Don’t punish everyone for one person’s mistake.
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Difficult for me to see that today Matt, I am in Norway and finding justification for allowing private individuals to own firearms is so far eluding me.
Sometimes you have to change the rules to stop others following the first guy.
Well make sure you don’t just stop at firearms that kill people. Ban the whole lot, including kitchen knives, fertilizer, nuclear power plants, freedom of information on the internet, drugs, machinery, cars, trucks, etc.
Unfortunately Mark is right. If someone is intent on killing another person, if they cannot get a gun, they will use a knife. If not a knife, a bat, ad infinitum! It is deplorable that the world is as violent as it is, but as you say, you can not punish the world for the wrong doings of a few.
It’s hard to just “shrug” some things off when they could be prevented in the first place and end up costing lives instead of an inconvenience.
@Bill: good luck killing 86 people in a couple of hours with a kitchen knife or a baseball bat.
We can all imagine why banning kitchen knives would be stupid since they are useful, same goes for any of your other examples.
but what can you use a gun for except to kill stuff?
if you say “BUT WE NEED IT FOR DEFENCE AND SECURITY!”, that is just throwing a problem (guns) at another problem (violence), and what we, as humanity, need to do is to work toward a solution.
Rules and laws are a primitive and severely limited attempt to address such issues, but at the moment, they (unfortunately) work best.
And btw, in Canada, guns are highly regulated, and it has a lower crime rate than most western countries (an objective measure of citizen safety).
Really? Does Norway allow private citizens to own machine guns? NOOOOO! Does Norway allow private citizens to own automatic pistols… or ANY pistols for that matter? NO!
So, what does your statement have to do with reality? Nothing. Any criminal that is determine enough to kill, will be able to get an ILLEGAL weapons… no matter what kind of regime is in power. Instead of blaming guns, start looking into the regimes who promote culture of death (yea, the leftist sacraments of abortion, or euthanasia) which also includes Norway. BTW, didn’t this nut job use 6 tons of fertilizer? Are we going to outlaw that too?
And just to clear one myth… guns don’t kill, they actually save lives, but you are NOT going to read about it in your “progressive” media outlets. Those states where all citizens can carry concealed weapons are actually safer, than the once that prohibit it.
‘guns don’t kill, they actually save lives’…
I suggest you look up the word ‘gun’, Google Translate has evidently failed you here.
?BTW, didn’t this nut job use 6 tons of fertilizer? Are we going to outlaw that too?” Well, based upon the foregoing, it’s clear we haven’t been successful … yet.
What happened in Norway is tragic. What happened in NYC on Sept. 11 was tragic. What happened at X on Y is tragic.
The thing is someone bent on doing violence is going to find a way to do it. Banning one instrument of violence is not going to stop violence. Those determined to do violence will simply shift to another method. Then everyone will be calling for a ban on whatever thing that is. Rinse and repeat. It becomes a never ending process.
Both you and Mark have good points on this one.
For one, having laws to stop the very obvious ability to kill hundreds of people makes some good sense.
For two, is there ever going to be a way to stop radicals from terrorizing especially when the way we’ve engineered our society seems to create more and more radicals daily? Take away the grape juice and orange juice is next.
Imposing heavy-handed laws and utilizing fear tactics is only going to ruffle feathers and create more radicalism. It’s the root of the issue that needs a reworking.
That guy has several good ‘keep it simple stupid’ videos. Thanks for sharing!
A great point 🙂
Thanks Matt!
When the terrorists made us all suffer queues at every airport they sort of won without ever having to bomb another plane.
I hope the Norwegians will decide that the best memorial to all those young people who died would be NOT to have greater security or to change their attitudes to the issues that that one mad person was attacking.
That video is spot on and we have all seen those in authority make that sort of knee jerk reaction – so silly.
You’re absolutely right, I think they should remove all security checks at airports, trains, etc, it’s very inconvenient.
Might as well make it easy for anyone with a chip on their shoulder, cause they can’t be stopped anyway.
See how silly that sounds?
Sometimes it goes too far I agree, but like the above comment “made us all suffer queues” that statement is just ridiculous. I think doing what we can to prevent things from happening, to a certain extent, is better practice than just punishing the offender, who sometimes doesn’t even care what happens to them.
Excellent post here, thanks a lot for sharing Matt! 🙂 Valuable lesson!
The author is right. The problem with making a new rule for every other person for what only one person did out of hundreds, thousands or millions is that you not only make the world a less enjoyable place for all the innocent people who never would want to light a shoe on an airplane. By creating new rules, we support the justification for every type of restriction of human rights we’ve worked so hard in modern societies to establish, giving the powerful even more power and the average citizen less and less. We need to look at statistics and be rational when making new rules, new laws, new security measures, and gauge the likelihood of such events ever happening again. Who would want to raise a child in a world where you can’t say anything political, express diverse views, wear whatever clothes you like, or be free of being viewed naked or of being molested in public places in the name of “security”. Wake up, this is where we’re heading. Punish the guilty to the fullest extent of the law when needed, but don’t punish the rest of us for what stupid did.
Mark it is precisely because some people are “stupid” that we have laws.
Laws protect the “normal” majority by imposing the views of the majority over everyone, even the stupid. This is the cornerstone of democracy.
Making one law or changing a law does not mean that we have to change them all or introduce hundreds more. That’s illogical.
My original comment was to restrict firearm ownership for private individuals because I feel that to WANT to own a gun or “personal” use is good justification for never being allowed to own one. Guns are tools to kill or to deter others from killing, end of.
As for getting hold of illegal weapons, have you ever tried? I suspect that it would be quite difficult for an “ordinary” person to find the contacts necessary to buy an AK47 (although I was offered one in Uganda once for $150!)
Facts speak for themselves, too many of these massacres are perpetrated by legal weapons, the nutcase here had three licensed weapons.
I agree with the earlier comment that I would rather have someone attacking me with a baseball bat than a Glock!
Cheers
and by the way, the norwegian nutjob tried to get the weapons illegally first in the Czech Republic, failed, and then went for the legal “sports license” (copy paste from wikipedia):
“He hollowed out the rear seats of his Hyundai Atos in order to have enough space for the firearms he hoped to buy. After two days, he got a prospectus for a mineral extraction business printed, which were supposed to give him an alibi in case someone suspected him of preparing a terrorist attack. He wanted to buy an AK-47 assault rifle (this firearm is however not very common in the country, unlike the Vz. 58), a Glock pistol, hand-grenades and a rocket-propelled grenade, stating that getting the latter two would be a “bonus”.
(…)
Originally, Breivik intended to try to obtain weapons in Berlin or Serbia if his mission in Prague failed. The Czech disappointment though led him to get his weapons through legal channels. He decided to obtain a semi-automatic rifle and a Glock pistol legally in Norway, noting that he had a “clean criminal record, hunting license, and a pump action shotgun Benelli Nova already for seven years”, and thus obtaining the guns legally should not be a problem.”
if there had been a law against gun ownership “for sports” in norway, he wouldn’t have had gotten one.
Good comments all round here. It’s a difficult situation. Banning guns only works up to a point. Criminals can still get them whilst any exist in the world.
Then their is the point that every citizen as a right to defend ones self when law and order fails it (which it is increasingly doing so now most laws are dictated to by corporations and bankers).
If we could all love each other, and it would be a wonderful thing to happen, then get rid of all military machines (then no one can get them – eventuallt they’ll all be gone). Problem here is the elite own the industrial militarised complex and they are not going to give up their biggest cash cow.
They start wars to make money, they need the guns in order to do this. They won’t drop this, ever. (lets be real). This is easy for them because; and I’m sorry to disappoint some of you; but it is “Man’s” nature to fight, this won’t end sometime soon. A radical shift in our DNA make-up is needed, and that takes aeons!
…and yes I think what’s happened is preventable. It’s time the government’s worked for us, using laws of the land, not laws to control and heard us.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time this happened, nor will it be the last.
Peace to you all…
Colin
Hi Colin,
I don’t think that it is mans nature to fight. I think that it’s mans nature to defend, something quite different.
I have never been an aggressor but can get mighty mad when I feel aggrieved!
I have never been involved in a fight. Even an agreed “meeting behind the sports hall”, for a scrap to sort out some schoolboy slight, only ended up with some pushing an shoving.
They say that soldiers sort out the mistakes of the politicians. Oh and of course money and territory all come into it, but I think that the vast majority of ‘ordinary’ people are law abiding and peaceful folk very tolerant of other cultures.
Agree to some point on the defending part, although I’d still say we’ve an inbuilt nature to fight – I may wrong and getting it mixed up with defence. You have a point =)
I think I base my thoughts on some primates who attack for no reason. Then again some hump each other for no reason too =)
That’s got to be a better way!
@LVG, You say the man was ready to go to Berlin or Serbia to get weapons if not Prague. He decided to buy them in Norway, so if Norway had stricter laws, he wouldn’t have gotten them??? Yet he would have went to Berlin or Serbia! Your statement makes no sense! That just shows you what lengths a person intent on violence and destruction will go to to get weapons!
@bill
is it ok in that case to make getting weapons easier for him? He “could have” maybe gotten them elsewhere, so we might just as well hand them to him?
“Why bother?” is not an attitude one should have while making laws.
Neither is “BAN IT!” (as the video matt posted tries to explain).
laws handles cases in a black and white fashion. that clearly doesn’t translate into the real world well.
First, a quote from a former US president: “Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective
way to enslave them.”
James Madison
Next a quote from an infamous person:
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be
to allow the subjected people to carry arms.”
Adolph Hitler
The US and other governments have a saying, “Never let a crisis pass by”. In other words, use a crisis to pass more restrictive laws and take away civil liberties. US citizens lost more civil liberty with the passage of the Patriot Act after 911 than they know. Including internet freedom and privacy. Many of these things had nothing to do with terrorism or the terrorists. The same thing is about to happen in Norway.
Cars kill many more people a year than do guns, yet we do not ban cars. Cell phones are the primary detonators of terrorist bombs, yet we do not ban cell phones.
The point is, where do we stop with our bans?
cars = method of transportation
phones = method of communication
guns = method of killing
I agree with you that civil liberties are the basis of any functioning society. internet freedom and privacy should be a basic right just as the right to private property. Might seem non obvious, but if you think about it, the internet is the world’s largest library in every home, it is an unsurpassed communication platform and it gives everyone a voice. That seems fairly important.
Take that away and you are enslaving people by denying them knowledge and stifling the spread of ideas.
Banning guns only stifles the ability of people to injure or kill.
Take the protests in Egypt as an example. The whole thing was organized and coordinated on the internet. People spread ideas and they knew that others weren’t so loyal to the regime as state propaganda portrayed. That was the primary weapon used to stand up against the dictatorship at the time, and get rid of mubarak after 30 years of his oppressive rule (or “enslavement” as you dubbed it).
Guns might have been instrumental in keeping civil liberty in the 18th century when Madison said the quote (armed resistance was the only was to fight totalitarianism). But humanity has grown. Ideas and communication are the new weapon now. If they worked in a dictatorship (Egypt), they should most definitely work in a democracy (like Norway or the US), where freedom of speech is the basis of society.
We have a older Mexican American gentleman in our neighborhood who pushes an ice cream cart all day in the 90 degree Florida heat to earn a few extra dollars. Last Monday he was attacked by 2 thugs who robbed him than began beating him. If 2 passersby hadn’t stop, got put of their vehicle WITH A GUN and chased his attackers away, they very well could have killed him. Also, last week, 2 homes were invaded in broad daylight, the owners beaten and robbed. If they would have had a gun they probably could have chased the invader away or, if they had to shot and killed him. This was in a gated community of $500,000 to over $1 Million dollar homes! Sometimes just the threat of a gun is enough to deter crime. I grew up with guns, I’ve hunted in years past and I target shoot. I have yet had to point a gun at anyone or threaten them with a gun and I hope I never do. I will, however, defend my home and belongings if someone breaks in. Yes, Florida does have a shoot to kill law if someone breaks in your home and you feel your life is in danger. Perhaps none of you has ever had to deal with someone who is high on drugs and would as soon kill you as look at you. Try it sometime. It isn’t fun! As I say, many time all you have to do is show a gun and an attacker will flee. Firing the gun should be a last resort effort to save your life.