h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Two Bit: where do you stand on taxes funding firefighters? Why is MY responsibility to pay to have the fire in YOUR house put out, your wife and children rescued, etc.? How is that fair? Isn't it your responsibility to stop your house from burning down, or to rescue them yourself? It's certainly not the government's fault you dropped a cigarette on the sofa/didn't plug the TV in properly/got petrol poured through your letterbox by a criminal. And yet the centrally funded firefighters will come out and rescue you when that happens - won't they?

^^^^^^LIKE.

(we need a like button!)

Regardless of the point being made above, I think the difference between medical support by the US government and firefighters is that injuries (as opposed to diseases) don't then risk injuring everyone around them, whereas fires do

In relevance to guns you fall somewhere in the middle - possesion of guns risks people, but it doesn't spread (except, perhaps in an indirect way of getting more guns) - a fire will almost always spread if intervention isn't taken

I'm sure this point appeared far back, but I still can't understand why the NRA thinks they can blame video games for causing violence without being hypocritical

The video games themselves don't cause deaths any more than guns on their own do

To blame video games obligates opening themselves up to the attack that they're trying to avoid

Yeah, they trash the first amendment in defense of the second.

The reason they do so is that the gun lobbyists know that their stance is untenable.


This week during the hearings on gun control in D.C. the father of one of the children slain in Newtown spoke passionately about the tragedy. He kept asking why anyone in the room would need an assault style rifle, why anyone in the room would ever need a 30 round magazine. At one point he directly addressed the crowd and asked them again. The replies were all shouted variations on "shall not infringe".

Repeating parts of the second amendment does NOT answer the question. Lawrence O'Donnell considered it mere heckling. It was the well honed response of the devout. The 2nd amendment is their mantra. The words have gone beyond any meaning. They are a prayer to protect them against their imagined enemies.

The NRA is lobbying strongly against the Arms Trade Treaty by spreading the unfounded theory that it would impinge on the sovereignty of the US and threaten their beloved 2nd amendment rights even though it specifically does not do either. Gun owners around the nation are repeating the lies, believing that the NRA protects their rights, but the NRA is just protecting the profits of gun makers by fighting this treaty. It will not affect any legal sales or transfers of guns inside the US or any other nation. It is specifically addressing illegal, international trade in arms.

But it will probably not be ratified by the US because gun owners here are so well indoctrinated to believe that any regulation regarding guns is the moral equivalent of armed thugs entering homes and confiscating weapons.

What object to is that the government being held liable for the independent acts committed by third parties.

I imagine that there are a variety of ways to pay for sure protection. I'd be surprised if we didn't have some rural areas where there fire protection is still provided like insurance. You can pay in, and the fire department response is complimentary. If you don't pay, thy'll respond but you'll be billed. Some services provided by public fire departments are billed every where. I've been billed for my two trips to the hospital. Some jurisdictions are billing for emergency response to accidents.

That being said, I think local governments have the authority to decide if they want public fire departments that are supported by tax dollars, as most seem to do.

This is really off topic, but the states have general police powers, and they're well within their authority to establish any public service that they wish. That's why it was appropriate for Governor Romney to create state healthcare plan although I think it is wrong for the federal government to do so. I wish a state would try a single-payer health plan so we can see how it would work in the United States.

Lest I be accused of not addressing issues, I really don't care about the video game thing. I think it's a bit silly to be too concerned about them. There's nothing the government can do about it because it's protected speech. I wonder if the incessant coverage of Newtown isn't psychologically enabling people to resort to shootings to resolve problems. The news certainly seems to be filled with examples. Still, there's little the government can do about that. The press has the right to publicize shootings to satisfy our prurient interests in the affairs of others.

Of course, fire departments don't pay to rebuild my house. That's why I have homeowner's insurance.

Actually, you're right. No amount of legislation short of an all out ban on all weapons and a thorough, nationwide, invasive search and seizure will significantly mitigate gun violence. As has been well pointed out, most of the proposed regulations will not stop criminals from getting or using guns.

It is a cultural issue and you can't simply legislate effective solutions to cultural issues. What needs to change is our attitudes. And that is feasible. Smoking is no longer as acceptable as it once was, yet it's still generally legal. (I don't smoke, but I disagree with laws that prohibit smoking in privately owned establishments and residences.) Mixed marriages were once unacceptable and often illegal in this country, but look how much our views on that has changed.

Newtown, and the rash of other multiple murders is changing the culture on this. Progress is being made.

Apt cartoon from Australia: http://www.scratch.com.au/archive/ica12/121218ct.jpg

"the fire department response is complimentary. If you don't pay, thy'll respond but you'll be billed"

Really? They'll put your fire out, then send you the bill???

One of Terry Pratchett's novels neatly sums up why a privately funded and operated fire department run on that model is a bad idea - the staff have a tendency to pop round to non-subscriber's houses and places of business and comment on how very flammable they look and what a shame it would be if they were to accidentally catch fire. I am really, REALLY glad I live in a country where the fire service is universally publicly funded.

"No amount of legislation short of an all out ban on all weapons and a thorough, nationwide, invasive search and seizure will significantly mitigate gun violence"

And the evidence for this assertion is...?

Don't get me wrong - it may be true, for a very narrow and specific definition of "gun violence". A definition that EXCLUDES accidental or negligent discharges, deliberate suicides, spur-of-the-moment homicides, vigilante actions of the Zimmerman/Martin ilk, and planned murders by otherwise law-abiding gun owners. In other words, if you limit the definition of "gun violence" to ONLY violence done with guns by the kind of people who would still own and carry guns if they were illegal, then yes, obviously making them illegal won't make any difference.

However, America as a society seems unable or unwilling to admit that otherwise law-abiding gun owners are responsible for really rather a lot of what in a civilised country would be regarded as "gun violence".

Re: the news coverage thing. Is there any evidence that the rate of gun violence has increased since Newtown? Or is it just that it's getting reported a little more often?

I'd like to see the figures, because I suspect it's the latter. I don't think the coverage of Newtown is *causing* more shootings. I think it's causing more coverage of shootings that are happening at the same rate as ever, but the US is no longer sticking its collective fingers in its ears and whistling and trying to ignore it.

I think you misinterpreted my statement. I'm saying that gun violence, ALL gun violence, would be mitigated if ALL guns were confiscated. But that ain't gonna happen.

>>...if ALL guns were confiscated. <<

Perhaps it is worth repeating at this point
that it was the British Army's intention and
attempt to confiscate a known weapons cache
that began the Revolutionary War with "the
shot heard round the world". The 2nd Amendment
was written to ensure that no governing officials
would ever again attempt such a search and seizure.

~jwf~

How, you may not appreciate how large this country is. There are areas that don't have full-time firefighters. They have firefighters who'll respond to a par or text. One or two guys will go get the firetruck and the test will respond in their personally owned vehicles equipped with lights and siren. As I gather, volunteer fire departmental are an important social glue in their communities.

For all I know there may be areas where people don't even have that.

I called 911 one time in Alabama and I was told that they didn't have anyone working that area of the county. I did a ride along with a deputy in large suburban Washington county that went from the boarder of Seattle to the Cascade Mountains. He told me about a small town where they rarely responded because the people just handled it themselves.

"you may not appreciate how large this country is"

You're probably right.

Just glad I live in an urban areas, I guess...

That's the same Fire Service as many rural areas of Scotland have.

I'm sure I've read that London used to have private fire brigades in the 1800s, funded by insurance companies. The idea was you'd get a bright plaque to put on your wall so the firemen could see if you were insured or not and act accordingly.

" I'm saying that gun violence, ALL gun violence, would be mitigated if ALL guns were confiscated"

I understand that. What I'm saying is, you have no evidence that such drastic action is a requirement to effect a noticeable change in the level of gun violence.

This false dichotomy is typical of the pro-gun argument. Nobody, nobody AT ALL to my knowledge, is suggesting even for a moment that every single privately owned gun in the US should be confiscated. One reason is that that would be a deeply stupid thing to suggest.

What IS being suggested is that it could be made illegal to own many types of gun, and strict limits could be placed on gun ownership, and one could rely on the goodwill of law abiding people to simply voluntarily comply with the law.

And the thing is - civilised people would do so. And those who didn't, when they were caught, could be suitably punished. This requires no searches, no seizures, no jackbooted thugs knocking down your door and confiscating your property. It requires an adult acknowledgement that, hey, some of the stuff you own is DANGEROUS, so now it's illegal to own it, so please, turn it in.

And I can guarantee that if you just did that, the number of firearm related deaths in the US would drop, quite a lot, quite quickly.

Yes, there would be deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise - people without guns would die in situations where if they'd kept their gun they'd have lived.

But those would be a tiny minority, vastly outnumbered by the number of people still alive because they, their spouse, or their parent no longer kept a gun in the house.

I know it won't happen, because in the rugged, individualist US, that kind of thing only happens to *other* peoples children, and why would you care about them?

We have a volunteer fire dept. It's funded by a fee tacked on to our water/sewer taxes (Municipal Utility District, or M.U.D.) and donations.


There was a case not long ago... I believe it was in Arkansas, or one of the states in that area [edit: it was in Tennessee, see link below], where a local fire department refused to put out a fire. The property in question lay outside the city limits. Rural properties were required to pay an additional fee for fire/rescue services. The property owner had not paid the fee that year and the fire crew refused to put out the fire, even after he offered to pay the full expenses. They did come out to the site to protect a neighbor's property however. Images of the fire crew watching the house burn sparked plenty of debate. (no pun intended, but I like it so I'll leave it.)

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/tennessee-firefighters-watch-home-burn/

Sweet Baby Cheeses. Welcome to America - it's like Victorian Britain with better teeth.

Wow. Just... wow.

What an unpleasant place to live. What unpleasant people. I simply can't get my head around the sheer inhumanity of a so-called person who can stand NEXT TO A FIRETRUCK and watch someone's home burn to the ground. How could those men look at themselves in the mirror? How could their wives or friends bring themselves to speak to them? That's one of the most contemptibly heartless, disgusting things I've heard in a long time... and there are people trying to justify it and explain it. What is *wrong* with those people?