Clarification/Follow-up by curious98 on 04/17/07 5:35 pm:
What facts do I have to wait for?

A perfect foreigner with a Visa-1 permit has got hold of 2 guns and enough ammo to kill 33 people and wound 30 or more. That is a fact accepted by your police.

You sau law abiding citizens have the right to obtain guns and go through hoops of controls. Immediately after you add that these sort of tragedies would be much less should the police had zero tolerance about students having guns on campus!!!

But I would say these students are law abiding people or are they not... The Korean chap was also a student. He probably didn't go through any sort of control, did he?

As to your last consideration I would say that the rest of the world you do not seem to recognize as real ALSO have the fundamental right of ALL humans, i.e. to protect themselves. But they do not feel the need, nor are they authorised by their Authorities, to keep an arsenal home, like our friend Charlton Heston.

As for defending yourself from the tyranny of your government, excuse me, but I think you are daydreaming or, perhaps, thinking of your American Civil War.

Last, but not least, don't make me laugh with that silly statement that you in the USA have chosen not to be sheeple... You, plain man in the street, whether in the USA or in Europe are as sheeple as can be. Your government (and ours) ONLY NEED YOU and us for your (and ours) votes. After that, so long.

Let me add, however, that the ONLY country in the world, who are also sheeple, but MUST keep their weapons AT HOME by law for some 25 or 30 years, are the Swiss. But, of course, they are civilized and respectful with the laws...

Curious98

Clarification/Follow-up by curious98 on 04/17/07 5:56 pm:
Hi Elliot, long time no hear,

I have heard this sort of reasoning time and again. But there are criminals all over the world. And people do not feel the need to protect themselves with their own weapons, for they are not allowed to keep any.

And the ratio of criminal acts is not higher in any country in Europe than it is in the States...

Claude

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/17/07 5:58 pm:
You sau law abiding citizens have the right to obtain guns and go through hoops of controls. Immediately after you add that these sort of tragedies would be much less should the police had zero tolerance about students having guns on campus!!!

No you misread my remark . I say if the school did NOT have a zero tolerance policy then perhaps one of the victims or another student would've been armed and could've shot him first .

Yes I'm sure crime rates in Switzerland are real low . Criminals know it wouldn't be wise to illegally enter someone elses home. As my friend excon was fond of saying "an armed society is a polite one . "

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/17/07 6:12 pm:
Claud
Neither you nor I know enough to state factually how the Korean got his guns. As a legal alien he was in his right to get them with the right backround checks of course ;but I somehow doubt he went through the legal process to get them . My point is that criminals have no trouble getting them if they want them . I'm sure that's true in Spain also .

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/17/07 6:23 pm:
here's more :


Police and university officials offered no clues to his motive in the massacre, but a rambling note was reportedly found in Cho's dorm room.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the note railed against "rich kids" and "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.

The Tribune also said Cho had been behaving strangely lately, setting a dorm room on fire and allegedly stalking women.

ABC, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the note, several pages long, explains Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this."

Sources told the Tribune that the words "ISMAIL AX" were also found written in red ink on the inside of one of Cho's arms.

The reference may be to the Islamic account of the Biblical sacrifice of Abraham, where God commands the patriarch to sacrifice his own son. Abraham begins to comply, but God intervenes at the last moment to save the boy.

In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the son is Isaac, father of the Jewish people; in Islam, it is his brother, Ismail (Ishmael in Hebrew).

Abraham uses a knife in most versions of the story, but some accounts have him wielding an ax.

A more obscure reference may be to a passage in the Koran referring to Abraham's destruction of pagan idols; in some accounts, he uses an ax to do so.

Cho's family lived in a two-story townhouse in Centreville, where neighbor Abdul Shash said the gunman played basketball and wouldn't respond if someone greeted him.

He was "very quiet, always by himself," said Shash.

The Chicago Tribune said Cho's family ran a dry-cleaning business, and that he had a sister who went to Princeton University.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
interesting .....may be a Muslim connection here .

Clarification/Follow-up by curious98 on 04/17/07 6:29 pm:
Well, Tomder, you don't need to look for terrorists in Iraq, if you have them already at home, do you?

Claude

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 04/17/07 6:32 pm:
I think we need to be on guard at home of course .But also we need to find and kill terrorists in Iraq as we have done by the thousands.

Clarification/Follow-up by curious98 on 04/18/07 4:16 pm:
Elliot,

You do have a point in what you say. We, in Europe, have also our share of murder rates. Still, I think you have been “a naughty boy” by ending your list with the United States.

Using your same source, if you continue with the information provided, you see that:

Armenia, India, Yemen. Dominica and Azerbaijan have lower rates than the States.
Finland follows with 0.0283362 per 1000, followed by Slovakia, Romania and Portugal.

Malaysia, Macedonia, Mauritius, Hungary, South Korea and Slovenia that
have the 34th, 35th, 36th. 37th, 38th and 39th position. Then you find France with 0,0173272 per 1000 people, which is already substantially lower than the States.

The Czechs, Iceland, Australia, Canada and Chile follow, with the U.K. in the 48th place and 0,0140633 per 1000 people. Italy, Spain, Germany, Tunisia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway and Ireland have a still smaller percentage.

The list ends with Switzerland, Greece and even Japan. Japan has a 0,00499933 per 1.000 people.

So, if these figures are correct, Japan has a crime rate which is 8,56 times smaller than the States… and the U.K. 3,04 smaller than the States, etc. etc.

So I think my point still prevails. Western Europe has a much smaller crime rate than the States and people are not allowed to have any weapons.

Governments are supposed to take care of their citizens by means of an efficient administration and police. This is why they collect their taxes which pay not only their salaries but also all these additional structures, like police.

The point that most Americans refuse to acknowledge is that you are still living in a culture of violence which is the outcome of a history that actually started les than 300 hundreds years ago…

Europe also went through that kind of violence. The difference being, however, that our history started just some 25 centuries ago… and by now, most of us we are also sick and tired of so much violence.

And this is no joke. Practically all violence in movies and on TV reaching Europe comes from the States. Movies like “28 days later””, “Robocop”, “American Psycho”, “The Hitcher”, “The Lord of the Rings”, “Bonny and Clyde”, “Scar face”, “The Godfather”, “The silence of the lambs”, “Natural Born Killers”, “Henry: Portrait of a natural killer”, American History X, Universal Soldier and/or Excessive Force…

All these titles belong to Hollywood and they all contain scenes of an indescribable violence.

They have all been great hits in European theatres, because some of them are excellent movies, but the producers and directors have always considered that some “good” sex and violence would increase the marketing possibilities of the movies and they were right. It did help a lot, particularly amongst the young crowd.

Two recently published studies show that prolonged exposure to gratuitous violence in the media can escalate subsequent hostile behaviors and, among some viewers, foster greater acceptance of violence as a means of conflict resolution.

The two studies were conducted by James B. Weaver III, head of the Department of Communication Studies at, precisely, the Virginia Tech, and Dole Zelman of the University of Alabama.

I will not go into the studies they carried out with 53 male and 40 female students from both universities, but the end result was that violent movies CAN AND DO increase violent responses in life.

Same goes for most American TV series and movies released. This week we are having in a Spanish channel TV the film Saving Private Ryan, by Tom Hanks. We all know what wars are like. And those that do not know can easily imagine it.

So why start the movie with ten minutes of the most spectacular war scenes I have ever seen.

The same applies to “Flags from our Fathers” or “Letters from Iwo Hima”, by Clint Eastwood. We could be saved a lot of violence in both pictures except for the fact that, then, they would not have been so successful.

Or take the latest great hit now in Europe, the movie 300, narrating the battle of the Thermopylae!!

There is so much blood one thinks it is going to fill out the theatre…

So you see, it is no surprise that you are one of the countries with a higher crime rate in the world. And I do not mean burglary crime rate, but real actual murder rate…

Sorry to disagree with you, Elliot, but facts are facts. America is still too young and you have accomplished a lot in a short time. I do hope than when you grow older you will also sober down as we did too.

Claude

Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 04/18/07 6:27 pm:
>>>Still, I think you have been “a naughty boy” by ending your list with the United States.<<<

My point, Claud, was to counter your statement that "And the ratio of criminal acts is not higher in any country in Europe than it is in the States... " By showing that there are indeed several European countries with higher crime rates than the USA, I succeeded in countering that point. The fact that there are also some European countries with lower crime rates than the USA doesn't change my basic point.

>>>So I think my point still prevails. Western Europe has a much smaller crime rate than the States and people are not allowed to have any weapons.<<<

I tend to disagree. Russia, Estonia and Latvia, which have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, much more restrictive than the USA, has murder and suicide rates that are both more than double that of the USA. Luxembourg, Germany and Denmark, have the toughest restrictions in all of Western Europe, but also have the highest murder and suicide rates in Western Europe. By contrast, Switzerland, Australia and Israel, all of which have much more liberal gun laws (in fact they are the three most liberal gun ownership countries in the entire world), also have the lowest murder and suicide rates. There is a pretty clear correlation between gun ownership and low crime.

Furthermore, to attribute crime rates in Europe as a function of gun control laws is simply wrong. Europe as a whole has ALWAYS had lower crime rates than the USA, even before any gun laws were legislated in any of the European countries. So saying that gun control lowered crime rates is just plain wrong.

>>>Governments are supposed to take care of their citizens by means of an efficient administration and police. This is why they collect their taxes which pay not only their salaries but also all these additional structures, like police.<<<

Yes. And when they fail, the social contract is broken, and it becomes the responsibility of the people to protect themselves. Thus the need for the right to bear arms.

>>>The point that most Americans refuse to acknowledge is that you are still living in a culture of violence which is the outcome of a history that actually started les than 300 hundreds years ago…

Europe also went through that kind of violence. The difference being, however, that our history started just some 25 centuries ago… and by now, most of us we are also sick and tired of so much violence.<<<

So you are saying that because the USA is younger than any European country it must, by nature, be less mature than any European country, and our violence is a function of that lack of maturity?

Sorry, but I don't buy that. Leaving aside that our founders were all Europeans before they were Americans, and that the majority Americans are of European decent, and should therefore be equally "sick and tired of the violence", you are assuming that Americans can't learn from history. You are assuming that only Europeans have had a violent history, and that Americans haven't had a history that is equally violent. I don't buy that.

Furthermore, if being "sick and tired of the violence" were all that was necessary to bring down crime rates, Europe wouldn't need gun control laws at all. They simply wouldn't commit crimes, regardless of how tough or liberal the gun control laws are. Therefore, by your own arguement, crime in Europe is NOT a function of gun control laws. No matter how liberal or tough the gun control laws are in Europe, crime will automatically be lower than the USA. Therefore, using gun control to stop crime in Europe as a model for gun control stopping crime in the USA doesn't work.

>>>All these titles belong to Hollywood and they all contain scenes of an indescribable violence.<<<

Perhaps. But they are imported all over the world equally. In fact, the majority of any Hollywood movie's gross income comes from FOREIGN SALES not domestic, especially foreign DVD sales. Which means that there are more foreigners (Euopeans, Asian, etc.) buying and watching American films than there are Americans. Which means that the violent nature of those films effects Europe and Asia as much or more so than it effects the USA. What that tells me is that Europeans have become as "desensitized" to the violence of American film as Americans are... and they want more of it. If prolonged exposure to these forms of violenct entertainment is a cause of rising crime rates, then Europe is as prone to it as the USA... despite being culturally "sick and tired of the violence". And unless you are planning on regulating the movie industry, banning guns won't stop changes in behavior. Instead of killing with guns, people will find ways to kill with home-made bombs, baseball bats, hockey sticks, knives, pipes, rocks, axes, hatchets, ropes, blunt objects or their bare fists. If movies are causing violence, you can't stop it by banning guns.

You are quite right, the facts are facts. But the facts DON'T say what you think they do. They in fact say exactly the opposite... that gun control doesn't stop crime and that places where citizens are armed have lower crime rates than places where guns are highly regulated. The movies are a side note, but the fact that Europeans enjoy violent films from America should make you wonder just how much more peaceful Europeans really are than their American counterparts.

Elliot