Sale of toy guns at Disney parks a center of controversy

God given right? I don't question your good/bad person point, but I don't see any connection between God and rights.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

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God given right? I don't question your good/bad person point, but I don't see any connection between God and rights.

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God given rights = free will = freedom

society adds laws to guide free will for a mass culture

and... along with what CPLady said....

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And that's my point, Freakylick and Dale. Parents these days seem to NOT take a role in their kids upbringing. A child has trouble in school, the teachers are blamed. A teen becomes violent, violent programming on TV or video games or even music is blamed. Someone spills hot coffee on her lap, and McDonald's is to blame. It seems that the blame is always put onto someone other than ourselves.

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I guess why not add Disney to this of those to blame, huh?

Oh yeah, and Jeff.... as far as...your comment of...

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The Red Coats aren't coming any more.

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Hmmm....let's get rid of all guns because we know we are safe from our own government from now till the end of time. The "redcoats" may not be coming today or tomorrow, but can you guarentee me that there will be no concern with a situation similar to what our forefathers faced developing within our own government in the next 100 years?

Dale *** This post was edited by Dale Picolet on 10/30/2002. ***

Jeff,

Here is a direct quote from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is the connection between God and rights that you don't see. Perhaps you weren't looking in the right place.

I think banning toy guns is pretty asanine...especially when I can go down to the local expo center at least 3 times a year and buy a real gun. Now I'm not saying real guns should be banned either, but let's look at the 2nd Amendment which states that we as citizens have the right to bear arms.

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Amendment II - Right to bear arms.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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Now I can see how this can be stretched to cover today's philosophy of, if you have the cash and the proper credentials you can buy a gun...but I mean come on. The Constitution was ratified in 1786 and I'm pretty sure our fore fathers didn't anticipate that we'd become such a violent society. But we have because this Amendment has been left alone to belie that any old person could own a gun...when it was only intended for State Militia for protection purposes against any kind of threat. Sorry that was my little rant...I think this amendment needs amending and someone needs to do it soon.

But hey, as 'Ole Chuckie Heston would say

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Guns don't kill people. Apes with guns kill people.

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See, I knew everyone would cloud the issue and interject flag waving and religion. That's my point. No one ever has a better reason to object to gun control other than:

1) Fear of our own government. Hey, you elect those people. Again, see Canada and the UK. I'm not particularly worried about my local mayor or my Senator pushing me around.

2) As Brett mentions, the spirit of the Second Amendment was never for the purpose for packing heat to fend off muggers and crack addicts.

3) People use "rights" and "free will" to justify everything. It's a search for an absolute that doesn't exist. There is no black and white when it comes to rights. Somethings you should be allowed to do, others you shouldn't. In the case of guns, not owning one hasn't prevented me from living life, enjoying liberty or being happy.

I'm not saying we should pitch all guns just because, that was never my position, since like I said there is no universal black and white for a complex issue. However, ignoring the issue on the basis of the above points is pretty short sighted if you ask me. Add to that the reduction in violent crime in the last ten years under some of the limited control we've had, and I think it's proper to start questioning things.

Like why we don't use the metric system...

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

Jeff,

Who is using religion to cloud the issue, certainly not everyone? I don't see it. The closest I see is the phrase god-given right . The phrase God-given right is an acceptable interpetation of the statement used in the Declaration of Indepence. It is not based on religion, but a knowledge of US Civics. If you want to blame anyone for clouding this issue with religion, you'll have to blame Thomas Jefferson, he's the one that wrote it.

I take acception to your cause and affect statement that our limited gun control laws have led to the decrease in violent crime. Are you saying that the benefits of a prosperous economy over the last 10 years have no affect on violent crime? Their is no proof to your statement and it is by definition a logical fallacy.

Wrong... I realize that it would only contribute to a portion of the decline. There are a thousand different factors that would contribute to the decline. However, I'm looking for that part that makes it a "logical fallacy" that making it harder for people to obtain guns, especially criminals, wouldn't reduce violent crime.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

Well *my* arguement would be that the majority of "gun control" laws *fail* in making it harder for 'criminals' to obtain guns. Of course that is a debate for another time, another place....

lata, jeremy

--Who thinks that it is asinine to ban toy guns. And isnt to partial to banning real ones. Praise the Lord and pass the Ammunition!

Damn, Jeremy, we agree AGAIN.

Mark, who just renewed his GOP membership.

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http://www.rockandrollconfidential.com

Jeff,

Gun control has only made it harder to legally obtain firearms. It has not made it harder to illegally obtain firearms. Using your logic, it could be said that the liberalization of CCW permits in Michigan and Texas is responsible for the reduction in violent crime in these states and therefore it should be carried out to all states. You are over simplifying with your generalizations.

Your logical fallacy is the use of a cause and affect statement. Cause and affect statements are by definition logical fallacies because you cannot prove that the cause brought about the affect as you have since stated your self.

There is no proof that gun control is responsible for any reduction in violent crime. It cannot be demonstrated using either inductive or deductive arguments.

Why isn't comparison to other countries valid? No one seems to have a good answer for that. If you do, I'd be interested in hearing it.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

Before the argument for or against gun control can be made on the basis of safety, it must first be settle on the issue of rights. If firearm possesion is a right of individuals, then no matter how unsafe this right is, our government cannot remove this right from us. Our country's founding documents state that rights do not come from the government, but from our creator. Only once it has been firmly established that firearm possesion is not a right, can safety be considered an issue on which to determine gun control.

Guns are not causing the problem in the country, our culture is causing the problem. We have a country that seems to accept violence against one another. We accept irresponsibility and the freedom to do whatever we want as individuals.

Where do we start to turn this around? Not by banning guns, but by parenting our children. Teach them that violence against one another is wrong. Parents are a role model to children, if they accept large amounts of violence as part of their world, then so will their children.

It's odd, the only violence in my individual reality is what I get from the media. If I didn't have tv, if I didn't have a radio, and if I didn't go to movies, I wouldn't know that violence is a problem. The people in my life don't go around beating up others, they don't shoot others. Sure, we have firearms, but they're used only for hunting. Our media surrounds us with violence in our music and film. Please don't misunderstand me here, I am not blaming the media for violence, however, it does play a part. The media exaggerates the violence in our world with it's attitude that 'If it bleeds it leads'. I'm not advocating the government restrict our media as other countires, such as Canada, do. However, I do feel parents should make more responsible decisions as to what they and their children watch.

I'm pretty sure the "creator" did not give me the right to drive a car or to live tax free. How do you explain that? The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document aside from letting the Brits know we're not a part of them. No law is derived from that document.

If you want to talk about rights, you'll have to do better than "God said so." (I realize that you didn't say God, but what else would you mean?)

Is parenting and personal responsibility a part of the solution? Of course it is. As I said, it's not a cut and dry issue.

As for media, I wasn't aware that Canada, a country where I can here some pretty whacked out non-FCC-friendly stuff on the government-funded CBC, is restricted. Besides, it still doesn't address the question about why gun control benefits democracies that use it.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

Jeff,

You don't have a right to drive a car. You have the privilege and or liberty to drive a car. Same as living tax free. I don't see your point here. Maybe your confusing rights with liberties. Rights are given to people by their creator, liberties are granted by their governments.

Your statement that I said 'God said so' is fine in essense that is what I said. Rights coming from God is an argument similar to 'I think therefore I am'. My point in claiming that rights come from God is not to start a religious argument, rather, it was to illustrate the position that our nation's founders had when writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. My question for you is: If rights didn't come from God, then where did they come from?

The only way that governments can be forced to recognize rights is to establish that rights come from a source higher than government. That is what TJ was trying to establish. If our rights come from government, then we really have no claim to rights, as governments change on a daily basis(especially in a republic like the US). TJ's attempt was to establish the fact that no matter what government we have, certain rights must be respected. That these rights are higher than government and governement does not have the proper authority to remove these rights.

My point involving other countries use of gun control is this: it isn't just the gun control. It is my opinion that our culture plays a larger part in violent death than guns. Remove the guns and the culture will still be there. I'd be interested to see the figures comparing the bathtub drowning of children per capita in both Canada and the US. I'm willing to bet that Canada's rate is lower than ours.

Despite the fact that Maryland has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. The alleged sniper was able to illegal purchase a gun. For some reason, the legal paperwork involving the sale of the gun doesn't exist. Gun control just doesn't work as well as a lot of people think it does.

Here is some text I found that can explain better than I can. I recommend looking into the works of John Locke for more information.

A second deontological theory is rights theory. According to rights theorists, these are rights that all people naturally have, and the rest of us are obligated to acknowledge. 17th century British philosopher John Locke argued that the laws of nature mandate that we should not harm anyone's life, health, liberty or possessions. For Locke, these are our natural rights, given to us by God. Following Locke's lead, US Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson recognizes three foundational rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson and others maintained that we deduce other more specific rights from these, including the rights of property, movement, speech, and religious expression. There are four features traditionally associated with moral rights. First, rights are natural insofar as they are not invented or created by governments. Second, they are universal insofar as they do not change from country to country. Third, they are equal in the sense that rights are the same for all people, irrespective of gender, race, or handicap. Fourth, they are inalienable which means that I ca not hand over my rights to another person, such as by selling myself into slavery.

*** This post was edited by PointMan on 10/31/2002. ***

I understand where all of your philosophy is coming from, but there are two problems I have with it. One is that our nation was founded on the principle that you need not believe in any higher authority, if you so choose. In that case, it is my belief that rights come from one's own sense of moral judgement. If that were the only standard, of course, people would do a lot of nasty things, so to keep a culture civilized, its government creates additional rules, on our behalf via the people we've elected.

The other problem is that a discussion of rights is a distraction from the original question: Do people need handguns? As millions of people live happily without them, I don't think it's over-simplifying anything to say that, no, people don't need them.

The ideologies of people who have been dead for 200 years are fine, and I don't disagree that they were wise people. However, they are quite dead, and the world is quite different now. Those folks knew that they'd be dead and the world would change, and knew they didn't hold any universal truths, and that's why they left provisions for us to change things. If anything, we let them down by just repeating what they had to say ad nauseam.

Looking to the past is always a good starting point to deal with today's problems, but if it's the only angle you take, it's impossible to move forward in an evolving environment.

I do like where you're going with the cultural refernce though, so let's talk about that some more. You contend that our media is violent and acts as our primary exposure to violence. For all the worrying we do about that, it's nothing compared to what you'll find (along with far more graphic sex) in France, the UK, Scandanavia, and yes, even Canada. The things people are exposed to in those countries would make most Americans stick hot pokers in their eyes. Why is it that these cultures, of which sex and violence is a key component, have less violent crimes per capita than we do? Why is more, less? If we rule out those cultural differences, which should favor us, then what do we attribute the difference to? I certainly don't know, but it would sure seem to me that gun control would be a good place to start.

And by the way, I believe the sniper bought his guns in the Pacific Northwest.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

Your question - do we need handguns? All we need is water, rice and in the colder climates some clothing. But that would make it a boring world. Do we need to take handguns away from law abiding citizens? I think you'll agree that we don't. I think we can also agree that criminals should not be allowed to have them.

You mention the excessive sex and violence in European media. Your right there's no violence over in Europe, especially in the last hundred years. The holocaust never happened. Are you kidding, Europeans have been killing each other for centuries. Are you aware that in Germany, nearly a whole generation of men is missing?

I find your explanation on the origin of rights especially chilling. Specifically the phrase

"so to keep a culture civilized, its government creates additional rules, on our behalf via the people we've elected."

Where do the people of Cuba, Iraq, Iran, N. Korea and a host of other countries that are not democracies derive their rights from" *** This post was edited by PointMan on 10/31/2002. ***

I might agree that we need not take guns from law-abiding citizens, but I'd like you to give me a reason that they need them.

You're reaching for sensationalist nonsense now. One-on-one crime and the holocaust should never be brought up in the same sentence. One was a subject of war, average street violence has nothing to do with it. Furthermore, I didn't say "Europe," so stick to what I said in context.

Regarding your last statement, you know damn well I wasn't talking about dictatorships, I was talking about democracies. Again, you're leading the conversation away from my points. Is it because you don't have good responses to them?

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure

Jeff,

You previously mentioned this: it is my belief that rights come from one's own sense of moral judgement. If that were the only standard, of course, people would do a lot of nasty things, so to keep a culture civilized, its government creates additional rules, on our behalf via the people we've elected.

Then you mentioned this:

I wasn't talking about dictatorships, I was talking about democracies.

Could you please tell me where people in dictatorships get their rights from. Under the traditional view of where rights come from, an authority higher than government, all people, under all governments are granted these rights. Also, these rights are the same for all people.

I think your position on rights is not well thought out and is designed to give certain people rights that others don't have. The tradional view of rights is that all people are equal and that all people deserve the same rights. Under your view, because everyone's sense of moral judgement is different, everyone is going to want different rights. Your view of rights only applies to beneficial democracies and nothing else. It also gives no moral authority to defend those who's rights are being abused.

War is violence, the same culture that breeds street crimes also breeds war. I think you only object to my usage of war because it contradicts your point. I also think that it was fair to use the countries I used as examples. Jeff, France UK and Norwegian countries are part of Europe, so you brought up Europe. I just used countries that didn't fit your model. Norwegians don't have the freedom of speech that we enjoy, and France and the UK do not have the same legal system that we have. They are less likely to let criminals go due to some small technicality.

I have never argued that anyone needs handguns, that has never been my point and you know it so why do you keep bringing it up? My point has been that we have the right to posess handguns, whether we need them or not. My point has also been that rights are not granted by the government, as you contend, but by a higher authority,(God, nature, Zeus, the universe, whatever). I have provided support for that claim. You however, have not provided one bit of support for your claim as to where rights come from. Your argument about the origins of rights is nothing more than blustery wind.

Finally, about the effectiveness of foreign gun control:
Actually, crime rates are the same in Switzerland, Israel and Norway, where gun laws are relatively mild, as they are in England, Italy and Japan, where guns are almost entirely prohibited.

In Switzerland, most citizens are members of the national defense force and are issued fully-automatic rifles and ammunition, to be kept at home, ready to be put into use in a national emergency. Outside their formal military duties, the Swiss expend about 60 million rounds of ammunition with the guns each year, mostly for target practice. Crimes with the guns are virtually unheard of. By comparison, "Italy's gun law, 'the most restrictive in Europe,' had left her southern provinces alone with a thousand firearm murders a year, thirty times Switzerland's total."1

England annually has twice as many homicides with firearms as it did before imposing its tough laws. Furthermore, "crime rates for robbery, assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft are higher in England (including Wales) than in the United States." And while U.S. crime rates have been declining significantly, the reverse is true in England and Wales.

According to a late 1998 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "For most U.S. crimes . . . the latest crime rates (1996) are the lowest recorded in the 16-year period from 1981 to 1996. By comparison, English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and police statistics have all risen since 1981." The murder rate is higher in the U.S. than in England and Wales, but the U.S. rate has been declining, while the rate in England and Wales has remained unchanged.2

*** This post was edited by PointMan on 11/1/2002. ***

Ugh... why can't you get it? I'm not talking about dicatorships, I'm talking about the United States. You're stuck on this notion that rights have to come from somewhere.

Who cares if my view of rights only applies to democracies? The converstation started with gun control in democracies, so why would I want to talk about anything else? You keep reaching back to fundamental absolutes (which don't exist), and attempt to apply them to all cultures.

I object to your point about war because it's irrelevant. We're talking about street crime, not war. If you never argued that people need handguns, then what are you even arguing about?

Furthermore, since you're stuck on who comes up with rights, you ignore the fact that some "higher authority" doesn't interject, doesn't govern and has no consequence on a culture's decision to allow or disallow guns.

Your stats fail to take into consideration per capita rates. A study by a Canadian university puts the muder numbers like this in 1995 per million:

US: 6.24
Canada: 0.60
Netherlands 0.27
UK: 0.13
Germany: 0.21
Spain: 0.19
France: 0.65
Italy: 1.66
Switzerland 0.64

These stats come from the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy.

The problem with the direction you take your argument is that it's almost entirely based on philosophy. Philosophy is a noble pursuit, but sadly doesn't have much effect on what's actually going on out in the world.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when it's all in your mind. You gotta let go." - Ghetto, Supreme Beings of Leisure