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

One more thing- I know that gun control wouldn't be airtight, that the US is extremely large and that's just one reason it'd be difficult, and that there would still be ways to get guns.....

Wouldn't it still be worth a shot? I mean, it seems like a much better investment in safety than trying to control marijuana or prostitution... at least it'll try to SAVE people, not just keep them away from natural, safe things.

Fenchurch, I love you! Your natural goodness shows through when you talk like that! Seriously.

However.... (you knew this was coming, didn't you? )

If I was confronted with a group of armed klansmen in the night at my house, I'd rather welcome them with a few rounds from the AK than good intentions, if you know what I mean. Too many people have expected bigots to behave like civilized people in those situations, and have been rewarded with a noose around their necks.

An armed populance also discourages government abuse. How could Hiter or Stalin get the run-of-the-mill soldiers to do the atrocities they did- except through fear? If you think that your defiance will serve no purpose other than to get yourself killed, and that things will be the same even if you do because the people have no way to resist the tyranny (and let's remember that Hitler was ELECTED to his posistion, THEN consolidated his power- not vice-versa!) even if provided with an example- why would you resist? Would it not be better to live, and hope that someday, somehow, things will change- but you still have to do the crappy things you're told to do in the meantime. Either that or join the Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Gays, etc. in the concentration camp- and some people did choose that way. However, it wasn't their pointless martyrdom which eventually put Hitler to rout, it was ARMED FORCE!

If I'm going to die, I'm going to take a few of "them" (whomever they might be- left, right, or indifferent) out with me!

I think the Fool up there might actually have a good idea- cut their goolies off. It would sure settle them down. Then they could take up macrame and knitting, and not worry about all the pretty "white" girls they can't get going out with "coloreds". hehe.

Good points, Baron, and well made, but the central fact remains that if you disarm the thugs, then "armed force" is simply not possible. The ideology of the Klan was and is based on the same principle (might makes - or facilitates - right), and it held a lot of power in parts of the U.S. for a long time - and continues to do so even now.

Even if "armed force" is not possible, people will find some way to give their ideologies muscle, as you imply - the danger then lies in the lynching power of the group, rather than in the way that people die (and you can run a lot more effectively from a disarmed group than you can from a bullet). There is also the point that there are other defences against armed force than bearing arms -such as effective organisation, a sound moral code, and a strong societal structure - which protect the community at the cost of some people's individuality. You cannot, however, have a strong community of completely free spirits: you have to make a choice between societal safety and individual freedom. Interestingly, such a defence probably would have worked quite well against Hitler: his "stunning" rise to power actually took about ten years, and if he hadn't started from so chaotic a point in German history he would have had very little chance of ever bringing force to bear on his own people.

The other thing is that you're going to die in any case - you should be able to defend yourself, but not to kill anyone around you who happens to be in the area at the time...

you were really confronted by klansmen? the fact that supremisist groups like the klan are still alive and thriving is both frightening and disturbing and it makes me wonder where the hell our society is headed for...
but is owning one gun really going to protect you from a government that is capable of who knows what?
-saffire

Hypoman: The thing about it is that the people we're currently discussing- the nazi/klan types- AREN'T going to give up their arms. No matter how many laws you pass, they will keep theirs (even if they have to bury them in a box in the woods).

True, they may not have them as readily available- but I can assure you if they want to start trouble, they'll quickly find them.

The things you mentioned as being things which could have stopped Hitler's rise to power are the very things Hitler promised the people.

I didn't mean that, if you were doomed to die you should take out as many people as you can around you- I meant that if a group or person was INTENTIONALLY killing you, you should take out as many of THEM as you can. At least, that's what I would do...


saffire: Yes, I've been backed into a corner by a few hundred rednecks before- several times while in high school, in fact. That wasn't what I was speaking of this time though (I guess I should be more specific when rambling on here). I was just noting that I've known a great deal of people (worked with them, friends of friends, etc.) who had these attitudes, and feel like I know what they're all about.

Backstabbers, the lot of them.

On your other point: me, by myself, owning a gun isn't going to stop a government from abuses- but a population which is armed is a very strong deterrent to such.

Bravo Baron. Exactly my thoughts.

This conversation has gone way off the death penalty, but there are just a couple more things to say...

Baron, the "bury the box in the woods" brigade will always be there - they're extant in Australia, too, where ownership of most kinds of guns is illegal for most purposes - but the laws against gun POSSESSION will then assist in preventing their USE. The fact that you cannot buy guns legally from anywhere would also reduce the number of places from which they can be got, so if you did use them you'd be found and convicted that much more quickly.

The militantly dissatisfied will always start trouble to demand satisfaction, but with guns less available fewer people have to die because of it. It's likely that people will always find reasons to beat up on other people, but doing so in a situation where everyone is armed can only escalate the number of casualties.

The other issue, which I failed to contest before, is the one you mentioned earlier about the discouragement of arms to government abuse. I concede that this could theoretically work this way, but there remains the simple point that a retinue of armed citizens contesting the will of the government will lead to a permanently destabilised government, unless the force of the "people's arms" is behind it. The result wil be that the government will basically run around trying to please those who will destroy them by forcefully contesting their will: a modern, domestic version of "appeasement" getting back to the Hitler theme. The only people who benefit by such a scheme of things are those in possession of the weapons to compel the actions of the government - i.e. the gun owners. Owning guns is not in the rest of society's interest for any other reason, and the small number of people who already own guns and would be able to pressure the government to work in their favour would work actively against too many people joining their group. If rebellion is necessary, then people will find a way to achieve it - whether the laws of the time prevent them from doing so or not: there has already been a good few thousand years' demonstration of this in China, for example, and there is also your earlier point about people finding ways to arm themselves if they are determined to do so.

So what does this have to do with the death penalty?

I can't stand the fact that someone spends YEARS on death row waiting for his day while the lawyers battle it out, wasting ungoddly amost of money, trying to convince people that the guy is crazy, since he can't be found innocent. Recently here in Texas, a guy got a stay of execution a couple of hours before he was to die. The Pope even got in on this! Apparently, this buy is Scitzophrenic, therefor shouldn't die. HE KILLED SOMEONE!!! WHO GIVES A DAMN WHICH ONE OF HIM DID IT???? As far as I can tell, the fact that he was Scitzophrenic came out after the fact that he had already be convicted and condemed, and spent 17 YEARS ON DEATH ROW!!!!!!!! Does anyone welse think this is phucked up? OK, there is the forgive and forget clause.....yeah, well, I will do that once the person who murders anyone in MY family has been executed! And screw this humane crap! I look at it this way....a while back, I saw a video (documentory thing) where a Central American family of a girl got to carry out the death sentence on a man convicted of rapping said girl. OUT-PHUCKING-STANDING!!!! They put the guy up on a wall, and four or five guys stood there and opened fire. Some took one shot, otheres took two. One guy walked up after everyone was done and emptied the clip! That's where we need to be, let the family members carry out the death sentence of the condemed! And let them do it the same way their family memner was killed! In other words, if their little girl was kidnapped, tied up, molested, bludgeoned almost to the point of death, and then left out in the woods to die, then family members should get the same justifaction that the guilty feel the SAM PAIN that their loved one went through! Am I vindictive? Sure! Am I wrong? Probably. Am I fed up with what's going on out in our world? DAMN SKIPPY! And to hell with the time spent on Death Row.....back in the good ole days, justice was carried out immediately! Someone was found guilty, ten minutes later they were on the gallows with a rope around their neck! Ok, I am done for now...

I've never been sure about this one. You hear about people commiting these awful crimes and I immediately think, yeah the death penalty should be brought back. But then its a little terrible if you execute someone and then they turn out to be innocent, which seems to have happened relatively often. I think perhaps it should be brought back for the cases of very extreme crime where there is no possible doubt as to the identity of the criminal - but in a lot of these the criminal tends to commit suicide anyhow.

Whoa, heavyweight discussion going on here!!! Some fascinating points of view have been expressed – here is my twopenneth.

Violent crime is not going to go away, it’s been around too long and will always appeal to some sick bastard. This is mainly due to the glamorisation of the criminal (today’s media adding to the problem further – eg magazines entitled ‘Serial Killers’, art work depicting the face of Myra Hindley, certain films etc).

The death penalty has been around just as long in countless imaginative forms and has never succeeded in deterring people from committing these incomprehensible acts.

Conclusion – what’s the point? Make these sicko’s suffer as much as possible in life rather than offering them an easy death. I’m not sure how that should be done but I get the feeling that some of the murderers in our prison system in the UK just seem to be being detained rather than punished for their crimes.

Oh yeah, and castration for sex offenders. Great idea.

castration for sex offenders... now there is a brilliant plan ... are we allowed to do that?
-saffire

Question- how about sterilisation of child abusers?

In the hypothetical world of h2g2 we’re allowed to do anything we like ... snip snip!!!! Ah, that felt good

theres really no reason we couldnt do it for real is there ???? well maybe there is ... anyway is there any way you can actually MAKE people (child molesters that is) sterile?? if there is, its worth investigating...!
-saffire

I've been thinking about this, and I've decided I rather like the "Devil's Island" scenario for dealing with the bastards. Find an island so isolated that it would be impossible for them to escape from it- and monitor it to make sure they don't.

Then just drop the convicts there to fend for themselves, sink or swim- in a society of people just like them.

That way, if an error was made, you may be able to rectify it. PLUS, society isn't justifying killing in any way- which really makes sense if you want to teach people that killing is wrong.

It would probably be a better deterrent to some people who have decided that they're going to do THEMSELVES in, and take as many with 'em as they can...

So ban guns and make possession of guns a bigger crime with a harsher sentence. It's what they need to do here before we go any further down the american road.

As for the death penalty - Well I listen to the arguments and I don't believe in it - I don't think killing someone makes up for the crime they committed and it certainly doesn't act as a deterrent. When you talk about people not having consciences then you are describing people with mental illnesses, or with personality disorders and I think you will find that by American and English Law you are supposed to be aware of the difference between right and wrong before you can be guilty of the crime. Don't get me wrong, I don't think these people should be set free and I don't believe they should be molly-coddled in any way but as a society can we solve our problems by killing these people. Doesn't it make us as bad as them? I don't have the answers but I do think that maybe if we used these people to learn why they did these things, maybe we could recognise the symptoms in someone else before it happens again. That would be a much better solution for society as a whole!

I always thought if I was guilty of a terrible crime then I would rather be executed than put in prison for life. But prison is a little too cushy nowadays. I think the h2g2 proposed system of castration for sex offenders, etc could actually be quite effective. But it wouldn't be accepted on a national level.

Trouble is that sex offences are not driven so much by sexual urges as by the need to exert power. By castrating offenders you do not solve the problem because they will tend towards commiting other offences, usually more violently. After all they don't have to use a penis to rape you! I really don't know what the answer is but I start to get edgy when people talk seriously of castration or execution because I think it could be taking us one step further back into a barbaric society.

"Most places where there's high gun-ownership in the general population, there's very little violent or gun-related crimes." says the Baron.

So there's hardly any violent or gun related crime in the US?
The US should sue the media for slander then.

Perhaps the 34,040 (that's 12.94 per 100,000 pop) people killed by firearms in the US during 1996 would beg to differ.

Then there's those only injured - "Between 1992 and 1995, young males aged 15 to 24 accounted for more than 117,000 cases or 40.7 percent of nonfatal firearm injuries in the United States. The primary circumstances for nonfatal firearm injuries are assaults. Between 1992 and 1995 approximately 79.5 percent of nonfatal gunshot wounds among males aged 15 to 24 years were caused by assaults. In 1995 the rate of nonfatal firearm assaultive injury for males in this age group was 156.4 per 100,000—6.2 times the rate of nonfatal firearm assaultive injury for the entire U.S. population (25.1 per 100,000)."

"When compared to other industrialized nations, the United States stands alone in the number of its citizens felled by guns. A 1997 study by the CDC analyzed firearm deaths for children less than 15 years old in 26 countries and found that 86 percent of the deaths occurred in the U.S."

Obviously, what all these people needed was some more guns.

"The higher mortality rate in the U.S. is not the result of more violence, but of more lethal violence. For example, a recent analysis by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) compared crime rates in the U.S. with those in England and Wales from 1981 to 1996. BJS found that British crime rates now exceed those of the U.S. in several categories, and to a surprising degree. The British assault rate has been rising steadily, for instance, and is now more than double the U.S. rate. However, violent crimes in England and Wales are far less likely to involve guns, and thus far less likely to end in death. According to 1996 police statistics, firearms were used in five percent of British robberies and seven percent of murders, compared with 41 percent of American robberies and 68 percent of American murders.(These statistics are from the year BEFORE Great Britain banned the private ownership of handguns in the wake of the attack on a Dunblane, Scotland kindergarten class)."

Figures & quotes from http://www.vpc.org/



;^)#
apologies for the topic drift

So, the biggest mistake of WW2 was to go to war & waste all those lives when all they really needed to do was to clandestinely mail hand guns en mass to the German population so that they could overthrow Hitler even though they elected him & he had majority support from the population until the war started to go against Germany & a few of the realities were rammed home to the German population?

You say "If I was confronted with a group of armed klansmen in the night at my house, I'd rather welcome them with a few rounds from the AK than good intentions" & "If I'm going to die, I'm going to take a few of "them" (whomever they might be- left, right, or indifferent) out with me!"

Here ( http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?MESSAGES[(*?threadid*15776?forumid*7926)threads[(threadid*15776?forumid*7926?subset*0)#p63754 )
you say "They want to be able to kill homosexuals with impunity. They want to be able to kill anyone who violates their narrow, bigoted world-view with impunity.
They want violence, and will eventually get the violence they want- in one way or another. "

- you seem more than willing, perhaps even keen, to give 'them' the violence 'they' want. Perhaps there's not that much difference between the 2.

You sound a lot like a volunteer for the death penalty you are advocating here ( http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?MESSAGES[(*?threadid*15776?forumid*7926)threads[(threadid*15776?forumid*7926?subset*0)#p63673 ) for "these politically-motivated mass-murders (and would-be mass-murders)".

You seem to want it both ways.

;^)#