Gun Control
- Thread starter Throatpunch
- Start date
Carib FMJ
Nuka-Cola Chaser
I do not believe in a gun for every home. What I do not cotton to is that law abiding citizens are the ones meant to pay the price for wrong doers who will keep wrong doing. Now if there is illegal pipelines of guns, by all means Johnny Law can land on them with both feet. But to demand confiscation from Joe Six Pack because the Mafia is at it again is a bad thing. Crooks do not like armed citizens. They don't. The Drug Cartels actually pay Mexican governors and legislators to make sure the peasants can't fight back.
The Cartel would be hard pressed to be leaving heads on door steps if Juan and Maria can fire back and in some places, especially those in the Mexican hinterlands don't get as much trouble from the cartel because they can fight back.
For the US, why is shootings a big issue now versus many years ago. If people have no respect for life than the mad dogs of society need to be dealt with and the citizen should not fear for his life. Yet, for all things a season. My pop raised me to respect and fear firearms; The army further instilled that. I am a licensed conceal and carry holder I am also trained in protective services. I do wish average American had training and I wish some places would at least enforce training. Training is key. The crazier the weapon, more demand on training.
I carry but I do not look for trouble. The Gun to me, is the last resort and I blame hollywood to a degree for making it seem to glamours but at the same time they call for bans. A ban won't solve anything. Because even if all guns disappeared doesn't mean we won't have would be Jack the Rippers running about.
However, that is my opinion. If you like guns, be responsible. Guns do harm but they also make sure no one tries to take your life away either. To each his own.
Most interesting opinion. How, exactly, guns "make sure" noone tries to take one's life? I am pretty sure - as far as my opinion goes, - that it's not so.
Here's one concrete example of what i mean - the person who had a gun tried to use it, but was killed by officers; however, as it reported, two bullets barelly missed one officer's head, and i mean here that in other similar situations, we'd have such a police officer instantly killed on the spot, despite being armed himself:
Me, i am fairly sure that as soon as gun's presense on any person is discovered (or initially known) to any other person who may wish harm to the gun carrying person - that person's life is as much extra protected as it is extra threatened, since his potential opponents are not only much more likely to just eat a bullet or two and RIP, but are also much more likely to use their intellect and weapons in a much more deadly manner.
The problem can only be avoided if you carry the gun, but nobody knows you do - but then you are also losing any "protection" the gun is giving you, since they are treating you as an unarmed person who supposedly can't shoot 'em dead in a blink of an eye.
That is my opinion as of now. Please educate me if i'm wrong about something, ok?
Why should law abiding civilians not own nuclear weapons?
Yeah. I imagine it'd be very funny if some office clerk mishandles his personal pocket nuke at some point, and as a result, whole Manhattan - and much of the surrounding area - would be levelled off. Would be such an irony. Ultimate result of "Manhattan project", eh.
Well, liberty and freedom doesn't come without its cost. How else, if not with access to nuclear weapons, do you want to protect your self from a tyranical government? What if they decided to take over, as right now they have a monopoly on nuclear arms and civilians are completely defenseless. Not to mention that it doesn't stop criminals from trying to get them illegaly.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
It would not surprise me if some [now civilian] gun collector has one of these in his stash.
MutantScalper
Dogmeat
All the current or future terrorists need to do is get a dirty nuke, and use it in a big city etc. I guess something like that has to happen in NYC or somewhere for US to start thinking about more regulations and laws.
Including live nuclear warheads? Yeah, I don't think so.
Dirty bombs are less effective in killing people than regular bombs.
Anyone who's capable enough to obtain couple "dead" tactical warheads is also apriori capable enough to disassemble them and then build his own "live" warhead using fission matherial from those "dead" warheads. Not personally, of course, - we talk people with enough influence to afford corresponding specialists to work for them on such a task. Design of simple fission warhead is not a secret, and corresponding calculations are not a secret either. Amount of fission matherial sufficient to cause runaway nuclear reaction (explosion) - is known precisely. The largest difficulty would be to design and build proper vessel for joining two halves of fission matherial together using conventional explosives, but that's something which great many thousands engineers of all kinds are able to do quite very well.
But if we talk what's most effective in killing people during terror attacks, in practice, - then it's no kind of nuke, dirty or regular. Efficiency is not only about brute force and immediate effect. If you talk "effective", then most efficient method of terror at present time remains conventional weaponry and transportation - and terrorists keep using exactly that. Because:
- if they start to blow up nukes, then massive infrastructure and "assets" collateral damage will force powers that be to start actual war against such terrorists. They won't last any much after that - and they know it;
- for a price / effort of making, transporting and detonating a single nuke, probably many dozens, if not hundreds, of "usual" terror acts (involving suicidal bombers and such) could be made, each having big psychological impact in cities they happen in, also adding to "collateral" psychological impact globally;
- using conventional means of terror allows terrorist organizations to function in much more discrete manner: instead of relatively large groups of people who must cooperate to make any "nuclear terror act" possible, small groups and even individuals, a.k.a. "lone wolves", can do.
I guess this is why largest concern about "rogue" usage of nuclear weaponry remains with certain relatively small countries which have certain "self-righteous" kinds of regimes. Pakistan and Iran, primarily, i'd say - while there are many rational specialists there who know they must never use nukes, there are also many proper religious fanatics, and in certain circumstances they may end up launching their nukes offensively. Perhaps same can also be said about US, after all, generations of its politicians and generals are largely grown with ideas of undisputable superiority of United States. Could it be that at some moment certain clique of extreme US nationalists will gain full control of US nuclear weapons - either globally or at least in some region? I wouldn't exclude this possibility.
Not North Korea though, - afaik, their "commie" ideology is only a shell, while elites of North Korea are very much pragmatic and capitalistic to the bone, which is why they will only use nukes as a means to prevent attacks into their soil, i.e. defensively. Unless they are massively attacked 1st, that is.
But if we talk what's most effective in killing people during terror attacks, in practice, - then it's no kind of nuke, dirty or regular. Efficiency is not only about brute force and immediate effect. If you talk "effective", then most efficient method of terror at present time remains conventional weaponry and transportation - and terrorists keep using exactly that. Because:
- if they start to blow up nukes, then massive infrastructure and "assets" collateral damage will force powers that be to start actual war against such terrorists. They won't last any much after that - and they know it;
- for a price / effort of making, transporting and detonating a single nuke, probably many dozens, if not hundreds, of "usual" terror acts (involving suicidal bombers and such) could be made, each having big psychological impact in cities they happen in, also adding to "collateral" psychological impact globally;
- using conventional means of terror allows terrorist organizations to function in much more discrete manner: instead of relatively large groups of people who must cooperate to make any "nuclear terror act" possible, small groups and even individuals, a.k.a. "lone wolves", can do.
I guess this is why largest concern about "rogue" usage of nuclear weaponry remains with certain relatively small countries which have certain "self-righteous" kinds of regimes. Pakistan and Iran, primarily, i'd say - while there are many rational specialists there who know they must never use nukes, there are also many proper religious fanatics, and in certain circumstances they may end up launching their nukes offensively. Perhaps same can also be said about US, after all, generations of its politicians and generals are largely grown with ideas of undisputable superiority of United States. Could it be that at some moment certain clique of extreme US nationalists will gain full control of US nuclear weapons - either globally or at least in some region? I wouldn't exclude this possibility.
Not North Korea though, - afaik, their "commie" ideology is only a shell, while elites of North Korea are very much pragmatic and capitalistic to the bone, which is why they will only use nukes as a means to prevent attacks into their soil, i.e. defensively. Unless they are massively attacked 1st, that is.
MutantScalper
Dogmeat
Depends on the dirty nuke. Also, I think a nuke device of any kind would render a large busy city center inoperative for a long time.
Define "long time", please? Nagasaki, as far as i remember, was never completely abandoned despite being hit point-blank with a nuke, back in 1945. Most modern nuke designs are times cleaner than those used in 1945, too - in terms of fallout. Tactical nukes can also be several times less powerful than Fatman design of 1945. Also, much depends on where the detonation occurs: usually highest damage is achieved detonating it in the air, some few hundreds meters over terrain (which they did in 1945, too); surface explosion would do less damage; and underground explosion - for example, in a city's subway system, - would possibly do little enough damage to only render couple blocks uninhabitable, or even not that - certain underground test explosions (done by both soviets and US back when nuclear test ban treaty did not exist yet) did not even produce any visible lasting damage.
MutantScalper
Dogmeat
Could be up to a month, or even longer, depending on what type of dirty nuke it would be and how it would be used. If it was in the subway system it could bring that system to a halt. Etc. During WW 2 in Nagasaki I doubt they had full knowledge of radiation etc. leading to the high mortality figures afterwards.
They had full knowledge, but the radiation simply wasn't that strong. An airborne explosion doesn't create much radioactive fallout. The high mortality afterwards was mostly from the injuries and radiation damage sustained from the explosion, not the fallout.
MutantScalper
Dogmeat
So in your opinion a dirty nuke in a big city, say NYC, would be a "meh"-type situation and not "OMG!!1"-type one? Not just saying the direct impact, I'd say the panic would be more from media etc.
No, a dirty bomb that just dispersed a few kilograms of uranium or plutonium (which are not only radioactive [although the radiation isn't that dangerous if you have a mask, as alpha radiation is blocked by basically everything], but also highly toxic) would be quite dangerous. Not necessarily in a subway, as it would only fuck up that station for a while, but in an open, crowded area it would be quite nasty I guess.
As for "dirty nuke", I guess that would be an inefficient nuclear bomb? Or a salted bomb? Anyway, that would be a lot worse, of course, because the explosion would likely be way stronger than any "normal" bomb, and not only would it disperse nuclear material, it would also have a much more extreme thermal and radioactive flash that would injure at longer ranges than a normal bomb.
BigGuyCIA
Yer fond of me Lobster!
Well the alternative is Police treating even the most mundane traffic stop as life-or-death and basically having their partner keep a gun leveled on you as you're reaching for your ID. We've already seen how those situations end (and they didn't even have their guns drawn).
Again, the less-pragmatic solution being to live in a society where everyone has their guns drawn and ready to act. Imagine having a Mexican stand-off with your waitress while ordering food for the kids. Fun stuff right? It's like that South Park episode where everyone in the Marsh household was pointing a gun at each other over a simple disagreement.
The reality is you can't prepare for every single possible situation. But, I'd venture a guess and say that an individual with a gun is more capable of defending him/herself than an individual without one - (especially in home invasions). That isn't to say I feel we should be handing out CC permits like candy, in fact I don't feel CC permits are a solution to anything because the problems are socio-economic (and creating deterrents without addressing the underlying issue is more problematic). But, a lot of what follows the notion of "being prepared for every possible situation" is just an exercise in dangerous heuristics.
The issue is that you only tackle the symptoms if anything with weapons. But since it is not very likely that anything in the US will change in the near future, a weapon might be actually advicable ... give the area. However, I often feel like this seems to be the solution to everything for some.
The US has a gun problem? More guns! Crime? More guns! Inequality? You guess it ... no seriously though, it's a bit strange when you should actually try to combat the reason for crime, and not just arm the civilian population. It really seems like people would rather want to live in the United States of Somalia rather then to do something to fight the reasons for all the crime.
The US has a gun problem? More guns! Crime? More guns! Inequality? You guess it ... no seriously though, it's a bit strange when you should actually try to combat the reason for crime, and not just arm the civilian population. It really seems like people would rather want to live in the United States of Somalia rather then to do something to fight the reasons for all the crime.
BigGuyCIA
Yer fond of me Lobster!
I mean, it's a funny thread to have adjacent to a 'guns and ammo' thread. It's two way street, though. Absolute Gun control and absolute gun freedom are two exercises in self-defeat. These conversations are symptomatic of societal problems, but the reality is that NIMBY-ism dictates how far people are willing to go.
Then again, the actual reality is that society (within the US) is significantly more safe than 20-30 years ago. I just believe that the advent of media has lopsided everything and created an eco-system where you're either being told to buy shit or to check under your bed twice for the bogeyman. You tune out all that white-noise and you find that hey, maybe the world isn't so bad.
Then again, the actual reality is that society (within the US) is significantly more safe than 20-30 years ago. I just believe that the advent of media has lopsided everything and created an eco-system where you're either being told to buy shit or to check under your bed twice for the bogeyman. You tune out all that white-noise and you find that hey, maybe the world isn't so bad.