When It Comes to Guns, We're No. 1

[Eliyahuw]

Eliyahuw, first off, I hope you're joking about executing everyone who sells or does drugs. That would be like 50 teenagers at my high school alone, and if Butero is correct, it would be worse in the US.

No i wasn't joking. it would solve the problem! the consequence would make it not worth the risk. China did just that, back what, 20 years ago i think. solved their drug problem!

the thing is, that this country wouldn't have the stomach for that!

I agree with you about the fact that it is worth the risk for 1700% mark-up. But that got me thinking, we're targetting the wrong crowd if we attack the drug dealers. They're making the huge profit and short of a life in prison sentence, people will take the risk. We need to target the users. Say we have a $1000 fine for anyone caught using illegal drugs, that will stop people from buying them. The sellers will be willing to risk it, but will the buyers? And if it becomes very hard to find buyers, the sellers will stop thinking it's worth the risk.

Well if you make it all legal, then the prcies of drugs would plumet, and the drug dealers wouldn't bother bringing the drugs in if all they could get is like 10 bucks a pound for pot, ect ect ect.

1000 fines. well that wouldn't do any good. these individuals already get fined to the tune of a 1000 dollars by teh time they go through court system. they continue to do the drugs anyway!

And I'm confused about your plan to legalize them. YOu said we should make them all legal, but then you said "and if they reoffend strip them of their citizenship and put them in prison or send them out of the country."... reoffend?

make the legal, if your busted for driving under the influence, or if you commit a crime while under the influence, then offer rehab one time. IF they reoffend, then strip them.

However, you might be on to something about legalizing them. I dont' remember when, but for awhile alcohol was made illegal in Canada, and that lead to a huge black market and the amount of alcohol actually increased. Maybe legalizing drugs would decrease their use and eventually people would realize how stupid it is to get hooked.

right now we have a prohibition on drugs. back in the 20's, we had prohibition on alchohol and guess what that did. it created al capone, and all the other gangsters, and then organized crime was born.

when alchohol was legalized again, it destroyed the black market for it and you don't have as much of a problem with it today. Sure you have some bootleggers but its not even a problem these days. i think around here the feds bust about 1 still every 3 or 4 years.

[KeilanS]

No i wasn't joking. it would solve the problem! the consequence would make it not worth the risk. China did just that, back what, 20 years ago i think. solved their drug problem!

the thing is, that this country wouldn't have the stomach for that!

It certainly would solve the problem, but it would be a mass murder rivaling the holocaust. The country wouldn't have the stomach for it and neither would I, the ends certainly do not justify the means in this case. (although if you were simply point out it would work, then yes, I believe it would).

As for the fines, I did not know users went through the legal system (again, I'm not American so my experience is limited). I know that at my high school a lot of the users would quit under the threat of such a huge fine (since they don't get called on it at all, meaning no legal fees either).

Your legal idea probably would work, although we could also end up with the drug market evolving into the tobacco market. The last thing we need is the large scale promotion and production of LSD and Cocaine. Smoking is legal and we've seen what happens with that, even if the dangerous drugs didn't catch on, marijuana isn't as dangerous as tobacco so that would certainly follow the path of the tobacco industry. Although the effects of legalizing drugs would be so far-reaching that I cannot possibly predict them all.

[Eliyahuw]

Your legal idea probably would work, although we could also end up with the drug market evolving into the tobacco market. The last thing we need is the large scale promotion and production of LSD and Cocaine. Smoking is legal and we've seen what happens with that, even if the dangerous drugs didn't catch on, marijuana isn't as dangerous as tobacco so that would certainly follow the path of the tobacco industry. Although the effects of legalizing drugs would be so far-reaching that I cannot possibly predict them all.

welll if they did legalize pot, the users wouldn't be a big problem. the biggest problem they would create is a shortage of munchies!

Oh LSD is not that big a deal. i used to do that years ago as a teenager. There was that hoooey that art linkletter put out about how you end up with flashbacks years later. nothing but a lie!

cocaine would solve its own problem, people would end up killing themselves over usage eventually, and other drugs the same way.

But the main thing is that the quality of the drug would be so bad, that eventually no one would even bother as it wouldn't get them high.

Mexico you can go into any pharmacy and get any drug you want for any medical need. i think theres only afew drugs that requires a prescription like morphine and such, but you only pay 20 dollars for hte prescription from a doctor thats usually around the corner and you go in and pickup your medicine.

That cuts out the 150 dollar office visit, then it also lowers the drug price too when the pharmacies can't jack the prices up.

Some folks would argue that we need professionals to tell us what we need. I say hooey. if you know you have pneumonia, you know you need antibiotics and you cnan go to the pharmacy and pick it up without the doctor adding his fees to the mix. The pharmacist knows what dosage you need.

If you are in severe pain, from lets say a slipped disk. The doctor can't do a thing about it, but add his fee for looking at you and writing a prescription. so why are you paying for him to look at you and tell you he can't do anything but prescrib vicodan, or loritabs or oxycontin??

[KeilanS]

Sorry Eliyahuw, you've pushed this into an area I can't comment on. I've never paid a cent for a doctor visit (outside of taxes obviously and I don't pay much tax yet).

[senerhu]

When It Comes to Guns, We're No. 1

By Laura MacInnis,Reuters

Posted: 2007-08-28 21:40:55

Filed Under: World News

GENEVA (Aug. 28) - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.

India had the world's second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people.

Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of country's overall civilian gun arsenals.

On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.

"Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons -- these images are certainly misleading," Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause said.

"Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income," he told a Geneva news conference.

The report, which relied on government data, surveys and media reports to estimate the size of world arsenals, estimated there were 650 million civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and military forces.

Five years ago, the Small Arms Survey had estimated there were a total of just 640 million firearms globally.

"Civilian holdings of weapons worldwide are much larger than we previously believed," Krause said, attributing the increase largely to better research and more data on weapon distribution networks.

Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons are thought to be registered with authorities.

***********

USA! USA! USA!

Praise God and pass the ammunition...

I need a glock...

[Fiosh]

Not saying I agree or disagree, just found this interesting:

The Uncomplicated Rational for Carrying a Firearm!!

By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a

100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a

75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

[Eliyahuw]

Awesome post!

[KeilanS]

Fiosh, I know that the article wasn't you speaking, but I have an issue with this point:

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force.

This is an outright lie. All carrying a gun means is that they have to be trickier in using force. You could be armed to the teeth and still have no response to "Do what I say or my partner will kill your family"... it also doesn't factor in the strength in numbers. If you have a gun, you can still be forced into something when faced by 2 people with guns. It gives the examples:

75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats.

Both of these are not so simple. First of all, if it comes down to force, who do you think will pull the gun and fire first? The 75-year old or the 19-year old? Unless the 75 year old has exceptional training, they will react slowly. The gay guy example is even worse. If the gay guy is carrying a gun, what makes them assume the carload of drunk guys would have baseball bats? They'd all be armed with guns too, and as I said above, there is strength in numbers.

Now the article makes some valid points (such as the fact that you can kill someone with a rock almost as easily as with a gun), but it certainly isn't true that carrying guns makes it impossible to use force.

[Eliyahuw]

This is an outright lie. All carrying a gun means is that they have to be trickier in using force. You could be armed to the teeth and still have no response to "Do what I say or my partner will kill your family"... it also doesn't factor in the strength in numbers. If you have a gun, you can still be forced into something when faced by 2 people with guns. It gives the examples:

There ya go changing the premise of what that post said. He specifically said personally. Secondly, two armed attackers 3 armed attackers, it does put you on equal ground, in either case 1 attacker or three. you just have to be more accurate than the others.

75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats.

Both of these are not so simple. First of all, if it comes down to force, who do you think will pull the gun and fire first? The 75-year old or the 19-year old? Unless the 75 year old has exceptional training, they will react slowly. The gay guy example is even worse. If the gay guy is carrying a gun, what makes them assume the carload of drunk guys would have baseball bats? They'd all be armed with guns too, and as I said above, there is strength in numbers.

Exceptional training? LOL, most gun owners are very well trained! better trained that most cops.

Now the article makes some valid points (such as the fact that you can kill someone with a rock almost as easily as with a gun), but it certainly isn't true that carrying guns makes it impossible to use force.

The article didn't say impossible, it said leveled the playing field.

[IraBenYahweh]

Did you know that there is a presidentual canidate that thinks that asult weapons belong in your hands?

Do you know why he thinks they should be in your hand? Because he is conserned that at some point this government just might get out of hand and start hurting its people without cuase.

Did you know this man also thinks that Man/Woman is the only thing that consittues marriage?

Did you know this man thinks that abortion should be made illeagle?

Did you know this man states that faith is a major part of his campain?

Would you guys accualy vote for a guy that feels this way?