Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. -
Can we stop calling Mark Steyn a journalist already?
Compulsory link to a kiwiblog thread in which DPF laments that liberal know-nothings like Robert Fisk enjoy a higher profile in New Zealand than incisive, quality commentators like Mark Steyn.
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I think the obvious point here is that the US wasn't in the war to 'save New Zealand', a bunch of distant islands 95% of Americans would never have heard of. They were in the war because the Japanese invaded the Philippines, which was a US occupied territory, and bombed their fleet in Hawaii. Defending New Zealand was a nice accidental side effect of their efforts but it had nothing to do with their motives for fighting the war.
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I found the wall to wall coverage of Cho's video and 'manifesto' pretty disgusting - isn't it just giving that loser what he wanted?
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Want to feel really smug and superior? Read some of the American respondents to the Heraldss gun control editorial.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/feature/story.cfm?c_id=1501154&objectid=10434649Stephen
I once thought I might like to live in New Zealand however, after reading some of the narrow minded, immature, and downright hateful messages regarding the University shootings, I have decided that NZ is one of the last places on earth I would want to live. Good day.Joe (US)
You are very uninformed. To base your views of America on a movie is sad to say the least. I spent 2 weeks in Auckland last year. Visiting my wifes family. Get your country's drug problem under control before you throw stones. Hope you enjoy living under Japan rule because they are buying up New Zealand 1 block at a time. Sorry we have a Constitution that allows us to buy weapons for protection or hunting. Sorry there is no sanity test attached to the purchase of a weapon. Let's not forget he wasn't an American. He was a guest here.Elaine
Kiwis are messed up like the rest of the world - if it wasn't for the United States kiwis would be still living in the dark ages. To make derogatory remarks about the US just shows how stupid kiwis are.Nick (US)
This is the same New Zealand that we fought to save in world war II? You kidding me ? Now that was stupid on our part ! we should have left them to bow hard to the emperor by now. Not that New Zealand really matters, (heck New Zealand doesn't even matter for the nearby Fijians) but for the record, this is not a country that we can call a friend. Helen Clark just made a trip recently to Washington. Let's make a note that at least for the next 100 years we need not bother with another kiwi official. I'm not heartless, really, but I can't wait to laugh when New Zealand faces a doom day. -
But hey, if your VCR is that important to you that you'll trade someone stealing your stuff for thousands of firearms homicides a year, I guess you've moved to the right country.
Heh.
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My house in Atlanta got robbed. The conversation with the investigating officers went like this:
Cop: We'll let you know if we find anything.
Me: Thanks. Do you ever find anything?
Cop: No.This suggests to me that burglary is not an uncommon crime in the US. And the guns as a deterrent argument against home-breaking is absurd. People rob your house while you're away on holiday or at work. Your gun isn't any kind of deterrent if you're an hours drive away while someones jimmying open your back door. If you want to protect your house get a big dog, not a glock.
And here's a google news search for home invasions in the US - it returns 9027 hits with the oldest dated two weeks ago. I haven't checked them all but I don't think they're all stories about how that crime isn't a problem in the US.
http://www.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=home+invasion&btnG=Search+News
And the statistics suggest that the gun you're relying on to defend your house is about fifty times more likely to end up killing you or someone in your family than some crazed intruder, so be careful with it.
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The fact is that all those guns would end up in the hands of people who aren't worried about firearms convictions. All that would have been achieved in this scenario is that you would have disarmed the 95% of the population who are decent honest law abiding people, but enabled the 5% of the population who are bad guys (maybe it is 5% or 1%, I don’t know) to have a lethal advantage over everyone else (except cops, but they can never be everywhere all the time), which is hardly a desirable outcome.
'Bad guys' are always going to be able to get guns. The mayor of Nagasaki was recently shot by a yakuza gang member. Drug dealers, hitmen and others involved in organised crime will be able to get guns no matter what the laws say.
But they're not usually the people who go crazy and march into their school or workplace with guns blazing. Would a 23 year old undergraduate loner be able to obtain handguns if they were illegal? If so could he afford them?
Criminals will always be armed, and that's why the police have guns. The real debate is whether you should make guns freely available to every unstable nut in the country so that the second they snap they can strap up, walk outside and start shooting.
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Just as a thought experiment, does anything this this would have received the same level of media attention if (say) Cho Seung-Hui had been a totally screwed up engineering student who'd killed thirty four people by planting a fire bomb in a residential hall? And if not, why not?
Probably - someone mentioned the Oklahoma bombing earlier and that sure got a lot of attention.
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I also wonder if it's the type of gun - Canada has very few handguns and laws against concealed carry while the US has about 80 million handguns, concealed carry laws and 14.5 times the number of gun deaths.
I suspect Canada resembles New Zealand and that most of the guns are rifles owned by people living in rural environments.