Introversion

Rkiver wrote:

Ace Rimmer wrote:

Rkiver wrote:Ah come on, that's a bit harsh now. It's not Feud's fault that some of his countrymen are a bit nuts and have easy access to weapons.

Something about a pot and a kettle and the color black comes to mind.

Edit: And just to point something out. Religion is not a precursor to violence, false religion is.

Religion can be a precurser to violence. I point out most violence at the moment is carried out by one particular religious group (well a minority part of it) who believe very strongly in their religion.

Also while better gun control would be a start, since Feud has not been able to vote in any legislation as of yet it's not his fault. When he does vote, and if he votes against gun control, then yes I'll lay into him. Till then however tearing him a new one for gun control is not really fair. Tearing him a new one for buying weapons however, eat your heart out.

Also his religion advocates helping fellow man, donating money does so, spending it on weapons does not (though the US sells so much weaponary a year....)

There was a point or two in there somewhere.

Buying a weapon does help the fellow man since you probably pay taxes on the gun (at least in belgium you do) and some of that money is spend to help poor people.

xander wrote:And, pray tell, how do you tell the difference between false religion and real religion? Also, you do realize that simply labeling something as false religion doesn't actually do anything to solve the problem, right?

And right there is the problem isn't it. How do you tell? Well, I don't actually think you want a real answer to the question, just what I think is the way to tell. So, I'm gonna try to keep it short. The Bible (what I believe to be Gods revelation to man, and thus my source) is clear. First you have to be called ("Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father") by God the Father. Then it is made evident what scripture means. ("And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God") The "god of this age" is a very real Satan. And then to "prove" what you begin to understand you must actually do what is said. ("The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding"). Having proper respect for authority, not outright scared fear as you'd fear a vicious animal about to devour you, as God is a perfect father, and being even an imperfect father I can tell that I do the majority of what I do (even discipline) with love and concern for my children. Lastly, since "many are called, but few are chosen" it's clear that the majority of humanity has it all wrong. Cause if you had it right, you'd be "chosen", meaning you'd understand.

Not that being chosen somehow makes you better than others, in fact it is specifically stated "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong".

Just take the last six commandments and completely ignore the first four. 1-4 tell us how to love God, 5-10 tell us how to love our neighbor. Love being active selflessness as opposed to the more common and natural selfishness. If these six were followed, the world would be transformed.

Honor your Father and Mother
You shall not murder
You shall not commit adultery
You shall not steal
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
You shall not covet ...

If children had a healthy respect for parents (i.e., first real experience with authority), they'd grow up to respect other proper authority, among other things. If this were done over long periods of time, the future parents would be a better group and so on. And it's pretty easy to see what would happen if there was no killing, adultery, stealing, or lying. Even the last one would make large differences in society.

Obviously a label doesn't do anything.

Anyway, I specifically said "strictly speaking recreation" regarding guns.

Rkiver wrote:Wasn't talking about the recent shootings being religiously linked, just world violence in general (Darfur, Pakistan, Gaze et all).

Certainly isolated conflicts can be driven by religion, but there is a huge amount of secular and domestic killing and violence that has nothing to do with religion. Also Darfur is more about ethnicity than religion, though religious groups are involved.

Rkiver wrote:Also I could have sworn I heard the NRA were backing betting gun control and backround checks and the like, perchance I was mistaken.

That'd be news to me. They were able to defeat reauthorization of the ban on assault weapons in the US in 2004. They have also been opposing (successfully so far) a hand gun ban in San Francisco. They have also managed to be so anti-government that even Bush has resigned his life-long membership.

Also yes, buying a rifle for sports is fine. Handguns should be limited to cops. There is no reason I can think of having a handgun in the home.[/quote]

Ace Rimmer wrote:The Bible (what I believe to be Gods revelation to man, and thus my source) is clear.

Aye, there's the rub. What you believe versus what they believe. Unless that belief was universal (regardless of who was right) there is no way to distinguish true from false religion simply because the false religions do not agree with your concepts of makes it a false religion.

I say X is true, you say Y is true
X says Y is false and Y says X is false

How do you prove which is right short of the big guy actually showing up?

Ace Rimmer wrote:If children had a healthy respect for parents (i.e., first real experience with authority), they'd grow up to respect other proper authority, among other things.

Lot's of criminals love and respect their parents, which as much as you know could be decent people or even worse criminals. Respecting the parents does not mean they'll respect other things. Similarly, lots of people that don't respect their parents, respect the proper authority. That extrapolation is not really valid.

Xocrates wrote:

Ace Rimmer wrote:The Bible (what I believe to be Gods revelation to man, and thus my source) is clear.

Aye, there's the rub. What you believe versus what they believe. Unless that belief was universal (regardless of who was right) there is no way to distinguish true from false religion simply because the false religions do not agree with your concepts of makes it a false religion.

I say X is true, you say Y is true
X says Y is false and Y says X is false

How do you prove which is right short of the big guy actually showing up?

That's exactly the reason I put the "I believe" in there and the part about not wanting the real answer.

Xocrates wrote:

Ace Rimmer wrote:If children had a healthy respect for parents (i.e., first real experience with authority), they'd grow up to respect other proper authority, among other things.

Lot's of criminals love and respect their parents, which as much as you know could be decent people or even worse criminals. Respecting the parents does not mean they'll respect other things. Similarly, lots of people that don't respect their parents, respect the proper authority. That extrapolation is not really valid.

That makes no sense. You don't respect your parents if you're a criminal! Hehe. What honor does it bring to a father or mother, what joy does it bring to them to see their child doing something that can harm them and possibly their family? If the parent/s are criminal/s too, then neither have any sense. As far as the opposite situation, respecting authority but not parents doesn't really work either. It can't be a healthy respect, that's for sure.

Ace Rimmer wrote:That makes no sense. You don't respect your parents if you're a criminal!

Oh really? Shows how much you know now doesn't it.

Ace Rimmer wrote:That's exactly the reason I put the "I believe" in there and the part about not wanting the real answer.

Heh. I missed the part about not wanting an answer
But that makes your post a bit silly though, that pretty much like saying, "you can't, but here's how it is done anyway".

Ace Rimmer wrote:That makes no sense. You don't respect your parents if you're a criminal! Hehe. What honor does it bring to a father or mother, what joy does it bring to them to see their child doing something that can harm them and possibly their family? If the parent/s are criminal/s too, then neither have any sense. As far as the opposite situation, respecting authority but not parents doesn't really work either. It can't be a healthy respect, that's for sure.

We'll have to agree on disagreeing, then.

Xocrates wrote:

Ace Rimmer wrote:That's exactly the reason I put the "I believe" in there and the part about not wanting the real answer.

Heh. I missed the part about not wanting an answer
But that makes your post a bit silly though, that pretty much like saying, "you can't, but here's how it is done anyway".

That's pretty much what I am saying.

Although, I'll clarify that a bit: "you can't unless you're called, but here's how it is done anyway". Once again, being called doesn't make you "better". Read that, it's not a [Nelson]Ha-Ha *points finger*[/Nelson] kind of thing.

For the record, I do support gun control.

However, that does not mean that I support all types of gun control, just as one may support social welfare but not agree with handing out cash to the homeless. I do vote for people who I feel are striving to make America safer, but I weigh that safety against the liberties that must be sacrificed to achieve it. Sometimes the scale tips one way, sometimes another.

I'm all for keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally unbalanced and the criminal element, and I support legislation whose goal is to do such. I do not think however that disarming the law abiding public is either ethical or responsible. These shootings, nearly always carried out in a supposed "gun free zone", illustrate that when you disarm the public those who obey the law will have no defense against those who don't.

While some may say making guns illegal will prevent access by criminals to them, I would advise them to contact their local police department and inquire as to how well making crack, meth, cocaine, heroin, and weed illegal has reduced criminals' ability to gain access to them.

If no 'law abiding citizens' have guns, then criminals no longer need guns to mug or rob other people. In Peckham and other ropier areas of London there have been shootings as of late, however so far they have all been gang and tribal warfare (and bizaarely one case of someone refusing to abide by the smoking ban in pubs), the majority of criminals who go in for mugging, theft, robbery and so on just use knives given than people are generally defenceless. Thus the people get robbed, the go to the police, they get insurance, people don't die.

If both the criminals and 'law abiding citizens' are armed, then someone is going to die or at the least get severely injured. That's not good in anybodies' book.

BrianBlessed wrote:If no 'law abiding citizens' have guns, then criminals no longer need guns to mug or rob other people. In Peckham and other ropier areas of London there have been shootings as of late, however so far they have all been gang and tribal warfare (and bizaarely one case of someone refusing to abide by the smoking ban in pubs), the majority of criminals who go in for mugging, theft, robbery and so on just use knives given than people are generally defenceless. Thus the people get robbed, the go to the police, they get insurance, people don't die.

If both the criminals and 'law abiding citizens' are armed, then someone is going to die or at the least get severely injured. That's not good in anybodies' book.

Knives are "safer" than guns eh?

Evening Standard, 2007-08-10 wrote: happened less than a mile from where 15-year-old Adam Regis was stabbed to death in March in an unprovoked attack.

Rizwan is the 21st teenager to be murdered in London this year and one senior Met officer said today that teenage violence was one of the biggest challenges facing the force.

At least 21 families would disagree with "Thus the people get robbed, the go to the police, they get insurance, people don't die." Especially the "they don't die" part.

Obviously that's (statistically) small number and I'm not saying a gun would have prevented any of them.

BrianBlessed wrote:If no 'law abiding citizens' have guns, then criminals no longer need guns to mug or rob other people. In Peckham and other ropier areas of London there have been shootings as of late, however so far they have all been gang and tribal warfare (and bizaarely one case of someone refusing to abide by the smoking ban in pubs), the majority of criminals who go in for mugging, theft, robbery and so on just use knives given than people are generally defenceless. Thus the people get robbed, the go to the police, they get insurance, people don't die.

Your reasoning may work for the casual mugger (though not in my case, where I was mugged at gun point when I obviously didn't have a gun), but for school shootings like yesterdays, where the aggressor is only interested in killing, a disarmed public is vital to their success.

He refused to give up his mobile and was stabbed, the other two who did give up their mobiles weren't stabbed. If the muggers were only using their mitts that could have just as easily happened, although you'd have to pretty huge to mug someone without any weaponry.

The offchance that anyone could walk into a large group of people and massacre them is hardly justification for school children to walk around with 9mm pistols tucked in their socks. Also even if the people in question are armed, unless they are a highly trained tactical force, it's not going to help them a great deal in a shooting - at best the death toll might be lower because the person in question is shot rather than taking their own life. There was a guy in England years ago who walked into a church with a samurai sword and slaughter a load of people, saying that people should carry their own bladed weaponry round with them on the minor chance that they are ambushed is just bizaare and will cause more injuries and death than it would stop; at the same time there is a law coming in in April this year which will make ownership of 'imitation' samurai swords (the ones which aren't real japanese samurai swords but are almost identical in every other sense) illegal to stop the various occasions people have used them quite horrifically.

BrianBlessed wrote:If no 'law abiding citizens' have guns, then criminals no longer need guns to mug or rob other people. In Peckham and other ropier areas of London there have been shootings as of late, however so far they have all been gang and tribal warfare (and bizaarely one case of someone refusing to abide by the smoking ban in pubs), the majority of criminals who go in for mugging, theft, robbery and so on just use knives given than people are generally defenceless. Thus the people get robbed, the go to the police, they get insurance, people don't die.

If both the criminals and 'law abiding citizens' are armed, then someone is going to die or at the least get severely injured. That's not good in anybodies' book.

I agree.

Ace Rimmer wrote:Knives are "safer" than guns eh? :P

Yes, they are. They require more skill to use for one thing. Not just anyone can handle a knife. A gun requires only the pull of a trigger. Plus, it's easier to run away from a knife fight, or block a knife with your arm. There's not much you can do when someone fires a bullet at you. A gun gives a criminal confidence. When both have guns, the likelihood of death or injury is drastically heightened. In fact, I would rather not have a gun when I'm being robbed. That way, I can hand him my wallet and send him on his way without anyone being hurt (maybe a few bruises, but nothing fatal). I then promptly cancel my credit card so I don't lose any money. Ideally, the criminal would have only a knife so I can run away or call for help. I also believe the frequency of muggings and robberies would decrease if there weren't any guns.

Let me get this straight, Ace. A true religion is any religion that you believe that your Bible says is true, while false religion is anything else? Way to raise the level of debate. :\

If a crime is done in the name of a religion, then it is appropriate to say that it was religiously motivated. Throughout history, many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. Thus, many atrocities have been religiously motivated, whether or not you believe in those religions, or even approve of them. Period.

xander