Connecticut Tragedy

[kencameron]

It's quite clear that I differentiated between the UK and Australia when I said  "calling for guns to be entirely outlawed as per the UK or even the Australia model."  For the sake of this discussion I see absolutely zero difference between "outlawed" and "banned."  It's the same thing.   So to help you with the reading:  outlawed as per the UK OR EVEN the Australia model.  Which means outlawed or severely restricted.   Why you quibble to the point of distraction about a sentence whose meaning is clear to most anybody is something I don't wish to speculate.

We will have to disagree about the plain meaning of your sentence as written. I now know that you meant it to mean "outlawed as per the UK or severely restricted as per the Australian".

But I do find your OTOH remark not well written because I don't understand what the heck you mean.   You start off with a 100% wrong assumption "your intent is to demonstrate your knowledge" (my intent was to answer a question directly asked and whose answer benefits everyone participating in the discussion. It's a key point, oft misunderstood) but the rest of your sentence is scrambled no?   Clear it up for us.

Well - as in the case of my understanding of what you wrote, the problem could be your understanding, or what I wrote. We are unlikely to agree as to which it was. I am a bit puzzled, however as to what question you thought you were answering by asking me questions about various makes of gun. And I can only assume you are using some kind of royal plural when you refer to "us", as I have no evidence that anyone else is in need of clarification.

orage."[/b]
So you won't mind telling me how one develops a "need" for hunting or target shooting, something according to your link you MUST be able to provide?   And what does a "gun club" cost in Australia?   Is a need satisfied by "I'd like to take a hunting trip up north" or must you show you need the meat to subsist?  Who decides your.. well.. we can't call it a 'right", so lets call change that to "who gives you permission or allows you to own a firearm by acceptance, or not, of your "need?"

The police decide, in the first instance, in accordance with their interpretation of the law, as they decide lots of other things, in your country and mine. If their decision is arbitrary you can appeal.  Read Tony's post for an account of how and why all that doesn't matter to us in the way it apparently does to you. In the real world, the situation is as I described it - anyone who wants to hunt or target shoot and doesn't have a criminal record can do so with minimal impediment, except in relation to what kind of gun they can buy. The cost of joining a gun club is insignificant compared to the cost of the guns and the ammunition.

orage."[/b]
My point here is you might not be able to do as you say if you have someone making the decision that doesn't believe hin hunting, doesn't like you, doesn't like the color of your car..   Because you no longer have a right.  You're only conditionally allowed on the whim of some official.

As I explained above, our officials don't get to make decisions based on whims, whether the decisions are about guns or about any of the other thousands of things officials make decisions about, in your country and mine. They have to make them accordance with the law and if you don't like their decision you can appeal it.

orage."[/b]
But yes, "the Australian model" as I eluded is not that guns are totally outlawed.  They are only subject.  Subject to the opinion of someone not you.. without clear guidelines they must act under.  Or at least the guidelines were not listed in your otherwise complete reference.

Oh come on. This is getting silly. Surely you don't really think it is safe to assume that there are no guidelines because the guidelines don't happen to be listed in a Wikipedia article.

orage."[/b]
  A gun is a gun.  I suppose politicians don't want to touch that one.

Here we are getting closer to an area of agreement. Bureaucratic distinctions between different kinds of gun are always going to be open to criticism and politicians are always going to go for what sounds good.

orage."[/b]
Well, if you don't want to answer questions showing your knowledge of firearms.. how about a more open question.  John Howard as stated in his autobiography "hates" guns.. a very strong emotion.  Ever wonder where he developed this hate?  And he states he "seized the opportunity with the Port Author massacre" to push through your restrictive gun control   So one man with hate of the subject of a law.. admittedly took advantage of the people in writing new laws.  Interesting.  Our laws get their power from our constitution and our constitution is written to prevent one man from having such control over laws (something our President often needs reminding of).. As a people American's reject such power.  My question:  Do you think Australia's "conditioning" as "subjects" of the Queen is responsible for their.. well.. being okay with being controlled like that?  Personally I haven't seen this trait in the Australians I've come to call friends.. but they don't belong to that vast majority who are okay with the current gun laws.  In all seriousness, if you read through this thread I've become quite impressed with Australians.  I'd hate to think they haven't outgrown the antiquated concept of a monarchy.

.

John Howard was able to legislate for changes to the gun law regime because almost everyone strongly agreed with him - almost all the people and almost all the elected politicians of all parties. The changes were made by people's elected representatives voting in Parliament, not by personal fiat of John Howard.  If almost everyone, Democrat and Republican,  strongly agreed with your President on something, it would probably happen, at least in the first instance, no?  Those who disagreed could of course challenge the constitutionality of changes to the law, as they could in Australia. If the people and their elected representatives had disagreed with John Howard he wouldn't have been able to do anything. You are making a distinction with little substance in it. In fact I suspect - I am open to correction on this - that your President can do rather more by executive order than our Prime Minister can by issuing any kind of personal instruction.

orage."[/b]
I've become quite impressed with Australians.  I'd hate to think they haven't outgrown the antiquated concept of a monarchy.

We have differing views on how best to select our purely ceremonial Head of State. I would personally prefer some kind of Republic, as would almost all of our gun control advocates, while almost all Australians who would agree with you about gun control would prefer to stick with the Queen.

[Steve Weldon]

Steve you are making my argument very well.
I put those observations down to show that there appears to be a massive gulf in thinking about gun ownership in Australia versus the USA.
Your thinking personifies that gulf.

As for some of the other issues that your last post dragged into the debate well you asked for this.
I happen to be an Intensive Care doctor (you didn't know that did you) who knows far better that you about iatrogenic (doctor-caused) harm because I deal with it in my ICU on a daily basis. I do regular battle with collegues about this issue (to the point where some of them wish they could put a bullet in me) and so am sometimes regarded as a polecat.

Also, although traffic-related injuries and deaths, in global terms are minimal in Australia - even one is too many.
Additionally, my medical career started in South Africa where traffic-related injury and death is appallingly, obscenely, and criminally, high.
That is not all.
I witnessed, in battlefield-like conditions, the appalling carnage made possible by unrestricted access to weapons of any sort never mind those currently accepted as military grade weaponry.
I have several late and lamented friends from South Africa who were trained Special Forces soldiers ("reccies") and policemen who carried guns all the time (especially when in civvies - and quite legally) who are all dead, killed by criminals, and had no chance despite their immense training and capabilities. Sadly them bearing arms contributed to their deaths since they all went for their weapons when caution would have been the better option or they were killed because they were found to be carrying weapons by the criminals despite their caution.

Unlike you, I will not speculate about your experiences, expertise, interests, and concerns, I will, however, put forward observations and opinions based on direct, and unfortunately very unpleasant, experience.

Tony Jay

1.  What argument was that Tony?  Other than your claim there's some big gulf?  Was that it?

2.   Tony, there is no more gulf between the way you think and the way gun control advocates feel in the USA.. But there is a huge gulf between what you say and Australians I've known for years.  The biggest one is they've never purported to speak for their entire country, only themselves.

3.  My personality.. wow.  I didn't know we've even kissed yet and there you go knowing all about me.    I think you're merely hearing what you were pre-disposed to hear.  So far I think there is only one person in this thread who has actually "heard" what I've been saying.

4.   Asked for what?  I never asked for your resume though big surprise a doctor doesn't like guns.  Not an entirely new concept.

5.  I didn't know and I don't see how you can consider it any big surprise.  First it needs to be relevant.  Second, someone needs to care.  I haven't asked anyone what their primary job is.  All I've cared about is if they actually understand the topic, and then what they think about the topic.  You seem to think its' a big deal you're a doctor.  Congratulations, but what does it have to do with the topic at hand?

6.   Too bad you couldn't have got in a better school.  Did you think you're the only one who's lived overseas in third world countries?  Welcome to my world Jay.. welcome to my world..

7.  You witnessed battlefield "like" conditions.  I'm sorry, I've been in the battlefield and in more than a few third world countries.  There is nothing "like" an actual battlefield though you can be forgiven for thinking so.  Btw  -  The US is not a battlefield or even "like" one.

8.   Such is war.  I'm sorry for your friends.  But people die in war, they die falling off a ladder.  Despite their training.  Sad but true.  Why, did someone tell you if you carried a gun for self defence it would save you 100% of the time?  That it was magic?  Or are you going to tell us them having a weapon is the reason they're dead?  I'm listening.


9.  Hehe.. that's exactly what you were trying to do.  These "immensely" trained special ops guys went for their guns and that's why they died.  It's almost too good to be true from your POV, without it you wouldn't have had this winning example.  Tony, I know something about the subject.  I've been around such men my entire adult life.   I've never heard of a more unlikely set of circumstances.

10.  Go ahead, guess away.  I don't get this "unlike you" part, did I let it slip out I didn't think you were a photographer?   I don't think I did.

11.  Boy, that's good to know.  Now the people here won't have to listen to the stuff I've been making up based on no experience, training, or opinions either..

Tony.  No offence digger, but you're let yourself down in a terrible way.  Rarely do I see someone shoot themselves in the foot with such a large caliber  bullet (pardon the metaphor), in public.. Such a treat.

[Steve Weldon]

We will have to disagree about the plain meaning of your sentence as written. I now know that you meant it to mean "outlawed as per the UK or severely restricted as per the Australian".

Thank you for this.  You wouldn't believe the people who continue to tell you what you were saying even after they explained to you, you were saying something different.

Well - as in the case of my understanding of what you wrote, the problem could be your understanding, or what I wrote. We are unlikely to agree as to which it was. I am a bit puzzled, however as to what question you thought you were answering by asking me questions about various makes of gun. And I can only assume you are using some kind of royal plural when you refer to "us", as I have no evidence that anyone else is in need of clarification.

The makes of guns were the "black gun" look, and the more soft versions.  Exactly the same function.  Like what we have here when they ban the other just because of the looks.   I was curious on the finer details to see if this was being repeated.   Us?  Sorry.. when Caesar sits with me it's almost like he becomes human.

That's his best Clint Eastwood "Make my day" pose.  What do you think?

The police decide, in the first instance, in accordance with their interpretation of the law, as they decide lots of other things, in your country and mine. If their decision is arbitrary you can appeal.  Read Tony's post for an account of how and why all that doesn't matter to us in the way it apparently does to you. In the real world, the situation is as I described it - anyone who wants to hunt or target shoot and doesn't have a criminal record can do so with minimal impediment, except in relation to what kind of gun they can buy. The cost of joining a gun club is insignificant compared to the cost of the guns and the ammunition.

As I explained above, our officials don't get to make decisions based on whims, whether the decisions are about guns or about any of the other thousands of things officials make decisions about, in your country and mine. They have to make them accordance with the law and if you don't like their decision you can appeal it.

Oh come on. This is getting silly. Surely you don't really think it is safe to assume that there are no guidelines because the guidelines don't happen to be listed in a Wikipedia article.
Here we are getting closer to an area of agreement. Bureaucratic distinctions between different kinds of gun are always going to be open to criticism and politicians are always going to go for what sounds good.
.

Police don't "regulate" in our country, especially areas such as rights.  But to be fair this is why many states have the "Shall Carry" laws, because they did exactly that.  Thanks for reminding me.   Because police initially were given the discretion to determine 'need' for concealed carry permits.  This entire thing got rather corrupt, not surprisingly not everyone agreed on need, some considered it a special favour or traded favours, and so forth.  So now the laws in many states say they shall or must issue the CCW if they meet certain requirements and fail to meet others.  It is now a very black and white process in most states.  Yet, in our most corrupt states, with the highest murder rates (by a great amount), it's still this old way and CCW's are very hard to get if you don't know someone.   

So yes, my questions were if there are strict guidelines and if so what they are or at least a reference to where they are.. like I said, I have an interest in this subject.  I spend a fair amount of time in self-education.  Your wiki link gave me nothing to think there were a set of guidelines..

We all want to hope the police will be fair and impartial.. and while I worked very hard at it, every day, it was too easy to be less.  It's like you develop a sixth sense about people and you let that make rule your decisions instead of the guidelines.  It's a tough one.

John Howard was able to legislate for changes to the gun law regime because almost everyone strongly agreed with him - almost all the people and almost all the elected politicians of all parties. The changes were made by people's elected representatives voting in Parliament, not by personal fiat of John Howard.  If almost everyone, Democrat and Republican,  strongly agreed with your President on something, it would probably happen, at least in the first instance, no?  Those who disagreed could of course challenge the constitutionality of changes to the law, as they could in Australia. If the people and their elected representatives had disagreed with John Howard he wouldn't have been able to do anything. You are making a distinction with little substance in it. In fact I suspect - I am open to correction on this - that your President can do rather more by executive order than our Prime Minister can by issuing any kind of personal instruction.

You're missing the point.  He used their emotions (just as our President is trying to do now, which is extremely unpresidential) to rally then towards changing a law.  I understand this part.  His hatred of guns was not yet known from what I understood.. and it doesn't take a shrink to know people are predisposed to be negative about anything about a particularly bad experience.. (like 54% of American's were yesterday).   But we teach our children not to act in the heat of the moment, and we endeavour to follow our own device in our day to day lives.   Yet, your PM didn't do ths  He took advantage of the tragedy which is a low act by a low person.   If it's true what you said, then the vote could have been taken six months later or after studies were conducted and it still would have passed.  But he took advantage of the moment (and the people of his country) precisely because he didn't think the votes would be there otherwise.

We have differing views on how best to select our purely ceremonial Head of State. I would personally prefer some kind of Republic, as would almost all of our gun control advocates, while almost all Australians who would agree with you about gun control would prefer to stick with the Queen.

You're yanking my chain right?  This is the opposite of what I've talked about often with my Aussie friends.

[Tony Jay]

You've got a pretty aggressive style there Steve.

I made an observation about differences between Australia and the USA about gun control but actually much more just about the culture in Australia.
I don't claim to speak for all Australians and that accusation that you make does say more about you than me.
I understand full well that there are outliers of opinion in Australia on the issue of gun control.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the weight of public opinion in Australia is roughly as I outlined.
Your disrespectful dismissal of John Howard and the legislation that he introduced following the incident with Martin Bryant completely fails to take into account that there was overwhelming public support for what he did.
You also fail to take into account that Australians did not have an epiphany as a result of Martin Brant's crimes because the attitudes of which I elaborated were already well represented in society.
The culture that you seem so earnestly to believe must exist in Australia and that John Howard must have unjustly suppressed just does not exist.
Nothing I am aware of in the history of Australia remotely parallels the gun culture that develops in the USA nor the current emotions that this subject elicits in the USA.

Your dismissal of the deaths of my friends as victims of war is shamefully wide of the mark. Not one them died in the line of duty. They died going to work, going to top up on fuel, or playing sport, or in their homes. Some of them died in front of their wives and children, and some of their wives and children were executed with them. They were merely attempting to protect themselves and their families.

I have entered this debate on a few occasions to make a point or two or an observation.
I was unaware, obviously incorrectly, that this issue, to you, is a fight to the death.
The triumphal tone of your apparent destruction of my observations is sad.
I accept that what I say on this issue is not the beginning and the end of the debate.
What I am seeing from you, on the other hand, is a brute force attempt to shoot down any perceived threat to your point of view.

Tony Jay

[stamper]

By my count Steve has had 86 posts on this subject.The thread has gone steadily downhill without a satisfactory conclusion. I think it is time to draw a line under it.

[Tony Jay]

Steve I have gone back through this thread from the beginning.
I have noticed that you are by far and away the biggest contributor to this particular thread.
I have also noticed that the tone of your posts has changed through the thread from relatively respectful and constructively interactive to aggressive and disrespectful.
Several other individuals have suffered the same sort of backhanders that you have attempted to dish out to me.
So, I think that a deep breath and a step back is in order.

Tony Jay

[kencameron]

You're yanking my chain right?  This is the opposite of what I've talked about often with my Aussie friends.

Broadly speaking, opposition to gun control and support of the Monarchy are shared right wing attitudes in Australia, while dislike of guns and opposition to the Monarchy go together on the left. Of course there are exceptions - John Howard is one, and actually, I am another (not in quite the same way). Some of your Aussie friends may also be exceptions - although I rather think that  if those same Aussie friends are the source of your understanding of the Australian political system, well - that may explain a lot.

I am actually no fan of John Howard - I loathe many of his policies and I don't warm to him personally - but on gun control, you are the one who is missing the point. There he did what almost all of us (maybe not your friends) wanted, lawfully and constitutionally, and six months would have made no difference to the outcome. The level of support for those changes is as high now as it was then. It was democracy in action in a pure form. The reason he did it so quickly wasn't so much to sneak it through before people changed their minds (they didn't) as to maximize the political capital he was getting from it. He also needed the States to fall into line, and riding the wave of public opinion was helpful there. Those things are what politicians do - all of them, particularly the effective ones - and do we want our politicians to be ineffective, or to wait around for six months before taking decisive action in accordance with the clear wishes of the people and their elected representatives?

As Tony keeps trying to explain, our culture is different from yours as far as guns are concerned. Better or worse? That would be a long argument, although the body count seems higher on your side of the ocean and for some of us, that is a consideration. Our political system is also different, but not in the way you seem to think. As you haven't responded to my previous attempts to explain that, I see no point in repeating them. Your american exceptionalism seems deeply ingrained and I wouldn't try to shift it.

Pretty bird.

I am out of here.

[michael]

Time to close up.

Michael