Translation: Any system of "ethics" that contradicts my beliefs I deem invalid

Reality: No "system of ethics" denies you the right to self-defence, but I'll ignore that by redefining "self defence" to mean "my right to carry firearms" (and relegate police duties to traffic control only).

Strawman: No guns != No self-defence

Anyone who would deprive free men of the means of any means of "self-defense" TFTFY

Can you point to the issue of Hansard showing the legislation that says I can't exercise "self-defense"? No? (there's a surprise).

Ironically - that is an excellent example of flawed logic. Did you miss the "well regulated" bit of your constitution? How's that confirmation bias working out for you?

Excellent advice - do try it.

From the land where we've had one mass shooting. Which was, before the gun restrictions. A country where we still have a "right" to self-defense - we just don't equate self-defense with arsenals (we just call the police). Obviously us colonial subjects of the Queen would have even less Sandy Hook episodes if guns were not "well regulated" (less tiger attacks if we carried magic tiger rocks, and less rapes in the military if those women had access to firearms). Thanks for the lesson in logic.

You logic is flawed. If self-defense is a requirement for any section of society: only those prepared to shoot first will benefit; you can kiss civilisation goodbye. And before you trot out that tired old cliche about how you "can't rely on the police", maybe you should make the system work before advocating the return to a system that was abandoned in favour of law and order.

Didn't seem to stop you misusing the ABS stats.

• Rifling is done the same way in both countries - most fitters and turners consider it a basic skill.
• I've got a mate who's a gunsmith - he buys his barrels from the US and assures me I could import them without difficulties - no license required (the law does require a certificate - but the sellers don't want one and it's just steel to Customs). .50 calibre? New or used? eBay if you're lazy.

Agreed. I've seen plenty of firearms in PNG and Indonesia that were made by people without lathes. Not as lethal as those turned out by trained and well equipped gunsmiths - but the people they were used to shoot looked just as dead to me.

Not from Mexico, no. And not one way either (we ship drugs both ways - hello Rio, how's the marmalade? - hello France, how's the green skins? - etc). It's true we don't ship a lot of guns to Mexico. We do bust large quantities of drugs coming in (occasionally going out), and while we do blame China and North Korea for the origin of some of those drugs - we also recognize they are just trying to compete to satisfy the demand. Australia does have a history as a being used to route weapons through to other parts of the world - but as far as I know Mexico isn't one of those places (I suspect Virginia has a monopoly on that).

You're trying to compare apples and oranges. It's hard enough to compare any two US states given the huge differences in reporting methods and laws on rape, and damn difficult to compare any US state and Australia. There is very little difference between Australian states in law on rape, the gathering of crime statistics (all based on convictions), and police training and qualification. Most Australians who visit the US are stunned by your bizarre laws and "police". It's not rape if you're married?!! Some states vote to see which untrained people get to play police!!

If you only get your news from Slashdot you might believe a growing percentage of Australians don't think we have a cultural problem with attitudes to women (unfortunately not a majority), and that that's the root cause of the rape problem (though not only women get raped). If so, you'd be mistaken.

One major difference is that is it's rare for Australians to propose that arming women will reduce the problem - quite the reverse. I suspect that may have something to do with huge difference in the amount of money gun manufacturers make in the two countries. Apropos of little - which industries fund the anti-gun lobbyists? (bullet proof vest are illegal for citizens here - so I'm guessing it isn't the ballistic protection manufacturers).

Oh and you might want to take a look at the huge percentage of "sex offenders" in the US. Given the bizarre laws you have in many States it's hard to tell whether you simply cannot be trusted around other people or you're just mostly batshit crazy religious nutjobs. Probably a bit of both.

Clearly you wouldn't recognize a fact if it flew back from Mexico and shot you in the foot. (statistical anomaly, ow, not murder, don't count).

• Not a solution
• Not relevant
• Do you have an authoritative reference that shows the "point of law is to indicate what's OK and not OK"?? And while your at it - find out why we all haven't been getting our weekly Hansard 'cause I don't know what's OK and not OK. OK?

The people who inhale the paper dust? The people whose peace is shattered by the gun shot?

Do you have a point? Or is this simply a "baffle'm with bullshit" exercise?

On the basis of the example given - no one. There's an assertion that the gun will protect the woman. The false logic that a gun is an equaliser. Another assertion that the "ex-husband" is "crazy". Yet another unsubstantiated assertion that somehow being "crazy" means the ex-wife is at risk from something that only a gun can protect her. Emotive, speculative, logically flawed, and totally irrelevant to the legislation that was speculatively proposed.

Maybe to you, but real life not so much. If you removed all the gun laws tomorrow it'd still be an offence to shoot someone (assault). Gun laws are there to keep voters happy as a measure designed to reduce the risk that someone might do "something bad" with a gun. Ownership of a gun, or explosives etc is a risk of behaviour and exposure. "You" might only shoot paper without adversely affecting anyone else but as long as you have a gun and ammunition there's a risk they could get into the wrong hands - so no, the current gun laws are not just about what you might do with a bullet. It's about limiting the number of firearms and ammunition and attempting to "guess" in advance which owners are likely to misuse the bullets (or point the guns at the wrong people - which is anyone).

Keeping voters happy means (amongst other things) limiting the embarrassment suffered by public officials when someone insists on wearing petrol pants to a barbecue. e.g. "Three times that person assaulted ex-partners with a weapon - now someone is dead. How come you allowed that person to get a weapon?".

Good and Bad are personal opinions - like Right and Wrong. Confusing them with what's legal and illegal won't end well. Leads to other stupid expectations like Justice and Meaning (sigh). It's the same sort of flawed logic that says possession of guns means the government won't be evil. 'cause we'll arm up - form a militia, vote for leaders, shoot the government and form our own government. That'll take care of that problem of outsourcing responsibility... (yup, if at first ya don't succeed keep doing exactly the same thing thing in the vain hope that blind optimism will triumph over experience.)

Bullshit. I'm relatively honest - how does the "cracking down on ownership" negatively affect me? It doesn't unreasonably affect me. (I'm assuming that part of your problem is the inability to differentiate between "law-abiding" and "honest". "Honesty" doesn't mean you obey the law - it just means you'll admit breaking it if asked.)

I'm a rural property owner without a criminal record or mental health problem. I legally own all the guns I reasonably need to do my work. I'd like to own a particular semi-automatic high-power air-rifle because it'd be cheaper for silent rabbit shooting than a suppressed .22 - but I can't because the manufacturer decided they could sell more in the US if it looked (hyper-)paramilitary (matt black with rails) instead of traditional hunting style. I can see the point of that, I know people in the grey zone and understand that the black market price is much higher for scary looking guns than for purely functional hunting weapons. I'd much prefer the bolt-action 100 year old .22 tack hammer to a 9mm Uzi machine pistol - and if I was a robber making good on a threat I'd be far more lethal with one. But I'm not a robber - so the NRA Match rifle is worth less than $50 even on the black market and the unregistered highly-illegal Uzi sells for $5K. Do the gun laws work? Get caught with Uzi and decide for yourself.

I'm old enough to remember when the only gun laws were those that restricted gunsmiths from making guns that were dangerous to use, and public access to cannons and concealable weapons (you can save your libertarian self-protection bullshit for the Congo or somewhere else you shouldn't reasonably expect your taxes to pay for police to actually do their jobs). It's a lot harder for people who live in places where they have no reasonable excuse for having a gun now - which may just have something to do with the enormous reduction in the number of water tanks, road signs, bottles, cans, trees, cows, horses, sheep, cars, and houses with bullet holes in them. Certainly it's been many years since I've had to call the police to remove illegal shooters - and that used to be a weekly event. I still have to deal with a lot a people who want me to sign a bullshit letter authorising them to shoot on my properties so they can get a gun license - because they "need" the gun for "self-protection", and so they can spend their weekends " blowing things away". Very, very few actually intend to hunt (and there's nothing to stop them joining a gun club if they truly believe gun sport is necessary). Many I meet at the local gun club (I train so I can hit what I aim at) only join in the hope of meeting people who will sell them an unregistered weapon - not because the laws unreasonably restrict them from owning one.

Wow! You have a knack for believing the exceedingly obvious and totally irrelevant, is relevant and profound. The story is about a proposal to investigate whether being able to print a gun might create loopholes in existing gun control laws - at no point did any politician seriously propose to pass legislation banning 3D Printing, or force printer manufacturers to make the devices unable to make guns. The average politician knows more about fast Fourier transforms than they do about gun manufacturing and with a background of stupid media stories about how "anyone can print a gun" they formally inquired into the realities. No "crack down".

No answer? I'm not surprised - clearly you're too stupid to understand how threads work, and too carried away with your "I would get the respect I deserve if I had guns" bullshit to bother creating a new post instead of just hijacking and existing one.

Looking for something that supports an existing opinion is not research. But don't let that stop you from cherry picking bad statistics (e.g only NSW has reliable crime statistics involving guns). The flawed ABS data you base your claims on doesn't count unregistered guns, doesn't count registered guns, only counts guns when it's the primary offence, and counts the same victim multiple times - an excusable mistake for an amateur statistician if it weren't so clearly and prominently printed as a preface to those statistics.

The reality is that "bad" gun use does not only result in death. Murder is a low probability outcome of criminal gun use. Drive by shooting, armed home invasion, and armed car jacking are all relatively new and growing crimes (you somehow overlooked that when cherry picking the data) - the vast majority involving guns not registered to the people using them.

Most surgeons will tell you that medical system is very good at treating gunshots now - but they aren't asked when compiling death by gun statistics (hint: irregular supply of crack cocaine caused a massive spike in gun shooting in the US - shootings are down, and number of deaths per shooting are down too, the latter mostly due to improved techniques and facilities).

I've spent time in places where you do need to be armed - to stand a chance. Guns don't deter attacks in those places unless you shoot first. In real life the person with the least scruples invariably wins - so much for the gun==equaliser myth (it's only true is the other person is unarmed and less violent).

So is murder and child rape. What was your solution?

Instructing them in what is a crime in this country? (or are conspiracy and incitement synonyms for instruction?).

No particulate component - ever? Unlike your "wikipedia" source I referenced mine with an authoritative source that's not in denial. Good luck convincing your mother those airbrushed brown stains in your shorts are just because you're too lazy to wipe, just keep hanging with your mates, telling bitch jokes and pulling each other's fingers.

Which means - justice and the law are mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite of the meaning you take away.

That in a two party system you can't win. No amount of legislation will stop corporate interests from profitably influencing candidates in a two party system. Donate to both and any time either party wants to do the corporate bidding they simply need enough support from the other party to push the legislation through - which is already bought and paid for. But if the balance of power is held by a large number of candidates/parties the only way to ensure all their support is to influence all of them - which is kind of hard to do without increasing the size of the total influence budget, and damn near impossible to do if the parties/candidates who win changes every election. If the majority of voters give their vote to candidates who "don't stand a chance" - those that get elected will serve a wide range of masters. For them to get any legislation through they'll need extensive negotiation with other politicians to get their support. It'll mean politicians will need to do more work, and spend more time with their electorate, and most of the time they'll have to do things they don't want to do (but no one said democracy was meant to be easy).

The only way a constantly changing mixture of candidates can be elected is if people don't vote for one of the major parties. If everyone votes for a candidate they believe won't get enough votes to be elected the major parties won't hold a balance of power between them and will have to reach a broad compromise with a wide range of interest - and keep searching for an agenda for the next election that might gain them enough extra votes to gain a better negotiating position. If people don't vote for someone who already holds office... the corporate interests have very little power to influence outcomes. i.e. If you own ChicknLickn and want to get a better deal for you company you only need to "support" maybe two candidates. Say half a million each to ensure "support" across every state - and maybe a ChicknLickn store on every Army base. But if almost any candidate on the ticket might get elected - across the nation, you'd need to give a lot smaller share of the "support" to cover all the possibilities. Now the size of your "contribution" to local candidates is no bigger than what the local taco stand is donating (and he only wants a larger car park permit - not nationwide franchising favours).

You cannot legislate against influence. Aside from being like trying to get foxes to create laws to protect chickens, it's virtually impossible to properly define - hence impossible to prohibit. "Fancy that bellhop with the tight pants at the Majestic?", "Want a winning tip at the dogs?", "Want your children to stop getting bullied at school?", "Want your brother to get a pay rise?", "Want your church to get funding for chapel repairs?". There's an almost infinite number of ways to influence candidates. Trying to pass laws to stop it happening at all is like pissing up a rope and hoping to stay dry - or passing laws against taking drugs. Business will seek to influence candidates, gravity will affect urine, people will take drugs.

The alternative is to keep hoping that a two party system will change it's nature. It won't. And the same broken excuses will be trotted out to defend it. "We need experienced politicians - and major parties, to govern our complex government" 'cause it's worked so well so far? "Your way would lead to anarchy - none of the politicians would agree on anything and nothing would get done - we need major parties so people can be told to vote on legislation down the party line" - which is why corporate influence works, whoever wins is always one of the front runners. Different dog every election - same leg action. If Business can't influence candidates because they narrow down the number of likely winners they'll have to try and influence voters.

When did I say it did?

"Deal with it" is a Claytons option. If you take the time to actually read what you're responding to - you'd get that.

Which would be "A phrase or expression in which the component words contradict one another".

Capitalism is voting with your wallet, Democracy is voting with your ballot. If Capitalism drives legislation (and I think it does) then laws are passed according to the influence of lobbyist groups - an effective mechanism as any politician wants to be re-elected and previous sources of funds are the key to funding a re-election. The "numbers" person for any party is only the person who can organise the "numbers" (votes) because they know all the "numbers" (telephone numbers for donors).

Does a "political mandate" (platform elected on by voters) take precedent over lobbyists? No - get elected because you say you'll do something about better eating and bury that mandate because the Beef Farmers lobby steps up and threatens to remove funding next election. Does a political mandate to increase employment take precedence over some country suing because the minimum wage was raised? No - to that too (Trans Pacific Trade Agreement). If it was a "democracy" then voters would take precedence over industry. Remember corporations can't vote, that only "voters" vote is the core of Democracy. The fact that in effect corporations do vote, and their vote counts for more than a "voters" is what I'd call "a contradiction in terms".

Nope - not ignoring it. That's just "how it works", the following paragraph (which you had trouble comphrending also) explained how to leverage that.

[slowly] By making their investments much less profitable.

If Koch brothers have $25 million to invest in political lobbying they can "invest" $12.5 in each of the main parties. That means they get no return on that investment for every vote that doesn't go to the major parties. The more votes that goes to parties that aren't backed by Koch, the worse the return on their investment.

Now read my original post again - you seem to have trouble comprehending the obvious.

Which, does nothing to change the influence of lobbyists or force parties to actually listen to voters when setting the agenda. If you keep picking from the offered cards hoping for a game that you control you're just hoping for the triumph of optimism over experience.

Tell what? An unjust law is no law at all?

Clearly you neither understood what I wrote (read it again). I've never said fixing the problem was easy or simple. Freedom doesn't come for free, it's gained at the cost of security. The security of being able to outsource responsibility and sit on the couch making a contribution no greater than whining. A pre-requisite for positive change is loss of social time, safety, and an investment in education (basically the result of trusting nothing and verifying everything - anytime someone says "but...." it's a cop out). If that's sounds like anarchy without the destruction it's because it is (libertarianism is bullshit).

Only when you seek definition of rules from those that set the game. Try reading the context of Augustine's quote.

There's the problem (flawed logic) - you don't live in a democracy. Capitalism (which I support) and democracy are contradictions in terms.

Kind of, maybe. More accurately "the people who can be bothered voting" - don't make an informed choice or understand the system. The system is simple - "the people" basically pick from two choices. Both choices are lies that don't get called. Neither do the choices get forced on the candidates. Education (not outsourced to institutions) is a pre-requisite to solve all those problems (voting, informed voting, setting the agenda, making candidate responsible for meeting the agenda).

Making an agenda requires understanding how the agenda is set. Each of the major parties want an increased majority. They seek that by looking at the results of the last election and playing lip service to issues that they percieve as votes they lost last time. So an agenda (platform) is influenced by a previous election. Knowing that, the solution is to not for any party that stands a chance of being elected - this forces the agenda. Pick an issue that you support as part of a platform by someone who will not win enough votes to gain power. It has the two-fold result of forcing an agenda for the last election and making the incumbent responsible for failing their mandated position (if they fail to hold or increase their power they are dumped by their financers).

Money wins elections (basically). You can't, as individuals, set an agenda by throwing money at candidates (individual candidates or parties) - only business/groups can do that as individuals do not all want the same thing. But as individuals we can make the major backers investments much less profitable.

Only one - which I've briefly outlined above. All others lead to failure via either bloodshed or disapointment. History demonstates this more than adequately. Increase accountability by legislation and you only exacerbate the exisiting problem. Overthrown the oppressors and learn firsthand what they were trying to oppress (trust me - that ain't a pretty revelation (hint: evolution is far from horizontal, many people will only be happy if they get to burn the entire planet to save the tiny backyard that they'll tire of tomorrow)

Yes - it's part of "take an active and constant part of change (and requires that pesky self-education - a critical component of which is the ever elusive self-awareness, another is the willingness to sacrifice i.e. security).

Historically that's only every been a short-term option, eventually no one is too small to be insignificant - and the first people the oppressed turn on are their neighbours (notice how poor junkies don't rob the rich?). That short-term option is catered to by big pharma already - like Elderberry in the fable I referenced earlier, their demands (driven by their shareholders) are insatiable. It's one of many closed loops that require increased oppression (both locally and globally) that cannot be fed without increasing the original problem it pretends to solve.

"Dealing with it" (suck it up etc) is the ostrich solution to the threat of rape. Likewise buying a Prius or "making enough to buy self-sufficiency far from the rat-race"

Of course - that's just my opinion. "God" (fundamentalism and conservatism"), Entertainment (ooh shiny thing), and Fantasy (woo, woo), are the most popular ways of "dealing with it". Sadly "thinking" about it (as you are obviously doing) and not (and it is, IMO, the only "begining") - subscribing to a stock opinion is just another form of outsourcing responsibility, which is just as bad as ignoring the problem.

Pushed for time - no edits or proof-reading. Hope it's readable

Lex iniusta non est lex An unjust law is no law at all.

It seems the degree of instrusion and control is directly related to the ratio of forum flooding disguised as trolling. Cue the gun debate/Republican/Democrat/Oh Look Shiny thing flood (sigh)

Agreed - time changes nothing. If it wasn't OK a hundred years ago for a judge to issue a similar warrant to raid the house of someone who visits or recieved mail from his jurisdiction - but didn't reside in it, why should it be OK now? And if the judge doesn't even know which jurisidiction the target lived in he couldn't approve a warrant for everywhere the target might go - on the offchance the target might be there one day.

This link that attracted all the slushpot comments earlier summarised the syndrome and problem well.