rubbing semen into his head: :salute:

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America, durr. They just give them out on street corners to passing homeless guys.

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For that matter, what's so bad about eliminating Jews/Armenians/the bourgeoisie?

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I kind of like System of a Down.

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People start to complain when you don't kill them all

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And without the Armenian genocide they mightn't have ever formed!

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Make love not war, but be prepared for both
This message brought to you by the makers of Smith and Wesson Hand Guns and Trojan Condoms

Re: Political Soapbox
 

Another brilliant populist use of statistics! I JUST LOVE STATISTICS!
It should be punishiabale by shoots to the face (with bullets AND cum!) to use them if you can't even understand the nature of them, or use in a stupid way to justify stupid causes :(

And as somebody allready said, people kill people. Look at Canada, they got lots of guns. Why dont they run around killing eachother? ITS THE NEGROS AND THE CRACK I GUESS EH?


OH AND NORWAY HAS GUN CONTROLL LIKE ****. WHEN WILL I BE SHOT ON THE STREET BY CRIMINALS?!?!??!?!? IM SOOO AFRAID!!!!!!!!!!!11

Re: Political Soapbox
 

True, I meant to add a caveat. I would however say most of Iraq is about opposing foriegn invaders, rather than an established government. But your point still stands, of course. Whether the insurgents can "win" in the long term remains to be seen, but they can certainly make governing much harder / impossible in certain areas.

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because thats what the neocons wanna turn it into!!!!111 :)

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From what I have read, canada has had a huge rise in gun related violence in the past few years. They are blaming american gun smugglers who are arming canadas youth and american culture which has polluted the minds of canadas youth.

And from what I understand it is the minorities that have been inflicting this rise in "gun culture" in canada. Only its not the "negroes" but other minorities.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

texan was banned for posting emotive and silly threads and then not bothering to join in the debate.

hint

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crashtester's ban is irrelevant.

don't fall for that british weakness of falling for the loser.

I don't know if texan was baiting. I doubt it because like any zealot he was convinced he was right. What texan did was abandon dialogue which is pretty silly on a discussion forum.

perhaps quazok is baiting.perhaps he thinks he's hillariously funny. OR perhaps like texan did, he believes this rubbish.

frankly I think we should ban him just in case.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

I blame hiphop culture :(

Anyways, my point (or lack of) was that its a society and it's norms/way of life that makes people kill people. We killed, raped, maimed and looted long before anybody thought about making guns, let alone live in cities or have grasseaters for pets. It's a society, and it's norms, that "decide" how we treat eachother in most cases. The reason criminals are killing eachother in USA and not in Norway is not that we have lesser guns, it's the way we think and treat eachother. It's not like our criminals has any difficulties getting guns, it's just that they are not desperate enought to use them (ie they give a ****)
And that Quazok is a populist scumbag, who can't read or understand statistics properly (or choose not to, but I do guess the first)

My "negroes" remark was a lame attemt at a joke (playing the rednex). I forget that people that might not know my stances reads these boards :(

Love, Snurx

Re: Political Soapbox
 

before america even existed there was a debate about allowing people to carry swords in the street.

the conclusion of that was that it was a bad idea to let your people carry swords in the street.

america is just such a new country that it imagines that the issue itself is 'new'

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Texan isn't Crashtester, and I have no idea why you thought this was relevent.

"David James isn't a good goalie because of his inconsistency", say I, and you retort with "Yeah, but John Higgins hasn't won anything on the snooker circuit recently".

Re: Political Soapbox
 

I agree with your hip hop culture remark. Like any young person growing up, they will look to emulate their idols. Unfortunately the hip hop culture has a violent interpretation as to what it means to be a "man".

I think the lack of worth and respect alot of gun toting thugs place on another human life is rooted in 2 things.

The first is that alot of them never learned how to be a man. Or to put it in other terms, never had a stable male role model.

Alot of the bangers ive come across have 1 thing in common. No known father. So, because of the invisiblity of these "men" who knocked up their moms, the male hip hop culture is being taught to be men, by women until their teens, then by the street. I think any society that has a proportianal amount of women who have 5 children by 4 different men is in for trouble as the family nexus has been shattered. Once these man boys are introduced to the street, they meet many others who are just as confused as they are as to what it takes to be a man, so they have come up with their own morality and a new social contract.

This then blends into my second reason for lack of value placed on human life and that is power. Power, to a large extent is why we as humans have killed, raped and maimed since we cralled up on a beach eons ago.

Since the education level of your average gangbanger is disgusting, the power/control/money available to them by normal means (rising to the top of a corperate ladder, etc) Is also nil. But on the streets they can have power based on what they are willing to do to get it.

Add the 2 of these to the easy access to hand guns and you have a volitile mixture.

Re: Political Soapbox
 

I don't blame hiphop culture, not at all. Maybe I should have switched the :( with :rolleyes:
Reasons?
Hiphop culture has been a alternate outlet for the rage that many youngsters feel. They can rap about their problems, they can get out their creativity and anger with graffiti, they can get out their energy and skills with breakdance. Hiphop was (and still is, if you see past the bling) a culture that promotes battling with SKILLS, not guns. Ie you beat a guy with a better piece, a cooler verse or a tigther headspin. The bragging rights in graffiti for example, is not who beat up most people but who dared go into the most hardcore yard.

Of course there are rappers that are shite and promote gangrelated issues, but it's only the last few years the shit ones have become the popular ones. The old gangsterrappers did not glorify bling, rims and guns in the same way as the new ones. But that's only 5% of the hiphopculture, and the most recent addition.
You can't judge punk by Green Day. You can't judge rock by U2. And you cant judge hiphop by 50 cent!

This might just be very true in many cases. But again, it's a too gross and simplistic statement to be THE truth. The most violent person I know had no such thing as a "bad" family, by any standards. His parents loved him and let him go his own way, his childhood was a enjoyabale time full of laugther and so on. But the rage and despair he got when he started to grow up manifested in a great anger instead of the more common depression. I don't really belive in a family nexus, or the illusion that the best family is the white core-family. Of course it's better to have your mom and dad, but I think that for example myself turned out pretty well, even if my father has been absent for important periods and my mother is a ex hippie.

Power and it's manifestations (Ie religion, money, the state and so on) is quite correctly why we kill eachother. But it's not just about education. It's that if you do, and go the "hard" way of a normal life, you will still not get as high as "the man". It's racism and ultimately class that divides people up in categories, and if you come from the lowest levels you got a chance in a billion. Of course education is important, but look upon our values! Even if we are taught that everybody is equal, we can see that they are not. The things that matter is a BMW or a huge house, not love or equality. It's our society, our norms, that makes people into criminals. You can't just look at the individual level, or at a small part of a culture. Just education wont change anything, as just guncontroll wont either.

To put it bluntly, as long as there is property there will be winners and losers, and thus there will be people who dont accept the fact that they are born losers.

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Like the white people in Toronto!