Please stop! :)

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Its the same here in Alabama. I worked for a company called Mad Science for awhile. We did hands-on science programs for children. Last year when the whole Harry Potter craze hit, Mad Science developed a HP afterschool program. We did various HP experiements with the kids, making a golden snitch, troll buggers, etc. Anyways, when we were promoting this program, we had to get permission from grade school principals to run the program in their school. Most did not want it because of parental reactions to HP. We even polled some parents and they said they didn't want their children studying witchcraft.

I remember growing up and going through all this with the Simpsons and Beavus and Butthead. Remember when B & B stopped using the word "fire"? All because two kids set fire to their home or something.

I lived in Chicago growing up and a lot of us int he neighborhood played D&D. My mom was so worried. My dad claimed that in games like that if you were in a situation and couldn't win, you'd kill yourself, so the game taught kids to commit suicide.

My brother and I were not allowed to wear black and red together because they were gang colors.

I could go on and on with more examples. But my point is this. It doesn't matter what you watch on tv, what games you play, or how you dress. What makes you the person you are is your morals and how you were raised as a child. If the parents and teachers don't teach you right from wrong, then yes, I can see how you could be influenced by games, tv, etc. Working in education I see so many kids get dropped of at school and forced into afterschool programs because mom and dad don't want to have to take care of the kids. I understand parents work, but they need to spend more time with their kids and instill in them the proper morals and teach them right from wrong.

 

I just wanted to say that Shralp's

comment was just plain outstanding in every way, shape, and form.

That is all.

[edit:liemy /= limey].

[ October 16, 2002, 18:34: Message edited by: ejsmith ]

 

Ah Ragusa
Since your from Germany I thought you would remember one of the first things the Nazis did when they decided too start realy putting their plans in action.
They went house to house and took the guns from the civilians.
I dont own a gun and never will but I do beleive people have a right to have them.The average response time for the police is 30 minutes or more.If someone was threating your family or yourself would you want to wait that long to see what happened.
Guns cannot kill anyone unless someone pulls the trigger.

 

Agreed, Dorian.

Perhaps a better question to pose to folks who don't believe in the right to bear arms:

1) I own a gun. It's a nice gun. A Sig-Sauer P245, semiautomatic .45 caliber handgun. One of the better ones you can buy, actually.

2) It stays loaded with Corbon +P high-velocity, controlled expansion hollow point rounds, designed to stop and incapacitate, or kill a human being. (or, in the rare ocassion, I guess - the marauding moose elk.)

3) If someone you loved, your wife, daughter, sister, etc were being attacked, assaulted, raped or threatened with death -- would you like for me to intervene, or go on my way?

 

I would like you to lend me your gun.

And maybe some bullets.

 

Just because somone comes from Germany does not mean there going to know about what the Nazis did, thinking like that is just racist. World War 2 was over half a centuary ago and people still assume that Germans know about or even are Nazis.

 

Anyone against owning a gun legally should remeber this:

If a person legally licenses his gun, he is most likely going to be fine with it. A person who walks into a bank and starts blowing the casheers and customers away, is not very likely to have a nice licensed gun anyway. Thus it dosn't matter either way.

[ October 16, 2002, 20:09: Message edited by: Z-Layrex ]

 

Ritwngr, I didn't know you were a superhero, I certainly feel safe now. (Kao you knucklehead!)

 

Note to self:

ArtEChoke's family...on their own.

 

LOL

 

Dorion Blackstar,
thanks for repeating this funny argument - it must be pre-made, from the NRA or some other lobby since I heared it with about exactly the same words before. Have you ever questioned it's validity? It's useless to argument that way to justify gun ownership, actually it's just a primitive way to insult the people who want gun restriction - for good reasons. The gun discussion is dirty in the US. I clearly remember a pretty sick Clinton = Hitler shockwave animation, however, since you seem to enjoy that way of argumenting and thinking, go ahead and enjoy.

No one denies the right of a hunter to own a ... hunting rifle ... even the possession of a handgun make sense, depending where you live. Yes, for self-defence or sporting.

However, I really doubt civilians need a .50 cal gun, a sniper rifle, assault rifle, submashine gun or mashine gun for personal use. This is allowed in some parts of the US, in others it's not. However, ask a mashinegun owner in virginia (iirc that's a state where that is allowed) if he needs his mashinegun to preserve his constitutional rights and personal freedom and he'll doubtless say "YES!". Sure it is fun to play with these toys, but I prefer the people who use them to be in the army. Actually that's all what I question about gun ownership in the US. However, more would only lead to a repetition of an old "Why do the US need guns" (or so) thread and the old one was disgusting enough. Since this thread is going the same way, I'll stop posting here

[ October 16, 2002, 22:41: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

I saw a funny cartoon in MAD magazine once... It basiclly involved a guy with NRA stickers all over him and a 'support NRA' arm thingy, being held at gun point by a thug. lol

 

Assuming that you have a bad fight with your wife, which is driving you out of control, and the gun is on the table beside you. What do you think that it will happen?

 

First, it's a fallacy to link machine guns with rampant crime.

Since 1968, fully automatic weapons and the parts necessary to create such a gun have been Class III firearms - NOT accessible to just anyone without a serious, serious background check. (I've never seen an instance where a class III permit holder used a firearm in a violent crime)

Even more than that, let's consider: how much crime is committed by suburban white guys with AK-47's? A teeny, tiny amount.

The problem really isn't with guns, or some real or imagined "gun culture." It's with sickos, and those sickos exist whether they carry knives, drive carbombs into place, or wrap themselves in dynamite and walk into an Israeli disco.

I'm just glad I live in a country where I have the right to put two in the chest and one in the forehead of any one of these yahoos that threatens me in my home.

 

If people here in the US want to own guns fine, but a civilian has no business owning an assault rifle. I don't have a problem with hunting rifles, a great many pistols, but when people start screaming that they "have the rite to own any type of firearm" I question their sanity. I have a friend that I argued this with. He said "that people could own weapons like that for target practice." I say, people, these weapons are anti-personnel weapons, why do you need to own a weapon who's sole purpose is to kill people. Saying "I like to hunt deer with my AK47 or M-16" or any other rifle of that caliber sounds plain stupid.

 

Atreides,

#1, my handgun (mentioned above) is designed to kill people. Period. Sure it's fun to shoot with, and doubles as a sporting gun - but it's designed to kill. The purpose of a device is not determinite - so are K-bars and other combat knives.

#2, An Ak-47 and M-16 are different caliber, but in fact the larger error you make is the fact that caliber, in and of itself is meaningless. An M-16 is actually a smaller round than most deer rifles.

#3 The entire "assault weapon/rifle" debate is a lark - the very term "assault weapon" is a meaningless cosmetic distinction that has little or nothing to do with the relative lethality of a firearm, further illustrating the distortions and deceptions rampant in the anti-gun policy debates.

 

I don't have a problem with people owning firearms, just civilians claiming the rite to own for military weaponry. An M-16 has a much faster rate of fire than a hunting rifle, why would a person need to kill something like an animal with a weapon that could possibly rip it to pieces?
Again, it's not the issue of whether people should own weapons that I have a real problem with (I agree that people have the rite to defend themselves) it's the types of weapons that I question.

 

I think that any sort of firearm should be severly restricted. Rifles only for people that have a hunting license and handguns only for people that are in a shooting club and then I am not talking about your normal pistol but sportguns. As for military weapons you must be maniac if you even want to have one.
Rightwinger, you argument of protecting whomever you see fit is worth null and void. Bash them on the head with a baseball bat if you really want to do something. And isnt the problem really that lots of people think they need a gun in their home to protect themselves? Isnt that something that is worse than the whole weapon issue. Are you so paranoid or do you live in such a lawless society that it is everyone for himself?

 

I guess that pulling a trigger is easier than beating someone to death, I don't know, just a thought.
As for society being lawless, it is a bit crazy over here in the US right about now with that accursed sniper on the loose. I'm sorry for those in the area but I'm glad he's not here in Texas and in the same area as my friends, and cadets.