Posts by BenWilson
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Ah, no. I think the cost is too high for the benefit.
Sure, I understand you feel that way, but perhaps you could at least admit that the benefit is at least an order or magnitude more than military style assault rifle ownership, in order to keep this thread slightly on topic.
So you’re supportive of entitled tossers who move into an area fully aware of a local activity that has existed for nearly 90 years, and then expect said activity to move away because they don’t like it?
I certainly think they do have rights, yes. I'm somewhat ambivalent about whether the speedway should move, as it does not affect me, but I acknowledge that the people who it does affect have rights. I mostly raised it as a way of showing how the right to an entertainment can change over time if it starts to affect more people differently, and I think that threshold got crossed with military style assault rifles long ago.
It's really a tasteless threadjack to continue this discussion of the right to automobiles in this thread, particularly since the last two are directly opposing viewpoints on the matter, and appear to be antagonistic. I'm out of all further discussion relating to car ownership/use rights here.
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Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Moz,
People arguing for public health based restrictions need to be very selective if they want to keep cars.
Well, you need to bring up the enormous utility of cars to counterbalance their obvious social cost. I don't think anywhere near the same argument can be made for guns. Most NZers use cars every single day and would be drastically affected if they couldn't, involving massive lifestyle changes. The entire layout of cities is built around them and infrastructure presumes their existence.
Yes, there is a case for car reduction, and direct harm from accidents is part of that, but it's a many times more complicated. Sustained efforts for many years, probably decades would be needed to eliminate cars without humungous social cost. Whereas rounding up a class of firearm is a matter of a few months and is only a minor cost to anyone who needed them for their work (they can pay a pest controller, or just use other methods themselves).
OK, there is probably a considerable loss in pleasure for some gun lovers who had become attached to their military style assault rifle. That is unfortunate for them, they will only be able to play with shotguns, hunting rifles, small mag semi-automatics, etc. This is much like boy racers complaining of restrictions applied to their vehicles, or speedway lovers believing they should be able to make an insane racket in a densely populated area at will. No, sorry, your rights to entertainment don't outweigh other peoples rights automatically. In the case of the kind of guns the Christchurch murderer had, the right to not have an entire community slaughtered is quite a strong counterbalancing right.
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Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Pete,
No I don’t need a semiautomatic and you don’t need a car
I do need a car, and you still don't need a semiautomatic. My car saves me an hour every day of commuting via public transport, enables transport of whole family rapidly around on the weekend to locations that can't even be reached any other way. What actual practical use is your military style semi automatic weapon? Put in actual real economic terms, and considering the alternatives (eg paying a pest control guy person to sort the pests out periodically)? Now, do those really, in your opinion, outweigh the tremendous danger that these firearms clearly present, as demonstrated patently only a few weeks ago?
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Legal Beagle: Why the censor's total ban…, in reply to Neil,
I'm not sure either and I don't want to take the chance on an obscure point of academic interest just now.
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Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Farmer Green,
Given my earlier post that I approve of the gun ban wholeheartedly, they would have to be a moron. Quite aside from the fact that the good-guy-with-gun meme is not about suppressing freedom of hate speech, it's usually about shooting someone in self defense or the defense of others. Which is, in fact, understandable in the context that it happens. But it's not something we need in place of sensible firearm control.
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Why do you feel the need to ask that?
Edit: No, on second thoughts, I don't want to know.
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If it contains highly specific instructions involving threats in NZ, I support the censor's blanket ban for now, because there is still some chance that there is more than one actor here and it would be better to not hinder the police with the subtleties, just as we prevent the public from visiting a crime scene. Later on, maybe it's OK for some access, but for now, this ban makes perfect sense to me. I would prefer that until the assault rifle buyback and amnesty is completed, that no one still in possession of one legally gets any stupid ideas that could have been prevented by the simple expedient of the revocation of something that is highly objectionable anyway.
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There are some views I will never have synthesis with, and will shut them down everywhere I encounter them by all means available. The free speech I saw in the gunman's video as I tried as fast as I could to find YouTube's report mechanism is something no one needs to hear or see and I have regretted seeing it since then.
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If only it were possible to slap an egg on someone's head over the internet.
No, Dennis, the sensible approach is not to punish the victims and expect the violent white supremacism to stop if only ALL OF ISLAM makes a change to a textual interpretation.
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Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Farmer Green,
It wasn't all you were saying. Please read what you are saying before you post and consider what a whole lot of people who read it will be feeling right now. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute.