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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Unfortunately, all these chemicals come from sources that can never be tied up...

sorry, wasnt it primarily fertilizer? and didnt they capture people at a later stage trying to buy large quantities of the stuff? i could be wrong, i dont pay attention to the US news everyday

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN sorry, wasnt it primarily fertilizer? and didnt they capture people at a later stage trying to buy large quantities of the stuff? i could be wrong, i dont pay attention to the US news everyday

Yes. And what element is *added to* fertilizer to promote plant growth?

And now...

What element makes up 80% of our atmosphere?

Yay.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 but events like this is like the fucking Groundhog Day movie in Iraq, only much much worse.

that just goes to show mass murderers will go to any legnths necessary if they know Democrats are willing to forsake it all.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Yes. And what element is *added to* fertilizer to promote plant growth? And now... What element makes up 80% of our atmosphere? Yay.

but it was a particular type of fertilizer. and i do think there are controls on it now.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN sorry, wasnt it primarily fertilizer? and didnt they capture people at a later stage trying to buy large quantities of the stuff? i could be wrong, i dont pay attention to the US news everyday

it was fertilizer and race gas. some diesel as well.

if he woulda smoked a little "Sour Diesel" instead that shit would have never happened.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN but it was a particular type of fertilizer. and i do think there are controls on it now.

you can still buy ammonium nitrate here with little restrictions.

nothing has changed as far as i know.

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r Take away the guns and the only ones left with them are the ones committing the crimes... (Because Prohibition worked so damn well...)

Most gun-crimes are not perpetrated by hardened criminals and most are impulsive or accidental. To say that restrictions on access to guns wouldn't reduce this sort of gun violence is absurd. You won't be able to stop the planned, pre-meditated violence, perhaps, but you can still make it is difficult as possible for events like this one to happen. I'd like to see this guy go through with a "plan" like this if he had to go to the extreme lengths of finding suitable guns on the black market in the weeks before the shootings rather than just plucking a couple of legal ones from the top shelf of his cupboard that morning.

The logic that restrictions on guns will somehow put people in more danger of becoming the victims of gun violence is so tortured that it's making my head hurt. Find me one place in the world where gun-control has led to an increase in gun-related crime, an increase in gang activity or anything of the sort. Either Americans are inherently more violent than every other people in the word, or they are just the victims of lax gun-control laws preserved by a cabal of psychopaths with a Freudian obsession for gripping powerful, phallic-shaped instruments of destruction.

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http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

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Originally posted by Renegade Either Americans are inherently more violent than every other people in the word, or they are just the victims of lax gun-control laws preserved by a cabal of psychopaths with a Freudian obsession for gripping powerful, phallic-shaped instruments of destruction.

it's prolly a little of both.

hey, isn't your characeture in your avatar parading a gun?

let me guess, irony?

Last edited by Q5echo on Apr-17-2007 at 06:39

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Originally posted by Renegade Find me one place in the world where gun-control has led to an increase in gun-related crime, an increase in gang activity or anything of the sort.

the UK?

didn't the twisted Fir3start3r post some stats refering to that same question?

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Originally posted by Q5echo hey, isn't your characeture in your avatar parading a gun? let me guess, irony?

Yes but he is a farmer and had to go to great lengths to apply for a special permit in order to acquire his gun. He has gophers that keep on destroying his crops, so he is one of the few people with a good reason to actually own a gun imho.

He also has arthritis so he smokes the occasional blunt (legally) to ease the pain.

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Originally posted by Q5echo the UK? didn't the twisted Fir3start3r post some stats refering to that same question?

The most important line in that article is:

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Overall, gun crime fell last year…

I'm not sure what else I can add to that, really. The article seems to imply that gun-control laws have somehow emboldened criminals in the UK because the victims have no way to fight back, but that's fallacious for two reasons. Firstly, I think it's about 1% of victims of violent crime in the US who use a gun to defend themselves, so even where guns are common, instances of people using for the purpose of self-defence are pretty rare and shouldn't enter into the calculations of any would-be assailant. Secondly, barely anyone in the UK (outside of rural areas) owned guns before the restrictions were put into place. The gun culture there is nothing like the gun culture in the US.

Still, there's only one question worth asking in a thread like this: all other things being equal, will less guns likely mean less gun violence? If so, on what grounds can lax gun-laws be justified?

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http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

I just don't understand how people can fail to make a connection between the easy access to guns and the absurd numbers of these shootings that occur in the US compared to similar western democracies like Australia and the UK. If you have two nations, nation (a) has a legal model that provides easy access to guns, nation (b) doesn't, and nation (a) see's a far higher occurence of crimes such as these, then how intelligent do you have to be to see where the problem is?

Yes, if someone really wants something illegal, they can obtain it regardless (see: drugs, alcohol prohibition). But most of these killing spree's are 'not' premeditated, not in the sense that the killer's are criminals, with contacts with people who they'll spend large portions of time contacting to obtain guns. Most of them are moderately spur of the moment crimes, by sad, angry, depressed people. If they don't have easy access to guns, they'll either perform a lesser crime (knife stabbing etc) with far lesser consequances, or simply do themselves off and commit suicide.

Furthermore, guns don't have any real use beyond killing. Yes, playing around with guns in a recreational manner is fun, but is having the right to do that really worth the lives lost? The ineveitable comparison to drug prohibition isn't really valid, because the damage caused by drugs, where they legalized, would by far mostly be self-inflicted upon the user by their own choice, the same cannot be said for the shootings that are a consequance of a lack of gun control.

And the self defense card isn't really valid either, how many lives do you think are saved by someone defending themselves with a gun they would not have had if gun access was restricted, in comparison to lives lost by someone taking them with a gun they otherwise would not have had.

Personally, I'm just glad I live in a country where I was able to go to school without worrying that today would be the day the angry bullying-victim would snap and schoot the place up, and that I'll be able to send my future kids to school in the same situation.