Good use of numbers, but you’re missing something important here. Despite the widespread availability of firearms in the US, going by your numbers 230 per million are murdered by non-firearms means in the US, and only 130 per million by these means in Canada. This implies that the US as a whole is a more violent society for whatever reason, and that only very limited reliance can be placed on relative gun-crime statistics - as overall crime is clearly much higher, and the easy availability of firearms will cause some displacement from knives to guns.
PDF, thanks for that input. Perhaps the problem may be congestion?. Perhaps the more people in a given society, the more they are prone to violence. Or perhaps the need to succeed or perhaps the drug culture or perhaps video games for youths…which leads to crime by gun. I don’t think we will ever know the answer. I have the greatest respect for America and you know that from my past posts when I have always praised America over my own country. I find it some what humorous that my objection to the American constitution over the right to bear arm, stirred up hatred against my nationality. I meant no disrespect to America but created this thread for the purpose of discussing other opinions so we could learn cross-national views from America, Canada and Australia etc. Just because I may hold a different opinion does not mean Americans should tell me off. I like your response the best because it was meaningful. I appreciate responses like this which articulate your view. I don’t respect the angle from the guy that thinks its cool to walk around with a handgun. In my opinion it is uncool. :army:
In fairness to him, if you lived in a society with such a high violent crime rate as parts of America and where criminals are more likely to be armed with handguns, or other guns, you might feel more comfortable with a handgun yourself.
I wouldn’t rule out carrying one myself if I lived in some parts of America, even though I’m opposed to them here.
Unlikely - Japan for instance is much more crowded than the US, but has far lower rates of violent crime.
Quote by Herman2: " I meant no disrespect to America but created this thread for the purpose of discussing other opinions so we could learn cross-national views from America, Canada and Australia etc. Just because I may hold a different opinion does not mean Americans should tell me off. " You write the above, yet also this. Quote by Herman2 : “Ya Ya, …as long as you Americans think with half a brain that concealed pistols are an ok thing to do, you will continue to have serious crime on your streets. Canada is one of the safest countries in the world because we think with a full brain and don’t allow handguns for personel use. Constitution rights to bear arms is in my opinion a really backward and stupid law that went out with the abolition of slavery laws.” I doubt anyone hates you, or Canada, so no need for melodrama.Unfortunately,these quotes show your posts as being less than genuine, perhaps even overtly provocative.
Provocative? Moi?.. …Well I have been known to be a bit sleezy but provocative, I don’t know about that…
Melodrama?,well I still think a society that allows guns is stupid, and I think War is stupid, and I think people who enjoy carrying hand guns are stupid…but that is just my opinion, along with millions of others…but that does not mean I am disrespectful. It just means I don’t think like many others and there is nothing wrong with that, despite your obsession with toting handguns to look cool. Whatever Ol tankgeezer…
Your own words convict you Herman, you speak of sharing opinions of other nations, but it is a bare excuse for you to be judgmental. Perhaps you feel yourself to be clever, but you are transparent, predictable, and dogmatic. (that means not clever)
Troll away as you wish, eventually, when others tire of your blether, they will ignore you as I am .
I was looking at some travel prog. or other, the other day in which they reported that one can only own a home in Virgin,Utah, if one owns a gun. I thought it a rather novel idea.
Utah town requires all households to own gunNovember 5, 2000
Web posted at: 11:22 AM EST (1622 GMT)
[i]VIRGIN, Utah (AP) – This tiny southern Utah town has enacted an ordinance requiring a gun and ammunition in every home for residents’ self-defense.
Most of Virgin’s 350 residents already own firearms, so the initiative has lots of support, Mayor Jay Lee said.
Residents had expressed fear that their Second Amendment right to bear arms was under fire, so the town council modeled a similar measure passed by a Georgia city about 12 years ago.
The mentally ill, convicted felons, conscientious objectors and people who cannot afford to own a gun are exempt. [/i]:lol:
To be consistent, if there’s a town called Gun in Utah I suppose homeowners would have to own a virgin.
Could be a bit awkward for polygamous Mormons, but I suppose they could always keep a virgin as a spare. 
Unless they are : The mentally ill, convicted felons, conscientious objectors and people who cannot afford to own a virgin are exempt. :lol:
…but then there’s always martyrdom?
I suppose one would have to demonstrate that one cannot afford to own a virgin by reference to the current market price?
Buy a virgin
Sac State grad appears on Howard Stern to promote the auction of her virginity
By: Paul Rios and Cody Kitaura
Posted: 9/17/08A hurricane of media coverage is swirling around a Sacramento State graduate who is auctioning off her virginity.
The 22-year-old, who is using the pseudonym Natalie Dylan for safety reasons, announced the decision to sell her v-card on the Howard Stern radio show on Sept. 9.
“We live in a capitalist society,” Dylan said on the show. “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?”
Dennis Hof, owner of the Nevada brothel Moonlite Bunny Ranch, brought Dylan to Stern’s attention. Dylan approached Hof with her sister, Avia, who worked at Hof’s ranch for three weeks two years ago.
“I’ve seen a lot of crazy things, but this is very unique,” Hof said in a phone interview.
With hundreds of offers already and bidding up to $275,000, Hof also claimed that a “rock star” and a “well-known male actor” contacted him and told him that they would outbid any other offers.
The amount of media attention did not surprise Hof, but Dylan, who could not be reached for comment, told CBS13 News that the coverage was a little overwhelming.
“I didn’t expect it to take off this much,” Dylan said. “I’m a big fan of anonymity and I did not expect any of this happen.”
Hof said that Dylan had already passed a polygraph test verifying the authenticity of her chastity, but added that she is also willing to submit to a physical examination.
“I think I’m very intuitive and I can sense if a person is genuine or not, so I’m definitely going to be looking for that,” Dylan told CBS13 News.
Dylan said she first got the idea to auction her virginity from a news story she read on the Internet about a Peruvian girl who attempted a similar cash out. The girl received an offer for $1.5 million from a Canadian man, but didn’t go through with it. Dylan is pursuing the idea largely because of debt incurred when her father allegedly took out student loans in her name.
Dylan earned her bachelor’s degree in women’s studies from Sacramento State and said she plans to use the money to finance her graduate studies in marriage and family therapy.
Hof defended Dylan’s choice to put herself out in the public and said that he wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this in the future.
“Once you get past the moral issue, all this is is a girl trying to get through school,” Hof said.
The auction will be conducted through and consummated at the Bunny Ranch, Hof said. Hof stands to receive 50 percent of the winning bid, but was uncertain how much the auction would pull in.
“I don’t have any idea, but it’s gonna be a bunch,” Hof said. “Maybe you should get the school-get everybody to kick in (some money) and send the homecoming king down here.”
I particularly liked the statement “Hof defended Dylan’s choice to put herself out in the public…”. She is definitely putting out in a big way.
I assume that the rejected $1.5m offer from a Canadian man was from Herman the Second. 
Anyway, it seems she’s established that it costs at least US$3m to own a virgin for a night http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081121.wcovirgin24/BNStory/specialComment/America/ , which works out to about $1.1 bn a year, which would definitely require the owner to bear arms to protect his (or her) investment (this was a transparently clumsy way of pretending to stay on topic). Or maybe it ain’t US$1.1bn a year, because after the first night she ain’t gonna be a virgin.
That’s why some opt for this:
If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins
and argue for the right to bear arms.
I thought it was 72 virgins, although some say it’s 69 (which has its own inherent interest factor), but what’s a virgin or two here and there?
Given the way the prospective celestial virgins cover themselves up on earth with gloves and a net over the eye slit for the truly devout, surely the best you could hope for would be a Virgin of the Month centrefold with a bare right arm upholding the right to bare right arms?
An old article, but nonetheless, if the right to bear arms is such a great idea then why are so so many cities suing the gun manufacturers?..hmmmm
By ROBERT HANLEY
Jersey City today became the 33rd governmental entity in the country since 1998 to sue the gun industry, charging that negligent sales practices have helped create a black market in weapons for criminals.
As he announced the lawsuit on the front steps of City Hall, Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham, a former Jersey City police captain, spoke of the ‘‘devastating impact’’ illegal handguns in the hands of drug dealers, gangsters and children have had on the quality of life in the city. In the coming court fight, he said, the city will be as persistent as an unmerciful gunman who keeps firing a weapon during a crime.
‘‘We’re going to keep shooting until we hit the gun manufacturers where it hurts,’’ Mayor Cunningham said.
In 1996 and 1997, the lawsuit says, handguns were involved in a ‘‘significant percentage’’ of the 42 murders, 2,430 robberies and 2,325 aggravated assaults in Jersey City. The suit does not cite more current gun-related crimes.
Yes, there are many of them in and around London and the Home Counties.
Most tend to wear the scarf, but don’t conceal the face, a short, but long-sleeved, mini-dress (as they don’t have the right to bare arms) with tight leggings to cover the legs. I must confess (being a true RC) that I find it all rather alluring - I’m sure it’s touch of the forbidden-fruit effect, added to the considereation that they are meant to be virgins and some of them are smashers.
Quite seperately. I like your Wilfried Owen signature. A bit of a paradox there.
I’m trying to remember who it was advised him on the title ‘Anrthem for Dommed Youth’? It might have been Sassoon?
Given that your quote seems to be about a decade old:
Which cities?
When?
With what result?
Why wouldn’t a city jump on a litigation bandwagon to sue a corporation outside its borders (and thus free of political risk) to look like it’s doing something (which like most politicians’ law and order ideas is largely or completely meaningless and ineffective in practice but it sounds good to unthinking electors) about crime, with the added bonus of possibly getting some money under the American legal system which makes such claims less risky than in Britain or Australia, where the loser has to pay the winner’s legal costs?
How does one sue ‘the gun industry’? It’s not an entity capable of being a defendant.
Ignoring the cute language by the grandstanding mayor, how do gun manufacturers become liable for illegal handguns?
Particularly as the claim is based on “negligent sales practices have helped create a black market in weapons for criminals”
Does the mayor have evidence that, say, Smith & Wesson is flogging guns illegally out the back door of its factory? If not, then why is the manufacturer responsible for guns becoming ‘illegal’? Surely that is the retailer’s responsibility or that of others in the subsequent chain of possession?
As for ‘negligent sales practices’, who is responsible for regulating gun sales? Retailers or government? If retailers, then government has no complaint about what they do as it’s up to them. If government, then why didn’t the government regulate them properly to enforce the sales laws?
So? How many were illegal handguns, which is what was getting the mayor all tight in the gusset?
And, how many were manufactured by American makers, as distinct from foreign makers who are not subject to American courts’ jurisdiction?
I don’t know.
I’ve never really got into reading about poets and writers instead of just reading what they wrote, but inevitably one picks up bits and pieces about them.
I think that Owen spent some time in a rehabilitation hospital with Sassoon after Owen’s early and devastating introduction to the battlefield, where Siegfried encouraged and advised him on his poetry. I have a vague recollection that Robert Graves might have been there, too, or maybe that was later. Or never.
My signature changed tonight from a quote from Owen’s S.I.W. and will change periodically to quote Owen and others, not necessarily poets and not necessarily Allies, depending upon how drunk I am and what I can remember, which rather narrows the field.
This may be a fraught process as I was convinced that Kenneth Slessor wrote a poem entitled ‘Seven Bells’ which had a moving burial scene on a North African beach during WWII. Some internet research shows that I was a couple of bells out and the scene I recalled doesn’t seem to be in his poems.
Well, when I complete my thesis for the Nobel Peace Prize, I will make sure I sight your questions of intrigue within the essay. Your questions go beyond a normal response. Perhaps I should quote the address and telephone number of the lawyer involved with the law suit and add the court hearing dates with middle name, first name and surname of all the lawyers involved?. Give me a break.The issue of cities suing gun manufactures has been an ongoing issue with may countries and is not new. The point is that the same government which allows the freedom to bear arms, is the same government which goes to alternative means to control gun crime by frivulous law suits.I agree the law suits are silly but I read about them in Toronto as much as elsewhere in the States. Instead of tackling the root of the gun problem, the government goes behind a bush and sues the gun manufacturers. I mean, if a drunk driver kills someone, does the law go after the beer maker?. i know the server may be liable but to go after the manufacturer is absurd indeed.:army:
I’ve responded to this on the WW1 Books thread.
I am pleased to report that I had the right poem (Beach Burial) in mind; the wrong title (Five - not seven - Bells); and that Google knows less than I do on this subject.
Beach Burial
Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.Between the sob and clubbing of gunfire
Someone, it seems, has time for this,
To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows
And tread the sand upon their nakedness;And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin -“Unknown seaman” - the ghostly pencil
Wavers and fades, the purple drips,
The breath of wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men’s lips,Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as ememies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front.