The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Guns is gud

Some good read about guns :
- http://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/why-the-gun-is-civilization/ (the original)
- http://www.amazon.fr/More-Guns-Less-Crime-Understanding/dp/0226493660

And also : http://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/killing-over-stuff/

Arkh you understand that tell to a american the gun is bad is like telling a blasphemy to the religious people, so you could even be killed by fire by the southern Guys. It´s an inalienable right, and we need to defend our homeland against possible invaders and if the government becomes oppressive.

Again I´m joking, so take easy.

Also why are the Southern guys the most members that have political opinions, why most of the time seems more interested in politics, why your counterpart from north do not show their opinions too, is all right to them? I´m wondering.

I hope in the next 50 years, we can stop people without making a rough hole in the subject, like the eletric and stun guns become more effective.

Any suggestion that guns are bad, that guns increase violence or that crime can directly be attributed to guns is not only ludicrous, it is a statistical, empirical and known fallacy.

The notion that reason is necessary to have a complete civilized society is perhaps noble, but unreasonable when considering human nature. Imperfect and emotional, the human being will use whatever means are available to achieve power, whatever they perceive that power to be.

As was stated far better than anyone else;
"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion [that violence never settles anything] is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms."

Actually Mithus, contrary to popular opinion, there is far worse racism, violence and crime in the northern states than in the south.

Vuldan and Mithus: you may have to click on the links I posted before writing about it.
Really, you should.

My apologies Arkh, I did not read the whole thing, only the begining and made an error in judging what I thought was your stance.

And the "more guns less crime" book should be a must read for any non US citizen who want to speak about guns. Because when outside the US people don't realize how much the possibility to carry a gun differ from one county to the other (not even just between states) and how lot of statistics studies are done with like only 1 or 2 big cities to represent a whole state.

I may not agree with you about some wars, but (even if french) I'm for the right for the people to defend itself and its property. And it means the right to carry a weapon and the right to use it to defend yourself.

Where I may make you cringe is that I think that someone who just got out of prison should not be stripped of this right: he has paid his debt to society.

I tend to agree with you Arkh. The core "macro" issue involved, is degree of centralization of power. An individual who has in hands the means to mount a credible defense of himself and his property by definition has more individual power than a person who has none. The person without any credible means of defending himself and must rely solely on others by definition has less power, however the groups who administer protection in his region by definition have more.

On the micro level, it may not see like a big deal to society if one particular person has slightly more or slightly less power - however on a macro scale, the aggregate increase of relative power held by individuals as opposed to a centralized authority is quite great and has a large effect on the balance of power in a society.

If you were to quantify a value called "protection" that represented to total level of protection from criminal harm in a segment of society, a society where a substantial amount of that protection comes from the grassroots citizenry will have a far more stable amount of "protection" over time. Wheres in a society where all of the protection stems from a single centralized authority , the amount of protection provided will by nature have larger swings in the amount provided.

Swings in the quality of the centralized authority will have a much larger effect in the absence of grassroots protection. Corruption, funding, competence, politics and other factors can greatly effect the amount of protection provided by a centralized authority with grave consequences if grassroots protection is not available to fill in the gaps left by an incompetent or corrupt centralized authority.

One good example of this is Mexico. The Mexican situation can be compared to the Old West in the USA in many ways. One telling difference however, was that in the USA the citizens could and would arm themselves. It was even a common occurrence for the citizens to be pressed into temporary "posse" or militia duty by law enforcement when organized criminal elements needed dealt with.

Citizenry owning weapons did not "solve" the problem of organized crime and violent gangs, but it did attenuate their effect on society at large. Whereas in Mexico, in the absence of ever-present competent police forces, the citizenry is completely at the mercy of organized crime.

If the feds would stop being such pussies and let the border states do what the border states do best the border towns would be a much safer place.

Or they could legalize drugs destroying the profits from these activities.