
Facing possible ban, more Americans are buying new–and legal–$900 flamethrowers - nkurz
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/facing-possible-ban-more-americans-are-buying-new-and-legal-900-flamethrowers/
======
andrewmcwatters
Ignorance is the real issue. It seems every civilized nation thinks America is
home to brutish neanderthals with no regard for gun control.

I ask you, is it the firearm or flamethrower, or the person behind the weapon?
Do you see ivy league students participating in gang crime? What about doctors
or engineers, do these people on the regular have their fingers over hair
triggers?

Do you think weapons make nations more dangerous? No you fools, ignorant
people make the world more dangerous.

Everyone's so ready to debate and break out metrics and statistics about gun
control whilst heart disease is a bigger issue by orders of magnitude in
practically any developed country.

You know what global violence is comparable to in terms of death count?
Falling.

------
collyw
I am sure these will make your country so much "safer".

~~~
hga
The 20th Century suggested the biggest danger to people is their own
governments, which killed a bare minimum of 100 million of their own (my
personal estimate, for countries that are still occupied by hostile
governments and therefore their killing fields are yet to be closely examined,
is 250 million).

The US has a strong bias towards allowing the people to be well armed,
starting with our 2nd Amendment. This certainly has costs, but many of us
prefer the tradeoffs.

~~~
leoedin
Do you seriously think that having a few guns is going to make a difference
when the government come knocking at your door? The idea that the government
will somehow turn suddenly into the enemy and millions of Americans will seize
their arms and rise up against it, toppling it and replacing it with some new,
better government is a complete fantasy.

A fantasy which costs 30,000 lives a year.

~~~
kls
History paints a far darker narrative than the one you tell. You are falling
victim to Cognitive in which you are shortcutting that data because, the data
is so nebulous you are only looking at your experience as the whole set
instead of a subset. As well you are falling victim to Confirmation Bias as
your personal experience (of a stable peaceful government) deviates from the
norm, but you are assuming it is the norm.

Outside of the first world the world is still a very violent place and it has
really only been peaceful in the first world for the last 60 or so years. As
recently the late 30's Spain was locked in a bitter civil war in which is
government was oppressing and killing it's citizens. You and I where not born
then and did not experience it, but on the scales of time that was 5 minutes
ago.

So the answer to your question is yes the data spell out that you should be
distrustful of government, where we are at right now is an anomaly and
historical data says governments are a temporal thing, it's just that they, in
general, span multiple lifespans and you and I got really lucks, but our life
span could bridge the fall of that government.

Now things may have changed this time and we may have evolved but those are
long odds looking around the world and the current political and financial
climate. Again going back to the historical data if it does not rise and fall,
then this will be the anomaly and mark a new epoch in civilization. And that
very well could be, but no bookie in Vegas would take those odds based on the
numbers.

You don't like guns and that's cool, but don't try and justify it by mocking
another persons perspective on the subject by calling it a fantasy, especially
when the data supports that persons position. There are a lot of valid reasons
to tighten regulations on guns, but assuming that the government does not need
an offset is not one of them.

