Charlton Heston Dies at 84

[mdo]

Just because there are doesn't mean that the subject is using them instead (it's about 99% versus something around 60%) and if someone uses them there is a lot lower chance that he suceeds in killing himself with sleeping pills. arms are the only almost certain way.

The question is cause and effect. You say guns cause suicide. I ask whether you also say that sleeping pills cause suicide. You go off on some other tangent. Answer the question directly: Am I correct that you say guns cause suicide, and if so, do you also say that sleeping pills cause suicide? Simple question. The reason why I pursue this is because this is the fundamental point that underlies the entire argument.

several university studies here revealed recently that availability is a major factor. they now have forbidden taking amunition home and we will see surprisingly results next year or so. it's a proven that in case of a snap-out availability is key. this is in fact very locigal. killing your family with a rifle is way "easier" than with a knife or a hammer after all and snap-outs are not well planned actions.

Do you wonder at all what it is that has caused the person to want to murder his family and himself?

You see, Americans love freedom -- and when freedom has been surrendered in the past it has always been as a wrong solution to some other problem. Taking guns away from people is the wrong solution to the problem of violence. If the cause of violence is not addressed -- and according to what you say, you don't appear to be interested in the causes of violence or to be taking action to find and address those causes -- then the only way to keep people from acting out on those unresolved violent tendencies will be to completely enslave them. Trying to solve a problem without knowing the cause of the problem always ends in disaster.

Then there is also the issue of out-of-control governments. Most persons who advocate gun control have total faith in their government. Something like another national dictatorial tyrant could never arise, they argue, therefore there is no reason for the populace to maintain its ability to defend itself. Americans tend to disagree with that. Here in the US we're probably pretty close to immune to most threats of that nature. So probably next time the curtain drops on international freedom, we're going to have to bail everyone out again. You should be happy that we will be sufficiently free to do so.

It's not the same matter but I believe it is illegal in the US. It's not really the same issue because there is a timeframe for prevention till some drug-addict dies on heroin.

Again, you miss the point. The sole significance of this point is that making something illegal does not prevent people from getting it. Making guns illegal will ensure that only criminals have guns. Any suggestion that criminals won't have guns is wishful thinking that has no basis in history.

Yeah, criminals will earn bigger money by selling arms (which are not really easy to manufacture), but people don't feel urged to get them like drugs if I look around here.. If that would be the case we would have way more here in Europe where you need an approval and aren't allowed to wear 'em. The opposite is true, we have way lower homocide rates in western Europe countries, where arms are scarce or registered goods.

It appears that the extent of your argument is that Europe has a lower violence rate and Europe has fewer guns, therefore guns cause violence. However, there is a significant amount of violence that does not use guns. Addressing guns is not going to solve the problem of violence, it is only going to leave honest men and women defenseless against it. Also, once violence is addressed and resolved, guns will no longer be an issue.

By the way, a weapon that will shoot one or two bullets is easy to manufacture. It doesn't have to be fancy or even particularly accurate.

That's true. But well, arms allow them to proceed their violence in a more dangerous way for everyone else.

True. Wouldn't you want to be able to defend yourself against that?

I think we both would like to see violence resolved so we can live in a calm, peaceful environment. We differ on our understanding of the causes and solutions.

 

[Yannick Hagman]

And as far as I know, america is still a democracy, which means their gun policy is decided by the elected majority, not by propagandistic documentaries.

It's a democracy. But it's also a democracy where you choose one of two(!) parties more or less by propagandistic commercials every four years and that's about it. It's not a direct democracy where you vote about issues after all. It's decided by the elected minority currently in charge.

Availability is not neccesarily the main problem, because then you would have to prove that guns are more available to blacks and hispanics since they account for 8 out of 10 convicted murderers.

It rather shows that whites can walk away with good lawyers.

Problems in my oppionion are the many illegal immigrants.

Funny, my perception of illegal immigrants is more that of doing working-poor jobs.

 

[Priyesh P.]

It`s mainly a human issue. Not typically american, I believe that with the proper "tools" any country on the world can be turned into something like the u.s., that is: alleged freedom, fear, greed etc.
I see it like this: as long as certain things were advertised as indispensable, people will buy them (regardless of the nation they live in), and let`s face it: the american spirit (or tradition) is an out-and-out materialistic and fears based one. Just listen what`s told here: defend against the government (haha, I`d like to see what happens when some gun-owner out of this thread directs his weapon to a cop/soldier whatever...), protect his family (yeah, nobody seems to conclude, that when everyone has a gun, the criminals are much more merciless, cautious and deceitful - reality affirms it...)

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

karapetkov, you really started a mess!

If someone gets killed in that thread, you're responsible!

OMG,

People, keep it peaceful .

Actually, I'm against guns... which kinda contradicts with something I did recently... but student shorts and reality are two very different things.

What I admire in Heston the most is his beliefs about freedom of speech and the democratic spirit, in general.

These are really important things.

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

I think it's time I quote Truffaut...

FERRAND

Tell him I speak English, but I don't understand it.

from "La Nuit Américaine" ("Day for Night" - 1973)

Truffaut was a great, great film auteur.

Patricia Franchini: What is your greatest ambition in life?
Parvulesco: To become immortal... and then die.

From À Bout De Souffle. (Where he's co-writer.)

 

[Eddie]

You'd do well to read Immigrant crime as an exaggerated fear: the evidence here:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/crime/toc.html#fear

Fear is American tradition and the basis for most of our problems. Politicians know this and use it to get elected or push their agendas. There are no boogeymen except the ones in our heads.

well "fightordie" I wasn´t adressing immigration as such, but ILLEGAL immigration... you know the kind where you can´t get a job legally, and often don´t speak the language. This combination makes an incentive towards profitable ILLEGAL activity, like burglary, pushing drugs or weapons, trafficking, smuggling and robbing , which in their nature leads to confrontation with the victims of the different kinds of theft, and the natives already controlling these markets, not to mention the crimes done by the increased number of drug-addicts.
The outcome of all these confrontations leads more often to murder, than is the case with normal jobs. And that is what differentiates the US from Canada. Canada has more guns per capita than the US, but they don´t have a billion-dollar drugmarket, with different gangs fighting illegal immigrants, in order to make millions of people into raging addicts, once again contributing to the staggering crime and murder rates. Moore doesn´t mention this, because it messes up the distributed characters of villiains, heroes, and victims in his home-cooked fairy-tale. Heston does mention it, and receives the price as the greatest asshole in the world, responsible for 10.000 killings each year, including child-murderers off course.

The PC document you are refering to is obviously misleading, and seems to be about fighting discrimation by using ridiculous statistical material. Now I am all about fighting discrimation, but please, if you really mean it, do it properly.

with regard to "fear", I must say, I have a hard time following michael moores argument. "if there were no big corporations, and no alerting media in the US... then the it would be paradise on earth"... frankly, I don´t think so. Hating big corporations, ridiculous television shows and stoppping wall-mart from selling cartridges is fine, but I would be surprised if it made a crucial impact on the murder rate.


all the best eddie

 

[fightordie]

well "fightordie" I wasn´t adressing immigration as such, but ILLEGAL immigration... you know the kind where you can´t get a job legally, and often don´t speak the language. This combination makes an incentive towards profitable ILLEGAL activity, like burglary, pushing drugs or weapons, trafficking, smuggling and robbing , which in their nature leads to confrontation with the victims of the different kinds of theft, and the natives already controlling these markets, not to mention the crimes done by the increased number of drug-addicts.
The outcome of all these confrontations leads more often to murder, than is the case with normal jobs. And that is what differentiates the US from Canada. Canada has more guns per capita than the US, but they don´t have a billion-dollar drugmarket, with different gangs fighting illegal immigrants, in order to make millions of people into raging addicts, once again contributing to the staggering crime and murder rates. Moore doesn´t mention this, because it messes up the distributed characters of villiains, heroes, and victims in his home-cooked fairy-tale. Heston does mention it, and receives the price as the greatest asshole in the world, responsible for 10.000 killings each year, including child-murderers off course.

The PC document you are refering to is obviously misleading, and seems to be about fighting discrimation by using ridiculous statistical material. Now I am all about fighting discrimation, but please, if you really mean it, do it properly.

with regard to "fear", I must say, I have a hard time following michael moores argument. "if there were no big corporations, and no alerting media in the US... then the it would be paradise on earth"... frankly, I don´t think so. Hating big corporations, ridiculous television shows and stoppping wall-mart from selling cartridges is fine, but I would be surprised if it made a crucial impact on the murder rate.


all the best eddie

The report is dealing with both legal and illegal. from the first line of the introduction:
"In recent years it has become difficult to avoid perceiving immigrants, legal or not, as overwhelming this country with serious crime"

The point is that there is no statistic to be found that illegal immigrants are causing a crime wave. The only ones spouting that they are are xenophobic politicians and the American citizens that listen to them.

By the way do you know illegal immigrants pay taxes for services they can never use yet the American government keeps the money. Especially for social security. Money for you.

"In the current decade, the file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year, generating $6 billion to $7 billion in Social Security tax revenue and about $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes."

"In 2002 alone, the last year with figures released by the Social Security Administration, nine million W-2's with incorrect Social Security numbers landed in the suspense file, accounting for $56 billion in earnings, or about 1.5 percent of total reported wages."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html?pagewanted=all

Some people want to grab the easiest target and blame them for the ills of the country.

 

[number6]

I think I see a pattern here. The anti-gun side grew up watching Barney, while the 2nd Amendment defenders grew up watching Yosemite Sam. Where's Chazmo when you need him?:gun: :biggrin:

addendum: no need to comment... just flash his avatar

 

[Anthony Gratl]

well "fightordie" I wasn´t adressing immigration as such, but ILLEGAL immigration... you know the kind where you can´t get a job legally, and often don´t speak the language. This combination makes an incentive towards profitable ILLEGAL activity, like burglary, pushing drugs or weapons, trafficking, smuggling and robbing , which in their nature leads to confrontation with the victims of the different kinds of theft, and the natives already controlling these markets, not to mention the crimes done by the increased number of drug-addicts.

dude, you've watched scarface once too often....it's the legal immigrants who are doing that shit....illegal immigrants mostly just want a job to help their families back home.

The outcome of all these confrontations leads more often to murder, than is the case with normal jobs.

That's like saying that race car drivers crash more often than commuters. Of course, I think "Falling Down" hit the nail on the head as to how many people in america are feeling. I'd be feeling that way too in L.A.:wacko:

And that is what differentiates the US from Canada. Canada has more guns per capita than the US, but they don´t have a billion-dollar drugmarket, with different gangs fighting illegal immigrants, in order to make millions of people into raging addicts, once again contributing to the staggering crime and murder rates.

Huh? You're right we don't have a billion dollar drugmarket, it's more like 10 billion, mostly run by, in no particular order: the various mafias, the asian, white, black, carib, hispanic, sri lankan, and biker gangs. We deport people on a daily basis who weren't born here, yet legally emigrated here and then committed crimes when they were older. Doesn't matter if they moved here when they were one. They go back to their country of origin. Kinda harsh culturally, but that's a different story.
By the way, it's your drug policy that makes things worse. Sending addicts to prison to learn advanced crime skills is not the way to deal with addiction. It's this crazy thing called "treatment", something your government routinely ignores medical data from around the world on, in order to enforce the Reagan inspired war on drugs. A disaster. An unmitigated, expensive, culturally suiciding, violent, and repressive disaster. And your government likes it that way. Keeps y'all distracted.

The PC document you are refering to is obviously misleading, and seems to be about fighting discrimation by using ridiculous statistical material. Now I am all about fighting discrimation, but please, if you really mean it, do it properly.

If you're about fighting discrimination, I would suggest you start by ceasing to make vast sweeping generalizations of complex and deeply rooted cultural issues, issues that are constantly sensationalized and overblown in the media to enforce those kinds of stereotypes and generalizations that you are making.

with regard to "fear", I must say, I have a hard time following michael moores argument. "if there were no big corporations, and no alerting media in the US... then the it would be paradise on earth"... frankly, I don´t think so. Hating big corporations, ridiculous television shows and stoppping wall-mart from selling cartridges is fine, but I would be surprised if it made a crucial impact on the murder rate.

Although we're jumping all over the map, it's fine by me. Everything is connected in this universe.
Killing is most often the end result of fear, poverty, and discontent. I would argue that big corporations are allowed to control how most of society's mind thinks in this modern culture of ours. It's why companies spend a trillion dollars a year on advertising. It works, and we're too "busy" to constantly filter through the bullshit.

Here's an experiment for you Eddie: it'll cost you nothing.
Turn off your television and your radio for one month and see how you feel.

 

[fightordie]

Hey Evolve come to America. We need more people like you to help us get our shit together. Unfortunately I know your answer.

 

[Mark B.]

It`s mainly a human issue. Not typically american, I believe that with the proper "tools" any country on the world can be turned into something like the u.s., that is: alleged freedom, fear, greed etc.

Americans aren't as greedy as you might imagine. Look at the disparity between rich and poor in the U.S. and you'll see it's primarily just a small percentage that has the greed to have taken most of the wealth. The rest aren't very greedy, though survival in America always requires some amount of thriftiness. In terms of fear and misunderstanding of freedoms, it's a media problem created by people in power, but hopefully as the Internet grows the controlling media sources will weaken. BTW, one of the "controlling tools" used by governments to remove freedoms is the introduction of gun control.

I see it like this: as long as certain things were advertised as indispensable, people will buy them (regardless of the nation they live in), and let`s face it: the american spirit (or tradition) is an out-and-out materialistic and fears based one.

The American spirit is one of entertainment and creativity. We like to learn, teach, build, invent, analyze, dream... some of us even like to have a good time. If we appear materialistic its because our activities require material possessions, we don't just buy possessions simply for the sake of buying possessions (obviously, some exceptions will apply). Also, many of our purchases are an attempt to navigate the lack of public services, the services our government fails to provide. For instance, most Americans own cars because we are provided completely inadequate public transportation.

Just listen what`s told here: defend against the government (haha, I`d like to see what happens when some gun-owner out of this thread directs his weapon to a cop/soldier whatever...), protect his family (yeah, nobody seems to conclude, that when everyone has a gun, the criminals are much more merciless, cautious and deceitful - reality affirms it...)

Americans try to be patient with governmental change, and the gun-owning Americans are mostly very moral (military and gangs aside). The act of taking up arms against the government would mean having to kill people (and politicians), and your average American isn't going to do that unless the situation gets VERY bad. If an uprising ever does happen, the privately owned guns will come into use. In the meantime, having the general public armed with guns gives us leverage so that we aren't treated horribly by the government. They don't act it, but governments know there's a limit to how much abuse they can foist onto an armed populace.

As for protecting the family, criminals can be fairly violent regardless of whether guns are involved or not. In general though, your typical criminal will avoid activities that pit them against someone who owns a gun, due to the increased risk of death. They might develop sneakier methods to commit crimes, but it will be to avoid brazen confrontation at gun-point, so ultimately fewer people will be injured when everyone has guns.

If you take away all guns (impossible, but let's pretend it could happen), the attackers will use machetes, axes, baseball bats, knives, crossbows, spears, flame-throwers, homemade explosives, just about anything that will overcome an unarmed opponent. If all weapons in existence are removed, they will use muscles and street fighting skills to overcome weaker inexperienced people (or they will get their thug friends to team up against one person). There is no way for people to defend themselves successfully unless equally powered weapons are available to everyone.

And to respond to the original topic of this thread...

I think Heston was a great actor, and a great advocate for freedom. I hope he is peacefully plinking in heaven right now.

 

[Andrew Madu]

....and a great advocate for freedom.

True freedom can only be acheived by self enlightenment. There are a few people/organisations which make a vast amount of money from selling and spreading fear.

 

[number6]

Apologies to all for briefly getting back on topic, but I've noticed that the obituaries seldom mention the Heston movie "Mountain Men", which he starred in with Brian Keith.

Along with Redford's "Jeremiah Johnson", that has been among my all time personal favorites and two of the most memorable love stories ever produced IMO. When Napster first appeared on the scene, I searched and searched for the soundtrack to both of those movies and never found them.

Another of his movies that will become prophetic, I fear, was Soylent Green. That was the most frightening movie I think I have ever seen.

 

[Yannick Hagman]

The act of taking up arms against the government would mean having to kill people (and politicians), and your average American isn't going to do that unless the situation gets VERY bad. If an uprising ever does happen, the privately owned guns will come into use. In the meantime, having the general public armed with guns gives us leverage so that we aren't treated horribly by the government. They don't act it, but governments know there's a limit to how much abuse they can foist onto an armed populace.

This is a very funny explination. Never thought that governmental mistrust is so widespread in the US! I thought it's a democracy.

As for protecting the family, criminals can be fairly violent regardless of whether guns are involved or not. In general though, your typical criminal will avoid activities that pit them against someone who owns a gun, due to the increased risk of death. They might develop sneakier methods to commit crimes, but it will be to avoid brazen confrontation at gun-point, so ultimately fewer people will be injured when everyone has guns.

As I said before, statistics prove the opposite. If you look around here in western Europe. Guns use to attract very specific folks, not everyone of them should be allowed to wear them.

If you take away all guns (impossible, but let's pretend it could happen), the attackers will use machetes, axes, baseball bats, knives, crossbows, spears, flame-throwers, homemade explosives, just about anything that will overcome an unarmed opponent. If all weapons in existence are removed, they will use muscles and street fighting skills to overcome weaker inexperienced people (or they will get their thug friends to team up against one person). There is no way for people to defend themselves successfully unless equally powered weapons are available to everyone.

LOL. So it's a self-renewing cycle so to speak. This was really funny to read. Truly a climate of fear. I guess it will end if everyone recognizes that there isn't so much to fear around us.

 

[Yannick Hagman]

you've watched scarface once too often....it's the legal immigrants who are doing that shit....illegal immigrants mostly just want a job to help their families back home.

same here. especially things like cleaning public toilets and other low pay staff nobody wants to do. these folks are way cleaner than most lawyers around here.. and of course they have absolutely no interest in crimes because it they would have to leave the country.

 

[fightordie]

Tommy Lee - You're the best.

http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/2471-3.html

 

[Roberto B]

:bleh: my fav post ever on this thread..

Apologies to all for briefly getting back on topic..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWa3ouFWwJs

 

[Andrew Benz]

:bleh: my fav post ever on this thread..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWa3ouFWwJs

Lights, Camels... Action!!!

 

[Emanuel A.]

(...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWa3ouFWwJs

Lights, Camels... Action!!!

And here's the band's story:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/kevin.hopper1/Stump.html

 

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

This thread is all over the place.

I recently re-watched Ben-Hur and...

Yes.