What did this family not have that it needed?

[Seth]

Didn't miss it, but wanted to emphasise that the key difference between Oz & USA is hand guns...

Yes, that is a difference, but we don't know if that is a good thing or bad. Seth is actually right in so far that the rate of homicide and other violent crimes has dropped over the past several decades while the number of concealable firearms has risen in the same time frame. The issue is determining if we are looking at causation or correlation. My guess is that it's the latter, but have not done enough digging to provide evidence for it. Of course Seth has not provided any evidence for his opposite view.

I have. Many, many times, year after year, in detail. I'm just tired of repeating myself. I've got better things to do than let idiots force me to waste my time refuting idiocy that's been refuted hundreds of times already.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:
...So even if BG is entirely mathematically correct, it's a pointless argument because it cannot happen here in the US. Civil war would likely result from a serious attempt to seize guns here....

Even if true, that was not my point; my point was purely about Australia maintaining its current hand gun controls, not changes to your system...

[Seth]

Seth wrote:
...So even if BG is entirely mathematically correct, it's a pointless argument because it cannot happen here in the US. Civil war would likely result from a serious attempt to seize guns here....

Even if true, that was not my point; my point was purely about Australia maintaining its current hand gun controls, not changes to your system...

Yeah, well, let's hope it's not your wife and kids being raped and murdered in front of you as you stand there helpless because your government doesn't trust YOU with a gun.

That would suck.

[Hermit]

But as we've seen with the recent seizures of military grade fully automatic rifles from persons in Australia, it is far from impossible for someone who is determined to obtain an automatic, or semi-automatic rifle to use in a massacre, and it's most likely dead easy for criminals to get handguns, just as it is virtually everywhere on earth.

Yeah, man, it's far from impossible to stop people from driving cars at 160 km/h in 25 km/h zones too. We still have speeding laws.

So you have regular casual killings like the two road rangers that shot each other dead, toddlers that accidentally kill their mums, unhappy customers that get upset with the bloke behind the counter at the fast food outlet and so on. Not so much in Australia. But do keep prattling on, seeing you love browbeating us. I am pretty sure that I'm not the only one who is suitably impressed by the intensity of your obsession and by your persistence, even though I scroll past 90% of your verbiage these days.

[piscator]

O yeah? Well, at least America hasn't outlawed natural selection by firearm...
But you do live on an island - monstrous cold seas and ice to the south, east, and west, nothing but sea snakes, sharks, and cannibals to the north for half a hemisphere - so maybe different things are epigenetically etched into your racial memory?

[Hermit]

Racial memory? There better be no such thing. I come from a population that started two world wars and a bunch of others before that. When Prime Minister Disraeli asked chancellor Bismarck what he thought about a war with France, he replied "The sooner the better." He provoked the French into declaring war by falsifying a telegram four years after he attacked and defeated Austria.

Oh, and we are the designers, builders and owners of the world's most pugnaciously warlike and ugly memorial. I have no idea why it hasn't been accidentally blown up yet.

[piscator]

Racial memory? There better be no such thing. I come from a population that started two world wars and a bunch of others before that. When Prime Minister Disraeli asked chancellor Bismarck what he thought about a war with France, he replied "The sooner the better." He provoked the French into declaring war by falsifying a telegram four years after he attacked and defeated Austria.

Oh, and we are the designers, builders and owners of the world's most pugnaciously warlike and ugly memorial. I have no idea why it hasn't been accidentally blown up yet.

You're a fucking Preußen? Did your forebears default to English banks, or were they merely prisoners of war? Fish have racial memory, BTW.

[Hermit]

Racial memory? There better be no such thing. I come from a population that started two world wars and a bunch of others before that. When Prime Minister Disraeli asked chancellor Bismarck what he thought about a war with France, he replied "The sooner the better." He provoked the French into declaring war by falsifying a telegram four years after he attacked and defeated Austria.

Oh, and we are the designers, builders and owners of the world's most pugnaciously warlike and ugly memorial. I have no idea why it hasn't been accidentally blown up yet.

You're a fucking Preußen? Did your forebears default to English banks, or were they merely prisoners of war? Fish have racial memory, BTW.

Prusse, yes. Both my grandfathers were born in Prussia. Both served the full term of both world wars as officers. My father's father was an archetypical Junker. He was shot through his leg just above the knee during a cavalry charge against a French artillery battery only a few days into WWI. It killed his horse. Here he is greeting the emperor and empress. He got into trouble for greeting them "like a civilian" by taking his cap off, but then he was awarded an iron cross second class because he nicked almost all the French cannon after the charge in which he was injured.



My mother's father was a real Nazi. Before WWII he was a lawyer, then the chief justice of Thuringia's supreme court. You can't have a job like that after 1933 unless you are a card carrying member of the NSDAP. My mother told me that on Crystal Night he put on his uniform, strapped on his service pistol and stood to attention in the lounge room. He returned from Siberia in 1953, the year I was born.

My father finished school in 1942 or 3, went to boot camp for six weeks and then it was off to the eastern front with him. Late in 1944 or early 1945 he copped some mortar shrapnel in his shoulder, which was the kind of injury known as the perfect homegoing injury: too serious to keep at the front, but still able to walk. By then he was a lieutenant, which was also lucky. Otherwise he would not have gotten a seat on the boat under his own steam three days later that took him to Bremen. After he sort of recovered he was given a pushbike and marching orders to make his way south, where he was told to take command of some artillery unit nobody knew the exact location of. My father suspected that it might not even exist, but he went nevertheless. He was billeted on a farm short of Munich one night. In the morning an APC appeared. American soldiers jumped out and spread themselves. Someone asked if he and his mate wanted to fight or surrender. My father looked at his sub-machine gun, his comrade's pistol, the rifles and machine gun aimed at him and decided his effort to achieve the Fuhrer's Endsieg had come to an end. Shortly after Germany's surrender he was released. He died three years ago.



I don't have a photo of my mother's father in all his Nazi glory, so the above snaps of dad and granddad will have to do.

[Brian Peacock]

Which one do you take after?

[Hermit]

My father, only through sheer luck more successfully. He didn't want to shoot people. His ambition was to have sex with women wherever he could. Unfortunately he was given only two options: Shoot at people or be executed himself. I managed to avoid becoming a soldier because our new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam abolished conscription a few weeks after I finished school. Had he not won the election there's a 50/50 chance that I would have been conscripted and perhaps shipped to Vietnam to shoot at people I had no beef with at all. While I am not a pacifist, I have no interest in being a pawn in a war waged overseas. Unfortunately Australia has a consistent record in sending its natives to far away conflicts, beginning with the Boer wars. In 1942 John Curtin had a really tough time prising Australian troops fighting in Africa out of Churchill's claws when the Japanese landed in Papua New Guinea which is very close to our shores.

[Sean Hayden]

That's good stuff Hermit -

[JimC]

Hermit wrote:

I managed to avoid becoming a soldier because our new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam abolished conscription a few weeks after I finished school. Had he not won the election there's a 50/50 chance that I would have been conscripted and perhaps shipped to Vietnam to shoot at people I had no beef with at all.

I'm a little older, so I actually got the papers requiring me to register for the conscription draft. I ignored them, of course. I got a second letter demanding that I register a few weeks before the election. After Gough won, that was that... Saved by the bell!

(bunches of us used to go around to Post Offices, where you could pick up the registration forms, and snaffle a whole lot. We'd then fill them in with fictitious names and addresses, and post them off.)

Viva la revolution!

[Seth]

But as we've seen with the recent seizures of military grade fully automatic rifles from persons in Australia, it is far from impossible for someone who is determined to obtain an automatic, or semi-automatic rifle to use in a massacre, and it's most likely dead easy for criminals to get handguns, just as it is virtually everywhere on earth.

Yeah, man, it's far from impossible to stop people from driving cars at 160 km/h in 25 km/h zones too. We still have speeding laws.

Indeed we do. And, as it happens, we have volumes of laws about the possession and operation of firearms. But we don't ban cars, which kill legions more people every year than guns do, do we? No, we regulate how cars are to be used, and then we trust citizens to comply with those laws, which the law-abiding ones do. Then again, the non-law-abiding drivers ignore those traffic laws and do whatever they please, including killing people. Yet you do not argue for banning cars because criminals use them to commit crimes do you? Nope.

Exactly the same rationale applies to guns. Society strictly regulates how, when and where firearms may be used (discharged or even displayed) and imposes strict penalties for even the smallest violation of those laws. Criminals ignore those laws and do as they please, just like they do with cars.

The two situations are identical. So why do you (the abstract collective "you" meaning gun-banners) argue for banning guns and not banning cars. Of the two, cars are demonstrably far more dangerous than guns are.

There's an obvious philosophical disconnect inherent in this blatant hypocrisy.

The only counter argument I've ever heard that is supposed to justify the hypocrisy (which does nothing but attempt to rationalize it away) is "cars are useful objects and they aren't built with the purpose of killing." This is a lame-brained rationalization that ignores several salient facts: Cars, whatever their design intention, are quite often used to kill, either accidentally or on purpose, far more often than guns are, even in the US; and it is philosophical nonsense to suggest that inanimate objects have intentions, which is the upshot of the "guns are designed to kill" rubric. Guns are in fact designed to eject a projectile in a specific direction at a specific velocity, and that is the only thing they are designed to do. Where that projectile impacts is another matter entirely and there are as many justifiable and non-murderous targets for those projectiles as there are reasons to allow people to drive cars.

So you have regular casual killings like the two road rangers that shot each other dead, toddlers that accidentally kill their mums, unhappy customers that get upset with the bloke behind the counter at the fast food outlet and so on. Not so much in Australia. But do keep prattling on, seeing you love browbeating us. I am pretty sure that I'm not the only one who is suitably impressed by the intensity of your obsession and by your persistence, even though I scroll past 90% of your verbiage these days.

Your loss, not mine.

[Hermit]

...we don't ban cars...

Nice analogy. It does not work though. You see, every government bans cars. A customer of mine used to build his own to take racing. One of those was basically a Formula two car, centre steering, race engine and all, with a fibreglass body around it that made it look like a Volkswagen Beetle. One Saturday afternoon he decided to show it off to his mates by screaming up and down the road in front of the pub with it where they had gathered. Unfortunately for him the cops came cruising past. They impounded the car and booked the owner with a string of traffic offences. In court his license was suspended for the minimum of three months and it also decided that the car was to be crushed. Racing cars are banned. Others get pulled off the road if they have serious safety issues. Also, every car that is allowed on the road must have a serial number we call license plate and must be registered in a central government database along with the owner's current name and address. Drivers are not allowed on the road unless they have passed theoretical and practical tests. For some years now they need to keep a log of the hours they have spent driving under the supervision of a qualified person. When they have clocked up a minimum, they are allowed to go for the tests. If they fail, they can book another test for three months later, which gives them time to undergo remedial training. And cars are not even designed to kill.

It is much easier to buy or steal an unregistered car and use it on public roads than to obtain an automatic or semi-automatic gun, let alone a concealable sidearm. Also, private ownership of guns as such has not been outlawed in Australia. The gun buyback scheme took 631,000 firearms out of circulation. Another 3 million remain legally in private ownership. That is to say, 18% of privately owned guns were bought by the government and destroyed. 82% were not.

[Seth]

...we don't ban cars...

Nice analogy. It does not work though.

Sure it does.

You see, every government bans cars. A customer of mine used to build his own to take racing. One of those was basically a Formula two car, centre steering, race engine and all, with a fibreglass body around it that made it look like a Volkswagen Beetle. One Saturday afternoon he decided to show it off to his mates by screaming up and down the road in front of the pub with it where they had gathered. Unfortunately for him the cops came cruising past. They impounded the car and booked the owner with a string of traffic offences. In court his license was suspended for the minimum of three months and it also decided that the car was to be crushed. Racing cars are banned. Others get pulled off the road if they have serious safety issues. Also, every car that is allowed on the road must have a serial number we call license plate and must be registered in a central government database along with the owner's current name and address. Drivers are not allowed on the road unless they have passed theoretical and practical tests. For some years now they need to keep a log of the hours they have spent driving under the supervision of a qualified person. When they have clocked up a minimum, they are allowed to go for the tests. If they fail, they can book another test for three months later, which gives them time to undergo remedial training. And cars are not even designed to kill.

No, your government prohibits one from operating a race car on a public street, they don't ban race cars. Custom-built rock-crawlers and race cars are built here all the time, they just can't be driven on the public streets, but they can be driven off-road or at a track. The government merely regulates the time, place and manner in which a race car may be operated, just as gun laws regulate the time place and manner that firearms can be operated, not the possession of the race car.

You need to distinguish between possession and operation. You can possess any weird type of automobile you like, and you can use it anywhere you're not prohibited from using it. But you can put it on a trailer and haul it around behind your street-legal car to your heart's content and the police will not stop you, arrest you and confiscate your race car merely because you are in possession of it. But they will do so merely for being in possession of a weapon, almost ANY sort of weapon, firearms included, even if you have never displayed or operated that weapon.

So your analogy analysis fails.

On that note, I heard an anecdote from a client this weekend who lives in Atlanta. He told me that on a particularly flat and straight stretch of rural highway some county sheriffs were parked at night and were chatting when their radars went off showing speeds from 180 to over 200 mph, but no vehicle was seen.

This continued to happen randomly until the sheriff set up a roadblock on that highway one night. What they caught was a guy driving a Lamborghini while wearing night vision goggles who was driving without lights. They confiscated his car too. So, you see, the regulations are about time, place and manner, not possession.