The point seemed to be that building nuclear weapons is a black art that few master. Reality is that the knowledge is widespread.

No, you can't make nukes in a cave. But those cave-dwelling islamists could pay someone with proper facilities to do it for them. Those islamists often have quite a bit of money.

My point is that knowledge on how to build nukes is widespread. It's not arcane black art or something like that.

Manhattan Project was a huge undertaking because no-one had done it before. They were breaking new ground and researching things that were not researched before.

Today, things are different. The technology and knowledge required to build a nuclear weapon is literally 70 years old. Just about every modern country could build them if they have the prerequisite fuel for it.

Hell, it was discovered few years ago that SWEDEN had plans for nuclear weapons in the seventies! Their plan was that in case of war against USSR, they could nuke the Red Army while it was still in Finland fighting against Finnish Army (without telling the Finns about it, of course). They had the required knowledge to build the bomb, they lacked the fuel. The plans were eventually scrapped because they were considered stupid.

I'm in Finland, and even here I have a choice of healthcare. I can go and use public healthcare-services if I want, or I can go and use private healthcare-services. So what exactly am I missing out on, when compared to USA?

Such as? Hey, didn't Prez Bush tell doctors that stem-cell research and treatments are not allowed?

You obviously don't know anything about Finland or Finns. And like I said elsewhere, there is no correlation between freedom and amount of guns. Americans have three times as much guns as Finns do. So, is US Government less corrupt than Finnish government? Are Finns less free than Americans? Yemen has the second biggest number of guns in the world, is Yemen more free and less corrupt than Finland? Or Germany? Let's quote Wikipedia:

"The government and its security forces, often considered to suffer from rampant corruption, have been responsible for torture, inhumane treatment and extrajudicial executions. There are arbitrary arrests of citizens, especially in the south, as well as arbitrary searches of homes. Prolonged pretrial detention is a serious problem, and judicial corruption, inefficiency, and executive interference undermine due process. Freedom of speech, the press and religion are all restricted.[67]"

We don't have that kind of problems in Finland, even though we have less guns. Neither does Germany. How does Yemen fit in with your idea that "more guns == more freedom"?

Uh-huh.

No, I don't. Because idea that I need guns in order to "oppose the government" is ludicrous. For starters, I can do that in the ballot-box. And second: guns I would have would do me jack shit in "opposing the government". It might give me a delusion of grandeur, but in reality it would do nothing.

Like someone else already said: just admit that the point of owning guns is that it's nice to shoot at things. there's nothing wrong with that. Trying to make it in to a political statement about "freedom" or something of the sort is dumb at best. Those "freedom-loving" gun-owners are just as much "sheeple" as rest of us are. They might talk about "opposing the government", but they are too busy watching NASCAR to actually do anything.

There is no "cut" if the app is free.

And Apple does not get a cut if you give it away for free in the App Store, so what's your point?

We can make that decision. We can decide not to buy iPhones and buy Androids instead. No-one is being forced to buy iPhones. Every product we buy is a collection of pluses and minuses and compromises. We need to select the product that has such a combination of those that suits us the best. And if that products happens to be iPhone, then so be it.

Hey, what if you want to make the decision of running Skyhook location-service on Android? Whoops, you can't!

[quote]I have an Android phone (HTC Aria)[/quote]

Does it still run Android 2.1? What if you want to make the decision of running 2.2 on it? There are lots of Android-users who are stuck with old versions of the OS because the carrier/OEM has decided that they do not have to be upgraded.

No, they had succesful unarmed uprising against their government.

And because of that we should all carry guns with us at all times?

Isn't that a bit unreasonable response to a slap in the face?

Wrong, as collapse of communistic governments in Europe and USSR demonstrate. Citizens did not have guns, yet they overthrew their corrupt governments.

So I'm being pitied because I live in a country where I don't have to worry about random violence? Um, OK. I think I'll manage.

It should be noted that in all the cases you cited, the fighters were armed with more than just normal guns that are available to civilians. Afgans fighting against USSR were equipped by Stingers for example. And each case you cited was a case of outside force attacking the country (USA in Iraq, USSR if Afganistan etc.). What we are talking about is citizens rising up against corrupt government. That is not what happened in Afganistan, but it IS what happened in the communist regimes in Europe.

If number of guns ensures free and corruption-free government, then number of guns should correlate with lower corruption and god governance. Is that the case? The list is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership

So, let's compare USA and Finland. USA has almost three times as many guns per capita as Finland does. So, if guns ensure good governance, freedom from corruption and all sorts of other good things, how do those two countries compare? Since the difference in gun-ownership is so huge, the differences should be obvious. Is US Government less corrupted than the Finnish one? Are Finns less free than Americans are?

Or what if we compare.... Yemen with Germany. Is there more freedom and less corruption in Yemen than there is in Germany, since it has a lot more guns? Wikipedia says this about Yemen:

"The government and its security forces, often considered to suffer from rampant corruption, have been responsible for torture, inhumane treatment and extrajudicial executions. There are arbitrary arrests of citizens, especially in the south, as well as arbitrary searches of homes. Prolonged pretrial detention is a serious problem, and judicial corruption, inefficiency, and executive interference undermine due process. Freedom of speech, the press and religion are all restricted."

How can that be, if guns ensure freedom?

If they managed to do that in Stasi-controlled East-Germany, and in former USSR, it could be done just about everywhere.

And as I showed, there is no correlation between gun-ownership and freedom.

So what do you say about assasinations of decent men? That it's ok to kill them as well, since bad men are killed as well?

Well, the people who created USA thought that people should have the right to carry arms as a part of "well regulated militia". Bunch of people blasting away is not "well regulated militia"

What you are describing there is warfare, opposition to invasion by a outside force. We are talking about opposition to oppressive regime. And for example to that, I will point to Poland, Russia, East-Germany, Baltic States etc. Unarmed population overthrew the oppressive regimes in those countries.

So you could kill the politicians you do not like? Like James Garfield, William McKinley, JFK, Robert Kennedy....

In order to not have corrupt regime or the current mess you have with the Tea Party-movement, you need to have informed and active populace. If you have uninformed voters, or voter-apathy, you will end up with anti-masturbation politicians, or politicians who think bike-trails are an UN conspiracy to enslave Americans.

And the risk is that you will have a perfectly decent politician who ends up dead, because some nutjob decides that he just doesn't like him all that much. It has happened in the past.

Couldn't it also be said that gun-ownership makes violent opposition to legimate government more common? I mean, several US presidents have been assassinated, and to my knowledge, they weren't tyrants or anything of the sort. William McKinley was killed by a lunatic. Like I asked elsewhere, what if the people with guns are the ones being unreasonable, while the unarmed ones are being reasonable?

And if we want to look at the opposite, overthrowing of communist regimes in USSR and Europe was done by unarmed people.

Why? So the government could be overthrown if needed? Then how did people in communist countries manage to do exactly that without guns?

So, if I'm not allowed to drive as fast on freeways as I wish, it means that the government is "oppressing" me? Oh no, maybe we should call Amnesty International?

Um, if you actually knew how to read, nowhere did I make any claims about wanting to ban guns. I just claimed that the argument about needing guns for self-protection is iffy at best, and the argument that you need guns to oppose the government is utter BS.

So, you are saying that Finland is as nice place as it is because our government is scared shitless of all those gun-owning citizens? Rrrrrrright.....

Well, one difference is that we don't go around claiming that we needs guns to "protect ourselves" or in order to "oppose the government" like you seem to do. We do not have citizens marching around with loaded guns so that they could blast away wrongdoers.