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Dangus

Christophercles

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I have started this thread to continue the discussion started in that Mi-24 thread in General. The discussion revolved around military readiness and gun control. Obviously that is not a topic for the General forum, so I have started this one.

You said that you had the port arthur massacre and then you implemented gun control and you have not had another massacre since. This is true. It does not, however, prove that gun control actually improved this situation. In fact, of the anual murders in Australia, a greatly increasing number of them are being commited with firearms, despite the laws against this. Also, there were no such massacres there before Port Arthur that I am aware of, so clearly there's no evidence either way from that standpoint about the effectiveness of gun control.

My point on military readiness is that the WORST time to prepare for war is after it has started. Preparation typically involves being ready ahead of time for an event. The mentality that military power is not needed during times of peace is pure idiocy, especially for Australia, which is a mineral rich country surrounded by potential enemies, all of which would easily defeat Australia should they chose to try. Australia has no navy worth mentioning, Australia has no airforce worth mentioning. Australia has a vulnerable infrastructure, no serious air defense systems, and no serious anti-armor capabilities. On top of this, Australia has a general population with almost no experience with arms of any kind. Even semi auto paintball guns are illegal in many places there. There is a movement in general there to strike down any sense of militancy. No warriors allowed. China has no such compunctions, nor does Indonesia, Singapore or even India for that matter(granted that the likelyhood India would ever invade Australia is just about non-existant, the point is, they are even more hippy-ish than you'd assume Australians are, but they have a monsterous military).

Civilian weapons encourage familiarity with ballistics, marksmanship, warrior mentality, understanding of logistics, understanding of limitations, etc. For hunters it teaches wound characteristics, ideal loadouts, stalking, stealth, recon, communications. The reality of those things cannot be replaced even by a great game of rec ball(paintball in the woods), which in most of Australia can only be played with pumps and single shots.

The opinion of two Australians

http://www.senet.com.au/~brucehan/index36.htm

Of the first you can definitely say he has a bias based on his involvement in the firearms industry, and of course he's a bit pissed about the blow to his economic lifeblood, but the other guy is a WW2 vet and he knows full well what the cost of unpreparedness is. Anyway, read it over, it's worth reading, even if you don't wanna hear it.

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Spell my name right! its bad enough most people dont know how to say it right! grrrr.

As for the article, yes they are right in saying that australia has never spent enough on our defense, and they have made some poor choices. But there isnt alot we can do about it. Our forces are also incredibly stretched just in east timor, to the point that we couldnt even lend medical teams to the forces in afganistan. They both say that australia should become a nuclear power, but that wont happen, we could PHYSICALY do it, but it wont realistically happen. Hell, I could

physicaly get hold of a nuclear weapon, but you know, laws and stuff. As for the training civilians with guns, do you really think that even america would do that? How many people in most of america even have proper knowledge of how to handle a gun? anyway, i must go play day of defeat 2.0, bbl with other stuff.

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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">As for the training civilians with guns, do you really think that even america would do that? How many people in most of america even have proper knowledge of how to handle a gun?<span id='postcolor'>

The whole purpose of the second ammendment was to promote military readiness/awareness. It has nothing to do with protecting the right to hunt, or the right to shoot holes in paper targets. Hell, it even has nothing to do with defending your house against criminals, though it happens to benefit the populous in that area. You know that massacre in Virginia? It was stopped by a student with a gun. The only problem is, he had to go to his car to get it because he was not allowed to carry on campus. So the second does have other advantages. Of course the press is not eager to print that an armed student stopped the rampage, but that's no suprise.

As for how many Americans know much about guns that varies wildly from place to place. You must bear in mind that realistically it's not correct to refer to the entire US as one group. If you come to my state, Iowa, the level of crime and violence in general is the lowest in the world, lower than England, lower than even Sweden. Go to Illinois, one state over(with the full registration of gun owners and tons of bans btw), and the crime levels are the worst in the country. The US is a more complicated place than Australia in a lot of ways, just because of the sheer number of people and cultures involved, and the role we play in the global theater. In some places in the US, like Washington DC(all private guns are illegal), crime is so bad that it rivals that of South Africa. Only criminals and cops know how to use guns in DC, everyone else is just a target. Get out West into states like Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, etc, and the level of experience with firearms increases tenfold. So when you ask questions about firearms in America, and crime in America, you really need to specify where you mean...

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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Spell my name right! its bad enough most people dont know how to say it right! grrrr.<span id='postcolor'>

Looks like a moderator fixed it lol

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">anyway, i must go play day of defeat 2.0, bbl with other stuff.<span id='postcolor'>

I find it ironic that you are going to play a mod that was designed by civilian gun owners. Precisely the reason the models are so good is because Thunder_Weenie(the history guy), myself, and others offered our advice based on our experience. If we had not known so much firsthand knowledge about weapons, we would not have produced a mod anything like that.

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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Dangus @ Jan. 19 2002,16:19)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Spell my name right! its bad enough most people dont know how to say it right! grrrr.<span id='postcolor'>

Looks like a moderator fixed it lol<span id='postcolor'>

As if I would do such a thing, errrr I mean "we" DOH!!! wink.gif

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Good you fixed it smile.gif

Why is it ironic? i didnt say that no civilian had good knowledge of weapons, i just said that not many do. Btw, you bring up the fact that in Iowa you have the lowest crime rates? how many of the crimes in Iowa are commited with guns? and how good would you say the knowledge of the state of Iowa's population would be on gun operation?

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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Why is it ironic? i didnt say that no civilian had good knowledge of weapons, i just said that not many do.<span id='postcolor'>

It is ironic because if we were in Australia, the guns we used to model the weapons in the game would have been chopsawed. Especially his MP-44. I would not have been able to give advice on what the various guns sound like if I weren't able to go to various machinegun shoots we have around here. I would not have been able to advise on what grenades sound like if I had not been able to go mess around with local reservists(the local rat population has been reduced lemme tell ya). Advice on penetration would have not been accurate if I had not taken various building materials out to the range and blown the hell outta them. Most people don't expect .30-06 or 8mm Mauser to go through 12 inches of concrete, but it can do it with some loadouts, though not reliably. Many aspects of that game depended heavily upon civilian gun ownership to become what they are.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Btw, you bring up the fact that in Iowa you have the lowest crime rates? how many of the crimes in Iowa are commited with guns? and how good would you say the knowledge of the state of Iowa's population would be on gun operation?<span id='postcolor'>

I cannot cite the specific rates of crime involving a gun in Iowa at the moment, but I can look into it again. I have seen it but it's been a while. The 1999 stats are probably out by now, maybe even preliminary 2000 stats. We have a slightly lower percentage of homicides that involve firearms than the national average last I checked, though only very slightly. Of our murders I think 55-60% of them involve a firearm. The national average last I checked is about 65% Of felony crime in general nationwide, about 36% of it involves a firearm, again, last I checked, Iowa was a bit lower on this, around 33%. Nationwide most states have seen a decrease in crime in general though, so I would expect both sets of values to be lower for last year. It will be a couple years before all the data is figured out and posted though.

In general Iowans, like most other heavily rural states, has a very high familiarity level with firearms, and the per captia ownership level is quite high. We have a higher population density than Australia, though we have no cities as large as it's largest few. If suddenly random Iowans were thrown into a large battle zone with a rifle and pitted against similarly armed random people from a state like California, we would definitely have quite an edge, as just statisitically speaking our people are more likely to be hunters, farmers, soldiers, and firearms enthusiasts. Not to say CA doesn't have some good people for this sorta thing, just that random sampling of them is less likely to turn them up.

There will be no debate that Australia certainly the edge climate-wise though!

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I didnt read evrything but i wanted to say that in switzerland, every male citizen, have an assault rifle (and one of the best) at home...

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Switzerland is an interesting case. On one hand they are the oldest democracy in Europe in all effective senses of the word "democracy", but they've also had their dark spots too.

Switzerland has a very effective militia system that has always contributed to their disproportionate strength relative to their size. Their citizens have been a perfect model of militia advantages, and the benefits militia give democracy. On the other hand, they have no ability to field troops on foreign conflicts, but then again they don't intend to anyway. Right or wrong, they consider most outside matters to be none of their business. Throughout the time Switzerland has existed, just about every one of their neighbors has tried to invade them, and always at a heavy cost. In WW1, a visiting German officer asked a Swiss general what they would do it the German army, twice the size of the Swiss forces, decided to invade. The officer thought about it and said, "Your troops train at 100 yards, and ours train at 200, and more often. If you were to invade we would shoot twice and go home". Smartass answer yes, but it has some degree of truth to it...

In WW2 however, they basically armed and otherwise supplied the Nazi regime to a very large extent. So did Norway, but Norway got invaded cause it didn't have the sort of nasty defenses that Switzerland has....

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everything's right. Do you live in switzerland wink.gif

We are actually train at 300m at shootin range. We can have the swiss assault rifle at 16 years old if we want. We just have to a train. It's free and paid by the army. They just lend us the gun while 6 or 7 month a year until we go to army. biggrin.gif

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Nope, I don't live in Switzerland. It is a very interesting place though. Probably the only country in Europe that has the roads leading into their country ready to be destroyed at a moment's notice. I forget what they are using now for that purpose, but they used to have electronically detonated mines for that purpose, but I imagine they've changed that since then. Probably C4 now since it's so stable.

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