Whamola

Now draw Patrick in the Hot Dog costume.

@BigChickenDinner: So you mean to tell me that a kid from a middle to lower-middle class family purchasing an illegal firearm on a teenager's income is AS EASY as just grabbing one from his dad's gun closet?

We agree that America is really fucked up right now, but how is allowing fucked up people to have deadly weapons a good idea? When people are not acting responsibly, they should not have tools that help them act even more irresponsibly. America can have their guns back once we:

1. Get an actual labor party

2. Completely restructure the school system

3. Re-educate the conservatives

4. Establish a livable minimum wage

5. join the rest of the first world in reaching scientific literacy

6. become a secular society

7. greatly down-size our military

8. and so on, etc.

@BigChickenDinner said: "...IQ test for guns..."

But that would ban the entire conservative party from owning guns, and they're they only people dumb enough to really care about owning guns in the first place!

What you said essentially agrees with what I said though. If people weren't obsessed with owning guns to fight an invisible army of super villains, they wouldn't teach their kids that it's okay to use deadly weapons to kill people who they view as threats. Of course, if these people WEREN'T such terrible parents, they wouldn't own guns in the first place.

So I guess what I'm saying is we should probably ban guns. Yeah, if you wanted a gun bad enough you could probably get one, but guess what? The people who want guns that bad have them illegally anyway. Banning guns would definitely almost eliminate school shootings completely.

The problem is, America runs on fear.

Just watch Fox news. If HALF of what they said was true, it wouldn't be safe to even look out your window. The problem is, people buy into the crap they try to peddle, and you end up with people who are so afraid of their own shadow that they're willing to recklessly kill another person. See, they NEED guns because what if a crazy rapist invades their home and tries to steal their guns? Never mind that that's never happened to them or anyone they know, Fox news said it happened to a lady a few years ago, so they MUST be next! These people barely leave their own house let alone go out and mingle with people that don't exist within their own tiny communities. They never realize that the vast majority of people out there are just like them, and not insane murderers/rapists/robbers.

Plus these people are delusional. They always think that if they were ever in a situation where it would be necessary to use a firearm, they're going to magically turn into The Punisher, but the fact is, they're pussies. Hell, why do you think they think they need a gun for protection in the first place? Never mind the fact that shooting at a paper target is MUCH easier than shooting a human, physically and mentally.

So you have kids raised by these frightened morons, and since kids are very perceptive, they become neurotic. Combine that with their parents suggesting to them that it's okay to murder people to defend yourself from people you perceive as threats, and it becomes easy to see why kids snap and bring their parents guns to school to kill the people who harass them.

Also, what's with gun nuts having weird torture fetishes? They're always daydreaming about people coming to try to torture and rape them to death. I never think about what I would do in that situation because it's so incredibly unlikely to happen to me that it's not even worth thinking about.

Also I like the people in the thread saying that it'd be too hard to ban guns, so we might as well just forget it. That's so idiotic I don't even know where to start. Anything that's hard isn't worth doing apparently.

Most importantly, what does "Rumpole the Bailey" mean?

@tadros said:

...all the people that are jobless and have the degrees and I just don't want to be in that same position when I graduate.

This is your problem right here. Those people aren't getting jobs because they're doing exactly what you're doing. Anyone can memorize things from the text book and get a 4.0, but then they start thinking that because they did well, they deserve a job more than others. There's a difference between being good at remembering things and being able to apply those things. You seem to think that any courses not entirely in your major are worthless, but I can tell you from experience, that's not true at all. Case in point: I'm involved with science, and back when I was in college, I had to take a certain number of history and English classes. Well, in one of my science courses, I befriended a woman who needed help with the classwork. We became friends after a discussion about literature, and eventually, she told me about a job opportunity working for the dean of the college, editing letters and writing a lot of various stuff. I needed a job, so I told her I was interested. I had to give the dean a sample of my writing, and being that a lot of my science writing from school was a bit technical, I decided to submit an essay I wrote for a history class. Not only did the dean love my writing, but also the topic I had chosen to write about and my thoughts and ideas. So I got the job, and some time later, I found out that it was a highly sought after position, especially for English and Journalism majors.

The point is, I got the job because I DIDN'T just stick to what my major was. The more well rounded you are, the better you sound. Classes are almost never worthless. Math is always worth while, no matter what, Science teaches you how to think logically and examine information, foreign languages are increasingly more important, and even learning about literature gives you an idea about how to effectively use words to convey complex emotions.

Basically, you get out of college exactly what you put into it. Don't just do your work and leave assuming it's enough that you've got a high GPA. Talk to as many people as you can, make friends, always have a strong relationship with your professors. Challenge yourself. I used to play a fun game where if I had several papers due around the same time, I'd try to work in at least one source that connected them, no matter what the subject was. If you think Biology is useless to learn about, then you need more practice in applying what you learn to other things.

Also, as many have said, yeah, you can just skip college and read textbooks on your own time, but without guidance from actual professors, there's nothing stopping you from thinking that Animal Farm is JUST about some animals taking over a farm, or trying to learn about Quantum Mechanics by reading something by Deepak Chopra.

Finally, you've picked a dream career that's very much about having connections and being incredibly good at socializing, and you won't get ahead by having a shitty attitude about college and thinking that you're much better than the 18 year olds you're going to school with.

@Commando: In no way am I saying that no animal should ever be killed. If you remember I said I pretty much HAVE to support certain types of animal testing which eventually leads to their termination. What I have an issue with is killing animals yourself when there are other, more humane, safer, and easier ways to obtain food.

As I said before, unless you're the perfect hunter, there's always a chance to miss your shot, have the animal run off to die a slow painful death, and not have anything to show for the suffering you inflicted. Meanwhile, your beef farm neighbor has plenty of meat that you could have bought, instead you said, "Nah, I think I'd prefer to go out of my way to witness my food's death."

I've asked several times already, and no one's answered. Why do you enjoy hunting?

The deer population needs to be controlled because years and years ago, humans wiped out a lot of predators because they were inconvenient to them. The problem is, it's not wise to let these same people try to control the population themselves. Leave it up the the people of the fish and wildlife departments. A lot of hunters don't pay attention to quotas and hunt out of season.

Essentially it all boils down to basic morality. The idea is to find an equilibrium of suffering thus ensuring the highest quality of life for all organisms. That's what morality is, at least in a scientific form. I can recommend several books on the topic, but they're all long and very technical, so I'm afraid they wouldn't be of much help if you were able to obtain them.

EDIT: I just realized that last part sounds insulting. I didn't mean that you're not smart enough to read, just that what I've read is aimed at people with an extensive scientific background, so the books aren't aimed at laymen. Just like I wouldn't understand a car manual or something.

Here's the difference, Animals kill other animals for food because they have no other choice. If you want to be smug, at least know basic biology and zoology, otherwise you just come across as an idiot.

We're aware of our place in the world and that we can have an environmental impact, as such, it's our duty to lessen that environmental impact. I mean, we kind of DID invent agriculture around 6000 years ago so we didn't use up all our immediate resources. So when you go out and kill animals with high powered weapons, you either don't realize you can buy food at stores, you like killing animals, or you're over-compensating for things.

@cyraxible: I'm not sure you've read anything I've said. But I suppose I'll go more in depth. I used to live in a dangerous city (In fact I believe, at the time anyway, that it was in the top ten for highest murder rates in the country). I've spent a night shadowing a fairly large drug dealer as he sold an illegal firearm, I've been mugged twice, both at knife and gun-point, stabbed once, beaten up once, I was outside a nightclub while a small gunfight broke out, I was arrested (on purpose), been roughed up by the police, I've been hunting, I've witnessed a man dying in a particularly gruesome way (It was a train accident), I've been to gay clubs, a pro-choice demonstration, a pro-life picket at a planned parenthood, a tea party rally and a number of other political events.

I haven't done a lot of things, but believe me, I am NOT sheltered at all.

Despite all this, I can honestly say, there was NEVER a time in my life where I wish I had had a gun, saw a need to have one, or even had the will to use one. Hunting is completely unnecessary, and this is coming from someone who supports certain types of animal testing and has to dissect animal corpses on a regular basis. When you have an intimate knowledge of nature, you start to realize that wild animals live their entire life in constant danger, and we really shouldn't add to that when we have entire industries based around giving us meat from specially bred animals so we don't have to hunt wild ones.

As for the other guy, the difference is that slaughterhouses are staffed with professionally trained butchers, if you miss your shot, that animal dies a slow painful death.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Where in that do you see "...to protect themselves from the government"? It was established during a time when the country was far from stable (We'd see more fighting in the war of 1812), and there's a multitude of writing from around the time that clarifies that it's based around protection from foreign forces, but now we have the Military to protect ourselves. Besides the fact that there's is no possible way we'd ever be in a situation where we're facing a large scale invasion, despite what Modern Warfare, Tom Clancy or whatever other ridiculous fiction writer would have you believe.

You've really never heard a single person who's been against hunting? Really? You're either very young or live in the very deep south, away from civilization. It's fine that you eat animals, but why exactly do you have to personally kill them? Like I said, if I wanted venison, I could have it on my table in under an hour without having to shoot anything.

Don't you see how ridiculous that statement is though? You're saying people need guns to stop the government from taking their guns. Again, what's the point?

That last thing raises an interesting point though. The guns that criminals get, and again, I know this because I've been witness to it, generally either come from theft from law abiding citizens, or gun shows run largely by supposedly law abiding citizens. Get rid of those sources, and you're destroying the largest suppliers of unlicensed firearms.