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Say a group of scientists asks for a meeting with the leading politicians in the country to discuss the introduction of a new invention. The scientists explain that the benefits of the technology are indisputable, that the invention will increase efficiency and make everyone's life easier. The only down side, they caution, is that for it to work, forty-thousand innocent people will have to be killed each year. Would the politicians decide to adopt the new invention or not?

"We already have it--the automobile."


http://www.primitivism.com/kaczynski.htm
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How many of these shooters were on hard core psychoactive prescription drugs at the time? We know Holmes was dosed up on a pharmaceutical cocktail just before the shooting.

Oh, I also love Obama's big fake tear wipe. It's almost as good as the PR photo of the entire Obama cabinet breathlessly watching the Osama raid play out in real time.......ya know, the from the live feed that didn't actually exist.

Say, how many tears do you think Obama sheds when a drone violates a sovereign country's airspace and kills 50 women and children at a wedding party to get one guy the State Department says is bad???

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/…
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Fred Rogers often told this story about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news: "My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people in this world."

http://www.pbs.org/parents/rogers/special/…
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At the age of 8, I watched live in black and white, Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. My dad loudly exclaimed to my uncles, "He shot the son of a bitch." Then he looked over at me with deep concern, and softly asked: "Did you see that"? I said "yeah". Like so what? It was only TV. I had sat there watching that same set at my grandparents' every weekend watching Westerns. What's the diff?

Obama and his henchmen, by the way, DID actually watch Osama get sacked, live on satellite feed; only NOT on the late date that Obama SAID that they did.
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I look forward to the day when a pro-gun individual has the courage to break from his/her cowardly flock and suggest the irrefutably rational--that it's time for checks on unfettered access to guns and acknowledgement that it won't mean a raid on any responsible owner's hunting rifles or otherwise. It certainly won't happen today, it certainly won't happen in this comment section.

Sadly, these events will happen again. As horrible as this sounds, provided they will happen again--a severly unsound perpetrator gaining easy access to high-powered weapons--I hope the victims are directly and closely related to ardent pro-gun advocates. An old rabbi said to us as a kid-nothing's real until it's personal. Maybe it's the only way perspective will be visited.

Hey Spindles-you really think the president with two daughters was faking his sadness? That's the kind of dissociative attitude that aligns you much more squarely with the Adam Lanzas and Jacob Roberts's than the rest of the caring world.
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How come they don't just have laws that say not to shoot people? How come they don't just have laws that say not to jay walk? Go ahead and ban guns. It won't make a damn bit of difference, except that then, people will find out that laws are made to be broken, and they'll just say to hell with all of them.
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Other notes of interest and related citations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count…

Japan was of particular note.
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Hopefully this doesn't double-post.
Other notes of interest on the topic at-hand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count…

Japan caught my attention and I looked at some other information here:
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/j…
11
If making guns illegal will get them off the street, maybe we should make meth, herroin illegal to?

Hey TSW, you think I believe our political mis'leaders are crass, cynical sociopaths who are more than happy to exploit a tragedy for their own political ends? Um, yes. Your "dissociative attitude" aligns you with a drone happy administration that's normalized torture, spying, running tens of thousands of guns to Mexican cartels, threatened by executive fiat to keep the provisions allowing for the secret arrest and execution of American citizens in the NDAA, and happily retaining every Bush era neocon policy....that's just off the top of my head.
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TSW, you're tops.

There is fear and there is data. The data says that less guns amount to less death by guns. Fear says you need guns to stop either other folks with guns or a well funded, out of control gubbment. With tanks. This horseshit Red Dawn fantasy is literally killing thousands of people for literally no good reason. Fucking kids, even.

There will always be crazy people who lose it and decide to share it with the rest of us. Maybe letting everybody have a long-distance device specifically designed to end a person is actually a bad thing.
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Several dozen DRONE STRIKES this years have killed hundreds of innocent people - where's the news and candle-light vigils on THAT?

Ooh riiight, they weren't Americans...
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Why do the gun fans keep putting "you want to ban all guns" into others' mouths? And then they base their whole shitty arguments off that. MOST people aren't arguing that guns should be completely illegal. People, including those Sarah references in this story (how about ya try responding to the content of her story), just want more reasonable and stricter gun laws.

At any rate, to repeat something my dad said to me today, "tell me one good thing that guns do." I can't think of one.
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Hey Spindles,
Was there meant to be something inherent in that last post indicating your potential to appear human and perhaps anything more than a regurgitative lunatic because I dissected every word and found nothing new. Although I've no faith, feel free to try again. Good luck.

TSW
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Right back at ya TSA in the exact same verbiage.
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You guys are right, people break laws so why bother having them? Hell, I should just pound a 40, go get in my car and drive 70 down Burnside firing a beretta out the window.
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Law is a democratic and effect means for maintaining civilization. No responsible person would use absolutist positions for human behavior - including gun violence. The purpose of laws is not to extinguish a bad behavior, but to limit it and formalize consequences.

You don't need to wait for politicians to vote against gun violence. Start with a New Year's pledge to not buy tickets for Hollywood gun-centered films any longer; they are NRA lackeys and reap great wealth by promoting danger and violence as a reasoned response to conflict.
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@ J Renaud:

you're close, but i would argue that the purpose of laws is indeed to extinguish bad behavior, and not just "to limit it and formalize consequences." granted, in the overwhelming majority of cases (if not all), laws are only successful in limiting said behavior, and not outright extinguishing it, but the purpose/goal of complete elimination remains the same.

as far as boycotting gun films that NRA lackeys are supposedly reaping great wealth from -- c'mon -- do you really think the NRA has its hand in every film that includes guns/gun violence? maybe i'm reading too much into your comment, but i hardly imagine that there are NRA lobbyists out there prodding screenwriters and producers to add a couple more gun scenes/plot-lines. and even if they were, this is clearly a case of them supplying our demand, satiating our ravenous appetite for bang-bang, shoot-em-up action flicks.

unfortunately, a few people boycotting a couple of the tons of these films would be about as effective as not peeing in the ocean to help stave off the threat of rising sea levels.
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Exactly what" Laws" do you propose? I don't want to see any more tragedy, but prohibition does not work. There are strict gun "laws" in Norway, how many kids did that guy slaughter again? We need to look at the human factor not just the implement. If you want to further ban assault rifles, fine. You really have no need to own one. Actually banning guns (which no one has suggested) would not sit well with Thomas Jefferson (in reference to the government), personally I hope he is never proven right, despite the "Patriot act". I just really hope a solution is found
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Ever hear of "feel good legislation"? How about "Fast and Furious"? Do you realize how many people got killed and are still being killed because of THAT debacle?
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Yeah, gun laws clearly don't work. There will still be crazies. The school attack still happened in China, where guns aren't legal, resulting in 22 children injured.

Wait, what's that? They were only injured, rather than killed? Surely that's coincidence, right???
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ouch.
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it didn't work in 'Demolition Man', either.....for several years it did, but not that one time.

laws are dumb unless they work 100% of the time -- 99.4% isn't good enough.
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"laws are dumb unless they work 100% of the time -- 99.4% isn't good enough."

This is a ridiculous expectation of any human-based law. There is no example of this in history or theory. Pure libertarian foolishness.
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Yeah Stu, the country that murdered over 65 million of its own people is a great example of gun controls success.
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@Single Bullet, that idiotic idea (fast and Furious) among other idiotic situations put in place by our Government is one of the reasons I have little faith in it, or the People in charge of it
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@Spindles Don't be obtuse. It wasn't an example that China is a better country than the US. It's an example that the comparisons to knives and cars and baseball bats are all bullshit. They can all kill, but none of them kill with the ease of a gun.
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@ J Renaud, and everybody else:

that was sarcasm, dudes. of course i don't think "laws are dumb unless they work 100% of the time -- 99.4% isn't good enough."

that was in response to those who say enacting stricter gun laws are pointless.
34
Stu and Aestro are right on in this thread.
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Of course we can believe whatever news comes out of China, right? If guns were ever to be banned, and they won't be, and all the Democrats went ahead and turned their's all in, half the population would still have guns, and most Democrats still would refuse to give up their cars and ride bikes. Personally, I have been hit by a bike, but have never been shot.

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