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Originally posted by OmegaMan:

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Originally posted by Jigga

You appear to have used two opposite logics here. Firstly, you say that better enforcement/tougher sentances etc. of gun control will not affect criminals, as they don't pay attention to the law anyway. Then you say that tougher sentances/ more enforcement for gun related crime should be increased, and that this would affect these crimes. Surely by the logic of your first arguement, this would have no effect, as criminals would not pay attention to these anyway.

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I never said that better enforcment and tougher sentances will not affect criminals. I said I do not support tougher gun control and licensing of firearmes. Those will not affect the criminals. The only people that get licensed are the law abiding gun owners the criminals will not go and get a licensed, and tougher gun control will just make it harder for law abiding citizens to purchase a firearm not the criminals. I do support better enforcement and stricter penalties. These will affect the criminals by locking them up and keeping them from committing another crime, and the stricter penalties will keep them locked up a lot longer.
Deterrent is a bad way to stop crime! In many cases, gun murders are done in hot blood, where logic and reason are at best distant acquaintances. The penalty for first-degree manslaughter is already either life or death, and it's committed pretty frequently regardless. The best way to prevent crime is to make sure that the people getting guns both know how to use them and intend to use them only for self-defense, and only as a last resort.

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Actually being a former member of the Armed Forces I spent 4 years in the National Guard I do know what I am doing.

Maybe you do. Others however do not. And when you say you know what you are doing, what exactly does this mean? You know how to shoot somebody well?

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What it means is I know the proper use of a gun I know how to handle it and how not to handle it. When to use it and when not to use it. And as for others, maybe if people where not so close minded and learned how to properly use and handle a firearm then their opinion might would go from, guns are bad, to if used properly a gun can be a very safe thing and have it's uses.
I, personally, know how to use a firearm. I, personally, would not carry or use one, as I would not want to be caught in a situation where I would require cool, calm nerves in a panic situation. I don't think guns are bad; I merely think that it should be necessary to learn how to properly use and handle a firearm before it can be legally bought, kept, or used. I don't stand for the outright banning of guns, but I do stand for controls that make sure that Joe Q. Public won't be putting my life -- and the lives of those I care about -- in danger by having one unless he knows what he's doing with it.

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Originally posted by OmegaMan:

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Originally posted by el presidente
Moral of story: The crazed gunman often knows what he's doing. The police always know what they're doing. You do not know what you're doing. There is no reason for you to own an assault rifle.

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Actually being a former member of the Armed Forces I spent 4 years in the National Guard I do know what I am doing.
Are you currently in the National Guard? Does your pay depend on you knowing how to operate an assault rifle? If not, why do you presume you are better-equipped to deal with a homicidal maniac than someone who is both?

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Do you stand against licensing of firearms, then, and tougher control of guns? It's my personal opinion that only those who know how to responsibly use firearms should be allowed to do so. That way those who can responsibly use firearms are able to, and those who cannot are not.

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I do not support tougher control of guns I support stricter penalties for crimes involving a gun, and as for licensing of firearmes. What will that do? Criminals will hardly be affected by licenses, they get them illegal anyway. If properly enforced the gun laws that we have on the books now would be very effective.
Criminals will acquire and use guns no matter what we do. The only thing we can hope to do is to make sure only those good, upstanding citizens who know how to use them get guns, so they don't end up killing other good, upstanding citizens when using them. This is the problem with firearms, which I like to call Dirty Harry Syndrome: Basically, it's an all-too-common mentality to think that picking up a gun automatically makes you a certified expert in using it, and will shoot accordingly. They are a danger to themselves and others. No legislature -- at least none directly concerning guns -- will permanently solve gun crime, but increased control will mitigate damage from people with good intentions.

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Originally posted by Lone Flame:
Let's revive that bill and while we're at, let's raid the homes of law-obeying citizens and take all of their guns away. And why not go a step further and take away their knives and swords. Then criminals can continue buying guns off of the street and kill the completely unarmed citizens. Wouldn't that be a nice safe America?
"Knives and swords"? The average man hasn't defended himself with a sword since the 1600s, and still doesn't. Most people who have swords are either overweight fanboys of some persuasion or another who would likely chop their arms off in a combat situation, or people for whom swordfighting is an unhealthy fixation and who will likely find themselves either using that fixation much less than they'd think they'd need to -- or in jail.

Of course not. Israel have no crime (other than suicide bombers), and the reason for that is most of the people there are packin heat and will bust a cap in you if you steal somethin.

Israel has no crime? Shows where you're getting your statistics from. [Hint: It has a nice view of his prostate gland.]

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Originally posted by OmegaMan:
Even if the bill is passed and I hope that it is not, it will do nothing to stop the criminals from using them, they are readily available throu the black market or by smuggling them in to the US from other countries.

Before you try and take away our guns (I mean law abiding, gun owing Americans) you really should take a look at the other countries that outlawed guns such as England and look at their crime levels and then ask yourselves, if their citizens had the right and the ability to defend themselves would their crime levels be so high?? I think not.

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and I know that the guns are not the problem it is the people using them that is the problem. I have been shooting sense I was 5 years old and in the 19 years that I have been shooting I learned how to properly handle gun and how to respect it.

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So maybe instead of outlawing the guns maybe they should outlaw stupid people. But in the words of a great man "You will have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands" and that man was Charlton Heston. Former president of the NRA and a great actor as well.

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Originally posted by Vladimir Scorpius:

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Originally posted by el presidente:
I don't believe it's accepted practice to destroy hijacked planes. Hijackers, more often than not, have a goal in hijacking a plane besides destroying buildings, and sending jets to scare the bejesus out of the highjackers gives them the wrong idea and jeopardizes any people in the aircraft.

I see you've dished out the rhetoric right from the get-go. You've changed "the accepted practice of interceptor jets" to "the accepted practice of blowing up planes". Then you go on to describe why blowing up planes is a bad thing. And then you automatically equate the "better choice" to military policy. All I have to say is...huh?

Okay, my bad if I screwed this up. The second point still stands, though -- sending out interceptors to meet the hijackers is going to give them the wrong idea in a serious way.


"Prolonged, horrifying attack"? You make it sound as if we saw this coming. The attacks were bolts of the blue, and the US would consume massive amounts of time and resources vigorously pursuing every potential threat. As it is in this kind of affair, by the time you know for sure what's going on, several weeks have passed since the attack.

(I didn't phrase the questions. A well-respected Canadian journalist did.)

So...you think it would be a waste for the US would consume "vast amounts of time and resources" in order to stop further terrorist attacks? You don't consider two wars to be "vast amounts of time and resources"?
(I love how you try to rile people up by using the material of a third party. It's like you don't even think about these things until after you've posted them.)
I didn't say I agreed with the war. I said that it would be patently insane to pursue any vaguely reasonable terrorist threat, as it would involve a clampdown on civil liberties and a huge amount of resources being expended. Your arguement seems to state that not predicting the attacks' occurence lead inevitably to two wars.

Suspicions were raised on them -- but not credible suspicions, not ones which would lead an immediate investigation or apprehension. In the US, it is not possible to arrest a man because you have a hunch about him being willing to commit a crime, nor should it ever be so.

It's not possible to arrest a man for a potential crime? What about all those people sitting in jail with no evidence and no trials forthcoming? What about the USA's policy on dealing pre-emptively with Saddam? Do you agree with these now, Alec? The US does what it likes.
I said that pre-emptive arrest is wrong, and that it's not something that is accepted process here. Learn to read, dickweed.[/qb]

Because Donald Rumsfeld is an irrational warmonger. You knew this, right?

It's so easy and fun to say "the Bush administration is filled with idiots". Sort of like how Disney poked fun at Hitler during the war, by making him out to be incompetent. (Except that...gasp! He wasn't!) But they all got their jobs because they're at least of average intelligence.
I didn't call him an idiot. I called him "irrational" because he has produced no evidence to substantiate his claims of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the Bill of Rights being threats to American security. Please learn to read these things more carefully; this will be the fourth out of four times you've "refuted" me on something I didn't say, implicitly or explicitly, and on something I'd agree with you on.
Please read these things before responding to them.

Why were the planes at Pearl Harbor mostly destroyed on their carriers? After all, there were obvious warnings about the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
The answer to both is that there was no state of alarm at the time of the attacks. Asking the US to be on constant alert against any remotely credible threat would be insane.

Again, you've transformed "protecting the leader of the country" to "being on constant alert against any remotely credible threat". Not the same, Alec. It's not hard to protect a single, vital target. Once again, drop the rhetoric.
You claimed that fighters should have been scrambled to protect the White House. The President was not in the White House after the attack, and before the attack there was no state of alert. We don't make a practice of protecting the President with combat aircraft unless there is a state of alert. So either you're asking why we didn't protect a President who was not there, or why we didn't protect him before and risked having him get killed in an attack we had no evidence to suggest.

So far as I'm aware, the final sentence of this paragraph makes false assumptions -- Bush couldn't have been briefed about the attacks before they happened, could they? He was there for PR, plain and simple.

It was after the attacks, before the PR event.
Again, so far as I'm aware, the PR event was at the same time as the attacks, more or less.
1½ good questions out of 7.

Wow. A "good question", and you decided not to answer it.
Do I look like the CIA to you? I can't very well answer good questions, as they're the sort I'd ask myself.

It's idiotic questions like most of these that prevent more valid, sane ones from being answered, too. Conspiracy-theory nonsense allows the powers that be to propaganda away genuine concerns about the events following the 9/11 attacks as "insane conspiracy theories".

6 000 000 people died in the world's largest conspiracy. Killing 2000 is a hell of a lot easier. Especially when they're helpless sheep who consider asking questions to be "idiotic".
Exactly. Why are you giving the people conspiring against them fuel by asking stupid questions?

I'm not saying it's probable that the USA launched an attack on itself. Just possible.
It's possible. It's also possible that Israel engineered this attack on us. It's no more likely, but hey, the various theocracies and despotisms of the Middle East sure latched onto it.

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Originally posted by Vladimir Scorpius:
Actually, I have several questions about planes flying into skyscrapers.

Why did the United States Air Force fail to scramble interceptor jets — in defiance of all long-standing rules and well-established practice — for almost two hours after it was known that an unprecedented four planes had been hijacked?
I don't believe it's accepted practice to destroy hijacked planes. Hijackers, more often than not, have a goal in hijacking a plane besides destroying buildings, and sending jets to scare the bejesus out of the highjackers gives them the wrong idea and jeopardizes any people in the aircraft.

How could the world's most powerful military fail to react throughout a prolonged, horrifying attack on the financial and political capitals of the nation?
"Prolonged, horrifying attack"? You make it sound as if we saw this coming. The attacks were bolts of the blue, and the US would consume massive amounts of time and resources vigorously pursuing every potential threat. As it is in this kind of affair, by the time you know for sure what's going on, several weeks have passed since the attack.

How did the FBI know the exact identities of the hijackers within 24 hours of the attacks? If their files were so readily to hand, why hadn't they been apprehended earlier? After all, several conscientious FBI agents had raised the alarm about a number of known Al Qaeda sympathizers at U.S. flight schools, and had been ignored.
Suspicions were raised on them -- but not credible suspicions, not ones which would lead an immediate investigation or apprehension. In the US, it is not possible to arrest a man because you have a hunch about him being willing to commit a crime, nor should it ever be so.

Why did Donald Rumsfeld call for a war on Iraq (not Afghanistan) the morning after the Saudi hijackers had accomplished their attack?
Because Donald Rumsfeld is an irrational warmonger. You knew this, right?

Why did the two squadrons of fighter jets at Andrews Air Force base, 19 kilometres from Washington, not zoom into action to defend the White House, one of their primary tasks?
Why were the planes at Pearl Harbor mostly destroyed on their carriers? After all, there were obvious warnings about the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
The answer to both is that there was no state of alarm at the time of the attacks. Asking the US to be on constant alert against any remotely credible threat would be insane.

Why did George Bush sit for half an hour in a Florida classroom, listening to a girl talk about her pet goat, after his chief of staff told him about the second plane? For that matter, why did he pretend that he first learned of the attacks in that classroom, when he had actually been briefed as he left his hotel that morning?
So far as I'm aware, the final sentence of this paragraph makes false assumptions -- Bush couldn't have been briefed about the attacks before they happened, could they? He was there for PR, plain and simple.

Why has there been no public investigation into the billions of dollars "earned" by insider trading of United and American Airlines stock before 9/11?
1½ good questions out of 7.

I don't think these questions have been answered yet.
It's idiotic questions like most of these that prevent more valid, sane ones from being answered, too. Conspiracy-theory nonsense allows the powers that be to propaganda away genuine concerns about the events following the 9/11 attacks as "insane conspiracy theories".

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Originally posted by Imban:
What happens to Limoncelli? :/

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Originally posted by M. Boeh:

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Originally posted by Little Miss Agoraphobia:
Yay for slash! As I know nothing about anime, I prefer to simply refer to slash as slash.

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Slash is homoerotic fanfiction, not pictures.

And can someone please post some shoujo-ai instead?

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Originally posted by RentBoy:
...I mean, thread.
Last weekend saw the opening of X-2 (the new X-Men movie), which could be argued was the kickoff to the summer movie season.
I'd like to see what people's thoughts are on this yearly spectacle:
Do you wish Hollywood would sink into the sea already?

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How do you feel about Jim Carrey making more money in three months than you will your entire life?

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Do you wish French movies would have endings?

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Do you wish American movies wouldn't have endings?

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Are you particularly excited about some upcoming movie?

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Do you think Glitter, Crossroads, and Spice World are the three best movies ever?

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Steven Spielberg: Overrated hack or creative genius?

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How about the possibility of a Spidweb movie? Which game? (Included for relevancy's sake)

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Etc.
Go nuts.
*is reminded of Kung Pow, falls down and dies*

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