Gyroscopic Investing

Pointedstick wrote: Now? It's been illegal for some time now.

MachineGhost wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: Now? It's been illegal for some time now.

Really?  Since when?  I thought just that guns were banned and they were trying for the knives.

In the heat of the moment it is not expected that you should make fine judgements as to how far you can go. What you honestly and instinctively believe is lawful and necessary self defence of either yourself, your family or your property, even if you use a weapon could constitute reasonable force.

gizmo_rat wrote: Jeez lazy analysis.

The context is self defence products not self defence. In the context of products, by definition something which doesn't have any legal precedent is neither legal or Illegal. Really what else would you expect the police to say ?

Ad Orientem wrote: The British government has been aggressively restricting or simply outlawing most weapons or implements that could be used for self defense.

gizmo_rat wrote: Perhaps... but not recently. The law dates from the 50s and prohibits the carrying of an offensive weapon in a public place without a lawful reason or reasonable excuse.

MachineGhost wrote:

gizmo_rat wrote: Perhaps... but not recently. The law dates from the 50s and prohibits the carrying of an offensive weapon in a public place without a lawful reason or reasonable excuse.

Does the UK have the equivalent of concealed weapons permits?

MachineGhost wrote:

gizmo_rat wrote: Perhaps... but not recently. The law dates from the 50s and prohibits the carrying of an offensive weapon in a public place without a lawful reason or reasonable excuse.

Does the UK have the equivalent of concealed weapons permits?

gizmo_rat wrote: In the precise sense of US concealed carry then definitely not, the things you might carry under this permit in the US can't be legally obtained in the UK e.g. hand guns, pepper sprays, tasers and so on.

MachineGhost wrote:
So how is the crime rate?  I know crime shot up after they banned guns in Australia about a decade or so ago.  At what point does everyone realize they've made a huge mistake???

gizmo_rat wrote: The biggest problem with gun control to me is that it makes no difference either way.

You can substitute drugs, butter knives, meta data collection and so on into the same arguments for the same net effect on crime.

The only effect you actually notice in the UK is that you don't have to deal with police who are armed, which is one thing that continues to freak me every time I go abroad. 

MediumTex wrote:

gizmo_rat wrote: The biggest problem with gun control to me is that it makes no difference either way.

You can substitute drugs, butter knives, meta data collection and so on into the same arguments for the same net effect on crime.

The only effect you actually notice in the UK is that you don't have to deal with police who are armed, which is one thing that continues to freak me every time I go abroad. 

There is no question that the U.S. is a society that is fascinated by violence.  It's not that every American is violent, but it does seem that Americans are more likely to embrace violent solutions to society's problems than citizens of another society somewhere else in the world.  Think about it: When there is a crime problem, we give the police more and better weapons and we talk about whether we should kill more of the worst criminals through the human sacrifice ritual known as the death penalty. 

When there is a dispute with a foreign country (or even a dispute between two other countries that doesn't even involve the U.S.), the question is always whether it is time to send in troops and/or bombers. 

The U.S. cranks out the most violent movies in the world and has the best people when it comes to creating realistic simulations of violence in those movies.

I am always surprised at the complete lack of any kind of national discussion about the U.S.'s use of nuclear weapons against Japan.  Everyone seems to casually accept that there was no alternative to incinerating almost 100,000 Japanese civilians in order to shorten WWII.  Truman in particular seems not to have been troubled at all by ordering this action, which I have always hoped was the result on him not entirely understanding what he had ordered (he didn't even know the atomic bomb existed until a few weeks before his orders to use it on Japan).  Only a society that is very comfortable with violence would be able to let such an action sit in the history books without a lot of hand wringing about whether it was actually a horrific war crime.

I took a film class in college and one of the films we watched was a documentary about the survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan.  It was very sad and when it was over many of the women in class were crying.  As I looked around at the tears I could tell that many of the people in the room had never really given much thought to what actually happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  They had just casually accepted it as one more bit of American pragmatism when faced with a challenge.

Libertarian666 wrote: If the US had lost, Truman would obviously have been tried and convicted as a war criminal, as Lincoln and Wilson would have been.

But the good news about war is that you only have to stand trial if you lose!

Libertarian666 wrote: If the US had lost, Truman would obviously have been tried and convicted as a war criminal, as Lincoln and Wilson would have been.
But the good news about war is that you only have to stand trial if you lose!

MachineGhost wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: If the US had lost, Truman would obviously have been tried and convicted as a war criminal, as Lincoln and Wilson would have been.
But the good news about war is that you only have to stand trial if you lose!

Better democracy won than imperialism!  Did you see what the Japanese did to the Chinese?

The mentality still lives on: they still kill dolphins and whales for food/sport.

MediumTex wrote:

MachineGhost wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: If the US had lost, Truman would obviously have been tried and convicted as a war criminal, as Lincoln and Wilson would have been.
But the good news about war is that you only have to stand trial if you lose!

Better democracy won than imperialism!  Did you see what the Japanese did to the Chinese?

The mentality still lives on: they still kill dolphins and whales for food/sport.

I'm certainly glad that the allies won WWII.  I just wonder if it was necessary to smoke 100,000 Japanese civilians to get there. 

I don't think that anyone believes Japan would have won the war if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been nuked, which means that the nukes were used basically as a convenience, as opposed to a desperation move by a country on the verge of defeat.

MediumTex wrote:

MachineGhost wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: If the US had lost, Truman would obviously have been tried and convicted as a war criminal, as Lincoln and Wilson would have been.
But the good news about war is that you only have to stand trial if you lose!

Better democracy won than imperialism!  Did you see what the Japanese did to the Chinese?

The mentality still lives on: they still kill dolphins and whales for food/sport.

I'm certainly glad that the allies won WWII.  I just wonder if it was necessary to smoke 100,000 Japanese civilians to get there. 

I don't think that anyone believes Japan would have won the war if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been nuked, which means that the nukes were used basically as a convenience, as opposed to a desperation move by a country on the verge of defeat.

Kbg wrote: Anyone who understands the history of the 100 Years war also understands, that yes you can kill your way out of something. It's not very fun getting there, but there is a point that even humans get tired of the killing and whatever beliefs they had get mellowed by a stronger desire for peace. People can also be "killed" into accepting beliefs previously absolutely anathema to them when those beliefs are no longer worth the cost. The US civil war is a pretty good example of that. War sucks, but the reason we humans do it is because it actually does work at resolving the big differences.

Pointedstick wrote: I actually agree with Ad Orientem on this. War is a horrible brutish business, no doubt about it. Better to end it quickly and decisively rather than dragging it out, allowing the misery and death to continue on for an extended period of time.

I'm reminded of something Kbg said on this forum earlier this year ago that I felt compelled to save in my "insightful internet snippets" file:

Kbg wrote: Anyone who understands the history of the 100 Years war also understands, that yes you can kill your way out of something. It's not very fun getting there, but there is a point that even humans get tired of the killing and whatever beliefs they had get mellowed by a stronger desire for peace. People can also be "killed" into accepting beliefs previously absolutely anathema to them when those beliefs are no longer worth the cost. The US civil war is a pretty good example of that. War sucks, but the reason we humans do it is because it actually does work at resolving the big differences.

Assuming the war department's projections were correct, then yes, I think it is preferable that 100,000 Japanese died in nuclear armageddon than 3 million Japanese had died in close combat or further firebombing (arguably less humane). If their assessment was not correct, then that obviously changes things.