[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Sheba

My god, if you have READ what Anh Minh said, cooled your head a little instead of going all RAEG COMMUNIST RAAAR HAET HAET HAET!!! You'd have actually known that he is french and that by "We" he meant Frenchmen. We, the French, had a functional socialist goverment for 14 years, without Reagan pulling a Chile over us.

Now would you please slow down on that little silly act you have been pulling for a while?

Oh I see, he was strictly speaking of France.
My mistake, I'm having too much fun with Mentar right now.

Originally Posted by Mentar

If you want to argue that the conditions people are living under in the US lead to crime, violence and murder, I'm not going to contradict you. But adding guns to the situation increases the risk of grave injury and death. It takes alot to kill someone with your bare hands. It's just the squeeze of a finger with a gun.

No, actually guns don't have much of an effect at all here.
Unlike other cultures, gun control laws don't stop criminals at all.
I'd be dead right now if it weren't for owning a gun, so you're not going to convince me.

I can only say that in Europe I _am_ safer. The numbers are clear. I see no reason to jeopardize that.

If you think you're safer, then I hope you're right.

A little bit less pompous, please. Fabian Socialism is a non-factor in European politics.

I suppose it has been nearly a decade since Tony Blair was in office.
I read his book "The Third Way" which was published by the Fabian Society.
The way he writes it, you'd think that the Fabians rule Europe.

Like which? Which frontline politician claims to be part or affiliated with the Fabian Society? If you follow the link to your event, it's full of nobodies.

Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were prominent members.

I can positively assuage your fears: Not even debating what the Fabian Society stands for, they're about as influential here as the Rosicrucians are in the US.

Fear, no I don't fear them, I just don't like their policies or politics.

They are utterly IRRELEVANT. You make it sound as if they had any influence or were about to set some sinister plot in motion. Except for being a fringe group within the UK labour party (which I mentioned before), they play no role whatsoever in the UK, and with the awesome power of the UK when it comes to shaping continental Europe, they definitely wield no power whatsoever.

If you say so.

Then by all means don't let NATO keep you from treating your poor humanely. Time to scale back (I actually do mean that)

We agree here. NATO has to be cut back.
It's not fair to Europe, nor the US to continue to have US bases on European soil.
We're not your babysitters and I'm quite sure you don't want us to be.

With the list of positions you made, I fully believe that - I'd rather see you on the libertarian side instead of the evangelical reactionaries. But your irrational hatred of what you call "socialism" (which has little to nothing in common with what socialism really is, by the way) is exactly the propaganda strawman I was talking about before: You believe to have understood something about the political system(s) in Europe which isn't really true. And if you're seriously equating Stalin's atrocities with European social democracies, then you're off the cliff *shrug*

No, I didn't equate them.
I said I despise collectivism, and socialism is just one form.
Theocracy is another, as it Fascism, etc.
I understand that Stalin took the leap from socialism into despotism and I said so in my previous posts.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

What's the difference? I actually think Ireland/britain is less collective then the US. No one talks to anyone here, and we're pretty selfish. That's like the opposite of collectivism. Japan, now IT'S collectivist.

Hmmm, I think in some ways you're probably right depending on which parts of this country you're talking about and whether you mean on a Federal or state level.

Examine this list. United States has over 100, Europe (twice the population of the USA) has 17. I don't think the US should be giving us lessons on gun control. In fact, thank god the chavs who were looting all over the place in London didn't get their hands on guns. The fact that the riots went on so long is more a case of police incompetence.

Perhaps we Americans are just a more violent lot than the rest of the world?
We do like to fight, and we do like to kill.
We immerse ourselves in sex, and violence in our entertainment and in our literature.
So is it really that odd that the USA should have more school shootings, murders, or gangs then other Western countries?
Take away the guns and you'll have the same rates of murder, gang violence, etc. only with different means.
I don't mean that as a boast or brag, it's actually kinda sad.

The United States is the only country I've ever seen that has schools with armed guards posted at the doors, and grills on every window. I've never seen a European school get that bad(and I've seen some pretty poor slums).

You forgot about Israel.

Fabianism is a british thing, little influence on the continent. And Europeans are getting pretty fat, and when I was on exchange in the US I saw some pretty fit girls...

Yes I know the Fabian Society is a British thing, but they've helped other socialist movements in Europe. I don't see them as some grand cabal of old men in a smoke filled room plotting world domination.
I see them as a rotting old socialist movement that's trying to hang on to it's influence by helping new socialist movements.

If you dunked your m14 in muddy water, would it still fire?

The AK definitely is king of reliability, but not so much on accuracy or quality of parts.
The reason the Ak is so reliable is because of its loose tolerances.
The trade off is a loss of accuracy.
Both are great weapons for defense.

Read the communist manifesto. Marx's goal was a classless stateless society. That's a very different proposition from Feudalism. All the reactionaries of Europe hated the Socialist's guts, and they wanted a return to feudalism, where the average worker was a serf entirely controlled by their "betters". Now in effect, Soviet communism ended out as a sort of quasi-feudal arrangement, but that wasn't the goal of Marx, and it certainly wasn't the goal of European communists and socialists outside Russia. You can get a very good idea of Communist and Socialist ideals from reading the manifesto, it's also pretty well written. A lot more fiery then most manifestos. It tells you how Communists viewed themselves, and what their ideals were.

I own a copy of the Communist Manifesto. I read it often.
The point I was making was that H.G. Wells, a Fabian member for some years, stated that Marx was dreaming about a new agrarian Feudal era.

Chavs are. I don't like the idea of a Chav being able to take me by surprise and shoot me for kicks. Because I know they would. Our gun control works so well that most of our Gardaí don't need to carry guns. Or even a taser. You can do pretty well with just a baton, pepper spray, and a whole lot of guts...

Glad to hear gun control works for you over there.
Over here that wouldn't work due to the weapons smuggled in from South America, and the sheer number that are already here.
Not too mention weapons that get sold on the black market.
It's simply a matter of society and mindset, and that's what I've been saying from the begining.

One in a country of a billion (with a lot of corruption), hundred in a country of 300 million, your point?

Gun control will not stop a determined individual from committing crime, nor will it deter criminals who have no respect for law to begin with.

And you should take your examples from the Social Democracies of Western Europe, and not the dysfunctional Despotic Communist Regimes of Eastern Europe.

I understand what you're saying, but my point is still that European style Social Democracy wouldn't work in the USA.
The corruption in such a system applied to the USA the way it is now would shock you.

True, but I don't think we can get away from youth gangs wherever you live, and I'd prefer to live in a society where they don't have them. The average gang member in Europe doesn't have guns, while in the US it's commonplace.

Only because the black market is full of stolen, and illegally imported weapons.
The UK has the benefit of being surrounded by water on all sides, I doubt it's easy for criminals to smuggle weapons into your country.

And overall, Europe has lower gun violence and homocide rates, so I'd say the policies work.

Maybe in Europe they do, but not over here.

I attended Virginia tech on an exchange, the ROTC does not have guns. In fact I talked to some gun advocates and he said(roughly) "they should at least have let the ROTC carry guns, they'd have been able to chase Cho off as there's an ROTC cadet in nearly every class". ROTC has no guns inside the campus. The whole campus is a no gun zone, even before the shooting.

Not even the US armed forces recruits could have guns on campus?
No wonder these shooters choose them.
They're easy pickings.
How many "gun-show" shootings do you read about?