BUSH WINS NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

It came from a UN report. INTERPOL was only the first of several data sources and I didn't want to crowd the graph. If you want to see everything: Linky

I can't really imagine a plausible way to establish confidence limits on this type of data. The major sources of error are almost certainly in classification and initial reporting of the crimes. The best you can hope for is that the error is equal in each country surveyed, and so the relative comparison ought to be valid if not the absolute values. I suppose you could collect the information several times and generate your interval from that, but such a procedure would undoubtedly produce a significant underestimate of the actual figure.

Edit: If you want to see some equally impressive homicide data it's all here.

Rape is a tough stat to track because so many incidents go unreported due to the perceived guilt and shame that go along with it. Perhaps Canada just has the populace staunch enough to report it.

Oh, and Orph, about your three things on Kerry, only #1 was true. Kerry is pro-choice.

He is against gay marriage (despite coming from Massachusetts) but believes that there should be no national position on the subject - that states should be allowed to come to their own conclusion. This is the same view Dick Cheney has on the subject, btw. And as you might have seen, on Tuesday 11 states had a referendum on whether it should be banned in that state, and every one passed it, even the fairly liberal Oregon which had a big push trying to shoot it down.

I haven't heard a thing about him being anti-guns. I think what is likely is he wants to reinstate the ban on automatic weaponry. The difference between

Previously Illegal: Automatic: Holding down the trigger will fire consecutive bullets

Always Legal: Semi-automatic: The gun will reload itself, but the trigger must be released and pulled again before another bullet is fired.

You can hold the view that automatics sould be allowed, but I fail to see how supporting a ban for what really has little need outside of a combat situation is evil.

Cash Car Star said:
Rape is a tough stat to track because so many incidents go unreported due to the perceived guilt and shame that go along with it. Perhaps Canada just has the populace staunch enough to report it.

These were my thoughts exactly - it must be assumed that the number of reported rapes are quite a bit fewer than the rapes themselves.

Rape is a tough stat to track because so many incidents go unreported due to the perceived guilt and shame that go along with it. Perhaps Canada just has the populace staunch enough to report it.

Oh, and Orph, about your three things on Kerry, only #1 was true. Kerry is pro-choice.

He is against gay marriage (despite coming from Massachusetts) but believes that there should be no national position on the subject - that states should be allowed to come to their own conclusion. This is the same view Dick Cheney has on the subject, btw. And as you might have seen, on Tuesday 11 states had a referendum on whether it should be banned in that state, and every one passed it, even the fairly liberal Oregon which had a big push trying to shoot it down.

I haven't heard a thing about him being anti-guns. I think what is likely is he wants to reinstate the ban on automatic weaponry. The difference between

Previously Illegal: Automatic: Holding down the trigger will fire consecutive bullets

Always Legal: Semi-automatic: The gun will reload itself, but the trigger must be released and pulled again before another bullet is fired.

You can hold the view that automatics sould be allowed, but I fail to see how supporting a ban for what really has little need outside of a combat situation is evil.

See, the thing is "Oregon" in general isn't that liberal. 65% of the state is rural or agricultural = farmers = heavy religious opinion. The only problem I really had with people voting "YES" on 36 was if they did it for the religious reason, since that has no baring on a judicial outcome (which is most marriage situations) and it isn't right to hold someone else accountable for your religious views. If they want it to be a religious only affair, that's fine, as long as ALL marriages become religion only and Judicial marriages become another type of union with similar benefits. It simply isn't fair any other way.

Cassius said:

Cash Car Star said:
Rape is a tough stat to track because so many incidents go unreported due to the perceived guilt and shame that go along with it. Perhaps Canada just has the populace staunch enough to report it.

These were my thoughts exactly - it must be assumed that the number of reported rapes are quite a bit fewer than the rapes themselves.

This is probably why the statistic is reported rape.

lol Tracer, I love that graph and how it "squashes" the higher rape and murder rates... So, "400/100,000" assault in the UK compared to "310/100,000" in the US? So you're 1.3 times as likely to be assaulted. But note that rape rates are twice as higher than all the other countries on that graph, except the strange Canada figures, and it doesn't seem to list murder, for which I have heard statistics that you are up to 6 times as likely to be murdered in the USA. And again according to your graph, it doesn't seem like Israel has the lowest rape figures at all.

Perhaps most crucial of all, it says nothing about gun crime!

Anyway, you can always find all sorts of crime figures, and ones fudged to show what you want them to- and don't forget, these figures probably only show reported crimes, so of course there will be some extra bias there (I'm sure if you looked at Zimbabwe's crime levels right now there wouldn't be much being reported!). If you want to tell us your actual source Tracer it would be appreciated :smile:

Since we're talking about letting people own guns to defend themselves, I guess it's ok for countries to own nuclear weapons to defend themselves too? :razz:

Oh... I'm sorry? Does that burst the bubble all of you non-Americans have been blowing about how violent we are? Certainly we are not the best in the world, but you cannot make the case that America is a more dangerous place then England because of gun laws. It isn't, for whatever reason, and that's a fact.

Nonsense. That chart is totally meaningless in this debate. It provides no information about gun crimes whatsoever.

Even if it did show gun crime information, it still wouldn't matter, because banning gnus would still reduce the number of gun deaths. I just don't understand why so many of you can't accept that.

Let's say america had the lowest gun death rate in the whole world. Why is it bad to reduce this further by taking guns away completely?

Cassius said:

Cash Car Star said:
Rape is a tough stat to track because so many incidents go unreported due to the perceived guilt and shame that go along with it. Perhaps Canada just has the populace staunch enough to report it.

These were my thoughts exactly - it must be assumed that the number of reported rapes are quite a bit fewer than the rapes themselves.

Why the hell do you guys continue to make up excuses to try and make it look like your country isn't as bad as the "big bully America". Do you really think that just because a women is in another country will make her report her own rape? Being in another country and reporting I crime against you will be the same if you were in America. Oh but I guess its better to report it in Canada because I'm sure you mountian man police force which we all know is the best in the world can catch any criminal. If canada had the population of America they would have equal the crime. Forgive me for saying this but a lot of our crime also comes from the black population.

Now I want to note that I am not just saying this to everyone in Canada but all the rest of you who bash America for such a horrid place it is because our crime rate is higher than yours, but then you don't want to take into fact that our population is higher than yours because we all know that would change nothing. :rolleyes:

This topic has grown a lot in couple of hours... It's nice to see Finlands statistics. But they say that we are one of the best countries to invest in, but for some reason or another I don't see very many investments in here. Statistics can be quite misleading to say the least.

i have lived in 3 different college cities.. belton texas,conway arkansas and jonesboro arkansas, and rape is a bit higher here than anyplace else i have lived.. perhaps its because of the kids, perhaps its no means yes, perhaps the numbers are skewed i dunno, but rape is reported often here.

assault is pretty high in jonesboro, people are always drinking beer and you know how rednecks are :rolleyes: .. guns.. i cannot even remember when i heard a thing about guns.. maybe its so common people do not report it as much anymore, maybe the level has dropped i dunno, but the only time i ever hear about guns anymore is during hunting season... most deaths are reported as accidental.. many deer rifles have much more power than our military weaponry used in the US.. they have less range, but lots more knockdown power.. most people hit with ammunition intended to kill deers.. well they don't fare very well..

scary_jeff said:
Even if it did show gun crime information, it still wouldn't matter, because banning gnus would still reduce the number of gun deaths. I just don't understand why so many of you can't accept that.

Let's say america had the lowest gun death rate in the whole world. Why is it bad to reduce this further by taking guns away completely?

think of it this way jeff.. now bare with me..

imagine, guns are easier to obtain in the USA, thats pretty much assumed.. now imagine, you are some punk who wants to break into your home/business.. he might hesitate to do it, because there could be some trigger happy redneck/suburban housewife in there with a gun..

what we will never EVER know is exactly how many people are saved because the resident may or may not have a gun in the area..

lowering the number of available guns could very well remove the only deterrent there is to violent crimes becoming a reality one can poll.. you cannot poll what doesn't happen.. and i doubt very seriously you will get criminals to say "yup i skipped that one alright"

lets assume i am wrong, but i couldn't be wrong by very much.. simply because the crimes not involving guns are far more numerous, at least i hear about them more.

I in no means am saying that Englansd is better than America on crime because for some of them its just as bad.

I can go down town on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night and the chanses are that I will get hit for no reason cos Mansfield is well known around atleast Nottinghamshire for the fights on the weekend, and St Anns well they have loads of gun crime there to say its just a small part of Nottingham there was a girl about 14-15 shot there for as of yet no reason while she was walking home from Goose Fair (its an anual fair that goes off in Notts).

As I have said I dont think England is better on crime than America but I do think that it could be a whole lot better.

I know this has nothing to do with anything else in this thread but I heard something really stupid a while ago. Someone from some equality thinkg for africans and asians was complaining about the number of black and asian people in the police over here and he said theat he wanted the police to recrut more even if they couldn't do the job.

Anyway... when are the New Mexico and Iowa results expected in? (not that it makes much difference, but it's more on topic than gun crime :razz: )

And are there more electoral college votes this year, or have things changed? In 2000 Gore got 266 votes and Bush 271 (total 537). This year, if Kerry had won N.Mexico and Iowa he would 264 votes (and Bush still 274- total 540). BUT if Kerry did win those states, then he will have won exactly the same as Gore did plus New Hampshire, which is an extra 4 votes if I'm not mistaken- so he would have got 270 if the college vote distribution was the same as last time (instead of 266) ?!

According to Yahoo New Mexico has been declared for Bush and that Iowa has Bush at 50% and Kerry at 49% with 100% of the precincts reporting. Dunno why they are still holding out, as it makes no difference whatsoever.

Considering the closeness of the election result, if this 50-50 trend continues, perhaps Amercia should adopt a system like the power sharing agreement in Northern Ireland. While Northern Ireland itself isn't the best example of this government in action (rather inaction!) it is truly representative of all people's opinions, rather than the more or less majority rule government the US currently have. Of course, over here the politics are extremely polarised which the are not in the US, no matter how people like to delude themselves.

I'd say England, currently, is probably a more dangerous place in terms
of menial/low level assaults than the US (after their big drive to
clean it up). It's not even confined to lower class areas.

Also, Asians/Blacks have nothing to do with the UK crime figures, the
Indian/Pakistanis barely make up 2% of the populous, and black people
not much more than 8%. The race card is only usually played by people
who have no grasp of society in general, and how it currently works.

Fact of the matter is, people nowadays are living in fear of being
assaulted/mugged/abused (verbally/physically) inside, and outside of
their homes - by white, teenage thugs.

And someone needs to sort it out, fast :razz:

Bloody chavs.

On the whole crime rate thing. Here it is for where I live.

<TABLE cellPadding=2 width=205 align=left border=1>

<TR bgColor=#cccccc>
<TD colSpan=4 height=34>[b][size=13]Orl?ans, Blackburn Hamlet, North Gloucester and Cumberland[/b][/size]</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD width="40%"></TD>
<TD width="19%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>This
week</DIV></TD>
<TD width="15%">
<DIV align=center>Last
week</DIV></TD>
<TD width="26%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>YTD</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD width="40%">Residential break-ins</TD>
<TD width="19%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>4</DIV></TD>
<TD width="15%">
<DIV align=center>5</DIV></TD>
<TD width="26%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>188</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD width="40%">Commercial break-ins</TD>
<TD width="19%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>0</DIV></TD>
<TD width="15%">
<DIV align=center>0</DIV></TD>
<TD width="26%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>80</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD width="40%">Stolen vehicles </TD>
<TD width="19%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>2</DIV></TD>
<TD width="15%">
<DIV align=center>9</DIV></TD>
<TD width="26%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>114</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD width="40%">Robberies</TD>
<TD width="19%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>4</DIV></TD>
<TD width="15%">
<DIV align=center>0</DIV></TD>
<TD width="26%" bgColor=#cccccc>
<DIV align=center>28</DIV></TD></TR></TABLE>

You'll notice its still pretty heavy. Not so bad in the "this week" column, which is from last week. I live in Orleans, which is South-east of Ottawa. Blackburn is just North-west of Orleans, Gloucester is more or less north, and Cumberland is to the east. So I guess you can call it the crime rate for the east end of Ottawa. It includes quite a bit however. And unfortunatly, most of it is located here in Orleans. All the local teens with nothing to do :sad:

[edit] you'll never believe some of the dumb crime thats going on around.

• Oct. 26 @ 10:40 a.m. Henri Lauzon St. and Jeanne d'Arc Blvd., Orl?ans. Fireplace stolen from house under construction.

• Oct. 31 @ 7:14 p.m. 1900 block Belcourt Blvd., Orl?ans. Victim was walking outside with a bowl of candy when he was jumped by kids. No injuries. Seven or eight suspects all white males 13 to 14 years old.

[size=13]- Oct. 31 @ 8:21 p.m. 1000 block Laporte St., Beacon Hill. Theft of candies during Halloween. Five white males (18-19 yrs) in silver Honda. Stole bag of candies from victim.

[/size]

• Oct. 31 @ 10:09 p.m. 2400 block Ogilvie Rd., Beacon Hill. Teens robbed of Halloween candy. Two male suspects, one white, one black driving older model white car.

Heh, you should try living in the UK - those incidents are incredibly tame compared with the daily happenings on our streets.

Teens with nothing to do drink cider and mug/assault people, incredibly viciously as well.

That sounds like quite the utopia! Remind me again how that is seriously better than a US with guns aplenty?

EDIT: Maybe with the expiration of the ban on assault weapons I can finally legally buy myself a fiveseven... awesome.

Orpheus said:
i still see abortion/pro-choice as pure evil..

Just out of curiosity, why are you against abortion?

Probably because it's basically the legal killing of thousands of babies? That's pretty much the beef opponents have with it.

Yak_Fighter said:
EDIT: Maybe with the expiration of the ban on assault weapons I can finally legally buy myself a fiveseven... awesome.

lmao!

Yak_Fighter said:
Probably because it's basically the legal killing of thousands of babies? That's pretty much the beef opponents have with it.

But, as far as I know, the baby isn't even conscious.

Conscient or not, it is still considered a form of life.

The problem with outlawing abortion lies outside the moral issues. The simple fact remains that you cant stop it. Period. The act of outlawing it would simply drive the process underground, making people who control it criminals, not medically trained professionals,and endangering lives of people who would otherwise not be at risk.

Agreed. I think women should be able to determine what they do on their bodies, in the end the baby is a part of their body until it is born...

That sounds like quite the utopia! Remind me again how that is seriously better than a US with guns aplenty?

EDIT: Maybe with the expiration of the ban on assault weapons I can finally legally buy myself a fiveseven... awesome.

Yeah, it's bloody awful - accelerated by King Tony and the governments mismanagement of just about everything.

Remind me again where I dipped my toe into the waters of the US gun debate? :razz:

Leperous said:
lol Tracer, I love that graph and how it "squashes" the higher rape and murder rates... So, "400/100,000" assault in the UK compared to "310/100,000" in the US? So you're 1.3 times as likely to be assaulted. But note that rape rates are twice as higher than all the other countries on that graph, except the strange Canada figures, and it doesn't seem to list murder, for which I have heard statistics that you are up to 6 times as likely to be murdered in the USA. And again according to your graph, it doesn't seem like Israel has the lowest rape figures at all.

Perhaps most crucial of all, it says nothing about gun crime!

Anyway, you can always find all sorts of crime figures, and ones fudged to show what you want them to- and don't forget, these figures probably only show reported crimes, so of course there will be some extra bias there (I'm sure if you looked at Zimbabwe's crime levels right now there wouldn't be much being reported!). If you want to tell us your actual source Tracer it would be appreciated :smile:

Since we're talking about letting people own guns to defend themselves, I guess it's ok for countries to own nuclear weapons to defend themselves too? :razz:

Um... I guess you didn't bother to read any futher than the Graph.

Tracer Bullet said:
It came from a UN report. INTERPOL was only the first of several data sources and I didn't want to crowd the graph. If you want to see everything: Linky

Edit: If you want to see some equally impressive homicide data it's all here.

And regardless of the fact that rape and theft rates are low on the scale, it is still quite Representative of violent crime. I suppose I could have normalized the figures, but the people would have bitched about using arbitrary units. It is irrelavent whether the crime involves a gun or not. The pro-gun argument hinges on the idea that more gun possestion leads to lower TOTAL viloent crime. I'm not arguing that it leads to less GUN crime, just a lower total.
Edit: just to make things easier


Looks to me like homicide is less than twice as common in the United States vs. England/Wales, but then again, look at Scotalnd and Sweden.

Agreed. I think women should be able to determine what they do
on their bodies, in the end the baby is a part of their body until it
is born...

I agree.

scary_jeff said:
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Oh... I'm sorry? Does that burst the bubble all of you non-Americans have been blowing about how violent we are? Certainly we are not the best in the world, but you cannot make the case that America is a more dangerous place then England because of gun laws. It isn't, for whatever reason, and that's a fact.</DIV></DIV>

Nonsense. That chart is totally meaningless in this debate. It provides no information about gun crimes whatsoever.

Even if it did show gun crime information, it still wouldn't matter, because banning gnus would still reduce the number of gun deaths. I just don't understand why so many of you can't accept that.

Let's say america had the lowest gun death rate in the whole world. Why is it bad to reduce this further by taking guns away completely?

I do accept that. Obviously allowing guns raises the number of gun-related deaths. The arguments is that there is less total violent crime, as I stated above.

Pvt.Scythe said:
Agreed. I think women should be able to determine what they do on their bodies, in the end the baby is a part of their body until it is born...

No. The baby is not a PART of her body, the baby and mother just SHARE the same body. There is a difference.

Consider siamese twins. They are another example of two people sharing the same body, but that doesn't give them the right to kill each other.

Hell, by your logic the baby should have the right to kill the mother: after all the mother is part of the baby's body...

The only decent argument for abortion is the one Juim brings up about practicality.

Why do you people think you'll solve the baby-mother thing? I don't think there's an issue with less common ground. I don't like it, but I consider myself a practical person and so politically believe in the mantra safe, legal and rare. Situations where a woman needs it can and will occur, and this is not something you can wait around on bureaocracy for.

Crono, thanks for the info on Oregon. I guess I incorrectly assumed with it being right between Washington and California that it would be quite similar in political composition.

Spartan, neither Cassius nor myself are Canadian.

Tracer, that latest graph interests me not so much due to the country to country comparison, but rather the 1990 to 2000 comparison. Our homicide rate seems to have dropped off by a third. Compared to 1990, the Danes and Swedes seem to be out on a warpath right now. Was their any explanatory text to accompany the graph where you found it?

Unfortunately there is very little text on the whole page. it is basically just a massive compilation of socioeconomic statistics. If you want a full description, Try this: http://www.unece.org/stats/trend/introduction.htm

I'm happy with the election results :smile: go bush

obviously MOST people aren't unhappy with the electino if bush won the popular vote.

Ferret said:
I'm happy with the election results :smile: go bush
obviously MOST people aren't unhappy with the electino if bush won the popular vote.

LOL, as absurd as it is, this idea doesn't come into play this time.. the candidates were so bad, that it all boiled down to picking the person who could screw you the least overall..

whatever you may think of that, i have yet to meet someone not online... who voted for our president because they felt they were the best candidate.. i'm sorry but thats the basic truth of the matter..

someone keeps asking "what about the others?" seriously??? i haven't heard them mentioned, not one single time, excepting in here.. not once... they must have been even bigger losers.. :sad:

as for the abortion legal or underground idea posed by juim..

practically speaking i agree and disagree.. there will be a certain portion of the world that would continue to get abortions underground.. these people, don't deserve to live IMO so its no great loss if they die.. and before you say it, that idea is NO MORE immoral than the act of abortion so stop judging me, unless you are going to judge them as well..

it is my opinion that the abortion totals have not risen because its legal or illegal, it has risen because it has become acceptable.. accepted practices always cause a rampant rise in actions..

we may never be able to stop abortions now, it has become to big an issue.. but i will always consider it the most selfish act any woman can think of.. even when it saves her own life to do it..

i would like to say this one last thing, its not ageism either... at least wait to form an opinion about abortion until you have children, or have one taken from you without your consent by a female.. then by all means.. tell us again how it feels..

Orpheus said:
these people, don't deserve to live IMO so its no great loss if they die.. and before you say it, that idea is NO MORE immoral than the act of abortion so stop judging me, unless you are going to judge them as well..

Technically, that destroys your credibility as a Pro-Lifer; you're now simply an anti-abortionist. Course, all it is is a silly little label.

I do accept that. Obviously allowing guns raises the number of gun-related deaths. The arguments is that there is less total violent crime, as I stated above.

That's not my argument.

Cash Car Star said:

Orpheus said:
these people, don't deserve to live IMO so its no great loss if they die.. and before you say it, that idea is NO MORE immoral than the act of abortion so stop judging me, unless you are going to judge them as well..

Technically, that destroys your credibility as a Pro-Lifer; you're now simply an anti-abortionist. Course, all it is is a silly little label.

i know, and i am not proud of it either.. but given a choice between a heartless mom, and a baby.. shrugs

i am not stupid though, there are certain occasions, as in a mom having cancer and needing treatment ASAP or die.. i would of course chose the mom.. thats not a contradiction in my policy really, because the mom is just as innocent, and not every cell cluster is guaranteed to become a viable baby, but the mom is already here, she doesn't need to baste for months, quite the contrary, basting may only spread the cancer more. same holds true for many other life threatening diseases, but i only express cancer cause many can grasp the need for urgency of treatment.

my thinking on abortion basically circles the women whom abuse the system with it truly.. i have always believed that if you play, you must pay.. anyways, i just wanted to clear things up, i am not completely heartless to the women..

Interesting.

So you would not sacrifice the mother for an unborn baby. I don't have a problem with that at all. What if there was an unborn baby that was definately going to have a hihgly dibilitating desease and not live past say the age of 8? Allowing the baby to be born does in effect destroy the lives of both parents involved. Would you support an abortion in such a situation? If not, what if the age that the baby would live to were only 4 years, or just 1?

I'm not saying you should or shouldnt support abortion in this case, I'm just interested as to what your view is.

scary_jeff said:
Interesting.

So you would not sacrifice the mother for an unborn baby. I don't have a problem with that at all. What if there was an unborn baby that was definately going to have a hihgly dibilitating desease and not live past say the age of 8? Allowing the baby to be born does in effect destroy the lives of both parents involved. Would you support an abortion in such a situation? If not, what if the age that the baby would live to were only 4 years, or just 1?

I'm not saying you should or shouldnt support abortion in this case, I'm just interested as to what your view is.

you are entering a new realm jeff, one not necessarily abortion related..

i also feel it should be a one case by one case situation decision, you could never think all children with birth defects should be killed.. yes i would consider a disease a birth defect, its not just missing limbs.

i also feel that just because we can keep a baby alive that we not always have a right to do so.. not only does it incur high debt on the part of the parents, but it also tends to create a false hope.. most times the infant is alive, but not living..

you jeff, are talking about grey areas and i am not sure how i feel.. i do however believe in euthanasia, where applicable..

i also, am not completely comfortable with being center stage again.. many here are not ready for my brand of thinking.. in spite of the fact that i am not an enigma, many share my views.

I know a couple (both MIT grads no less) who's third child was born without a large portion of the brain. It's been like five years now and he can hardly do more than stare straight ahead. I don't know how they keep up, he requires constant supervision and often can't perform many essential tasks (breathing...). It really brings the world of eerie birth defects frighteningly close to home.

Orpheus said:
my thinking on abortion basically circles the women whom abuse the system with it truly.. i have always believed that if you play, you must pay.. anyways, i just wanted to clear things up, i am not completely heartless to the women..

What about rape? You can't quite tell those women, "Hey, you played with fire, deal with the consequences." Well, you can tell them deal with the consequences, but they certainly weren't playing with fire.

Orpheus said:
many here are not ready for my brand of thinking.. in spite of the fact that i am not an enigma, many share my views.

Your opinion is a little unfamiliar to me. Probably because I live in a
country where abortion is fully legal. You might have a point that
people should face the consequences for what they do and not turn
abortion into something they do "just like that" just because they
didn't care to protect themselves against pregnancy.

scary_jeff said:
<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quote:</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I do accept that. Obviously allowing guns raises the number of gun-related deaths. The arguments is that there is less total violent crime, as I stated above.</DIV></DIV>

That's not my argument.

No, but it is my argument.

How do you know some of them don't get pregnant to supply embryos for research? And why the hell would you be against that? It is that woman's cells after all, in which she would have consented with at least two other people to achieve that goal. I just think the ways the laws stand now are fine. You can't have an abortion after, what? 4 months or so (maybe a little later then that). Also, if those people can't support the child, are you saying it is fair to the child to f**k them up by putting them in a poor dysfunctional family? Saying, "Put them in adoption" isn't a very good idea either, there are too many orphans already, most just grow up and are let go to fend for themselves. Also, you can't say, "Hey, if you didn't want a baby, don't have sex", because you have no say in those people's life. I don't understand why a lot of people don't get that point. If they're not your children or a personal friend or anything like that, it's none of your business. To be perfectly honest, we would be in really bad shape if no woman could have an abortion without proper cause. Population would tremendously higher as would taxes. There would be people who can't even support themselves, have a child they can't take care of instead of going to have an abortion, because it's "immoral". In return, they file for government funded aid, and you pay more taxes to support them, but oh wait, you don't want to do that either. There are also other situations like, if some girl has a baby, it'll f**k her life up, completely, which otherwise would be very beneficial. Are you saying, "Tough s**t! Be Miserable"? Anyway you slice it the only way it would work out best for everyone is if you just leave them alone, let them get an abortion if they want one. It really has nothing to do with your personal opinion on the topic, you simply have no right to tell those people what to do with their bodies and their children, which are still part of their body (They are physically connected; it is a one way symbiotic relationship). I don't know, I think people have the choice, the reason why abortion was made legal was because woman were becoming injured and sterile trying to end the pregnancy other ways.

[Note: It logged out and killed my newlines, deal with reading it]

The reason that there are so many orphans is because people want to adopt babies, not older children who'll be able to distinguish between their new guardians and their actual parents.

You're saying it as if there is one specific reason...

Fine, I'll list some more reasons.

Many people habitually like babies more because they're "cute."

Many people prefer raising a child from birth rather than from where they're already somewhat developed so that they can leave a bigger mark on them.

I meant, in relation to abortion.
Not whether or not people like adopting babies more. :rolleyes:

Crono said:
Saying, "Put them in adoption" isn't a very good idea either, there are too many orphans already, most just grow up and are let go to fend for themselves

Most orphans aren't babies, that's my point. Saying that because there are still orphans means that people don't want to adopt isn't the best logic, as they just don't want to adopt older children.