peacefuljeffrey

I'm glad I could help you feel good about yourself. I may have been misinformed about some topics, sure, but as far as the idiocy of this "subjective enforcement alcohol law" policy, I am not. It's stupid. It will fail to do any good. Beyond that, it is patently unfair to legal consumers of legal goods. I have yet to be proven wrong on the pathetic misguidedness, harm, and futility of gun control. You still can't show that it does any good, but I can cite all kinds of stuff that indicates it doesn't work. I can also cite all kinds of stuff that indicates that gun ownership saves people's lives. I'd trade those other stupid things I was wrong about (who gives a shit which side of the road brits drive on?) for being right about that one. Small price to pay. edit: The thing about metal strength and density was a fucking question, remember? I was ASKING because according to what I understood at the time, stainless steel would be likely to be harder than a piece of titanium. I said right off I was no metallurgist, and I was ASKING people what they thought. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

And you think that this anti-social behavior will be cured by limiting their ability to obtain alcohol. Do you have any idea how funny that sounds? (Even apart from the idea that you'll be at all successful in preventing them from obtaining alcohol. Did no articles or books about the U.S. Prohibition amendment ever reach your shores?) Your youth culture has an anti-social problem period, more likely. Alcohol fuels it, perhaps, but to think that alcohol is the root cause of it, and without alcohol it will disappear, is sheer stupidity. To think that alcohol prohibition will even dent the problem is stupid. You might as well go on believing that banning aluminum baseball bats will stop people over here in Florida from beating others to death. I suggest that your society (hell, even parts of our society) has problems that engender the drinking, which causes more problems -- not that the drinking is the root of the problem. What is it about your youth that sends them running to alcohol for their entertainment and social interaction? I have also read that sexually transmitted diseases are running rampant in your young population, possibly in part driven by drunken (and irresponsible) sexual encounters. Do you really feel that separating people from their alcohol is the big solution to your country's problems? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

FUCKIN' A!! I don't think that the free people of the world should rest until the despotic, sick regimes of the world that oppress their people are obliterated. And if this means that the islamic cultures that subjugate people and prevent them from living free have to be done away with, I don't think I oppose that notion. Lately when I hear that a culture is oppressive and cruel, it seems to be either communist or islamic. I wonder why that is... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If this is the logic of the British government, they might as well tell people they can't buy cars until the youngest of their friends is over the legal driving age, because they're afraid they will let the underage friends drive around illegally. Same "thinking" applies. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I already knew that liberals were whores, but this takes it to a new extreme. They always did whore for bigger, more powerful government and fewer individual rights. Now they're advocating sexual manipulation for votes? Will the liberal depravity never end? Don't bother replying: I already know the answer to that question. (A: Of course not.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No it is not. Don´t let your anger cloud your brain and think again. Most groups of friend have a range of ages of 2 or 3 years of diference. Is your birthday the same age than your friends? I didn´t think so. So when the oldest turn 18, he can buy alcohol to his 15 years old friends. However if the seller Voluntarily refuses to sell unless he is 21, it is more unlikely that he will pass that alcohol to a 15 years old guy. I mean, most 21 years old guys don´t go out with 15 years old guys. Ridiculous. If there is anyone here with "clouded thinking," it is you and the rest who seem to think this will solve any problems. Your "plan" works great for a perfect scenario, but there ARE people whose social groups span enough years to make this restriction fail. You still have not addressed the stupidity, unfairness, and illogic of refusing to sell a legal item to a person who may legally buy it. That would be like telling someone that at 18 he can have a driver's license, NOT changing the law to require that he be 21, and then telling him that you simply don't want to give him his license for three more years. If you think that the problems are being caused by those from 18-21 buying alcohol for those under 18, you go after the people who are providing the alcohol to the under-18s. There are bars and stores everywhere that get caught when their clerks sell to those under 21 in the U.S. The government does not shut down all the stores. It fines and punishes the OFFENDERS. Not EVERYONE. So why punish those 18, 19 and 20 year olds who DON'T buy for underage drinkers? Why not run educational campaigns to discourage underage drinking instead of restricting the rights of those who are of legal age? Since you cannot prove that there will be no 17-year-olds successfully asking 21-year-olds to buy them alcohol, you cannot demonstrate the utility of this stupid, stupid policy. If the government believes it's such a problem, they should enforce the laws against minors' possession of alcohol. They already exist by virtue of there being a legal drinking age of 18. If people don't obey that law, what makes you think pubs will obey a VOLUNTARY REQUEST which is NOT law?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Because at 18 you'd still be able to go to a pub and buy drinks or go to a club and buy drinks. The local shops just wouldn't sell you a bottle of Jack until you were 21. Read it again, Mark. It says "tavern owners." They want "tavern owners" to refuse service to people who legally are entitled to service. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That law is based on fanatical, outrageous, irrational religious fundamentalist extremism, and on its face is so contrary to the concept of human individual rights as to be utterly contemptible. Have you never heard of the moral obligation to oppose and break laws that are wrong? It was once against the law to harbor fugitive slaves in the United States of America. Will you really defend the enforcement of those laws, just because they were the laws at the time? Or is it more defensible to break laws that are so clearly wrong? Blind adherence to law just because it is law is a dangerous, ignorant practice. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Registering them is one step from taking them. So we are all one step away from losing the right to vote? Is that just the aluminum foil hat wearing side of you talking? I don't believe in right or left wing conspiracy theories so I don't believe that registering is one step away from confiscation. Technically, we are always just one election away from never having our votes counted again. All it takes to lose the right to vote is for the government, already entrenched in power and with a willing military/police force that receives benefits and power from that government, deciding that it is not going to hold elections. You think there are not places where this happens? There is no guarantee, ever, that elections will ever be held again. You wait and see if it comes to pass when you wake up on election day. What would you do if you woke up on election day and went to your polling station and found no one there to record your vote? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Dude you don´t really believe what you are saying, just want to prove a point .If you really think that you should never give up your rights for a promise of safety, you should REALLY be against GWB and his Patriot act. That the government is able to held you captive without informing you of the reason takes away more rights than that you have to do more paperwork to get a gun. Being more consistent with your ideas will help proving your points across the board. Who are you to tell me whether I believe what I'm saying or not? You're in effect calling me a LIAR. I can't believe that YOU believe what YOU say. I think you're full of shit when you talk about the "benefits" of gun control. You come across like you understand NOTHING about the effects of guns and gun control. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Would you care to comment on the places in the United States where you CANNOT still go buy a firearm? You know, places like Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago... You might claim that you could get a permit in those places and then be allowed to buy a firearm -- the only problem is, the police just don't give out the permits. (Unless, of course, you are rich, famous, politically connected, or some combination thereof.) The permit systems there are completely at police discretion. That means they don't have to give out permits if they don't want to, and since their philosophies in those sociofascist cities are that ordinary people cannot be trusted with guns, they don't allow them to have guns. Your claim is negated by the FACT that there are places in the U.S. where you are, effectively, legally banned from owning guns. What would you say of the people in New York City, who, after owning guns legally for years, were asked to register them, and then several years after they registered them, anti-gun-laws were passed, and the police, using the registration lists to track down the people who had guns, went to their addresses and confiscated the guns? Would you say that all just happened in a dream? That they imagined it all? I mean, where the fuck are you coming from, making these assertions that REAL WORLD FACTS completely controvert?! What would be wrong with looking for a DROP in the number of crimes that DO happen in places where gun control was instituted? You don't have to be able to count the crimes that didn't happen; you could just look for a decline in the actual incidence of crime. The only problem is, you DON'T find that in places where gun control is instituted. Dude, you are so wrong on so many counts, I can't figure out why you persist in your arguments. It is clear that you don't know what you're talking about, and are just spouting off and pontificating in the blind. You mean the same Supreme Court that Democrats claim threw the presidency to G.W. Bush? Since they refute the legitimacy of the USSC decision that ended up leaving Bush with the victory in the election, they are claiming that the Supreme Court cannot be counted on to do objective right. What makes you think that a biased Supreme Court would find correctly in favor of gun rights as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment? Because no one, anywhere, can show evidence or proof that good people giving up THEIR guns has any effect on the degree to which BAD people remain armed. Why on EARTH would you think that GOOD people either registering their guns or giving them up would curtail crime?? It's not the good people who would register or give up guns who are committing the crime! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm not going to bother comming in on the argument, but felt it nessasery to point out to any who bothered reading the above text that it is entirely incorrect. Whoever wrote that needs to be banned from ever writing again - it's an appaling miss-truth to the point that I simply have to conclude that they are deliberate outright lies. I confess I scan read the text for comments on the UK... I don't think I'll bother reading the rest of it as I have absolutly no confidence that the author can actually write a truthful word. David Kopel enjoys a very good reputation, and so your claim that he is lying doesn't go very far with me, given the fact that you do not refute him, you just contradict him. Could you post anything factual that demonstrates what IS true about the topics he mentioned? It's not hard for me to believe what he wrote above, given the climate of people volunteering up their rights to privacy in the U.K. for the sake of illusory government "protection." (Cameras on every streetcorner a la 1984... You did know, did you not, that Orwell was warning against that kind of thing, not suggesting it??) and Tony "Never-met-an-infringement-on-rights-he-didn't-like" Blair has advocated for stripping away the right to remain silent! Those silly little things like human rights keep getting in the way of prosecutions! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

A few months ago, there was a hubbub about a video game that featured a stage where Haitian immigrants were coming ashore, and the game said, "Kill the Haitians!" I wonder, Microsoft could probably make some commercial hay out of this, running a commercial for a game in which you are ordered, "Slug the X-Box Thieves!" I mean, morality, ethics and compassion are all but dead in modern society, so what the fuck? Why not use this cheap publicity to sell more X-boxes? "X-Box: You'd kill for it, too!" - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Bringing this one back on topic... So who besides me wants to drive up to Deltona and volunteer to administer the aluminum-bat execution of these loathesome slime? I can't remember the last time I felt such intense hatred as I do for these people. Actually, I'm not sure that I ever have. Oh, and the Tuesday paper has a story about how four people in the criminal justice sector who should have and could have kept the ringleader in jail didn't have been fired. It's just too bad that people in that line of work are not able to be sued. I think that they can be charged, though, can't they? I call that malfeasance. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Man, the more I read here, the more the British subjects seem eager to have government tell them what they may and may not do! Fuckin' terrifying that people can be so eager to be subjugated! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

There's nothing to justify. Private shop owners can sell or not sell to anyone they want. I got my booze as a teenager from stores that just sold to underage kids and the odd over 21 year old brother someone had. But it would've made it SO much easier to get booze when I was 16 or 17 if you only needed to know someone who was 18 to buy it. I don't think they're aiming to eliminate it, just tone it down a notch. None of this explains why they should leave the drinking age at 18 if they don't want anyone from 18-21 to be able to buy the stuff. If you don't want 18 and19-year-olds buying beer for 17 year olds, raise the dame legal age! But to tell someone they're old enough, and legally allowed to purchase, and then tell them you refuse to sell to them is actually age discrimination. This story isn't about the shops choosing not to sell, btw, it's about the government trying to get shops not to sell to people over the legal age but under a "desired" age. That's bullshit, in my book. And if I were affected by it, I'd fight it in the courts. Besides, who says that if a 17-year-old can't get an 18-year old to get him alcohol, he won't be able to find a 21-year-old to do it? The logic here is just pathetically stupid. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

All the reason we need to say that infringing on our rights is not justified since it can't deliver safety (and even if it could deliver safety, the price is still too high. You NEVER give up rights for a promise of safety. Better to live without safety than without rights.) Major understatement there. You sure don't have the answers. There are guns around now that are over EIGHTY years old that still can be fired just fine. Why on earth do you think that a modern manufactured firearm, if maintained and used sparingly, would not last at least 100 years, if there are 100-year-old guns still capable of firing? Well, in any event, we don't currently have a "gun free-for-all. It's already illegal for felons to own guns. It's illegal for anyone to sell guns to a felon. It's illegal for them to attempt to obtain guns. It's illegal for them to even HOLD a gun, say if a non-felon friend took them to the range and offered for them to blow off a mag or two. What do you want, for it to be made twice illegal? Would it being made illegal twice over make felon gun possession less likely to occur? Uh, no, it doesn't make it harder. I certainly believe that any felon who wants a gun either has it, or will within a week of setting out to get one. You don't register your car for safety, you register it to give the state revenue. This is well-established. You don't need a driver's license to simply purchase a 6,000 lb. SUV, which can mow down dozens of people in a fell swoop in a crowded outdoor market (like that old geezer did in California, though it wasn't in an SUV). You don't need a license to drive if you plan on driving only on private property. So if I want to buy a gun, and plan on keeping it and firing it only on my ranch, I shouldn't have to register it or get licensed, right? This is according to YOUR car-analogy, dude, not mine. I'm fascinated by the way people proposing gun control seem to always guiltily apologize for it at the end by admitting that it won't solve the problems, and thatgun ownership is a Constitutionally guaranteed right, unlike their analogies (like cars), which pretty much closes the case on their claims. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

But that point is debatable. What is "the right thing to do" with regards to guns? I think there are two sides, both of which think they are right. Well, when the pro-gun side says it fears registration will lead to confiscation, and the anti-gun side says, "Aw, you're just afraid of phantoms, it will not," and the pro-gun side has country after country after country -- and even cities and states in the U.S. -- where it can cite that exactly that has happened... which of the two sides claiming to be right actually IS right? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Private shop owners can sell to whoever they want and it'd be harder for sub 18 year olds to get alcohol if only over 21 year olds could by it. Wait, you don't think they're wrong to do this? How on earth can they justify refusing to sell to those who are of legal age to buy?? If the problem is with people selling to those who are underage, go after THEM. This is more of the mindless BULLSHIT of going after the people who are NOT the problem in a futile effort to affect those who ARE the problem. How will this policy prevent, say, a 22-year-old from buying alcohol for 17-year-olds? Of course, the answer is, "It won't." If they want to deny those under 21 buying alcohol, they should raise the legal age to 21. You can't justify not selling to those who can legally buy, because you're simply afraid that they'll make straw purchases. If they make straw purchases, punish them then. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Wait just one motherfucking minute here. Are you saying that you believe that the woman who was NOT MUSLIM and therefore wasn't dressed "the muslim way" is WRONG to have not been wearing the head scarf, and deserved to be convicted in a court before which she could not present ANY DEFENSE WHATSOEVER and should have been WHIPPED?! I surely hope you are fucking KIDDING me. I've said it before and I'll say it again: religion is the most hateful thing to come of human civilization, and it must be eliminated if we are to EVER have peace and human rights. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That is some pretty fucked-up shit right there. And I've read several times in the last few years (the most recent being last week) about psychos using BLADED weapons to commit mass murders. (A few years ago, a guy killed 8 children in a school, and the other week, someone killed several people in a family over some "simmering hatred" issue.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The best remedy for a sucky stupid "I-don't-know-what-I-was-thinking" crappy-ass tattoo is to not get sucked into the tattoo craze in the first place. I've always liked the idea of getting a tattoo, but several things keep me from doing it. 1) I hate the idea of some permanent modification of my body done by just "some dude" i paid money to. That's too personal to reduce to a simple commercial exchange. 2) I would never get some pre-fab design done, like a Superman logo or a Tasmanian Devil -- can you say "overdone"?? I would have to design my tattoo myself. 3) I would prefer to put the tattoo on myself -- which isn't gonna happen because I am not trained in that skill/art, and am not planning on getting trained. But people, please, tattoos seem to be the new ear-piercing, but it's a hellofa lot more serious a commitment, and I think people are so caught up in the major fad-ness of it that they turn off their brains when deciding what to get, or if. Sorry, I can't help with suggestions about cover-ups. I just felt like venting about the hyper-popularity of tattoos. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I had never thought much about how good or bad the cover photos of the magazine are. I'm still so new to skydiving that I relish seeing anything related to it. Still gives me the thrill of a vicarious skydive! As far as this Kaz goes... If she's this great swooper, and that's the name she's made for herself, why didn't they run a nice action photo of her swooping at some demo or something?? The photo they used (of the head-downexit) is uneventful, so I do agree that it's pretty boring. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You ask rhetorical questions that you can't answer and then use your own unfounded "conclusions" based on a hypothetical answer to argue that guns are bad for citizens to have, and shouldn't be owned by the general populace. I wonder if you have any idea how ridiculous that ends up sounding. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

They can "claim" that all day long. In the end, they cannot prove nor demonstrate any truth to the claim. But studies of defensive gun usage estimate 800,000 to 2.5 million such usages each year in the United States. That dwarfs the total number of people killed using guns even if we include all the suicides and lawful killings in with the person-on-person criminal homicides. You're the one making the claim. Why don't you tell us how many? Until you do, all you're doing is spouting off unsubstantiated phantom fears. And so at the end of all your hemming and hawing, you a) have not shown that guns are used so much more often to harm than to save b) still point out that determined people will find the means to kill, and will kill, even if they have no guns. So making sure that good, honest, defensive people have no guns will not save people from getting murdered. Thanks for making my case for me. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"