What % of American pop would have to revolt against the gov't to stand a chance??????

Originally Posted by badfast

you are impossible. and it is not only because of the failed ways you frame arguments and abide by false correlations. And you constantly prove this by approaching me as some die hard gun grabber--when I am not. It is no surprise than that everything you read from starts with a negative perception of what I will say. I don't take you as an open minded individual just someone that is widely susceptible to misinformation and whatever conforms to his preconceived views. You not only prove it here, but in the conspiracy theories that you believe in and defend.

You are cute. You think that I am actually addressing you as Diane herself. I know you are a gun owner, and that you have a different view point. I am addressing the argument you are placing out there, regardless of what you actually think or feel, they way you are coming off is a gun grabbing idiot.

Widely susceptible to misinformation? Where? What "misinformation" am I representing here, or for that matter anywhere in these "conspiracy theories" you bring up. I asked a few very level headed questions, which not even you yourself could answer.

Originally Posted by NFRs2000nyc

Why do you believe laws will stop these events?

You're putting words in my mouth. I never stated it would stop these events. In fact, I believe I spoke to the fact that there is always the inherent risk. Laws are not necessarily designed to stop the event from occurring though they may act as a deterrent to some. They serve to ensure that there are repercussions for violating them.

my simple view on gun control.

a drug user, although illegal, will obtain drugs for their use

someone who wants to shoot someone, although illegal, will obtain a gun for their use.

making guns illegal doesn't change anything, just like making drugs illegal doesn't change anything. It just costs billions more dollars to taxpayers... re: the "war" on drugs. On drugs inc. I watched a 20 man swat team take down a guy growing/selling pot out of his tool shed. Are you fking kidding me?

the environment you are raised in determines whether or not you seek these types of actions in my opinion. And this constant american "everyones out to get me and my family" attitude is definitely formed from the environment you grew up in. That should be your focus, improving the american environment from which everyone comes from. Improving schools, education, community programs, government programs etc to create a better population.

Some of the posts I read on threads here sicken me. Some posters clearly have no empathy or care for their fellow neighbour, and would watch them die in the street. I shake my head at that mentality!

Originally Posted by dabears

my simple view on gun control.

a drug user, although illegal, will obtain drugs for their use

someone who wants to shoot someone, although illegal, will obtain a gun for their use.

making guns illegal doesn't change anything, just like making drugs illegal doesn't change anything. It just costs billions more dollars to taxpayers... re: the "war" on drugs. On drugs inc. I watched a 20 man swat team take down a guy growing/selling pot out of his tool shed. Are you fking kidding me?

the environment you are raised in determines whether or not you seek these types of actions in my opinion. And this constant american "everyones out to get me and my family" attitude is definitely formed from the environment you grew up in. That should be your focus, improving the american environment from which everyone comes from. Improving schools, education, community programs, government programs etc to create a better population.

Agree

Originally Posted by dabears

Some of the posts I read on threads here sicken me. Some posters clearly have no empathy or care for their fellow neighbour, and would watch them die in the street. I shake my head at that mentality!

Disagree. The physical proximity of someone elses house doesn't make them my neighbor. My relationship with them does. I'd put my life at risk for most of mine. They'd do the same

Originally Posted by dabears

my simple view on gun control.

a drug user, although illegal, will obtain drugs for their use

someone who wants to shoot someone, although illegal, will obtain a gun for their use.

making guns illegal doesn't change anything, just like making drugs illegal doesn't change anything. It just costs billions more dollars to taxpayers... re: the "war" on drugs. On drugs inc. I watched a 20 man swat team take down a guy growing/selling pot out of his tool shed. Are you fking kidding me?

the environment you are raised in determines whether or not you seek these types of actions in my opinion. And this constant american "everyones out to get me and my family" attitude is definitely formed from the environment you grew up in. That should be your focus, improving the american environment from which everyone comes from. Improving schools, education, community programs, government programs etc to create a better population.

Some of the posts I read on threads here sicken me. Some posters clearly have no empathy or care for their fellow neighbour, and would watch them die in the street. I shake my head at that mentality!

Agreed!

Originally Posted by JonJon

Agree

Disagree. The physical proximity of someone elses house doesn't make them my neighbor. My relationship with them does. I'd put my life at risk for most of mine. They'd do the same

I used the wrong word, and obviously we've all had shitty neighbours. I meant fellow humans... i.e. random acts of kindness towards complete strangers. Selflessness... one doesn't need stats or graphs to determine the lack of selflessness within the average american. Just read this forum often or talk to americans (I work with plenty when I travel for business) or travellers. There are exceptions, but when discussing a country it is best to speak about averages. And the worst part is, you don't notice you are doing it! Awareness of the lack of selflessness is almost non existent!

Example... before I got a keurig in my office, I would get tim hortons (ignore the stereotype ) every morning. Often (I'm talking once every two weeks or so) the person ahead of me would buy my coffee for me, with no anticipation of reward, not even expecting a thank you (pretty hard when they drive off!). So I started paying it forward as well. Small thing, but it could make someones day!

Originally Posted by JonJon

Disagree. The physical proximity of someone elses house doesn't make them my neighbor. My relationship with them does. I'd put my life at risk for most of mine. They'd do the same

We are all one big giant family and the powers that be in the world want to divide everyone up in to categories - countries, culture, language, religion, democrat, republican. For christ's sake I have seen people get in to heated arguments over a f*cking sports team! Pathetic.

Like I said, we are all one big family but with a whole lot of ignorant childish brats that call themselves adults and bicker over which car handles better or who's team is going to win.

Someone has society by the balls and they are squeezing tighter now-a-days...

Divide and conquer, right? Once everyone wakes up it'll be unite and prosper. Couldnt come too soon at this point...

Originally Posted by Drex

We are all one big giant family and the powers that be in the world want to divide everyone up in to categories - countries, culture, language, religion, democrat, republican.

I don't need the "powers that be" to tell me who I hate.

Originally Posted by casino is no lie

I don't need the "powers that be" to tell me who I hate.

You're right. They just set the game up. You choose to play it.

Originally Posted by Drex

You're right. They just set the game up. You choose to play it.

I don't play by the rules. Not even my own.

On a total side note, does anyone else find it really strange that the NRA is targeting the video game industry for their violent video games?

Originally Posted by evolved

On a total side note, does anyone else find it really strange that the NRA is targeting the video game industry for their violent video games?

Maybe because all these shooters are "young?" I have no clue. I don't agree with them, since I believe it is the parents responsibility, but I guess everyone needs someone to blame...

Originally Posted by evolved

On a total side note, does anyone else find it really strange that the NRA is targeting the video game industry for their violent video games?

They should be targeting the pharmaceutical industry

Originally Posted by evolved

On a total side note, does anyone else find it really strange that the NRA is targeting the video game industry for their violent video games?

I don't think they are making them out to be a scapegoat, but I think there are ramifications for all of the time people spend playing FPS games. If nothing else it desensitizes people to the violence involved in such acts. For the overwhelming population, it isn't going to cause someone to flip a switch and going on a shooting spree ala FPS games. In some very rare cases it might contribute to someone who is already mentally unstable to be more comfortable going off the deep end in a "blaze of glory" if they have done it a million times in in front of the TV.

I think the overall point is that it isn't helping things to have this level of violence (real or not) in our culture. If they try to pin the entire thing on FPS games, that will be just comical.

Originally Posted by SLVR JDM

I don't think they are making them out to be a scapegoat, but I think there are ramifications for all of the time people spend playing FPS games. If nothing else it desensitizes people to the violence involved in such acts. For the overwhelming population, it isn't going to cause someone to flip a switch and going on a shooting spree ala FPS games. In some very rare cases it might contribute to someone who is already mentally unstable to be more comfortable going off the deep end in a "blaze of glory" if they have done it a million times in in front of the TV.

I think the overall point is that it isn't helping things to have this level of violence (real or not) in our culture. If they try to pin the entire thing on FPS games, that will be just comical.

The National Rifle Association had an entire week following the tragedy in Sandy Hook to craft a response that reflected the complex, difficult and long-overdue conversation taking place around the nation regarding gun ownership, the availability of high-speed weaponry and mental illness in the United States.

Instead NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre stood up at a press conference this morning and announced the real culprit behind mass shooting in our country: videogames.

Videogames, LaPierre said, are part of a "callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people." Other members of the cultural Axis of Evil include music videos, the TMC horror movie double-feature "Splatterdays," the 1994 film Natural Born Killers, which critiqued the media glorification of mass murderers, and the 20-year-old videogame franchise Mortal Kombat, which features no guns.

"In a race to the bottom, many conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society, by bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior, and criminal cruelty right into our homes," said LaPierre. "Every minute, every day, every hour of every single year."

We've seen this movie before. Every time the firearms lobby is taken to task in the wake of some horrifying gun crime, it trips all over itself to deflect the public's outrage to videogames, TV and film. Never mind that there's no scientific evidence correlating violent videogames and real-life violence.

"If videogames contributed to violence, we'd expect the Netherlands and South Korea to have the highest rates of gun related-violence - since they play they most violent videogames per capita," says Christopher Ferguson, the Department Chair of Psychology and Communication at Texas A&M International, who has spent years researching the psychological effects of violent videogames. "But the rates are actually quite low," said Ferguson.

Ferguson calls the NRA's statements "surreal." He's conducted studies on media violence that range from several hundred to several thousand participants, and the correlational findings not only fail to show a link between gaming and real-life violence, their outcomes found that gamers had less depression, less frustration, less fighting, less weapons carrying, and fewer arrest records.

Despite results like this, LaPierre plainly hopes that if he blathers on about pretend gun violence long enough, we'll all forget that the very real violence that crashed into a quiet Connecticut town last week would not, and could not, have happened if the troubled perpetrator didn't have ready access to guns.

The solutions to the mass shootings offered by the NRA press conference, which at times bore more resemblance to the first round of a brainstorming session, included exactly zero measures dealing with the numbers or types of guns available to Americans. Their preferred answers include: more armed guards in schools (a measure that didn't prevent the tragedy at Columbine), the creation of a national database of the mentally ill, and nebulously addressing the "moral failings of the media" and the games, movies and other media that LaPierre deemed "the filthiest form of pornography."

LaPierre's NRA researchers even managed to dig up a videogame titled Kindergarten Killer, a 10-year-old Flash game set in a school that allows the player to fire weapons at both students and, for some reason, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is an especially ridiculous demonstration of LaPierre's point, not only because Kindergarten Killer is an amateur game that pretty much no one ever played, but also because its gameplay features students firing back at the shooter with firearms of their own. It is actually the vision of the world the NRA says will save us: the one where all of us are armed and ready to take down potential mass murderers, wielding bullets against bullets in a firearm version of rock-paper-scissors.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said LaPierre at the conference, a line that it's not too difficult to imagine hearing in the voice of Duke Nukem.

The tragic, hilarious irony of the NRA is that its solution to gun violence - more guns - is ripped straight out of the shoot 'em up videogames that they decry for their moral turpitude. Except while gamers seem to have no problem telling the difference between a fantasy world where every problem can be solved with more ammunition, and the real world, where nuanced problems required nuanced solutions, the NRA isn't quite so lucky. And as long as they continue to promote their first-person shooter approach to gun violence in America, neither is anyone else.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/nra-video-games/


As a firearm owner, I'm not a big fan of the NRA and this is one of the reasons. The author of this article is clearly anti-gun, but it was a quick google search that portrayed the ridiculousness that LaPierre is going on about in reference to the video game industry.

Originally Posted by evolved

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/nra-video-games/


As a firearm owner, I'm not a big fan of the NRA and this is one of the reasons. The author of this article is clearly anti-gun, but it was a quick google search that portrayed the ridiculousness that LaPierre is going on about in reference to the video game industry.

There is evidence in his reasoning. Kids playing Gears of War pumping 10000 rounds into zombies filled with blood and gore does have psychological effects (ie, desensitizes them to death and killing)...add that to the soup of pity, overmedication, etc...and that can be a recipe for disaster.

Do I think videogames create killers? Of course not. However, they do indeed have an effect on young minds, and while they alone are pretty harmless, add that to the cocktail of all the other crap and you have the recipe for quite a spectacle.

Originally Posted by dabears

my simple view on gun control.

a drug user, although illegal, will obtain drugs for their use

someone who wants to shoot someone, although illegal, will obtain a gun for their use.

making guns illegal doesn't change anything, just like making drugs illegal doesn't change anything. It just costs billions more dollars to taxpayers... re: the "war" on drugs. On drugs inc. I watched a 20 man swat team take down a guy growing/selling pot out of his tool shed. Are you fking kidding me?

the environment you are raised in determines whether or not you seek these types of actions in my opinion. And this constant american "everyones out to get me and my family" attitude is definitely formed from the environment you grew up in. That should be your focus, improving the american environment from which everyone comes from. Improving schools, education, community programs, government programs etc to create a better population.

Some of the posts I read on threads here sicken me. Some posters clearly have no empathy or care for their fellow neighbour, and would watch them die in the street. I shake my head at that mentality!

Americans are the nicest people in the world (it's why everyone looks up to us like a big brother when in need). You should envy us for not being able to reside in our society.

Originally Posted by NFRs2000nyc

There is evidence in his reasoning. Kids playing Gears of War pumping 10000 rounds into zombies filled with blood and gore does have psychological effects (ie, desensitizes them to death and killing)...add that to the soup of pity, overmedication, etc...and that can be a recipe for disaster.

Do I think videogames create killers? Of course not. However, they do indeed have an effect on young minds, and while they alone are pretty harmless, add that to the cocktail of all the other crap and you have the recipe for quite a spectacle.

You can find evidence anywhere you want to suit an agenda. I just find it odd that LaPierre is adamant about not blaming the gun industry, but will roll over onto the video game industry.

Originally Posted by evolved

You can find evidence anywhere you want to suit an agenda. I just find it odd that LaPierre is adamant about not blaming the gun industry, but will roll over onto the video game industry.

Blame the liberals and the media. They keep claiming that we are a violent nation (ie, we are a violent people.) Guns don't make people violent, they give people the ABILITY to be violent, much like baseball bats and knives can be used for violence. Some things are known to cause violence....steroids, alcohol (remember the Marine beating the cabbie?), etc. Videogames, movies, etc are all becoming more and more violent. People are conditioned and desensitized to it. Ever see the movie Rampage on netflix streaming? Horrible movie, but it was basically a crazy kid, got dressed up in full body armor, went into town and started killing literally everyone. Personally, I don't blame music, videogames, and movies (although their effect is undeniable.) We can blame the medical industry, the drug industry, the government, the education system, the parents, and a heap of other things before we can blame guns. It's only a matter of time until someone decides to blow up a school using ammonium nitrate.