long live NRA - next convention in Mandalay Bay !

[RSL]

Asia was in your first sentence, when you started to talk about Stalin and Hitler I thought you were specifically referring to Europe. And don't kid yourself, while the US played a major role you couldn't have done it without the other allies. There is no need to claim all the glory, and by the way I think shared glory with allies is much more honorable than claiming it all yourself. When you are 15 you tend to romanticise and believe all you read in the US press who claim it's all US and downplayed the role of other allies in WW2. Just like you recently "read" the homicide rate in France and Germmany was approaching that in the US. I'm sure there was a similar hidden agenda in that article

I'm not claiming that the U.S. won the war single-handed, Pieter, as you well know. Without Britain the war would have been lost long before we came in. And of course, toward the end, de Gaulle marched in and cinched the French election. But none of that would have been possible if the U.S. hadn't gotten off its duff and declared war. You guys all would have been either under Hitler or under Stalin. Bottom line: don't denigrate the U.S. firearm situation. We're a free country because of our firearms, and we're not about to give them up. You should be happy about that.

And yes, there are way, way too many murders in the U.S., by firearms mostly. But it's interesting to see where those murders are taking place. Left-wing propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, in almost all cases it's not Hillary's "deplorables" doing the shooting.

And just as an aside, I haven't personally owned a gun since I came back from Southeast Asia in 1965.

[RSL]

And then it will be the defense industry and its workers that will suffer most. That's what their Washington lobby is currently trying to protect.

ROTFL again. Where do you guys get this incredible crap?

[kers]

Let not divert from the discussion to WWII and other wars….
This thread will be long enough without…

Let me say that i am happy to live in a place were i do not feel any need to have a gun to protect myself for there is nobody threatening me with guns, at least the last 55 years.

That said
Once in Barcelona at night i had to give away my bag to somebody that threatened me with a knife.
It was a drugsrelated crime. I gave him my bag and he disappeared.
if i have had a gun….    If he had a gun….

Once at night in a park in Amsterdam i met a group of some teenagers that pushed me of my bicycle when i passed.
They wanted my money and threatened me with a large knive.
For me it was clear they did not know what they were doing and because of that very dangerous. I think they collected money in the park to go into town.  Anyway i gave them the money. Then i asked some money back to be able to get a coke. They gave me some money back.
if i have had a gun….    If they had guns….

[pegelli]

ROTFL again. Where do you guys get this incredible crap?

Maybe in the same paper where you read the France and German homicide rate was approaching the US 

I wouldn't laugh at others for posting crap if I were you, it's just the pot and the kettle. Trying to put reasonable arguments (and data) against it is much more useful.

Just a refresher :

From what I've been reading it sounds as if both France and Germany are having murder rates relative to their populations roughly equivalent to what we're experiencing.

[degrub]

it may go back to Eisenhower's warning against the "military industrial complex"  influence in DC as he left office.

[Alan Klein]

And then it will be the defense industry and its workers that will suffer most. That's what their Washington lobby is currently trying to protect.

How come European defense industries don't push spending on defense like America's?

[pegelli]

How come European defense industries don't push spending on defense like America's?

Fair question, they probably do but I haven't got the foggiest why they aren't as successful.

EDIT: thinking about it more it might have to do with having to devide their attention between 20-25 governments (who all take autonomous decisions) vs. just one. But beware, this is just speculation from my side.

[RSL]

Let me say that i am happy to live in a place were i do not feel any need to have a gun to protect myself for there is nobody threatening me with guns, at least the last 55 years.

And why do you suppose you live in such a place, Pieter? Seems to me that 75 years ago you had a problem that gun-toting Americans came along and helped solve. You don't want to divert to WW II, but that's the crux of the situation. Guns gave you your freedom to stay away from guns. Looking at what's happening in Europe right now I'd suggest the future may not be so forgiving. The next guy with a knife may be yelling Allahu Akbar.

[RSL]

How come European defense industries don't push spending on defense like America's?

Especially when they're a part of NATO and signed an agreement to devote 2% of GNP to defense. With the exception of Poland and one or two others, their main contribution to their own defense mostly is military bands.

[RSL]

Maybe in the same paper where you read the France and German homicide rate was approaching the US 

I may have been off by a bit, but I suspect that considering the rate at which you're accepting Middle-East refugees the situation is going to even out in the not too distant future. I also suspect the accuracy of statistics about murders relative to population. On the other hand, I'll tell you this: The United States is a big place, and when you get away from population centers like Chicago you find that the murder rate by guns in the U.S. is comparable to the rate anywhere else. As I said earlier, it ain't Hillary's "deplorables" who are doing the shooting.

[pegelli]

their main contribution to their own defense mostly is military bands.

Where do you find this crap? But I have a hunch

[pegelli]

I may have been off by a bit, but I suspect that considering the rate at which you're accepting Middle-East refugees the situation is going to even out in the not too distant future. I also suspect the accuracy of statistics about murders relative to population. On the other hand, I'll tell you this: The United States is a big place, and when you get away from population centers like Chicago you find that the murder rate by guns in the U.S. is comparable to the rate anywhere else. As I said earlier, it ain't Hillary's "deplorables" who are doing the shooting.

OK, you're talking about the future, not about today's numbers. Somehow I hadn't realised you were clairvoyant.

Btw, any real data to back up your claim that outside centers like Chicago the homicide rate is like anywhere else, or have you also read that "somewhere"? 

[MattBurt]

We're a free country because of our firearms, and we're not about to give them up. You should be happy about that.

...

And just as an aside, I haven't personally owned a gun since I came back from Southeast Asia in 1965.

I think that is certainly a debatable point. We had a revolution and got out from under England with significant help from personal firearms. If you look at other countries that also used to be under British rule, they are also all free countries now and they didn't all have a bloody revolution to get there. Canada is a good example.
Now I'm not saying the Revolutionary War wasn't a good thing but chances are we would be an independent nation by now anyway.
After that, the firearms that helped protect our freedom were military issued and deployed, like your time in SE Asia. Your average armed citizen really had nothing to do with maintaining freedom.
You could make the argument that they would be a deterrent, but like we just saw in Las Vegas, personal arms can't typically compete with military grade arms.
The only reason we really need personal guns today is that others have them but this generally doesn't hold water from a statistical standpoint. Firearms also make it so easy to commit murder in a moment of passion, or for toddlers to shoot each other or their parents too. That happens a lot more frequently than the "good guy with a gun" saving the day. They make their owners feel better but statistically it also puts them in more danger.
That being said I have two guns in our house that I reluctantly accepted from my father in law who was terrified at the thought of us being unarmed. We keep them locked away and unloaded which is the safest thing to do if I must have them. But I don't feel safer.  I worry that one could fall into the wrong hands somehow and contribute to something horrible. I doubt it will happen but I know that is statistically more likely than the guns enabling me to protect my family from a criminal.

[RSL]

OK, you're talking about the future, not about today's numbers. Somehow I hadn't realised you were clairvoyant.

Btw, any real data to back up your claim that outside centers like Chicago the homicide rate is like anywhere else, or have you also read that "somewhere"?

No.I'm talking about today's numbers. Figures don't lie, but liars figure, and I'm very suspicious of the figures I saw popped up on here. I'd be the first to agree that Europe doesn't have the number of shootings that even Chicago has, but murders overall, that's a different subject and it depends on the definition of "murder." And I wouldn't exactly call being able to observe and recognize a trend clairvoyance.

[Peter McLennan]

I wouldn't exactly call being able to observe and recognize a trend clairvoyance.

Depends on who's doing the observing and where they go for their information.  For example: Slobodan and his "Crime Prevention" site. Spare me.

When they woke up and glanced at their phones on Monday morning, Americans may have been shocked to learn that the man behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas late on Sunday was an anti-Trump liberal who liked Rachel Maddow and MoveOn.org, that the F.B.I. had already linked him to the Islamic State, and that mainstream news organizations were suppressing that he had recently converted to Islam.

They were shocking, gruesome revelations. They were also entirely false ...

In other words, "Fake News".

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/las-vegas-shooting-fake-news.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region&region=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region

[Christopher Sanderson]

From the Economist:
Guns and God

Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is editor-at-large of America magazine, responded to the Las Vegas killings with a kind of prayer-poem that included the lines: 

I am tired, God.
I’m tired of the unwillingness to see this as an important issue.
I’m tired of those in power who work to prevent any real change.
I’m tired of those who say that gun violence can’t be reduced.

Either end of this religious-ideological spectrum can go to funny extremes. An approach that puts overwhelming emphasis on the structural or regulatory context of violence can leave itself open to mockery by seeming to deny that individuals have moral choices. But whatever you may think about the causes of badness in the world, it seems manifestly absurd to suggest that the legislator should not try, at least, to reduce the scope for evil to prevail. (My emphasis)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I wonder why there was no outcry to ban fertilizers?

[RSL]

From the Economist:
Guns and God

Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is editor-at-large of America magazine, responded to the Las Vegas killings with a kind of prayer-poem that included the lines: 

I am tired, God.
I’m tired of the unwillingness to see this as an important issue.
I’m tired of those in power who work to prevent any real change.
I’m tired of those who say that gun violence can’t be reduced.

Either end of this religious-ideological spectrum can go to funny extremes. An approach that puts overwhelming emphasis on the structural or regulatory context of violence can leave itself open to mockery by seeming to deny that individuals have moral choices. But whatever you may think about the causes of badness in the world, it seems manifestly absurd to suggest that the legislator should not try, at least, to reduce the scope for evil to prevail. (My emphasis)

And how is the "legislator" to do that, Chris? By banning guns? Everybody acts as if the guns get up and decide to go out and shoot people. Fact is, people shoot people. People also knife people. People also blow up people. People also drive trucks into people. The guns don't do it by themselves. The knives don't do it by themselves. The bombs don't do it by themselves. The trucks don't do it by themselves.

So is the idea that if we get rid of guns people no longer will kill people? Uh uh. As I said in an earlier post, making a bomb is easy as pie. If you don't know how to do it you can google it. The problem in the U.S. isn't guns. It's people. When I was young just about everybody had a gun, but they weren't shooting people. In areas of the U.S. away from crowded population centers -- especially in the deep south -- an awful lot of people have guns, but they aren't shooting people. Want to know the highest murder rates by city? The first 13 aren't even in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate. Then we finally get to St. Louis.

I think the prayer is right on, except the part about government. As Slobodan says, why aren't we banning fertilizer? You can make bombs from it. It's more dangerous than guns.

[pegelli]

I may have been off by a bit, but I suspect that considering the rate at which you're accepting Middle-East refugees the situation is going to even out in the not too distant future.

No.I'm talking about today's numbers.

What is it Russ, are you reading today's numbers or those in the (not too distant) future.

Contradicting your own words and not disclosing any numbers behind your claims about "how safe" the US outside the left hotspots is makes them suspicious at least.

[RSL]

Read what I just posted about murder rates by city, Pieter.