Re: Question for those that would ban all guns...

"Trevor Wilson" <trevor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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"RD (The Sandman)" <rdsandman(spamlock)@comcast.net> wrote in message
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"Trevor Wilson" <trevor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
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"Peter Franks" <none@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Trevor Wilson wrote:
"Peter Franks" <none@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Trevor Wilson wrote:
"Peter Franks" <none@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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How does a law abiding citizen defend themselves against an
assailant(1) that has a weapon(2) or against multiple
assailants?
**If the assailant has the element of surprise (ie: Whacks the
citizen over the back of the noggin with a large lump of
wood/baseball bat, et al), then the citizen will just lie there,
unconscious. Maybe even dead.

Why do you feel the need to ask such silly questions?
What benefit would a gun serve, for the above-mentioned citizen?
Probably not much.

**Thanks for your honesty.

But what about the other 10,000 means of attack?

**Surprise is always the province of the assailant. In VERY RARE,
VERY EXCEPTIONAL circumstances, a weapon may be of help. For the
most part, a weapon will be of no use.

Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right to me. A lot of
generalizations that don't seem to correspond to reality, but ok.

**The reality is that DGUs (Defensive Gun Uses) are extremely rare
events.

Care to prove that, Trevor.

**I prove it the same way that I can prove that there is no God. No
evidence = no God. Little evidence of DGUs = very few DGUs.

Not really. Just because you accept little evidence of a God doesn't
mean that there isn't one. I find little evidence of alligators around
my home, but know that they exist.....just like Koala bears.

You have made that claim often and have
failed to prove it each and every time.

**It's not up to me to prove the existence of DGUs.

I never said it was. Your claim is that they are extremely rare events
even though you have been shown the contrary.

The lack of
evidence surrounding the claims of DGUs is adequate proof that very
few DGUs occur in the US. NB: I NEVER suggested that there are zero
DGUs. There are a handful each year.

There are more than that. I have given you the website of a fellow
Aussie who tracks news reports about them. He shows much more than a
handful every year, yet I doubt you have even gone to that site to look.

After all, not
everything is a surprise whack in the head. How do you defend
against that?

**A whack in the noggin? You cannot.

OTOH, we had, here in Australia, just last week, the example of
a German, female tourist, who was attacked by an unknown male.
Unfortunately for the assailant, the tourist was a trained
matial arts student. Last I heard, local medical facilities were
being checked out for the assailant, who was badly injured in
the attack. The German tourist was unharmed. She was unarmed.
So, is that the answer?

**The answer is to attmept to build a fair, just, polite society,
where such attacks are unheard of.

So, how do you do that, and what do you do in the meantime?

**A good start might be to ensure that everyone is paid a fair and
reasonable wage. That would include the lowest paid waiters to the
execs of Exxon.

That is a good idea.....where does the money come from?


The Exxon execs, for a start. They ear millions of Dollars every year.

WHy should the execs from Exxon give lots of money to the lowest paid
waiters? Is this part of your spread the wealth? Do you prefer that
everyone be paid about the same monies for their work regardless of what
that work is worth in the overall scheme of things?

Where do you think their money comes from? Thin air? Your pocket?

Choose one.

You are the one suggesting the relocation of wealth.....you say where you
think the money you wish to give the waiters should come from and why.

A good start might be to (say) limit the maximum pay for any person in
a company to (say) 10 times the pay of the lowest paid person in that
company. Such an idea would serve two purposes:

1) Company execs would ensure that reasonable pay and conditions are
applied to all people in a company.

IOW, share the wealth. You feel that the person who guides and controls
the company (and may have his own life savings wrapped up in it) should
only be paid 10 times what a janitor is paid? Have you gone mad?

2) Company execs would limit their own pay.

Many do. The new GM of General Motors is being paid $1.

And yes, such a system is already in place in various parts of the
world.

It is? Tell us of the successful major company where that is true.

If you can explain how any person can justify an annual salary
of (say) $20 million, then I would be all ears.

If he is successfully guiding a 200 Billion dollar company, why shouldn't
he get paid well for it?

[ASIDE] I argued this point last year (just before the meltdown) with
an Australian financial journalist, after one exec was paid AUS$33
million for one years' work. I maintained that I could do his job
better than the exec could do mine. He laughed at me. Within a couple
of months, the company's share price dropped from A$100.00 to less
than $30.00. It is STILL less than $40.00. The exec's decisions have
cost the shareholders billions of Dollars, yet he is still raking in
millions of Dollars in income. If I make a mistake, it costs me money.

I agree that CEO (and his attendents) pay should reflect the company's
success or lack of it. I am a firm believer in merit pay. If the
company goes down the toilet, so should the CEO (and his attendents). I
do not believe in golden parachutes.

There is, for instance, no sane reason to pay the CEOs
of large companies millions of Dollars for working as hard (or less
hard, as the case may be) as an inner city high school teacher.

There is if he is correctly steering a corporation into a profitable
and growing business. Not if the corporation is failing.

**There's four problems with that:

1) Execs still take home bundles of cash, regardless of the financial
state of the business.

That is a problem but it doesn't match what I said just above. I said
"if he is correctly steering a corporation into a profitable and growing
business." Your statement says "regardless of the financial state of the
business." If you wish to say that there are problem with what I stated,
then stick to what I stated. You didn't do that.

2) Execs often make the bottom line LOOK better, by cutting staff
numbers. They leave the company and the company shows terrible figures
the very next year. The execs keep their money.

See above.

3) I don't care how good a CEO is, no one is worth (say) $30 million a
year.

Your opinion. Obviously not the opinion of the Board who sets that CEO's
pay.

The only exception to that would be a person who has set their
business up and who owns a significant chunk of that business. Bill
Gates, for instance. The CEO of Exxon is, essentially, an employee. He
is not worth the money he is paid.

You don't know if that is true or not. Well, in the case, of Exxon,
perhaps we do. However not with most companies.

4) Taking the example of the Exxon CEO, for a moment. Exxon caused
massive and permanent damage to a pristine wilderness area a bunch of
years ago. Hundreds of people have lost their livelihood. People have
committed suicide. The Exxon CEO has fought against paying fair and
reasonable compensation to the people of Alaska. By being a corporate
bully, he has enhanced his own bottom line.

Yep, but don't judge all CEOs (or their worth) by him.

In
fact, a good case can be made to pay school teachers a lot more, to
encourage high quality teachers into the profession, so that real
changes can be made to children in the formative years of their
lives.

I agree that teachers should be paid more than they are, but to pay
them like CEOs when they have nowhere the responsility is rather
ludicrous.

**Points:
* I did not suggest that they should be paid like CEOs.

Good. I agree that they should be paid more.....however, I also feel
that tenure should not make them like overgrown weeds, hard to get rid of
if they aren't doing their job. Merit pay should fit them also.

* It could be argued that teachers have a greater responsibility that
CEOs.

No, it can't.


The Exxon CEO has certainly ignored his responsibilities to the
people of Alaska.

That's one.

Of course, so were your ideas about chain mail and everyone being
trained in a lifetime of martial arts.

**Strawman. I never suggested anything of the sort.

Yes, you did. You brought up chain mail and you brought forward the
story of the woman defending herself with martial arts when you were
arguing a gun being viable for self defense.

ALL forms of corruption need to be rooted out and prosecuted (and,
in the interests of fairness, the US is a leader in thos area,
compared to Australia). As shown by the experience in NYC, rigorous
prosecution of all laws can reduce all forms of crime.

Which is what we have been saying for years. We don't need any new
laws, we need strong enforcement of existing ones. That, BTW, was
also shown in Project Exile (supported and funded originally by the
NRA) in Virginia.

**What you need are HOMOGENEOUS laws. Half a dozen properly policed
laws, homogeneously applied accross the nation are better than 20,000
badly enforced, haphazardly applied ones.

Project Exile enforced federal laws.....those are the ones that are
"homogenously applied" across the nation.

Mandatory visits to gaols for all school children.

Elminate tipping and pay people who survive on tips a livable wage
(we, Australians, are particularly mystified at the (il)logic of
tipping for everything).

Who tips for everything?

**Certainly not Australians. We don't tip restaurant workers, taxi
drivers, porters or anyone else. No need. We are despised the world
over, since we don't tip.

Or are considered very cheap when you do. However, the way wages are set
up for those in the US, tips are a part of their wages. Ergo, until that
wage setup is changed......

Raise taxation to levels similar to most other Western, developed
nations, so more police can be employed.

Or we can pay for that abortion called the Pelosi Healthcare plan.

**I know nothing about the "Pelosi Helthcare plan".

Neither do most folks here including those Congressmen who just voted for
it.

Stop invading other nations, so that tax money can be better spent
on Americans.

Not bad. We have a strong Air Force. If some nation harbors
terrorists who like to blow up our buildings or fly airplanes into
them, we can simple reduce the entire nation to rubble.

**Ask yourself: What were the reasons given by Osama for the decision
to attack the US? Did it have anything to do with the millions of US
Dollars used to prop up a corrupt regime in Saudi Arabia?

Al Qaeda can say any reason that they wish. The real reason is that they
consider us infidels and wish to destroy our way of life.

Or, asked another way:

If the US did not spend billions of Dollars keeping US military forces
in Saudi Arabia, propping up a corrupt regime, would Osama have
attacked the US?

Probably.

NB: I am NOT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM condoning the cowardly attacks
on US civilians. If Bin Laden was pissed off with the US military in
Sadia Arabia, then he should have attacked the US military, not US
civilians.

As most cowards do, he attacks soft targets. Ones that won't shoot back.

Cut back defence spending so Americans can enjoy the benefits of
their own hard work.

Why would you wish to cut back defense spending? We are a
target....you are an island not many people really care about.

**Thanks to Cheney, the waste present in the US military is huge.

Get off your Cheney stick........waste has been prevalent in government
contracts since time immemorial. It isn't a Cheney thing.

Install a decent, fair and rational public health system.

And how do you suggest we pay for it? You do realize that of the
folks with health insurance, 84% of them are happy with it.

**I have private medical insurance. I also have access to the public
health system. As is my right as an Australian citizen.

Good for you.

I pay Around
AUS$75.00/month for private health insurance. How much do you pay?

When I was on private insurance, I paid about $50/month when I wasn't
subsidized by my company. I am now on Medicare.

The
reason why I pay so little, is because the private health care system
is kept 'honest' by the existence of the public system. The massive
waste and rip-offs in the US private health care system do not (for
the most part) exist over here.

I keep hearing about this massive waste and rip-offs but no one
(including our government) really seems to be able to quantify it with
concrete examples rather than exceptions. It is like the Democrat's
claim to pay for the new healthcare plan by cleaning out the waste and
fraud in Medicare. Two points on that. One, they don't state exactly
what that waste and fraud is and two, if they have known about it, why in
hell is it still there?

There's a few things that would help. There's probably a bunch more.


Weapons are, fundamentally, not much use. Now bullet proof armour
may be of far greater assistance. Why do we not see the NRA
promoting that cause? Bullet proof vests have been shown to be of
some use against assailants with guns. Chain-mail vests are
helpful against assailants with knives.

And also impractical. A defensive weapon is a lot lighter, easier
to manage, etc. than chain mail and vests. Any other suggestions?

**Make handguns VERY difficult to obtain.

Why?

**Because they serve very little purpose except to be used to kill
people.

In my case, the only people that they will kill will be those who
threaten me or my family. I suppose you do realize that in over 80% of
the homicides in the US, one party or the other has involvement in drug
or gang activity. It is mostly criminal on criminal.

They have been proven to be the most effective defensive weapons of
all.

**I've never seen any proof of such a thing.

It has been posted several times, so don't give me such bullshit. Here I
will post it again:

"*A fifth of the victims defending themselves with a firearm
suffered an injury, compared to almost half of those who defended
themselves with weapons other than a firearm or who had no weapon.
Care should be used in interpreting these data because many aspects
of crimes--including victim and offender characteristics, crime
circumstances, and offender intent--contribute to the victims'
injury outcomes."

For this and additional data, go here:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt


It isn't the legal possessor who is the problem.

**Is it your contention that no legal handgun owner has ever murdered
another person? That's a bit of a stretch, even for you.

No, Not what I said. Pay attention. I said it isn't the legal possessor
who is the problem. Most homicides by firearm, the firearm is used by
someone who is possessing it illegally. When over 80% of the homicides
involve drug or gang activity involvement on the part of one or both
parties, it isn't Joe GunOwner.

Even you with your 'scientific' mind should be able to grasp what that
means.


--
Sleep well tonight,

RD (The Sandman)

Let's see if I have this healthcare thingy right. Congress is to pass
a plan written by a committee whose head has said he doesn't understand
it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it, signed by a president who
hasn't read it, with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn't
pay his taxes because he didn't understand TurboTax, overseen by an obese
Surgeon General and financed by a country that's nearly broke.
What could possibly go wrong?
.

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