Gun Control - 2006/09/27 23:40The gun control one.
You could make at least as good a program taking the exact opposite view. Most of the argument seems to be based on the the 18th century views of the founding fathers which is a good argument for slavery too.
The 43 kids killed by accident for every attacker is justified by 42 people who are deterred? Holy shit people in the US must be insanely sick and lawless if the crime rate is still as high as it is with those 42 people not committing crimes. What happened to Penn's theory about the vast majority of people being good?
In the US 40 times as many people are killed by accident by head of population as the UK. Homicide rates in the UK are now rising fast as immigrants pour in with guns smuggled from Eastern Europe.
In the US there are 100 times as many firearm homicides than in Japan by head of population, which has the strictest gun control in the world.
It's not joined up thinking, it's taking a point of view and working your way to it illogically, the kind of thing that the show usually fights against.
Jackie Mason is wheeled out as the expert voice of reason...
The founding slave traders would of course have put in an ammendment to legalise personal nuclear weapons so that the government would be super fearful of it's citizens if they had foreseen it.
Now that is Bullshit.
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Jabjabs
User Karma: 12
Re:Gun Control - 2006/09/28 01:03Well as they have said before, Bullshti is an evangelical show, it is how they see the problem. True you will not always agree with the point they take but that is just the way the river flows.
I didn't agree the on most on their points of view on this one but they did make some good points as well.
That said I live in Australia where gun laws are also strict and the amount of gun violence we have is very little. Although that happened after someone went postal and took out 23 people for no reason at all, it was almost immediatly that they called for a ban on all guns outside of nessessity or sport.
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Sesh
User Karma: 8
Re:Gun Control - 2006/09/28 11:58I meant to post this in the thread about Bullshit episodes you have a problem with rather than a whole new thread. Ooops.
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maf
User Karma: 41
Re:Gun Control - 2006/09/28 13:12The point that Penn always tries to make is that the government has no business regulating individual choices. Gun ownership is another individual choice that is highly debatable due to the effects it could have on other people.
My opinion is that this individual choice must be protected, if for no other reason than to keep the individuals power above that of the governments. Governments who want to limit individual rights first do so by taking away the power of the individual to physically defend themselves. It's a right that I would go so far as to protect with force.
Australia's rights are more limited than the U.S. and if you ever needed to defend more precious rights, such as freedom of speech, you would have no means to do so.
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mddawson
User Karma: 5
Re:Gun Control - 2007/02/28 18:39I understand that this is a "freedom" issue - the freedom to own a gun. However this comes at the expense of other freedoms like the freedom to walk unharmed through any part of your city. Is that possible in most US cities?
For example I live in Canberra, the capital of Australia (pop. 320,000). Australia has strict gun controls eg no automatic or semi-automatic weapons, no guns unless your job requires it or you are a member of a gun club, etc.
Canberra is the safest capital city in the world, you are 90 times less likely to be murdered than you would be living in Washington DC. I can walk through any part of the city and any time with absolute safety. I have lived here for 35 years and never heard a gun being fired nor do I know of anyone who has been shot.
I also think that Penn's reasoning that we need to be able to protect ourselves from the government is flawed by the fact that the government will always have bigger guns than the public. Would he advocate members of the public owning nukes because the government does?
Unfortunately for the US gun control is impossible as the market is already flooded but for places like Australia it is wonderful.
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cgc13
User Karma: 11
Re:Gun Control - 2007/02/28 19:38" I have lived here for 35 years and never heard a gun being fired nor do I know of anyone who has been shot."
Can this be completly attributed to the gun laws? You have to take into account the type of population. Such as economic and cultural.
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mddawson
User Karma: 5
Re:Gun Control - 2007/02/28 21:04I agree that the type of population in Canberra (mainly educated middle class) helps. However even Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, would have a greatly reduced rate of gun crimes when compared to equal sized US cities.
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demoncleaner
User Karma: 3
Re:Gun Control - 2007/06/09 08:40While I agree to a certain extent that restricting guns can limit gun violence, it doesn't stop people from getting a gun. Sure gun violence is low in Australia but that doesn't stop people from bashing and murdering other people. Statistically speaking, population-wise, our crime rate is just as high as any major U.S. or European city in the world. We just don't have the population to equal it in numbers. I see it all the time and it's getting worse.
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demoncleaner
User Karma: 3
Re:Gun Control - 2008/02/25 10:17Found this about gun control after the shooting in Illinois, interesting viewpoint http://cognitivephilosophy.com/
Also has an article about religion banning a myspace page which I did'nt even know about
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