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golguin

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golguin

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#1  Edited By golguin

Dark Souls and Borderlands 2. I don't have the numbers on hand, but both easily over 100 hours.

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golguin

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#2  Edited By golguin

@KoolAid said:

@Sooty:

You're mileage may vary, like any game. I didn't run into any bugs, with the exception of an annoying one where I would click through the second level space I wanted to move to, and my guy would run to the ground floor. I think this wasn't a problem with the controller, so I think not every one experienced it.

I had no problem with the LOS system though, what problems did you have?

I didn't really have a problem with line of sight since there were times when I had a shot when I thought I had none and other times when I moved to another location for a better shot only to see I somehow couldn't see a guy standing right in front of me.

An issue that came up about 5 times during the game was overwatch failing to trigger when enemies ran right up to my guys. I would load up the save to the point right before that and it usually fixed that issue. What could never be fixed was all of my team taking a shot at the same enemy when 4 came into sight. What's the point of everyone shooting the same enemy when it needed one more shot to die?

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#3  Edited By golguin

@kishinfoulux said:

@Feanor said:

It'll be entertaining no doubt, but I don't understand why people get so flustered about what they pick. I don't need other peoples opinions to validate my taste in games.

I think it's because some of the arguments for/against the games are borderline stupid.

Also I'm confused that people seem to think Sleeping Dogs will land so highly on the top ten or even at all. The game was a pleasant surprise to them and nothing more. Personal top tens sure, but the GOTY overall top ten? I'd be kind of surprised.

I'm currently playing Sleeping Dogs and its a pretty fun game. If it keeps up its pace it will easily be on my top 10. I'll put it over games that people say have GOTY potential like Fez and XCOM. I'm still on the fence with comparing it with Journey, but I'll see how the rest of the game pans out.

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#4  Edited By golguin

@flindip said:

@golguin: I'll address a couple of your points:

1)"Switzerland is an outlier because of their unique population in regards to its more affluent and homogeneous nature." This is where we can both agree on. But it does not change the fact they own guns. That their culture, for whatever reason, does not create extreme acts of violence. That their own populace voted against gun control laws. The guns themselves aren't really the problem.

Which leads to my next question:

How do you define American "gun culture?" Is "gun culture" the same in a place like Compton where crime could be very high? Or in a place like Montana/Alaska that have shit loads guns but comparatively low homicide rates?

2)"I believe your original point was that the availability of guns doesn't mean anything with these kinds of events. That it would still somehow happen in an Oklahoma style incident. How many of those have we had? How many gun massacres have we had in the past few years? The past decade?"

Alternatively, I could ask you how you can prove that removing guns will greatly prohibit these extreme acts of violence? Which even becomes more muddled because acts like the CT shooting are outliners themselves in the context of national homicide. Guns are the preferential method because of their availability(which could be the reason why we haven't seen alternative methods). That is obvious. But would homicide rates drastically change if we took them away? My point being it doesn't matter if its a gun, a bomb, or a car. A homicide is a homicide.

Did you know that the Soviet Union which had stringent gun laws, had one of the highest murder rates in the world? England which enacted its current stringent gun laws post WW1 already had an extremely low murder rate before enacting gun control. Is it the guns or is it the culture?

3)"How about it? Will you attempt to explain why the United States is as bad as it is when compared to the rest of the Western world?"

I'll answer by saying I do not know. I can say that its an extremely nuanced issue that is FAR more complicated that either of us can probably truly comprehend. But simply saying that guns are the main culprit seems WAY too easy an answer.

Btw, just so that I am not accused of manifesting my comments out of thin air:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

1) Off the top of my head I would define American "gun culture" as one that celebrates weapons as a means to solve problems, preserve justice, and amass power. The history of the US is one of war and violence. It started with a victory of independence through arms, continued with the idea of Manifest Destiny at the cost of the indigenous population, and ended in our current state of perpetual war. As a result of our history our media has romanticized guns in literature, movies, tv, and everything in between. Instead of instruments of destruction they are portrayed as tools necessary for the preservation of justice and security. I believe that impression of guns is unique to the US as a Western nation. The rest of the West isn't as tolerant toward depictions of violence as we are.

2) There is no way to prove that the removal of guns (I advocate stricter gun control. Removal is impossible) would greatly prohibit these types of massacres from happening. All we could do is look at countries similar to our own in political structure and see if enacting similar legislation will produce similar results. We can't be sure that it would make things better, but I can assure you with 100% certainty that if we do nothing then nothing will change.

3) The availability of guns is not the main culprit for gun violence in the US, but they are a big part of the problem. I can tell you right now though that if guns weren't as easily accessible as they are now gangs wouldn't be able to achieve the same results with drive by stabbings.

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#5  Edited By golguin

@flindip said:

@golguin: You didn't seem to read the article at all. The point of the article was that limiting guns doesn't stop homicides. The nature of homicides simply changes. Poverty, poor education etc are the real undercurrents for it.

You seem to believe those reasons for those big numbers can be quantified in a simplistic, myopic reason.

We won't even get into the whole idea of prohibition and what type of illegal cottage industries that will arise from it.

I'm curious how do you translate the gun situation in Switzerland?

Since you are so hell bent in saying I'm avoiding the hard numbers; what about numbers that do not corroborate with your stance?

If you don't want to continue the conversation I'm perfectly fine with that. I have no issue in having dialogue with someone with an opposing viewpoint to my own. But perhaps we should take out the snarky, self righteous tone?

Its not contributing anything to the conversation. We have no need to turn this into an ego competition.

Let me also clarify:

I do not want, own, or need a gun.

No Caption Provided

I read the article and don't agree with the claim that there is no relationship between the availability of guns and the rate of homicides in a country. They try to assert that in the absence of firearms people will simply use other means to kill while completely ignoring that the United States has the highest homicide rate in the Western world and the majority of those homicides are done via the use of firearms.

As you can imagine there has been a lot of talk about comparing the United States with other countries in the news lately and Switzerland gets brought up a lot. I'm no expert on the country, but from what I read it sounds like the majority of the guns are government issued as part of their military service so guns are essentially forced on the male population. Despite the number of guns in the country their gun related crime is very low.

"gun related crime is remarkably low, with only 24 gun murders in 2009 — 0.3 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 2007 figures in the US of 4.2 per 100,000 people,according to Time Magazine." http://www.businessinsider.com/switzerlands-gun-laws-are-a-red-herring-2012-12.

The people of Switzerland don't exactly choose to be involved with firearms. The men receive their weapons as gun training for the country's militia. Switzerland is an outlier because of their unique population in regards to its more affluent and homogeneous nature. That in no way compares with the US population and how gun culture has developed in this country.

I believe your original point was that the availability of guns doesn't mean anything with these kinds of events. That it would still somehow happen in an Oklahoma style incident. How many of those have we had? How many gun massacres have we had in the past few years? The past decade? They were as deadly as they were because of the efficiency a firearm has in killing. It's the reason why we had 20 kids dead while China, in a similar incident, didn't end up with 20 dead kids because the guy used a knife to commit the same type of crime.

How about it? Will you attempt to explain why the United States is as bad as it is when compared to the rest of the Western world?

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#6  Edited By golguin

@flindip said:

@golguin: You want to talk about facts here:

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/07/doing-math-guns

Is that your answer to explain the high rate of gun violence and gun massacres in the United States to the rest of the Western world? Most people who own guns legally don't go out and commit a crime with them? That we should improve our neighborhoods and teach kids not to kill people? What a novel idea. I'm surprised that no one has thought of teaching our youth the difference between right and wrong.

That's nice, but how about dealing with the reality of the numbers? I can see that other people have tried confronting you with the comparison of US vs Rest of Western World gun violence and gun massacre argument with no real response so I see no point in continuing this futile conversation until you actually address that point.

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#7  Edited By golguin

@Kazona said:

I find it incredibly baffling that despite overwhelming proof to the contrary, people still think that stricter gun control (or no guns at all) won't change anything. If that is true, why then are there so many more shootings in the U.S. compared to other countries where they do enforce strict gun control?

I call it denial. They never have an answer when the facts are staring them right in the face. Has anyone in this thread even posted an answer for that because I'd like to see their reasoning.

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#8  Edited By golguin

@flindip said:

@golguin: Lets say Timothy McVie went into a building and gun down 50 people with assault weapons. Alternatively he kills 50 people with a bomb. Does that not make the former a terrorist act? Certainly the latter seems to be the case

Its interesting you bring up 9/11- not a gun involved.

The point I'm trying to make(that seems to be going over your head), is that EXTREME situations like yesterday will continue irregardless.

You're the one who mentioned the terrorist act by McVie as somehow being relevant to this discussion. I mentioned 9/11 as an equally nonsensical terrorist act you could have used. Your point that this would happen if the guy didn't have the guns available to him is laughable. How many massacres of this kind have been accomplished without the use of firearms? We can play the hypothetical game all day long or look at the history of these kinds of incidents in this country for our answer and the lack of such events in other Western countries.

Let's talk about the point that every person who denies that stricter gun laws would help curve gun violence in this country and that is the number of deaths in this country compared to other Western countries. Every time that point is brought up the numbers are simply ignored. Answer that question. Answer how those countries have a couple hundred deaths to America's 9000.

Classifying terrorist acts is a funny thing by the way. What do you think would have happened if the person that committed the massacre was connected to something like al qaeda? Do you think the pro gun people would be calling for inaction every time these type of things happen?

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#9  Edited By golguin

@flindip said:

@golguin said:

@flindip said:

At end of the day, taking away guns are not going to stop crimes of this nature. Having stricter gun laws will probably lower crimes of passion or gun related accidents.

But it will not stop crimes that fall into categories such as:

a) a person has long pre-mediatation.

b)has a mental illness.

c)has no fear of punishment.

I am HIGHLY skeptical that taking away guns is going to stop this. What happens when the next iteration becomes someone strapping themselves with homemade plastic explosives? What do we blame then?

I think the elephant in the room in much of these circumstances is our bloated sensationalist media which creates a twisted sense of "celebrity." Combine that with someone with mental illness and its guaranteed to be a time bomb.

You can look at other Western countries and see how their gun laws have had an influence on their rate of gun violence. The US blows them all out of the water. It's not even close. Arguing that stricter gun laws would have no effect in the face of those statistics (they've been posted several times in this thread) is either ignorant or delusional. It's pretty hard to kill people with guns when you don't have easy access to them in those countries. Do you deny that?

Did you read my post? What did I say? I said that making stricter gun laws will limit certain types of crimes. But these crazy sensationalist situations will still continue. All you do is change the perimeters.

Timothy McVie happened without a handgun even being in the equation.

Did you read my post? How does a number like 9000 gun deaths for the US compare with something like 150 gun deaths in Canada? The Oklahoma city bombing has literally zero to do with the conversation of gun control. We are talking about the availability of guns causing more deaths in the US than other Western countries with stricter gun control. You might as well mention 9/11 as a reason to stop air travel because of its potential as a bomb. The Oklahoma city bombing was a terrorist attack in the same vein.

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#10  Edited By golguin

@flindip said:

At end of the day, taking away guns are not going to stop crimes of this nature. Having stricter gun laws will probably lower crimes of passion or gun related accidents.

But it will not stop crimes that fall into categories such as:

a) a person has long pre-mediatation.

b)has a mental illness.

c)has no fear of punishment.

I am HIGHLY skeptical that taking away guns is going to stop this. What happens when the next iteration becomes someone strapping themselves with homemade plastic explosives? What do we blame then?

I think the elephant in the room in much of these circumstances is our bloated sensationalist media which creates a twisted sense of "celebrity." Combine that with someone with mental illness and its guaranteed to be a time bomb.

You can look at other Western countries and see how their gun laws have had an influence on their rate of gun violence. The US blows them all out of the water. It's not even close. Arguing that stricter gun laws would have no effect in the face of those statistics (they've been posted several times in this thread) is either ignorant or delusional. It's pretty hard to kill people with guns when you don't have easy access to them in those countries. Do you deny that?

EDIT:

"In terms of the U.S., there's much easier availability of killing instruments -- rifles, machine guns, explosives -- than in nearly every other developed country," Dr. Ding said.

"In the United States, we had 9,000 people killed with guns last year, in similar countries like Germany 170 (killed with guns), in Canada 150. There's a reason for that," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, told CNN's Piers Morgan.

"The proof in the pudding is that in every other industrialized nation except the United States, they have reasonable gun control laws, and they have hundreds of people killed each year -- not 9,000 or 10,000 a year -- killed by guns."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/15/world/asia/china-us-school-attack/index.html?hpt=hp_c2