Hmmmm, knife control now?

[+Julhelm 266]

Well thruth be told, there is a little shimmer of hope after all up here.

 

Last year a guy, after years of having his family harassed by local youths, snapped and shot two of them, killing one and wounding the other.

Well what do you know? The court not only dropped all charges against the man, but gave him back his gun!

 

Take that f***ing hippie scum.

[Emp_Palpatine 501]

You are a British fellow?

That's not gonna happen in France...

[GwynO 16]

Couldnt agree more. The politics of polarization have poisoned the the ability of this country to compromise and function as it was intended. Moderation has become veiwed as weakwilled evil by both extremes when it is what reasonable men have pursued since the dawn of time. Wierd how that happens...

 

 

 

 

I agree rights have obligations. That is the hallmark of any good civilization. But to search when nothing has been done wrong even if someone fits a so-called profile smacks of a rights violation in itself. Remember Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and countless other dictatorships. Its called un-lawful search and seizure. Americans hate it. Even if the search is completely un-obtrusive with modern technology, it still smacks of "Big Brother" watching us. What gave him the right to do that? 9/11 and the possibility of more such attacks? Im sorry, but aint we fighting a war because of that attack? They hit us, we hit back, simple as that. And law-abiding citizens dont lose the rights thier soldiers are told they are defending. We require a warrent here after due evidence has been demonstrated. Its in our Bill of Rights. In America it is presumed you are innocent till proven guilty. Yes violence has become more prevalent, only a blind fool would think not. But I, and the VAST majority of law-abiding Americans, should not be required to relinquish one iota of our civil rights to satisfy anyone elses justifications...that is wrong. To violate human and civil rights in the name of crime fighting, or terrorism, or whatever the "in" word is this particular day is taking the simplistic easy way out of a difficult issue/problem at the expense of freedom. Thats un-American. That is exactly the kind of goverment interferance this topic was started in protest of.

 

Bill of Rights...

 

Amendment IV

 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

Using that rational that to be searched without prior evidence of guilt is wrong, I should refuse to have my luggage scanned boarding a plane? What is the difference between being searched at an airport for a domestic flight for example, e.g. citizen flying from one place in their own country to another and being searched on a train? Do we need more security just because they are planes? Surely the principle is the same in that to take steps forward in detecting illegal items before they are a problem is justified because the rights of the many individuals to freedom and peace outweigh the ideological slight to individuals who feel their innocence should be apparent to all. I say ideological slight because thats all that I can see could be raised by anyone for being passively scanned for explosives, drugs, weapons etc. For example, if I walk through a busy public space and encounter a police handler with a sniffer dog on exercises, do I really have the right to complain that this is an infringement on my liberty? If the dog is ONLY used for me and the police follow me relentlessly with the damn thing then fair enough that sounds like a violation! ((seriously though, get real) If my person is free of anything worth detecting it is not a problem to me is it? neither are all manner of passive electronic scanning equipment that not just can be used but are being used routinely at airports across the world and I for one wont complain on the basis that "I AM innocent and MY word for it is good enough for anyone else"

 

I think you misunderstand the war on terror, at least I hope you do, because I would never support a war where the casus belli is not merely to chase those responsible for terrorism but also to defend the lapses in security that allowed them to happen in the first place, that im afraid is pathetic, by that rational we shouldn't have adapted to 9/11 by banning all bladed articles from flights for example? We shouldn't be thinking of sealed cockpits, or air marshals? And all because it threatens an ideological value that while fair in a hypothetical fairy society is entirely inconsistent with the lived in reality of human behaviour.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Mab Glyndwr

[GwynO 16]

Lucky the police can still give you a sense of reassurance. Local cops here are dread instilling as they're nothing but improvised tax collectors. They pulled the same BS speeding charge on both my father and next door neighbor, and the judge simply tossed out evidence prooving the ticket was falsified and physically impossible for the alleged charge to have happened. Because if the cop said you were going 50mph (in a 30 zone right before a red light, had either of them been going 50, they would have run the red light and certainly caused an accident passing through traffic that was going 50) Not to mention the one whose job seems to be to stand around outside the local supermarket/mini-mall strip and harass kids for no reason.

 

Re: knives again, this is one area I do agree with those on the right: simply carry a bigger knife (like in crocodile dundee and a guy tries to mug him with a switchblade, and dundee pulls out a machete )

 

And actually, the only times such measures are anything but violations of rights would be in the immediacy of a crisis (like manhattan the day of 9/11) People here are remarkable for pulling together, making it unnecessary. With the vast majority of emergency services tied up in lower manhattan, the rest of the city could have devolved into no man's land, yet crime was lower than it normally would have been.

 

I'm not suggesting that police should act as your describing, but the institution of the police does reassure me, much more than the prospect of their absence in society.

 

Crocodile Dundee?? Oh please do be serious, I thought about that for a while in my adolescence, and you know what I found in practice, that there will always be doubt "do I have the biggest, the best and am I the best?" questions that make you paranoid and in need of a ever bigger, better weapon. But what if there are more of them??? Ohhh then I need friends who will back me up, this is how teenagers get sucked into this problem of knife crime in the first place, because of this Crocodile Dundee mentality you promote. Given the choice of living in a Crocodile Dundee New York or a country where knives simply are not tolerated on ANYONE then I would choose the knife less state!

 

The rights issue, again i'm seeing ideology as the primary focus of that argument not pragmatism, so people behaved well during the events of 9/11, hmmmm was that because they had other things on their minds maybe???? In every day normal circumstances, would you entrust the safety of the state to peoples good will in not abusing their rights or committing crimes? The truth is we do need the police, we need them to play an active part in ensuring our collective and individual safety, and if that involves passive detection of weapons, what exactly is the problem with that?

 

Immediacy of a crisis, to this do I understand that it is right to stop criminals but only after they have done something wrong or do you think the measure of searching for weapons even through passive means should only be used in the context of global terrorism?

[GreyCap 0]

And what is wrong with gun and/or knife control?? Geez what's the matter with you people...

[Emp_Palpatine 501]

The matter is: can and should the state ban us to bear arms whereas the state itself isn't able to protect you. In a word: giving your liverty to defend yourself in exchange of a false protection, whereas bad guys would have arms, control or not.

[GwynO 16]

@Tailspin - We obviously disagree on a number of points, mostly concerning the rights of one individual being more important than the the rights of the many individuals, that is something that as interesting as it is, neither of us will likely yield on that one and no need either in a democratic forum. About the abuse of power and the need to stop it well, I don't think i do contradict myself, as I pointed out previously, i am not sitting on the outer fringe of either left or right, I am a free individual, free to choose what I think when i think, and this I do based on new information and new ways of processing that information this is why I am extremely cautious against dogmatism or ideology in my thinking - The circumstances of the 1990's policing of the U.K. where different and there is nothing wrong in my thinking for having different solutions to problems, you don't treat illness with the same old drugs because they illnesses adapt just as fast as the solution, this is true of social diseases too.

 

Well it is shocking that police would confiscate the property of poor little old drug dealers! How dare they! I wonder if its a crime to steal stolen property from a junky? If its a end user, who otherwise is law abiding person then that is an abuse but for dealers and thieves, I don't pity their loss of property at all.

 

Carrying large amounts of money should in my opinion be perfectly legal and fine unless it is not yours of course! I can understand why a police officer would ask questions of a person with a huge amount of cash though! As would a bank if you tried to cash in an enormous sum of money pretty likely they would have procedures to source it, again here I can understand the argument of presumption of innocence but I insist that this is only really valid in an ideological state, not a pragmatic one... e.g. Certain international banking centers are a haven for drug barons and other criminals just because of their stance on non disclosure and obtrusion of investigations into the sources of huge deposits, I understand why you would admire their ideological stance but I don't, in fact I think it despicable that some banks even would even attempt to obfuscate enquiries into nazi gold deposits on just such ideological grounds that deposits should be assumed legitimate unless proven otherwise despite the fact that proof likely would only be forthcoming through those particular enquiries.

[GreyCap 0]

The matter is: can and should the state ban us to bear arms whereas the state itself isn't able to protect you. In a word: giving your liverty to defend yourself in exchange of a false protection, whereas bad guys would have arms, control or not.

 

Well using that logic, I guess we can all walk around with hand grenades in our pockets, because the bad guys might have grenades... Hey, alot of kids get kidnapped, lets arm our kids and teach them how to shoot. That will solve everything.

Isn't the USA proof that bearing arms doesn't solve anything?

[GwynO 16]

The matter is: can and should the state ban us to bear arms whereas the state itself isn't able to protect you. In a word: giving your liverty to defend yourself in exchange of a false protection, whereas bad guys would have arms, control or not.

 

Well yes, thats going from one extreme to another isn't it, from a stuation where everyone has weapons and the state fails to to protect us but we individualy protect ourselves, to a state of having no means of self protection at all but again no state to protect us. So what is the problem with having a state where bearing arms is just not possible for the vast majority of people, criminals and law abiding citisens alike because the state actualey does function to detect and prosecute (in most places with already existing laws) what I am suggesting is that we actively try to achieve what our (most of Western Europe) laws aim to do, this means empowering police not tying their hands behind their backs like for instance in the U.K. we had a particular community of muslims complain against police dogs infringing their rights as muslims and guess what the police suggested?? That dogs wear booties so as not to directly contaminate the purity of their muslim floor surfaces :rapage:

 

I'm just fed up with people undermining the attempts to make society safer by making the police smarter, more accountable, equipped, trained and crucially free to act. Whats the point of having a police force at all if its all up to the individual to sort out their problems, then they are nothing more than a waste of tax money.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Mab Glyndwr

[GwynO 16]

Well using that logic, I guess we can all walk around with hand grenades in our pockets, because the bad guys might have grenades... Hey, alot of kids get kidnapped, lets arm our kids and teach them how to shoot. That will solve everything.

Isn't the USA proof that bearing arms doesn't solve anything?

 

Sanity at last!! Thats what im saying, there will always be the thought of "is my weapon enough", "am I outnumbered"... I don't want to live in a country that has that paranoia! Its bad enough living in parts of cities here that feel like that! Been there and got the t shirt and it's not worth the paranoid delusions, itchy trigger fingers and fast guns/knives are fine for John Wayne movies or Tarantino films but aint that a large part of the problem with Afghanistan, Iraq and so many other places though, the constant fear of the other guys weapons leading to more and more intimidation and aggression.

 

The U.S.A. has a lot of good things to show the world, you can't walk around tooled up everywhere in the States you know, it's actually quite illegal to have a weapon on your person in public without good cause in most of the States.

 

Also, if they don't trust the government, who will protect them against W.M.D.?? hmmmm quick Grey lets go W$$$mart for our ICBMs before the cranks get them first!!

[GreyCap 0]

... what I am suggesting is that we actively try to achieve what our (most of Western Europe) laws aim to do, this means empowering police not tying their hands behind their backs like for instance in the U.K. we had a particular community of muslims complain against police dogs infringing their rights as muslims and guess what the police suggested?? That dogs where booties so as not to directly contaminate the purity of their muslim floor surfaces :rapage:

 

I'm just fed up with people undermining the attempts to make society safer by making the police smarter, more accountable, equipped, trained and crucially free to act. Whats the point of having a police force at all if its all up to the individual to sort out their problems, then they are nothing more than a waste of tax money.

 

I completely agree with you, we should let the police/law/government do their job. It is to protect us after all.

Using the "this law is infringing on my human rights!!!" BS is a favorite trick of (some) muslims in Canada too...

[eraser_tr 29]

Not quite as stupid as installing footbaths for muslims in public bathrooms, but only in unisex bathrooms!

[Emp_Palpatine 501]

Well using that logic, I guess we can all walk around with hand grenades in our pockets, because the bad guys might have grenades... Hey, alot of kids get kidnapped, lets arm our kids and teach them how to shoot. That will solve everything.

Isn't the USA proof that bearing arms doesn't solve anything?

That's exagerated.

Allowing private possession of arms and make the self defense law less stricter is not the same thing as allowing the possession of war weapons.

By the way, as far as I can tell, not everybody wander around in switzerland with the war rifle almost everyone do have. And the country is not in constant bloodshed too. I'm sure US fellow can also assert that they don't often see some people with hand grenade in streets.

 

The fact is that today I'm defensless in the streets and at home and that in my own country, the Police is unable to fulfill its duties. Why should I rely on the state for everything? Giving it all the responsability for my security is a step toward serfdom. The question is not to solve crime or whatever, the question is in my eyes the capability for myself to defend my ass. If the bad guy in the subway or in the street think I may bear an arm, he might have second thought before risking his skin for my money or my MP3.

 

Plus, I do agree with the US constitution. Having the right to bear arms is a protection against any oppression. We are today totally unarmed against statism -and its failure- today in Europe.

[Emp_Palpatine 501]

Well yes, thats going from one extreme to another isn't it, from a stuation where everyone has weapons and the state fails to to protect us but we individualy protect ourselves, to a state of having no means of self protection at all but again no state to protect us. So what is the problem with having a state where bearing arms is just not possible for the vast majority of people, criminals and law abiding citisens alike because the state actualey does function to detect and prosecute (in most places with already existing laws) what I am suggesting is that we actively try to achieve what our (most of Western Europe) laws aim to do, this means empowering police not tying their hands behind their backs like for instance in the U.K. we had a particular community of muslims complain against police dogs infringing their rights as muslims and guess what the police suggested?? That dogs wear booties so as not to directly contaminate the purity of their muslim floor surfaces :rapage:

 

I'm just fed up with people undermining the attempts to make society safer by making the police smarter, more accountable, equipped, trained and crucially free to act. Whats the point of having a police force at all if its all up to the individual to sort out their problems, then they are nothing more than a waste of tax money.

I'm not a libertarian. I don't want to destroy the state. But I find it profoundly unfair to be quite certain order is no longer enforced in my country and that if I try to protect myself I WOULD BE PROSECUTED. Because I'm a low-middle class post-graduate caucasion. Hell yes, I would be prosecuted and punished by judges. Because I'm too stupid and I'm still a normal citizen, obeying police or whatever. Everyone knows in France that some people (immigrant/muslim gangs) bear arms. They are the ones who are putting cars in flames, making gang-rapes, pillaging in subway or whatever. Those peoples are not prosecuted. They are perfectly known by police services, who do often catch them and handle them to justice. The said justice, in most case, release them the same day... Poor guys are victims, etc. You know the common bulls**t behind such attitudes.

So what's the point? What's the point when indeed the police does its job, but the state (because such acts by the judges come from instructions too) do not play its role?!

Even if I'm against any ban on arms, I wouldn't found it scandalous if I was sure any bad guy would be prosecuted or arrested. It's sadly not the case, therefore I would like to have the right to defend myself.

[GwynO 16]

I'm not a libertarian. I don't want to destroy the state. But I find it profoundly unfair to be quite certain order is no longer enforced in my country and that if I try to protect myself I WOULD BE PROSECUTED. Because I'm a low-middle class post-graduate caucasion. Hell yes, I would be prosecuted and punished by judges. Because I'm too stupid and I'm still a normal citizen, obeying police or whatever. Everyone knows in France that some people (immigrant/muslim gangs) bear arms. They are the ones who are putting cars in flames, making gang-rapes, pillaging in subway or whatever. Those peoples are not prosecuted. They are perfectly known by police services, who do often catch them and handle them to justice. The said justice, in most case, release them the same day... Poor guys are victims, etc. You know the common bulls**t behind such attitudes.

So what's the point? What's the point when indeed the police does its job, but the state (because such acts by the judges come from instructions too) do not play its role?!

Even if I'm against any ban on arms, I wouldn't found it scandalous if I was sure any bad guy would be prosecuted or arrested. It's sadly not the case, therefore I would like to have the right to defend myself.

 

Emperor, I fully agree with the right to defensive actions (even with any weapons to hand including chainsaws and flamethrowers) within your own home, what I disagree is that because we know there are criminals with weapons and that we know the state, government, judges etc are ineffective in enforcing the law, that this means the final solution is to carry these with us everytime we leave the house and enter what is not our personal space but a shared social space.

 

If the criminal in the street thinks you may have a knife or a gun also and he desperately hungers after your ipod, believe me he will play by the rules of the jungle too! He wont stick with his current weapon, rather he will use the black market and get a bigger better weapon than you could as a legal individual, unless you think we should all be allowed to drive around in Humvees with assault rifles and body armour? Where would it all end?

 

Surely the better kind of fear to put the criminal under is the fear that the police will almost certainly detect them, detain them and that the courts will punish them to the maximum stated in law, this is a kind of fear that I would dearly love to see facing the criminals.

 

Of course, there is the argument that the state(s) can go bad i.e. Former Yugoslavia then we would need to defend ourselves against them, well this is the only time when it would be permissible in my opinion to bring my weapons out of storage and into the conflict, but you will find that this is the mentality in Switzerland and Sweden and many places with a high rate of weapon ownership verses usage. People in these countries generally don't wish to use their weapons unless their is a crisis of invasion, civil war etc or of course an invasion of your home. The difference is that these examples of Western European liberal states is that the populace generally do not have an obsession with carrying weapons on the street, indeed street crime is lower in the Switzerland and the Nordic countries and I will look for the statistic source tomorrow, we studied this during a sociology module at uni. What we need to do in our countries is to ask ourselves why are we so different, why is it we have a street crime problem? I think it is more to do with enforcing the law than arming ourselves, to that end we need a better police force, a better political and judicial state of affairs... not a better blade/gun/grenade/nuke in our pocket.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Mab Glyndwr

[GwynO 16]

Not quite as stupid as installing footbaths for muslims in public bathrooms, but only in unisex bathrooms!

 

Now thats what I call Progressive Islam

[Roopod 0]

I completely agree with you, we should let the police/law/government do their job. It is to protect us after all.

 

I don't know what country you may be referring to here... but in the U.S.A. it isn't the job of the police to protect us. I don't have a police officer or security guard protecting me. Neither does the majority have any such setup. That's why you are expected to defend yourself via our 2nd Amendment rights. Thousands of Americans do this every year. They protect themselves, their families, and sometimes complete strangers. That's what it meant when we made the Declaration of Independence one of our founding documents. Now, in 1992 many people signed onto the Declaration of Interdependence and probably believe it's the job of someone else to risk their life to save yours such as the police/law/government. There's a reason why the U.S. of A. became such a successful nation in a relatively short time. Probably the main one is that most Americans strive for their own Independence from others telling them what and when they can do anything. Would you be able to say that after you put the police/law/government in charge of you?

[+Tailspin 3]

@Tailspin - We obviously disagree on a number of points, mostly concerning the rights of one individual being more important than the the rights of the many individuals, that is something that as interesting as it is, neither of us will likely yield on that one and no need either in a democratic forum. About the abuse of power and the need to stop it well, I don't think i do contradict myself, as I pointed out previously, i am not sitting on the outer fringe of either left or right, I am a free individual, free to choose what I think when i think, and this I do based on new information and new ways of processing that information this is why I am extremely cautious against dogmatism or ideology in my thinking - The circumstances of the 1990's policing of the U.K. where different and there is nothing wrong in my thinking for having different solutions to problems, you don't treat illness with the same old drugs because they illnesses adapt just as fast as the solution, this is true of social diseases too.

 

Well it is shocking that police would confiscate the property of poor little old drug dealers! How dare they! I wonder if its a crime to steal stolen property from a junky? If its a end user, who otherwise is law abiding person then that is an abuse but for dealers and thieves, I don't pity their loss of property at all.

 

Carrying large amounts of money should in my opinion be perfectly legal and fine unless it is not yours of course! I can understand why a police officer would ask questions of a person with a huge amount of cash though! As would a bank if you tried to cash in an enormous sum of money pretty likely they would have procedures to source it, again here I can understand the argument of presumption of innocence but I insist that this is only really valid in an ideological state, not a pragmatic one... e.g. Certain international banking centers are a haven for drug barons and other criminals just because of their stance on non disclosure and obtrusion of investigations into the sources of huge deposits, I understand why you would admire their ideological stance but I don't, in fact I think it despicable that some banks even would even attempt to obfuscate enquiries into nazi gold deposits on just such ideological grounds that deposits should be assumed legitimate unless proven otherwise despite the fact that proof likely would only be forthcoming through those particular enquiries.

 

 

There is nothing dogmatic about it. Its called the Constitution. :yes:

 

The drug dealer law as written was designed to confiscate the property of drug dealers. The idea being that said property was obtained with illegal and obviously untaxed income. That law was quickly "expanded" by overzealous LEOs into the idea that police could confiscate the property of drug "users" such as the vehicle of an owner that was caught with a single joint in the car. A clear abuse of the law and the powers given to police by such laws. Same for cash. I don't know about you but $5000 isn't much money...about what you might need for a few weeks vacation. The Govt. is telling me I basically can't take the cash necessary because I am a suspected drug dealer if I do and we can confiscate it until you prove otherwise. The counter point I was trying to illustrate is that abuse of power by Law Enforcement Organizations is much more common than people realize.

 

And FYI...48 of the 50 States in the US have concealed carry laws that allow anyone who meets requirements and obtains a license to carry a concealed firearm on their person in public. Guess what. Violent crime in those States has dropped considerably. Fact is the areas with the most restrictive gun laws have the highest incidences of violent crimes. Crooks aren't stupid. They know where to find the most vulnerable victims.

 

As for reliance on police protection...well we have a saying here. "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

[i90807065 0]

The fact is that today I'm defensless in the streets and at home and that in my own country, the Police is unable to fulfill its duties. Why should I rely on the state for everything? Giving it all the responsability for my security is a step toward serfdom. The question is not to solve crime or whatever, the question is in my eyes the capability for myself to defend my ass. If the bad guy in the subway or in the street think I may bear an arm, he might have second thought before risking his skin for my money or my MP3.

 

Thats how I feel, I personnally carry a knife wherever I am just in case(because im not in any way an intimidating person). No im not just going around stabbing people cause they scare me, I have it JUST IN CASE. One just never knows what might be "lurking around the next corner" so to speak.

 

And FYI...48 of the 50 States in the US have concealed carry laws that allow anyone who meets requirements and obtains a license to carry a concealed firearm on their person in public. Guess what. Violent crime in those States has dropped considerably. Fact is the areas with the most restrictive gun laws have the highest incidences of violent crimes. Crooks aren't stupid. They know where to find the most vulnerable victims.

 

Im trying to get a gun license for that very reason..

Edited July 24, 2008 by i90807065

[+Dave 2,319]

OK guys lets put this one to bed shall we?