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[Nadaka]

.50 bmg is a hunting caliber if you are hunting big horn sheep or bear.

[Virex]

.50 bmg is a hunting caliber if you are hunting big horn sheep or bear.

Do politicians and cartel members count as big game?

[RedKing]

I don't see a benefit to not having the ban, because the general public really has no need for a .50cal rifle with a range of two kilometers. That's not a home defense weapon, that's not a hunting weapon. That's a sniper rifle/anti-vehicle weapon.

There is no benefit in having an 'assault weapons' ban, either. I'd point out that high capacity rifles are virtually never used in crimes. Too visible for criminal purposes. Those .50 caliber rifles are never used in crime either, they cost a fortune and they weigh like 40 pounds. Only example I can think of is the Killdozer guy had one in his Killdozer.

We weren't discussing them in the context of US crime, we were discussing them in the context of the Mexican drug cartels. Where they are quite definitely used in paramilitary fashion to kill Mexican Federal police and the Mexican military. I'm pretty sure that murder qualifies as a crime.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

.50 bmg is a hunting caliber if you are hunting big horn sheep or bear.

Very large mammals with tough hides can indeed shrug off or at least not be seriously injured by lower caliber firearms. That's why Elephant Guns were originally invented, and it's all in the name.

[kaijyuu]

Gun control is something I've never been too adamant about, but I do think should be tightened.

It's obviously going after the enabler, not the violent individual actually shooting the gun. I'm not too fond of blaming enablers.
At the same time, I have no real reasons guns shouldn't be controlled; if gun control were infringing on some other important right, then maybe there'd be a case for keeping them around. As it stands, I don't really see a reason to have them (there are other options for self defense), so banning them with the justification of getting rid of an enabler gets my tentative support.

There are other problems with guns than malicious violence, too. These are dangerous implements that can be mishandled. For that, I'd push education as much as control.

[Nadaka]

Look at what is happening in Syria. IIRC Syria has a mostly disarmed population. One of the reasons that a well armed population is important is to resist the tyranny of their own government.

[Truean]

This is from another forum where someone was defending Ron Paul's statement that if someone is being molested in their workplace it's their own fault for not quitting their job on the spot.  I really can't believe how difficult it is for people to realize that blaming the victim is absolutely ridiculous in these sorts of situations.  The thread in question was mainly debating Ron Paul and libertarian ideology (which is heavily based in "fuck you, got mine"), so it's not entirely on topic.  But it still ties into the general mindset of blaming the victim:

First, where are you getting 'most' from?  Over half of the United States is below the poverty line, we're at around 10% unemployment, and if you up and quit without notice you can lose your accumulated benefits.

Further, even if everyone in the US could exist without pay, implicitly defending rape by arguing that the victim has the choice to leave is going completely against the non-aggression principle that Libertarians claim their ideology flows from.  Someone is doing harm to you, and putting you in a situation where you either tolerate it or lose your job.  It's coercion, and unlike the 'violence of law', it's coercion you did not agree to.

Saying that not getting raped is better than losing your job, and one should abandon their livelihood for it is arguable, but why should it be a choice?  If you're being molested by your employer, they should be punished, and your job shouldn't be at forfeit for someone going out of their way to shit on your rights.  If Ron Paul groped your ass and you didn't work for him, that is clearly his fault.  Why should it be different because you work for him?  Is it because you become his property?  Does your personhood vanish the moment you sign on to work for someone?  Can your personal rights, which he and other libertarians see as being inherent above all else including law, be bargained away?  Is that not wildly inconsistent?

Saying that "well you were wearing those clothes, you were on the bad side of town, you were asking for it" to shrug off someone getting raped is indefensible.  The only person responsible for the rape/molestation is the person who did it.

You don't see libertarians saying "well of course they were asking to be robbed, having such a big house with nice stuff in it." Rich people too have the choice to not be conspicuously wealthy, they can move to a secluded area, etc.  And yet their suffering is not passed off as being their own fault when misfortunate strikes.

Why are tangible property rights to not have their golden toaster stolen from their home ranked higher than the right to not get tongue-kissed by Ron Paul because you work for him?

How sad that this is necessary to point out....

Why is the victim's sole remedy to renounce whatever they have that is in any way associated with their attacker? A job, walking outside, going places, etc.... Said victim has the least ability to stop or prevent the offending act crime and doing so, if even possible, comes at an incredibly high cost to them. Comparatively, the attacker can merely stop or prevent the crime by simple inaction. Just don't do it. The attacker has the easiest, least costly, last clear chance to stop the crime. Thus, the incredibly light burden should fall to them.

The problem is humans do not have a set protocol for relating to one another and thus we suck at it. A monster that fed on human loneliness would never starve in a world full of humans despite the contradiction. Loneliness is the absence of others. We are surrounded by others, yet loneliness persists and thrives. If the condition persists despite being surrounded by the remedy, then the interaction or lack thereof between the two must be the problem.

Justice is not renunciation of value in the face of crime. It does not protect the criminal's right to impose upon victims. A Just society isn't one that malfunctions to the point of creating vast and extreme unmet needs of its citizens. This includes the relations between them.

The true preventative remedy to rape would be a courtship ritual that made sense. It would include the simple truth that rejection is required and desired to find someone who will accept you. Mathematically speaking, any given person will be rejected (even if initially accepted) the overwhelming majority of the time when seeking a romantic partner and this is a weeding out process to find acceptance. Focusing on the rejection will prevent further search and thus prevent acceptance. While I'm at it, reasonable expectations would help, because I'm just not gonna get Brad Pitt of "Fall" for me in any universe. That's another part of the "weeding out process" figuring out what type of person is or isn't reasonable for you to expect. I'd go for a halfway decent looking guy who gave a shit about me had no drug problems and a skill set with a reasonable chance of employment. You're an unemployed carpenter; fine, I get it, bad economy.... Hopefully we'll see if you can make some stuff out of wood and we'll work with that. I've set people up with their own businesses before, meh.

The rapist typically doesn't want to hear any of that, much less do any of it. They just want laid without putting in the preliminary work. I've unfortunately had to defend a few of these assholes. It sucks. They are my third least favorite type of case to defend and I won't take them if possible.

[Capntastic]

The rapist typically doesn't want to hear any of that, much less do any of it. They just want laid without putting in the preliminary work. I've unfortunately had to defend a few of these assholes. It sucks. They are my third least favorite type of case to defend and I won't take them if possible.

Rape is being revealed by study to be less about sex itself and more about anger, feelings of inadequacy, and power over someone else.  It's a constellation of psycho-sexual frustration, and Virex saying that rapists are 'just normal dudes' is a really uninformed and sort of inexcusable thing to say.

Edit:  Here's Virex's quote from a few pages back: 

One of the main thing people are always forgetting is that rapists are normal men, not some rabid savages that need education.

[Montague]

Montague, as far as I know, there isn't a major snowmobile traffic to help the Canadian Mafia. If the cartels get their weapons in the US, it's because it's the easiest way. Ana ssault weapons ban would make their life more difficult, there is a reason why the Mexican government has been urging for one for years.

We weren't discussing them in the context of US crime, we were discussing them in the context of the Mexican drug cartels. Where they are quite definitely used in paramilitary fashion to kill Mexican Federal police and the Mexican military. I'm pretty sure that murder qualifies as a crime.

Sorry, thats a terrible rational for an assault weapons ban. We are not justified in stripping Americans of their freedom to appease foriegn governments. The problem of drug cartels smuggling weapons into Mexico and drugs into the US would be a rational for better securing the border, not implimenting drastic, unconstituional domestic policy in the US.

So the Canadian Mafia is using snowmobiles to smuggle maple syrup across the border, we better ban the sale and production of snowmobiles. Or better yet, we should clamp down on the internet because criminals in Romania are using it to steal credit card numbers.

[Vector]

I'm kind of wondering if the powerlessness/control thing would partially explain some of the higher male rape rate.  There's a lot more social pressure on men to be powerful and have their shit together (mastery of their domain, whatever that is) than there is on women...

[Jackrabbit]

Look at what is happening in Syria. IIRC Syria has a mostly disarmed population. One of the reasons that a well armed population is important is to resist the tyranny of their own government.

In this day and age, is it really? Do you think the Syrian Free Army would be doing any better if there were more people in Syria with guns? The Syrian Army isn't coming out and engaging in open warfare, they're shelling the living hell out of Homs and other strongholds. Unless you want to allow civilian purchase of artillery there isn't much that having more guns would do other than turn the place into even more of a hellish battleground, when you've got a million and one angry, frightened and most importantly armed citizens with no real training to speak of defending their doorstep from whoever comes near. Revolutionaries are by definition rather radical, so even if everyone had guns that wouldn't mean that suddenly they'd be better able to organize a revolt or want to join it or do anything beyond keep their family safe in what's all of a sudden an incredibly trigger happy way. It'd just mean more deaths.

What's really important in preventing tyrannical governments is improving the capacity of the global community's ability to deal with them. I mean, right now the UN is something of a joke, bending over backwards to the whims of China, Russia and America whenever one of them decides to play games, but if the UN's responsibility to protect civilians was a law and not a norm and wasn't tied up in so much ridiculous bureaucratic bullshit then maybe something could get done. I know it's a mess right now, but I honestly believe international co-operation is the best avenue we've got for things like this.

I guess what I'm saying is there needs to be a better international framework for protecting civilians from tyrannical governments, and giving everybody guns is not the way to go about it because that assumes they know what to do with them, or will use them to overthrow the tyrannical government, or really do anything beyond shoot the first person in a rag-tag uniform who walks onto their street just in case they're the bad guys.

[Truean]

The rapist typically doesn't want to hear any of that, much less do any of it. They just want laid without putting in the preliminary work. I've unfortunately had to defend a few of these assholes. It sucks. They are my third least favorite type of case to defend and I won't take them if possible.

Rape is being revealed by study to be less about sex itself and more about anger, feelings of inadequacy, and power over someone else.  It's a constellation of psycho-sexual frustration, and Virex saying that rapists are 'just normal dudes' is a really uninformed and sort of inexcusable thing to say.

Edit:  Here's Virex's quote from a few pages back: 

One of the main thing people are always forgetting is that rapists are normal men, not some rabid savages that need education.

I'm a practitioner rather than an academic and view field practice as generally superior to any study so I'll make my views as plain and open as possible. What I've observed is that it's about one of those things you mentioned AND sex. What I was saying, all I was saying with the above is essentially that they are horny and don't want to go through the process of finding a girlfriend who will willingly have sex with them, thus.... . Obviously, I'm not defending the thing itself. If somebody raped me or someone I cared about, I'd honestly want to shoot them myself, even though doing so would be murder and wrong. It does and should go through a legal process, because justice and my vengeance aren't the same....

That and our courtship rituals, suck and are broken. The thought springing from this is simple and I would hope agreeable: if said guy had a healthy relationship with a girlfriend, then he wouldn't be out doing unspeakable things like sexual assault. Again, I'm really not defending the act, but most of the defendants I've seen were... shall we say... "frustrated." If they could've chilled the hell out and found a responsible, consensual way to [ahem] deal with those needs, then we wouldn't be in this mess. That doesn't make what they did any better, but hopefully you can see the argument of fixing the system yielding different results? Theft isn't good and springs from lack of opportunity; provide reasonable opportunity = decrease in theft. Same line of logic.

I'm kind of wondering if the powerlessness/control thing would partially explain some of the higher male rape rate.  There's a lot more social pressure on men to be powerful and have their shit together (mastery of their domain, whatever that is) than there is on women...

Vector's point dovetails nicely with this. Without even being kinky at all, there are a lot of women who really like a man in control. I sorta consider myself one of these to a degree as long as he doesn't overdo it. I'm happy to let him take the lead for a variety of reasons. 1.) It gives him the chance to overstep bounds and if he does, then I know he isn't for me. If he doesn't, then bonus points for him. 2.) I like having him happy and hopefully he'll return the favor. 3.) At some point in time, it makes me feel safe (subject to him observing 1 and 2 above). 4.) If he's paid any attention to what I'm saying, maybe he'll know what I like and choose accordingly, little sneaky quiz for him.... We won't even touch the kinky BDSM stuff that I'm personally not into but it seems lots of people are with the exception that, hey, it is them being responsible and consensual and dealing with that "power trip" thing.

Am I saying rapists are somehow less to blame for their crimes due to an inadequate system. No, not really. I'm saying we can make that system more adequate to have less unsatisfied needs and thus less undesirable outcomes. Same thing with my theft clients. It's still wrong to steal. No matter if I get them off or not, a question is always, what will keep this from happening again/keep others from doing this? <--- Practical problem solving/prevention. No?

[Montague]

Look at what is happening in Syria. IIRC Syria has a mostly disarmed population. One of the reasons that a well armed population is important is to resist the tyranny of their own government.

In this day and age, is it really? Do you think the Syrian Free Army would be doing any better if there were more people in Syria with guns? The Syrian Army isn't coming out and engaging in open warfare, they're shelling the living hell out of Homs and other strongholds. Unless you want to allow civilian purchase of artillery there isn't much that having more guns would do other than turn the place into even more of a hellish battleground, when you've got a million and one angry, frightened and most importantly armed citizens with no real training to speak of defending their doorstep from whoever comes near. Revolutionaries are by definition rather radical, so even if everyone had guns that wouldn't mean that suddenly they'd be better able to organize a revolt or want to join it or do anything beyond keep their family safe in what's all of a sudden an incredibly trigger happy way. It'd just mean more deaths.

What's really important in preventing tyrannical governments is improving the capacity of the global community's ability to deal with them. I mean, right now the UN is something of a joke, bending over backwards to the whims of China, Russia and America whenever one of them decides to play games, but if the UN's responsibility to protect civilians was a law and not a norm and wasn't tied up in so much ridiculous bureaucratic bullshit then maybe something could get done. I know it's a mess right now, but I honestly believe international co-operation is the best avenue we've got for things like this.

I guess what I'm saying is there needs to be a better international framework for protecting civilians from tyrannical governments, and giving everybody guns is not the way to go about it because that assumes they know what to do with them, or will use them to overthrow the tyrannical government, or really do anything beyond shoot the first person in a rag-tag uniform who walks onto their street just in case they're the bad guys.

I'm sure that's why tyrannical governments don't bother outlawing civilian ownership of firearms, the dumb proles would surely just end up shooting each other because people cannot be organized against governments.

Also, the UN isn't designed to be the world government or world police or anything else besides a forum for the purpose of simplifying diplomacy between nations. You think that would ever work even if it was? Democracies and theocracies and dictatorships coming together to further world peace and advance human rights? Of course the UN seems like a joke if you expect it to accomplish any of those goals, it's not intended to or able to do so in the first place.

[Capntastic]

I'm a practitioner rather than an academic and view field practice as generally superior to any study

No, actually, peer reviewed studies are better to base things off of than anecdotal evidence.  I'm not even saying that sexual gratification doesn't have a part in it, but rapists by and large are driven by other things as well.  This is why I am rebutting Virex's assertion that rapists are 'normal dudes'.  Even in studies designed to determine this very question, it's been shown that while both rapists and non-rapists are pleased by normal consensual sex, rapists typically respond more to scenes of rape than non-rapists.  Ergo, there are other elements at play.

[scriver]

Rape is being revealed by study to be less about sex itself and more about anger, feelings of inadequacy, and power over someone else.  It's a constellation of psycho-sexual frustration, and Virex saying that rapists are 'just normal dudes' is a really uninformed and sort of inexcusable thing to say.

Edit:  Here's Virex's quote from a few pages back: 

One of the main thing people are always forgetting is that rapists are normal men, not some rabid savages that need education.

Normal dudes cam suffer from anger, feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness. Your and Virex' statements are not dichotomic in any way.