Ot: Pew Pew Pew

[ryan roopnarine]

Gun violence is very rare, statistically, in my country. A country without guns CAN work.
!

if by "country without guns" you mean canada, you wouldn't be accurate. canada has a pretty high gun ownership rate. homicide rates by firearm increase to american alaskan levels in the yukon and nwt. i would assume that alaska and nyt or yukon are comparable entities.


"Arguments based on the fact that if you don't have a gun, then criminals who DO have guns will rule the country and make society hell, do not"

No, but the argument being made in dc was that "if criminals who do have guns are making society hell, then law abiding entities shouldn't have them"

i'll go ahead and let my personal feelings bleed through for a second. I've heard a number of dc residents bleat in the week or so since this ruling has been delivered about how the aforementioned is going to become wild-westian in character as a result? my feelings? tough titty. DC has had about 40 years now to fix the cesspit that composes itself. its residents have chosen not to, and as a result, no one with any financial resources lives there. i've heard a woman talk about how she could have moved to maryland after her kids were killed in a mistaken id driveby, but she didn't, and that she wouldn't stand for the city lifting the gun ban. sorry, but most people aren't meant to cure cancer, they aren't goddamned snowflakes. if you feel unsafe testifying against criminals, aren't willing to take extrajudicial measures to stop the criminal element from finding value in setting up shop in your neighborhood, then your situation fails to be my problem. want to institute a gun ban because you "think" it will fix the problem? sorry, that's just (you) taking the least potentially physically harmful route to get out of fixing the problem. what you say, a 32 year gun ban has done jack shiat to curb the violence problem in the city? well then, time's up. you aren't measuring peregrine falcon concentrations, you are running a social engineering experiment that has, for all intents and purposes, failed. the results are invalid, and coupled with the wording related to firearms in the constitution, suggests that it is appropriate for the the rest of the country respond in the most liberal manner prescribed by the constitution. if not because others will likely hold YOUR ban up as precedent to implement such elsewhere, then on principle alone. the united states is usually 8-10 years behind the UK at any given time, and I don't see their gun ban making their lives infinitely better.

why are those terms in the constitution? here's a canadian example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Sniper_Weapon_(LRSW)
look for the section that say "longest distance kill"

1. I can bet that cpl furlong had fired firearms long before he enlisted in the service, and his level of skill had a great deal to do with that. related to the "militia" phrase, no?

2. macmillan brothers (the company that supplies canada's choice in 50 cal rifle) is a private us company. like barett, they were making, and innovating "deadly, anti-helicopter !1!1!" 50 cal rifles for the civillian market long before the armed forces of the united states saw value in such. the lilja barrel that mr. furlong used during that incident came from a similar source. i sincerely doubt that any canadian "civillian" is allowed to register a .50 caliber bmg rifle for their own personal use.

3. switzerland has invested a great deal in making their populace firearms proficient. i wonder to what end that is meant....

like it or not, there is value in having a populace that can shoot accurately and develop new firearms technology, and such is why the 2nd amendment exists.

it is most telling that the gun control groups, for the most part, didn't have anything to do with backing the stance that dc took . fools from the governing bodies of NYC, chicago/cook county, SF, et cetera did much of that (ie, amicus briefs, &c. &c). conversely, the NRA let heller twist in the wind about this. Both the NRA and HCI, Brady, et cetera knew that if the court found against their side, there would be wide-reaching ramifications, and didn't want to be responsible for such if such happened. now that heller won, i hope that the nra goes through and dismantles all of the remaining examples of this failed, utterly defective social experiment that dc started.

[repenttokyo]

if by "country without guns" you mean canada, you wouldn't be accurate. canada has a pretty high gun ownership rate. homicide rates by firearm increase to american alaskan levels in the yukon and nwt. i would assume that alaska and nyt or yukon are comparable entities.

I think you need to be careful when examining Canadian violent crime statistics and gun ownership rates. the percentage of the population who live in the nyt or yukon is extremely, extremely small. It is also much younger, with more low income families, single parent families, and almost no policing. Alcohol abuse is also a significant problem there. Is that the same as Alaska? I don't know. But I do know that the primary reason people own guns in the north is to eat, as the native population is extremely high and many people there still live off of the land to a large degree.


I wouldn't say Canada has a high gun ownerships rate. It hovers around 20 percent. However, it's 90 percent long rifles used for hunting. Handguns are very rare, and they have been banned since Confederation. Owning a handgun is legal, but in most places they can only be transported to and from a gun club, in the trunk of a car. In 2004 there were 548 murders in all of Canada. About a third of those involved a firearm. In 2004, California, which has a population almost the same size as all of Canada, had 2,394 homicides. So you see, we don't really have a gun violence problem. I know documentaries from Michael Moore make it seem like gun ownership is common in Canada, but in the cities, it is extremely rare, and the only place you run into guns is in rural areas wheere people hunt. The majority of people I know have never even seen a firearm, let alone held one in their hands.

"Arguments based on the fact that if you don't have a gun, then criminals who DO have guns will rule the country and make society hell, do not"

No, but the argument being made in dc was that "if criminals who do have guns are making society hell, then law abiding entities shouldn't have them"

i'll go ahead and let my personal feelings bleed through for a second. I've heard a number of dc residents bleat in the week or so since this ruling has been delivered about how the aforementioned is going to become wild-westian in character as a result? my feelings? tough titty. DC has had about 40 years now to fix the cesspit that composes itself. its residents have chosen not to, and as a result, no one with any financial resources lives there. i've heard a woman talk about how she could have moved to maryland after her kids were killed in a mistaken id driveby, but she didn't, and that she wouldn't stand for the city lifting the gun ban. sorry, but most people aren't meant to cure cancer, they aren't goddamned snowflakes. if you feel unsafe testifying against criminals, aren't willing to take extrajudicial measures to stop the criminal element from finding value in setting up shop in your neighborhood, then your situation fails to be my problem. want to institute a gun ban because you "think" it will fix the problem? sorry, that's just (you) taking the least potentially physically harmful route to get out of fixing the problem. what you say, a 32 year gun ban has done jack shiat to curb the violence problem in the city? well then, time's up. you aren't measuring peregrine falcon concentrations, you are running a social engineering experiment that has, for all intents and purposes, failed. the results are invalid, and coupled with the wording related to firearms in the constitution, suggests that it is appropriate for the the rest of the country respond in the most liberal manner prescribed by the constitution. if not because others will likely hold YOUR ban up as precedent to implement such elsewhere, then on principle alone. the united states is usually 8-10 years behind the UK at any given time, and I don't see their gun ban making their lives infinitely better.

yes, i was addressing some of the other, more general comments, not the DC situation in particular. I agree with you in what you are saying, the status quo in DC did not seem to make any kind of difference. what would? what change do you think is necessary? what makes my country so different?

why are those terms in the constitution? here's a canadian example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Sniper_Weapon_(LRSW)
look for the section that say "longest distance kill"

1. I can bet that cpl furlong had fired firearms long before he enlisted in the service, and his level of skill had a great deal to do with that. related to the "militia" phrase, no?

2. macmillan brothers (the company that supplies canada's choice in 50 cal rifle) is a private us company. like barett, they were making, and innovating "deadly, anti-helicopter !1!1!" 50 cal rifles for the civillian market long before the armed forces of the united states saw value in such. the lilja barrel that mr. furlong used during that incident came from a similar source. i sincerely doubt that any canadian "civillian" is allowed to register a .50 caliber bmg rifle for their own personal use.

3. switzerland has invested a great deal in making their populace firearms proficient. i wonder to what end that is meant....

like it or not, there is value in having a populace that can shoot accurately and develop new firearms technology, and such is why the 2nd amendment exists.

hmmm - I am not sure what you mean by this...Canadians aren't trained to shoot from a young age, or at all. Like I said above, if you know how toshoot, it's because you grew up in a family that hunts, and most likely in a rural area. It's not similar to Switzerland, in that we don't have compulsory military service or anything like that. One of the reasons that our army and our air force do very well in terms of international competitions and in field operations is because they are SO small that everyone gets a TON of training and actual service time, giving them valuable experience. I was in the Canadian Army Cadets for three years, where I learned basic shooting and survival, but nothing advanced, really.

it is most telling that the gun control groups, for the most part, didn't have anything to do with backing the stance that dc took . fools from the governing bodies of NYC, chicago/cook county, SF, et cetera did much of that (ie, amicus briefs, &c. &c). conversely, the NRA let heller twist in the wind about this. Both the NRA and HCI, Brady, et cetera knew that if the court found against their side, there would be wide-reaching ramifications, and didn't want to be responsible for such if such happened. now that heller won, i hope that the nra goes through and dismantles all of the remaining examples of this failed, utterly defective social experiment that dc started.

what would work? in your opinion. how do you bring gun violence levels in the united states down to canadian levels?

[ryan roopnarine]

I think you need to be careful when examining Canadian violent crime statistics and gun ownership rates. the percentage of the population who live in the nyt or yukon is extremely, extremely small. It is also much younger, with more low income families, single parent families, and almost no policing. Alcohol abuse is also a significant problem there. Is that the same as Alaska? I don't know. But I do know that the primary reason people own guns in the north is to eat, as the native population is extremely high and many people there still live off of the land to a large degree.


I wouldn't say Canada has a high gun ownerships rate. It hovers around 20 percent. However, it's 90 percent long rifles used for hunting. Handguns are very rare, and they have been banned since Confederation. Owning a handgun is legal, but in most places they can only be transported to and from a gun club, in the trunk of a car. In 2004 there were 548 murders in all of Canada. About a third of those involved a firearm. In 2004, California, which has a population almost the same size as all of Canada, had 2,394 homicides. So you see, we don't really have a gun violence problem. I know documentaries from Michael Moore make it seem like gun ownership is common in Canada, but in the cities, it is extremely rare, and the only place you run into guns is in rural areas wheere people hunt. The majority of people I know have never even seen a firearm, let alone held one in their hands.


yes, i was addressing some of the other, more general comments, not the DC situation in particular. I agree with you in what you are saying, the status quo in DC did not seem to make any kind of difference. what would? what change do you think is necessary? what makes my country so different?




hmmm - I am not sure what you mean by this...Canadians aren't trained to shoot from a young age, or at all. Like I said above, if you know how toshoot, it's because you grew up in a family that hunts, and most likely in a rural area. It's not similar to Switzerland, in that we don't have compulsory military service or anything like that. One of the reasons that our army and our air force do very well in terms of international competitions and in field operations is because they are SO small that everyone gets a TON of training and actual service time, giving them valuable experience. I was in the Canadian Army Cadets for three years, where I learned basic shooting and survival, but nothing advanced, really.



what would work? in your opinion. how do you bring gun violence levels in the united states down to canadian levels?

while, admittedly, the yukon has a small population, and the natives have "hairspray" abuse problems &c. &c., given two low density examples (ak and yuk or nwt) you are seeing similar patterns of behavior and violence--regardless of nationality.

a 20% gun ownership rate is not small. a 2004 telephone survey of americans put admitted gun ownership at about 35%, down from 45% in 1989. the reason for the drop, i have no idea about. perhaps with the advent of better tracking technology, people were less willing to admit to ownership, i don't really know the reason for the drop. i lived for about 13 years in saskatchewan and manitoba (was born in winnipeg). it seemed like every two parent household there had at least one long gun in it. i could see how ontario or bc could be different. i do recall being able to go down to the canadian tire in regina in the early 90s and being able to buy rimfire cartridges (no one in my party was over 13 at the time). we rode up on bikes, they had no reason to think we were 16.

i was also in the the air cadets for about a year. no advanced training, no, but exposure to firearms was more than could ever be dreamed of in american jrotc. the people i were with were reprehensible individuals, though. when asked to march the flag out at saskatchewan roughriders games, they much resembled boris yeltsin's personal guard. marching with correct feet at correct time was optional.


as someone in his mid 20s who is trying to get accurate up to 500m on a rifle with iron sights, i can assure you that the cpl did a little more than "hunt" in his youth. if you can hit 3 targets at >2300m that quickly (he got a miss, a backpack hit, and then a hit on the person he was firing at), you've been training for marksmanship, not to take out animals. much like with foreign languages, that skill is best established when one's mind is still soft and pliable. ensuring that the general populace has access to at least long guns means that some people, at least, will have such a skill set. air cadets/sea cadets/jrotc/CMP here were developed, at least in part for that purpose.


as for the reasons for such violence, I can't explain such. europe, while having rather significant continuous gun bans across contiguous contry entities (three countries, side by side, with bans in each, in case i wasn't clear) has significantly differing gun homicide rates. the Uk might have low rates, but luxenbourg or holland have significantly higher rates. the united states, for all effective purposes, is safer than it was 30 years ago. what the abortion prohibitions, racial riots of the late 60s/early 70s had to do with this, i can't say. in excess of 80% of the fugitive felon warrants that originate from LA are for illegals, and we don't have 3 sides of our border surrounded by water.

[repenttokyo]

while, admittedly, the yukon has a small population, and the natives have "hairspray" abuse problems &c. &c., given two low density examples (ak and yuk or nwt) you are seeing similar patterns of behavior and violence--regardless of nationality.

a 20% gun ownership rate is not small. a 2004 telephone survey of americans put admitted gun ownership at about 35%, down from 45% in 1989. the reason for the drop, i have no idea about. perhaps with the advent of better tracking technology, people were less willing to admit to ownership, i don't really know the reason for the drop. i lived for about 13 years in saskatchewan and manitoba (was born in winnipeg). it seemed like every two parent household there had at least one long gun in it. i could see how ontario or bc could be different. i do recall being able to go down to the canadian tire in regina in the early 90s and being able to buy rimfire cartridges (no one in my party was over 13 at the time). we rode up on bikes, they had no reason to think we were 16.

i was also in the the air cadets for about a year. no advanced training, no, but exposure to firearms was more than could ever be dreamed of in american jrotc. the people i were with were reprehensible individuals, though. when asked to march the flag out at saskatchewan roughriders games, they much resembled boris yeltsin's personal guard. marching with correct feet at correct time was optional.


as someone in his mid 20s who is trying to get accurate up to 500m on a rifle with iron sights, i can assure you that the cpl did a little more than "hunt" in his youth. if you can hit 3 targets at >2300m that quickly (he got a miss, a backpack hit, and then a hit on the person he was firing at), you've been training for marksmanship, not to take out animals. much like with foreign languages, that skill is best established when one's mind is still soft and pliable. ensuring that the general populace has access to at least long guns means that some people, at least, will have such a skill set. air cadets/sea cadets/jrotc/CMP here were developed, at least in part for that purpose.


as for the reasons for such violence, I can't explain such. europe, while having rather significant continuous gun bans across contiguous contry entities (three countries, side by side, with bans in each, in case i wasn't clear) has significantly differing gun homicide rates. the Uk might have low rates, but luxenbourg or holland have significantly higher rates. the united states, for all effective purposes, is safer than it was 30 years ago. what the abortion prohibitions, racial riots of the late 60s/early 70s had to do with this, i can't say. in excess of 80% of the fugitive felon warrants that originate from LA are for illegals, and we don't have 3 sides of our border surrounded by water.

my corps was also filled with reprehensible individuals. thanks for the informative posting, it is appreciated.

although consider natural talent when it comes to marksmanship - some people were born to run 5000 meters, some were born to ski jump, and some were born to hit the back of a pack of matches from 5 kilometers away with a crosswind.