Bowling for Columbine

[Oblivion437]

He's been condescending and rude the whole time, behind a veneer of humor, every reply has been an insult. Not to mention, it seems to me he seriously must be lacking a certain reasoning capacity to be unable to connect the dots between a fallacious argument and an unfounded base of an argument. At what point is it difficult to see that if Moore is lying, his points are meaningless?

For 11000 killed annually, we can turn to social controls, and start peeling them down, one by one. The War on Drugs kills 10000 people every year. About 1600 are the victims of gang wars and other shootings. There you have it, over 1/10 of all firearms deaths the result of a gross infringement on civil liberties.

[ 02-28-2004, 06:51 AM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]

[Melusine]

Originally posted by Grojlach: And cool! It seems I've pulled a Yorick, judging by the number of posts in a row.

LOL!! "Pulled a Yorick", I love it. I think you should all take care though, before y'all pull another Yorick and Ziroc puts gun ownership next to religious debates under the moratorium.
Interesting discussion though - I may not post here any more, or at least not as often as I once did, but the lurking still makes for plenty of entertainment, with none of the direct hits.

[Night Stalker]

Happy to entertain Mel!

[Davros]

It's a strong point that Mr Moore has never been sued for slander or false representation. Do none of these debunk stories put forward by the contributors to "Guns and Ammo" not have enough substance in truth to be able to pin him down in any way? I guess not.

[Night Stalker]

GrojBob, youmay feel safe with out guns because right now you don't feel the effect of not having them. But, a short sixty years ago, your country was conquered and disarmed. Now, that was an outside invader, but right next door the hositile take over came democratically from with in. When they came over the border, you were unable to defend your freedom. Since then, Europe has had the luxury to work on more social issues - even under threat of the Russian Bear, because it's security was provided for by mostly America and Britain. They could spend their money elsewhere. But sixty years doesn't buy true enlightenment, Milosovic popped up in your own back yard.

As for mass killings by alternative means in Europe, I couldn't tell you much about it. I don't get EU news feeds and don't pay much attention to the news anyway. Except to find out who the Enemy of the Moment is cause my ass may be shipped there. I will say that the IRA gave Britain a nice harrying for a number of years though. Regretably, some wealthy misguided Americans did help fund them - at least that is what the rumor says. I don't know the money trails personally.

As for the availablity of guns in Europe, I bet you would be supprised to find out just how easy it is to acquire them. And rest assured, the really dangerous people DO know how to get them.

The only way that I can see gun control working is to destroy all guns, and destroy all knowlege of them. For as long as knowlege exists or product exists, some one somewhere will have one, and that someone may turn out to be either tyrranical or psycho.

I am in the business of defense and providing security. So, I have a healty respect for weaponry of all kinds, information and information distribution being the most dangerous weapons. But, I also recognize that if those that I am providing security to cannot supply some basic security for themselves, what is to protect them from ME should my methods of providing security become detrimental to their well being.

Like it or not, Freedom is traded in the coinage of Blood.

[Night Stalker]

Originally posted by Davros: It's a strong point that Mr Moore has never been sued for slander or false representation. Do none of these debunk stories put forward by the contributors to "Guns and Ammo" not have enough substance in truth to be able to pin him down in any way? I guess not.

No it's not Dav. Libel and Slander are very hard cases to proove in court. Plus, as one gets more and more into the public eye, the shield of Libel and Slander get smaller and smaller.

I will give Mr Moore credit to one thing though, he crafts his fabrications very well such that he doesn't come out directly and speak his poison. He misleads his audience into swallowing it without feeding it to them directly. That also makes it much harder to proove Libel or Slander. It's not the strength of his facts as they support his arguements though.

[Oblivion437]

Mass killings without modern arms:

-Genocides in Assyria
-Inquisition
-The Crusades
-The various great battles of the Judean-Roman wars, of which the names escape me, but in ONE battle, nearly 20,000 soldiers were killed, and an entire city of Jews were eliminated.
-The conquests of Temujin, aka Genghis Khan
-Attila The Hun
-The Roman Conquests

All examples of brutal, massive killings where no firearms and not even the most advanced weapons of the day were needed or employed. Not to mention the various Germanic wars the Romans engaged in, which involved massive slaughters of peasants on the campaign trail, and no victories for the Romans. Then there's the collapse of Rome itself, a work often attributed in the history books to the Vandals (I'm not sure, but I believe the Huns did the serious work in shaking up Roman power, and this same book refers to Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who killed Kennedy) and other tribes from the East of the Danube.

You don't need good weapons to kill. Human beings are incredibly vulnerable at all times. A sharp, acute force delivered to the temples could very easily kill you, and human hands could easily deliver them.

NS, you bring up the moral crisis, are people who are good merely because they don't know how to be bad really good, or just ignorant? History says they're just ignorant.

[Davros]

Originally posted by Night Stalker: I will give Mr Moore credit to one thing though, he crafts his fabrications very well such that he doesn't come out directly and speak his poison. He misleads his audience into swallowing it without feeding it to them directly. That also makes it much harder to proove Libel or Slander. It's not the strength of his facts as they support his arguements though.

Nope [img]smile.gif[/img] not lettin you get away with that one so easily . If the whole film was just this total fiction as the NRA people would have us believe then no matter how crafty the tissue is applied it can't cover the whole case of bananas. Ergo, there is more substance than the other side is prepared to concede [img]smile.gif[/img] .

You may like to believe he is misleading loads of people, but it is just as easy to make the claim that there are loads of people that refuse to be educated. Let's face it, the reality lies somewhere between the two, and it requires people to listen and apply reasoned judgement to really know where the balance lies. I think it is a reasonably valid statement to make that there are people in the NRA that are of the "cold dead hands" fervour that would totally fail in the listening department simply because you can present them all the facts in the world and they are going to reject them as lies because they just don't sit with the way they want to view the world. A large proportion of the debunk attempts I have seen are put together by these NRA fanatics, and they do their cause more harm than good because of their total lack of credibility.

[Faceman]

Originally posted by Oblivion437: Mass killings without modern arms: -Genocides in Assyria -Inquisition -The Crusades -The various great battles of the Judean-Roman wars, of which the names escape me, but in ONE battle, nearly 20,000 soldiers were killed, and an entire city of Jews were eliminated. -The conquests of Temujin, aka Genghis Khan -Attila The Hun -The Roman Conquests

While your list proves a point to some extent you should take into account that numbers of antique and medieval authors are often grossly overstated (and then taken at face value by sloppy historians).
The old Athens is estimated to have had about 300 000 inhabitants at its peak (around 500BC) and Rome tops at 1 million (about 200AD)
When Herodot e.g. speaks of armies of 200 000 people this value is to be taken as synonym for "A LOT" but not as an actual number.

However, I think that we - at least partly - owe the ceasing of "annual wars" to modern weaponry. While pre-WWI it was common to want revenge after a war, the horrors of modern weaponry (mustard gas, tanks, flamethrowers,...) and the devastation of Europe that had been unparalleled since the 30-year war made the people fear war and want peace. It was in the 20ies when offensive war was outlawed for the first time in history and Clausewitz' quote "War is continuation of politics with different means" became invalid.

[Night Stalker]

Dav, in response, I'm just going to let your own words echo back to you. First of all I am not a member of the NRA. I've seen the scenes that many contend and have seen the creative editing done. I have seen Mr Moore's attemped responses to the critisism. Often, he divulges into red herrings or ad hom or gross hyperbole and side steps the point of the critisism. Or he uses another fallacy of logic "well I've never been sued for libel, so I must have struck a nerve of truth" as you just brought up. Most of the critisism that I have seen is not the rabid ravings of the NRA people or hyper conservatives. It just points to inconsistancies in Mr Moore's movies and exposes creative editing on Mr Moore's part and then asks the question - if his facts stand so strong on their own, why the creative editing?

Fiction does not have to be make believe. It can be contsrued from fact. It's not so much all of his factst that I question, but his mixing and matching of them to create a story that the base facts don't tell. Or will you tell me that Lockheed Martin in Littleton is responsible for two psycho kids going on a rampage. I grew up in an area saturated with defense companies. I never knew or cared what they did till I graduated college and wanted to work for them. I've seen Kennedy Assassination Consiracy Theories that have better arguements than those that Mr Moore presents.

The fact is, people on both side will rabidly reject the arguements of the other side and stand by their guru as it were because if their guru is wrong, possibly .... so might they.