Vanir Ausf B

To me an execution is the killing of a helpless individual, not getting the drop on someone invading your home. Secondly, how far do you take this logic? Does that mean that a person in Australia, which has no capital punishment, cannot use deadly force against someone trying to kill him because doing so would be inflicting a "punishment" greater than what the law would impose? What about rape? Despite our noted unfriendliness towards criminals, rape is not a capital offense in the US. Should a woman be allowed to use deadly force to stop a rape? Magpie's criteria suggests not.

This is crazy. The monetary value of an item has nothing to do with its portability or concealability. Nothing. Guns are not hard to smuggle. They are smuggled every day across our borders. This idea of yours that we can just seal of our country to guns entering it is pure fantasy. Mexico also has strict laws against drugs. See how well that has worked out for them? And as for their "strict" import regs, most of the drugs that come into the US from Mexico did not originate in Mexico. They are smuggled into Mexico first and then on to the US. We have tight legal controls. Physical control is a completely different matter. This is the basic flaw in your idea. Again the conflating of monetary value with concealability. Oh, if only that were true. Unfortunately your math is wildly off the mark. 1.7* trillion is the total spent to date. The amount spent per year currently is a small fraction of that. * 1.2 trillion is the actual number, but no matter. Even if it were feasible it would be a colossal waste of resources. You are blithely dismissing, or at least ignoring, the economic realities. We are looking at cutting sacred cow social programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Did you not read what I wrote previously? Programs and budgets are being cut left and right. Any money we save when we withdraw from Afghanistan will be a drop in the bucket compared to those cuts. We are also 14 trillion dollars in debt. The idea of diverting resources from all these other critical needs to fund a misguided attempt to ban guns is insanity at its finest. What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? I sleep well at night. You don't like it, tough. No, the nub of the issue is that you think you could run our country better than we are, while apparently having limited understanding of the issues.

A typical handgun weighs less than 1kg and has smaller dimensions than a kilo of cocaine. Your continued insistence on using the completely irrelevant factor of dollar value is puzzling. You can't be serious. Drugs and guns flow in the direction of supply to demand. If the supply/demand equation changed the direction of flow can change just as easily. If you do not believe this, explain how this could not happen. This is obviously not true. You are greatly underestimating the difficulties involved. Perhaps you are unaware that the vast majority of drugs currently smuggled into the US arrive in vehicles, airplanes and boats. ... From January through November 2009, U.S. seizures of illegal drugs in transit exceeded 1,626 metric tons, indicating that DTOs succeed in moving several thousand tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin, and MDMA into the United States annually. There are unique smuggling and transportation methods associated with each drug type, but overall, drug seizure data and law enforcement reporting indicate that overland smuggling and subsequent transportation by vehicle exceed all other methods combined. Common Overland Smuggling Methods Mexican DTOs dominate the transportation of illicit drugs across the Southwest Border. They typically use commercial trucks and private and rental vehicles to smuggle cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin through the 25 land POEs as well as through vast areas of desert and mountainous terrain between POEs. Asian traffickers, OMGs, and Indo-Canadian drug traffickers transport significant quantities of high-potency marijuana and MDMA into the United States across the U.S.-Canada border. They use commercial trucks and private and rental vehicles to transport these drugs through more than 100 land POEs. They also use all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), aircraft, maritime vessels, and couriers on foot to smuggle drugs through vast areas between POEs. Link You are under the impression the US government does not already spend money on it's own people? You might want to do some research on that. While you're at it, you might want to look into the size of our budget deficit and outstanding debt. You seem to have a very naive view of our financial situation. Please explain what that different approach should be and why it will succeed. I think the problem here is that you are viewing this issue in theoretical terms that ignore most of the practical considerations. You are blithely dismissing issues that we have been struggling with for years, seemingly under the belief that any problem can be solved if enough money is thrown at it, and that we have vast sums of money that can be painlessly relocated from Iraq and Afghanistan, which is what we are spending all our money on now, so that we can spend it on the one thing that would do more good for the US than any other initiative: a War on Guns! The reality is that government budgets at both the state and federal level are being slashed across the board. Programs are being cancelled or cut back everywhere. In countries without a death penalty even murder is only punishable by a prison sentence, as is rape. You prefer laws more merciful to the criminal and apparently would prefer the State to have a complete monopoly on the legal application of violence. Our laws give the individual more power to defend himself, his family and property. You are entitle to your opinion, but I do not see a problem at all.

I'm sorry but this makes no sense. We are talking about how easy or difficult it is to smuggle the items, not how much money they can be resold for. Correct. And going the other direction would be no more difficult. The ban would only be effective if we could stop guns coming into the country. I have no idea what that would cost, or even if any amount of money would be sufficient given the area and volume of traffic, but what we are spending now is obviously not working and increasing funding is very difficult, both financially and politically. Arizona lawmakers are hoping to raise around $50 million for border fencing with a new online public fundraising plan that launches Wednesday – despite skepticism from key stakeholders. Under legislation signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in April, the state would use inmate labor and money pulled in through the website to fence in some of the 82 miles of border between Arizona and Mexico that remain open. Despite support from top state officials, the initiative is already facing problems. Private land owners and county sheriffs are skeptical that fencing even works and don’t plan on contributing, while the federal government may not even allow construction on its land. Some of the biggest stakeholders in border security, including sheriffs and private land owners near the border, appreciate Smith’s efforts but said they aren’t sure they will donate. Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County said border fencing simply doesn’t work. Dever is co-chair of bordersheriffs.com. Bordersherrifs.com is helping to fight the legal battles against Arizona immigration legislation. “I think it’s well intentioned, but you can build all the fence you want to build and unless it’s the right kind of fence and unless you have the manpower to watch it, it’s of very little or no value,” Dever told msnbc.com. “The federal government has built a lot of fence and most of it has been inadequate in terms of actually stopping people from crossing.” Link That money is gone. We are certainly not going to spend another 1.7 trillion in those countries. We have spent over 1 trillion on the "War on Drugs" with no end in sight. Adding a "War on Guns" to our list of stupid expensive wars is a terrible idea. The same logic applies to the dealers as to the individual buyers. Sure, they would sell to the government. Then the unscrupulous ones would restock illegally and make a profit. Your idea only works in an environment where illegal weapons are unavailable. Not where I live. Laws vary from state to state, but in general, when in our homes, if someone breaks in we are not required to wait until the intruder has a weapon trained on us. If we see they are armed we can kill them right then and there, even if they are not yet aware of our presence. In some states you are only required to have reasonable cause to believe the intruder intends to commit a felony. For example, North Carolina: (a) A lawful occupant within a home or other place of residence is justified in using any degree of force that the occupant reasonably believes is necessary, including deadly force, against an intruder to prevent a forcible entry into the home or residence or to terminate the intruder's unlawful entry (i) if the occupant reasonably apprehends that the intruder may kill or inflict serious bodily harm to the occupant or others in the home or residence, or (ii) if the occupant reasonably believes that the intruder intends to commit a felony in the home or residence. ( A lawful occupant within a home or other place of residence does not have a duty to retreat from an intruder in the circumstances described in this section.

IIRC there is a formation that contains vehicles with extra infantry gun ammo, but I don't remember which one.

There is no such evidence.

What makes you think I can't?

Wrong. Dieseltaylor asked "No comment?" and I intimated that was why.

The dollar value is irrelevant. Portability is what matters, and in that aspect guns are very easy to smuggle. A handgun is smaller than a kilo of Cocaine. And in fact there is already a thriving gun smuggling system along the Mexican border. Pennys on the dollar compared to what would be required to effectively enforce a ban. I'm sure that out of 14 trillion dollars the amount could be found, short term, to make the head of every household in Afghanistan a millionaire. That doesn't mean it's feasible. Yes, the criminal will sell his gun for $500 or whatever, then use that money to buy another gun on the black market for $300 and make a nice profit at taxpayer expense. That scenario assumes the assailant has the drop on you and only wants your money, in which case the smart move would indeed be to just give him your wallet, armed or not. But the bad guys don't always have the upper hand, and some of them want something more valuable than money.

Very true. A mistake in the thickness of one of the Tiger's front plates is being fixed in the 1.01 patch. It took hours of testing to establish something was wrong. If we could see the raw stats it would have been apparent at a glace (and I suspect would never have made it past the beta stage).

It's cool. Right now we're just trying to avoid bankrupty. Banning guns and massively increasing spending to enforce that ban is near the bottom of our priority list. As it should be. But people stay the same.

There isn't a demand for guns and guns are not available? :confused: In any case, the last sentence of the article states: "And no matter what the outcome of that analysis, the results are not necessarily applicable to the USA" EDIT: And to be clear, my "no evidence" statement referred to the fact you had posted none, it was not a claim that no evidence exists anywhere.

Nice strawman. My comment referred to the study dieseltaylor linked to. And that was indeed just about the quantity.

Ok, if you want to be pedantic it is true that I provided no evidence to support my contention. That is because the guy I was answering provided none to support his (which apparently didn't bother you...) He was stating his opinion, I stated mine. End of story. Exactly. Thank you. Adding another chimera to our list of chimeras is not a change of course. The fact that we have done stupid things is not a good argument in favor of doing more stupid things.

And if you have paid any attention at all to recent US political news you know that we are feeling the limits to that ability. I happen to think adding one more chimera to the list is a bad idea. You call that a lack of will, I call it a lack of stupidity.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1296548&postcount=23 And round and round we go.

I missed your edit. If the argument is that it is theoretically possible to do these things, but we are unwilling to do those things, I don't disagree. The question is are the solutions (police state or whatnot) worse than the problem? Legalization is hot topic. Of course, guns have already been legalized.

You have nothing...

I never claimed we needed guns to police the border. Your comment was a non sequitur. What I said is that guns can move across these borders as easily as any of the other contraband that flows across on a daily basis. Because it's not true? You think we don't have the will? We spend around 20 billion dollars a year on it.

So if all the law-abiding citizens were to voluntarily disarm the criminals would follow suit? I don't buy it. Criminals will take whatever advantage they can get. Counting on them to fight fair is a losing position. No, I don't feel the need to be armed 24/7. In fact, the only gun I own is a bolt action hunting rifle. The reason is that I live in a part of the country that has a low rate of violent crime (murder rate is about 1/2 the national average).

What does that have to do with anything? :confused: It's called a statement of fact. Oh, so you DO know what that means. We have the will to outlaw Cocaine, Meth and Marijuana. They are still easily available. What's missing? You seem to have all the answers, so tell me.

Australia is not the United States. You live on an island. The US has 2 very long and very porous borders. As long as there is a demand for guns there will be guns available. If you doubt that please do some research on how successful we have been at stemming the tide of illegal drugs from Mexico. Suggesting that where there is a will there is a way is too glib by far. As for the numbers posted suggesting that when assaulted I am safer unarmed, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. For myself, I'll take my chances armed. Those who feel safer unarmed are always free to remain so. Anyone familiar with the issue of gun control knows there are reams of studies out there purporting to prove one side or the other correct.

+1 This is what I was referring to with my "perfect world" comment above. In the real world people we don't want to have guns are going to get them anyway. Even if we could magically make all the guns already in circulation disappear there remains the fact that illegal contraband of all sorts is flooding over our ridiculously porous borders every day. Supply and demand.

There are at least 2 issues that I have complained about on these forums that have been added to the fix list for the patch because of those complaints. So its not true that complaining is a waste of time. As for fanboys or whatever you call them, I guarantee that if you go to almost any forum for any game on the internet and make a post that basically says "This game sucks!" you are going to get attacked for it. People who are active on a game forum are usually people who like the game. That's just the nature of the beast.

They are measuring the quantity of coverage, not the quality, so it's of little interest. FOX obviously has reasons to downplay the issue, just as it's rivals CNN and MSNBC have a motivation to play it up.