Arizona shooting range accident

I personally think only well trained professionals need to get near guns

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I wasn't being sarcastic at all, but making a serious point about intellect and suitability.

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Rights and liberties, whatever they are, are not conditional on intellect in democratic societies, are they?

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I wasn't being sarcastic at all, but making a serious point about intellect and suitability.

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Um, no you weren't.

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Originally Posted by Rudy Tamasz

What do you do, then? Logically speaking, you might be right. However, culture and history has much to do with any issue as logic. In simple terms, you don't ban guns where everybody historically owns guns. That's not going to work, anyway, or it might be even counterproductive. Similarly, you don't open access to guns, where people are not used to them culturally.

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Logically if you want to change behaviour, then you change the law and then enforce it. The problem is that in the case of the Second Amendment, it is seen as sacrosanct, despite the costs associated.
Whenever we have these sorts of threads, the same objections are raised and the same solutions offered; meanwhile the United States also asks the same questions, does nothing and then six weeks later forgets about it until the next time that someone destroys people - even if the guns are obtained legally and even if they happen to destroy innocent people.

Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!
(The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!)
- Kurt Tucholsky, Französischer Witz (1932)

America likes to yell "Freedom!" in the face of statistics.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I wasn't being sarcastic at all, but making a serious point about intellect and suitability.

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And its a good point.

You could add;
According to polls these same people, 92% claim to be Christian" and 88% "believe" in astrology.

How's that for cognitive dissonance?

And allegedly 47% of the country believe the earth and man are more or less 6,000 years old..

Are these people I want running around armed to the teeth?

Nope.

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Originally Posted by Starter

Um, no you weren't.

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I think I'm in a better position than you to say whether or not I was making a serious point, thank you very much.

I will say it more pointedly: the intellect of many Americans is such that I feel they should not be trusted with weapons far less dangerous than guns.

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Originally Posted by Rollo

Whenever we have these sorts of threads, the same objections are raised and the same solutions offered; meanwhile the United States also asks the same questions, does nothing and then six weeks later forgets about it until the next time that someone destroys people - even if the guns are obtained legally and even if they happen to destroy innocent people.

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Which is exactly why I say again that American gun enthusiasts consider the toll of the innocent a perfectly appropriate price to pay for keeping their guns. There can be no other explanation.

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Originally Posted by Starter

So you are saying that the United States Bill of Rights, part of the original amendments to the Constitution, is totally obsolete?
That is perhaps the most ignorant statement I've read on here in quite some time.

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Not totally.
Some of them are pointless, one is archaic, one is barbaric and the rest are fine.

This is an 11 minute read:
http://rollo75.blogspot.com.au/2014/...s-bill-of.html

I think that the existence of a Bill of Rights, limits people's vision to the extent of what's committed to paper. I for instance at common law have the right to quiet enjoyment of property, a right to travel, a right to be forgotten... the Ninth Amendment hints at this but "The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights." Doe v. Bolton (1973).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/fed.../179/case.html

Under common law principles in Commonwealth countries, rights are assumed to exist unless hedged in by law; that includes rights which haven't been thought of yet.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I will say it more pointedly: the intellect of many Americans is such that I feel they should not be trusted with weapons far less dangerous than guns.

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Wealthy and educated Brits, knives, journalists, Syrian desert...

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Originally Posted by Rollo

Logically if you want to change behaviour, then you change the law and then enforce it.

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You need to have popular support to enforce laws. Otherwise you'll have another case of brutal social engineering of the kind that often happened over the last hundred years.