Ah yes, the old “hearts and minds” strategy for defeating ISIS. Because Vietnam. No matter what you think of America’s pursuit of that war, the idea that America is going to somehow Tweet ISIS to death is beyond laughable. It’s disgusting. It’s demeaning to the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children who’ve been – and will be – tortured, mutilated, raped, enslaved, beheaded, shot, burned alive, hung and drowned by ISIS. As this CNN documentary reveals, the aspiring Caliphate controls its citizens by combining the ever-present threat of savagery with brainwashing, browbeating and bullying. You ain’t gonna convince them that multi-culturalism rocks. The best you can do is . . .
kill the bastards. You know; the ones controlling the willing hordes. All of them. And yes, maybe some of their hordes too.
Air strikes are all very well and good. But there’s nothing like staring into the eyes of a human being armed with a gun – someone ready, willing and able to shoot you dead – to get you to see the error of your ways. To convince you to stop all that evil stuff (listed above) and consider an alternative lifestyle. And if you don’t, well, see the beginning of the previous paragraph for a potentially appropriate response.
I’m not saying we should put our troops in harm’s way – again, still – to cleanse the earth of this filth. Maybe containment is the best policy, at least for now. Maybe we should do what we’ve been trying to do without success for decades: train our so-called allies to do the “boots on the ground” thing. Maybe we should nuke ISIS from outer space, just to be sure (it would be a lot better way for the innocents to die). I don’t know.
But I can’t believe that the leader of the so-called Free World would step up to the microphone and caution against using guns to counter this anti-Christian, anti-semetic, anti-American, anti-human scum. Hello? Did we defeat the British colonial ideology with guns? Did we defeat the Nazi’s fascist ideology with guns? Did we defend democracy against Russia’s communist ideology with guns? Or did we talk them out of it?
The sooner this PC idiot is removed from office the safer we – make that the entire world – will be. Assuming, of course, we replace President Obama with someone who has a brain, a belief in freedom (ours first) and balls. Not excluding women, of course.
Worst president EVER…sea of glass Barry.
110% agreed
Calm, cool reasoning didn’t work for Peter Brady either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHjcH8HDmOo
….and this imbecile is what the high priests of Leftism said was their smartest guy.
He transformed our country into a laughingstock.
Intelligence is of little use if one’s premises are wrong. Obama is super-intelligent, but he isn’t capable of seeing the world as anything but a community that needs organizing.
Please enlighten us with examples of this “super intelligence” .
I recall nothing but the MFM repeatedly trumpeting how smart he is….. but examples….not so much.
If you read his speeches…the vast majority are F’ing moronic.
Remember…when BHO says “let me make this perfectly clear”….what follows will be an absolute f’ing lie.
Yes, he’s soooo super-intelligent that when his teleprompter breaks he babbles incoherently. He’s soooo super-intelligent that he’s never released his college transcripts. Speaks volumes.
He must be intelligent to have run this country into the ground so hard and so long, all the while breaking constitutional law, and not get voted out of office, or (preferably) thrown in jail. This is a smart, sneaky, conniving enemy we have on our hands and in our highest office, so do not underestimate him. He may have done the absolute wrong thing for America time & time again, but he’s done the best thing for himself and his image (to the people who voted for him, anyway).
“Ideologies Are Not Defeated With Guns. They’re Defeated By Better Ideas”
Shame the moron cut all those history classes in order.
Ya, you could claim his idiocy is incompetence. However, if you stack all of his incompetence up, you immediately see that it is one-sided, i.e., he has consistently erred in favor of our enemies, particularly radical muslims, muslims, communists, liberals.
MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, (a/k/a: Never leave the “Green Zone” but write about the war Media) HAVE BEEN SILENT ON THE PURPOSEFUL FAILINGS OF THIS MAN, and SO HAS THE EVIL HOUSE OF (D). Whatever ‘failings’ this president has had to “do right” are all on you as well.
“Ideologies Are Not Defeated With Guns. They’re Defeated By Better Ideas”
Idiots with bad ideologies are defeated with guns. History has already decided.
Lincoln, Truman, Wilson, Johnson and the idiot Roosevelt cousins all hold claim to “Worst President Ever”. Obama joins Bush the Lesser, Clinton, Bush the First, and Nixon in the second tier of bad government executives.
Our best president was William Henry Harrison, would that more elected officials followed his lead.
You can claim that “Bush the lessor” was not the ‘best’ president, but your lumping of many Republicans in with Democrats is sheer ignorance (you cannot claim to having been paying attention). Further, this close to the election it’s classic for (D)s and Liberals to start with the mantra that “their all the same” to attempt to blur the lines a bit, but it doesn’t fool those who are mildly paying attention, and I will tell whatever generation of my progeny I may live to see what an evil piece of crap has been foisted on this great nation from the Evil House of (D) in the last two centuries, and they can all go to hell but pray fervently that I don’t, because they will be my b_tch there too.
Don’t get your Harrison reference unless your harping on the brevity of his Presidential administration. Whatever greatness the man possessed, he exhibited it all before he became president. You can’t just WANT the job (the job does not seek the man, the man seeks the job, and the only exception was George Washington, and he turned it down), you have to WANT TO DO THE JOB, and you can’t just WANT TO DO THE JOB the way someone would construe as an incredibly excessive (John Woo version) MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.
Obama is standing in the place of our 5th Element.
And if that ideology has guns and wants to attack you…what then, Mr. President? Will “better ideas” save your life and our culture?
Meanwhile, the fact that hundreds-to-thousands of people born and raised in the non-Muslim west are eager to join the nascent Caliphate pokes a great big hole in your assumption that your soulless, mush-brained, spinelessly authoritarian ideology is either inherently better or more rewarding than theirs; it’s less overtly violent, and that’s about all you’ve got.
“And if that ideology has guns and wants to attack you…what then, Mr. President? Will “better ideas” save your life and our culture?”
Thank you for the laugh it was refreshing.
Hilarious that your hypothetical question is the exact question many Americans are asking themselves about the black cultural problem that plagues our nation’s cities. Pass more laws in favor of the terrorists and pay them is the American solution. ISIS defaces historical cultural landmarks just like blacklivesmatter. White people can’t safely be around young blacks in numbers as exampled recently by Christopher Mcknight’s savage beating, and the police force retracting that it was racially motivated. ISIS was funded by OUR government just like the population segment most likely to be your murderer in America.
Answer to the question is WE can’t talk about the violent ideology that is truly threatening America because that is racist. Yet, Mr. Farago advocates genocide on camel jockeys thousands of miles away who are transforming their society through brutal force, which is called revolution. I don’t condone ISIS because they slaughter innocents and Christians, but our government condones that in America and labels it work place violence or poverty. I want my tax money spent domestically on the nations enemies and maybe building a wall to keep out the foreign ones.
“in your assumption that your soulless, mush-brained, spinelessly authoritarian ideology is either inherently better or more rewarding than theirs; it’s less overtly violent, and that’s about all you’ve got.”–
The ideological definition of American Politicians who are popularly supported amongst the people. Also the very definition of community organizer, who are sometimes disguised as reverends, mayors, senators, and unfortunately presidents. What does that say about us?
Post Script
Let ISIS come to America and after the first redneck youtube video surfaces with the death of a ISIS Jihadi goes viral on the web. They may realize a lot of pain and unnatural acts with a pig would come before a redneck girl sent them to their 72 virgin boys.
Pretty sure the idiots association of America will be sending you a letter demanding an apology. “Yes we’re idiots, but equating us to Obama is just going to far”
Good luck saving your life from some fanatic screaming “Alohah Snackbar” while running at you with a scimitar with your ideals. You keep those ideals, I will use my DW Valor to stop him.
I dunno what your DW Valor is, but it sounds like it could be dangerous. No screaming Aloha Snackbar! for me. I’ll approach the snack bar quietly, and say Aloha later after I’ve discreetly sampled the wares. 🙂
Dan Wesson Valor = a pretty nice 1911.
Nice. Thanks for back-up ref. too.
Pretty words to the American people, but to ISIS? They spit in our face. The unfortunate truth of the matter, the ONLY thing that is going to stop ISIS and the likes is the business end of weapon or a bomb.
His words require a reasonable person or people. That’s like telling the gangs in Chicago to just smile and get along and to put your trust in God! It sounds heartfelt and reasonable, but it’s not realistic or practical.
Obama talks a good like of BS while he’s using advanced technology to listen in on every communication possible so he can bomb them off the face of the planet.
Just more lip service.
Ideas defeat people with guns only when those people consider ideas to be important. Ghandi beat the British only because the British were open to thought. Had the British been ISIS, India would have run with blood until only one idea was left: theirs.
The ideals of Bannockburn won out over the tyrannical ideas of the descendants of invaders only because generations of Scotsmen and then Englishmen and finally Americans took up arms for those ideas.
He’s not wrong, though. ISIS doesn’t have that many members or really much real military power. They do have popular support. This is what an insurgency is. To think that you can bomb or shoot a country into compliance is silly. The insurgency will remain, and all they have to do is wait. Only until you turn the people away from their ideas can they truly be defeated and turned into just another extremist group. There is a reason the KKK does not rule the south any longer, and it isn’t because MLK decided to use an M2 to defeat them in glorious battle. It’s because people no longer listen to them. I really don’t see him being wrong here, but then again, I thought about it for more than a couple of minutes.
” ISIS doesn’t have that many members or really much real military power.”
Imam Obullcrap from the White Mosque, as well as the fleeing, American-armed Iraqi Army left ISIS BILLIONS in weapons and transport.
Napalm works wonders I hear.
I hear it sticks to something, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what.
Don’t forget that it also “smells like victory.”
Eat Babies! Eat Babies! So….am I the only one here that remembers that?
How would obama know? He has never had an original “better idea”.
Tell us all-knowing Commander in Chief, what “better idea” would you present to a violent attacker who had just bound your wife and was seconds away from violating (raping) her?
“Better ideas” only work with honorable people. Force is the only thing that stops people intent on committing atrocities.
Your comment is worthy of posting on Facebook, except for the incoming volley of hate comments from
compassionatebleeding heart liberal ‘friends’.Well I guess Obama could be right…..if he classifies nuclear weapons as “better ideas”
Oh good, another SWA mess for us to get embroiled in and get a bunch of kids killed and maimed.
We dn’t need to get embroiled, we simply let arms through to the Kurds, and give targeting coordinates to the Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis, and let them carpet bomb ISIS, and if they miss and hit a few brigades of Iran’s Revolting Guards, that’s a bonus.
Just so we are clear, the “former” muslim occupying our White House REFUSES TO DO ANY OF THE ABOVE.
Which makes you wonder, whats he got against destroying ISIS?
I do not want to spend any more blood and treasure on the sandbox. Our GIs are much to valuable to waste in that sh*thole.
We must have a few old, tired nukes laying around not doing nothing. Time to dispose of them.
After you have incinerated that batch of savages you could then negotiate with other savages (Iran) from a much stronger position. “So, about that nuclear program you think you want to continue…”
Imagine that … as it turns out guns (or nukes or whatever) sometimes are necessary to defeat some ideologies.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: We can pump oil over radio active slag, the initial investment of putting that pipeline in will be high, but nobody will mess with it for the next 100 years or so… Till the real hot stuff decays anyways.
Please, no nukes! The fallout gets everywhere, world-wide.
Agreed. It’s past time to build THOR.
That’s why the neutron bomb exists, or did exist. I think I remember the soviets calling it the “Ultimate capitalist weapon” because you could wipe out an army and then sell their uniforms afterword. Characterized by brief intense neutron radiation that doesn’t leave any lasting fallout. From what I understand, the rest of the world pressured us to dispose of the ones we have because we might be tempted to actually use them, and then invested in neutron bombs themselves.
My only knowledge of it comes from what I’ve read online, so if someone knows better, feel free to correct me.
“Please, no nukes! The fallout gets everywhere, world-wide.”
I don’t think so.
ISIS’s methods and ideology are pretty much antithetical to any kind of economic stability or sanity. Once they brush up against a few countries that can stop their advance they will be sealed off from the pillaging that has sustained them so far. See how long their power lasts then.
Remember how the Soviet Union, one of the biggest superpowers in history, finally collapsed. Not only did communism not work, but it proved you can have ~10 time zones to pillage and you’ll still bite the dust.
Forgot about oil, but I suspect those barbarians will find a way to mess that up too.
Sure. You purge all the people smart enough or trained enough to operate and maintain the iinfrastructure to extract and move it to market. Because by some coincidence, people who know how to think often are ideologically unsound.
Mao did something like this back in the day, and China is still recovering (in the sense that they’re maybe decades behind where they otherwise might be). What really scares me, however, is that it’s something we seem to be doing to ourselves via our education system.
People tend to forget where prosperity comes from. So they find people to blame when outcomes don’t meet their utopian standards and they use political power or force to get rid of them. China has realized what a mistake that was, and has tried to backpedal(millions of dead later). When the nazis killed off the Jews(or tried anyway) they destroyed the country’s financial sector. The government wanted control anyway, but it turns out the government is really bad at pricing and allocating resources and other assets, which is an important part of economic progress or even stability.
Side note, Not sure if this is true, but according to my latest finance class, sharia law supposedly bans interest payments on investments, but some sort of futures “option”(like a stock option) is okay.
Evan: re interest, from what I’ve read it’s true. Instead there is something that is a payment on a loan that incorporates an expected gain in value as a return of principal to the lender, or some such.
But just don’t call it interest.
Yeah, we can wait out ISIS the way we waited out the Sovs.
I mean, instead of confronting them at the end of WW2, it only took FORTY FOUR YEARS for them to collapse, they only imprisoned, slaughtered and starved tens of millions of their own people, and only virtually improvised 130 million people in Eastern Europe….
CARPET BOMB ISIS NOW.
And he oughta know, considering the fantastic success his ideas on foreign policy have brought so far…
Seriously. Is there a police state or terrorist organization that hasn’t benefitted by us having this imbecile in charge of our foreign policy?
You can thank the NeoCons for our foreign policy messes. Of course Obama the third in the line of Anti American NeoCons to hold the Presidency.
We can tell you are nearly politically illiterate by the fact that you toss around NeoCon like some epithet and you use it to describe Obama well as Bush.
Bush knew in his heart that 9/11 was just another example of 1400 years of islamic terrorism, and he wanted to crush it, but Bush screwed up because he listened to Rove and Colin Powell et al, all of whom were listening to the Leftists on one hand and the isolationist p*ssies on the other, and so the job just didn’t get done.
We needed to do to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran AND THE SAUDIS what our parents did to Germany and Japan.
FLATTEN THEM and occupy them , and then suck their oil out of the ground to pay for occupying them for decades like we did to Germany and Japan until they were dejihadified, with few if any mosques left in the region.
Too bad too many didn’t have the balls for it. Even more lobbied against ANYTHING against islam, and spun their own version that we deserved 9/11.
I and most Americans DEFECATE ON THOSE who say that.
Obama is an islamo crony-capitalism marxist, and a nihilist.
His prime goal is turning America into a turd world outhouse, to (a) get revenge for his daddy and ihs daddy’s daddy, neither of whom who he barely knew and (b) to get as much bling for his retirement while spinning the world into as much chaos as he can, so that either the 12th Mahdi or some other luciferesque “messiah” can then restructure the world into some hash-hazed fantasy where he and his cronies get to tell everyone how to live and die.
NEO-CON is a spin on former soft leftists who went anti-soviet and became defense hawks, most remaining socially liberal, a handful of whom worked in Bush’s admin.
BUSH WASN’T ONE OF THEM, and Obama isn’t either.
It’s also bandied about by some paulistinian morons as code for “Israel loving /Jew war hawk…” but I don’t give you that much credit.
Well Mr. POTUS, ISIS is currently using guns to defeat people possessing different ideologies. Seems to me guns are pretty freaking effective at defeating different ideologies, as they have been since their invention.
If war is an extension of politics, then quite so.
And also, if everyone hewing to an ideology is dead, well, then that ideology probably is too. Or at least until someone decides to bring it back – like ISIS – and you have to go do it all over again.
Rocks, Sticks, Spears,Swords, Arrows, Catapults, Firearms, Bombs, Nukes…..every one of theses has been used to change peoples minds. Sadly our Dear Leader is too locked in to his dream of Sparkly Rainbow Unicorns prancing about the world.
Isis could be driven by an extraterrestrial agenda. Obama could be apart of an opposing intergalactic force. What if… he’s also be on the same side? Could we have an alien being commanding our nation?
You make a good point! Well, an interesting one. In a Harry Potter sort of way.
“Could we have an alien being commanding our nation?”
That’s laughable.
Everybody knows the newly arrived Insect Overlords are running the show.
I, for one, welcome our Insect Overlords…
(H/T, The Simpsons)
B(ody) O(der) might be the worst president in my lifetime, but long before he came along our foreign policy was downright effed up. We are a predominantly Christian country. Yes. Get used to it. We are also the most powerful country on earth and have been for over a century. We pretend that we’re all about the ideal of democracy and liberty.
Yet when it comes to protecting Christians we don’t seem to give a fuck. We did nothing for the Christians who were slaughtered by the Ottomans in 1915 and after the war we let them sweep their genocide under the rug. That inaction emboldened Adolf Hitler to take genocide one step farther. And now we turn a blind eye to the new ‘caliphate’ as they embark on their new Christian genocide. Say what you want about the likes of Saddam Husein or Bashar al-Assad or Hosni Bubarak – they never let this sort of thing happen under their regimes. I think the allies knew what they were doing at Versailles. The borders that exist today were created to keep these people from uniting under an Islamic ideology. They could only be maintained by the brute force of a dictator. And until the Islamic world has it’s Reformation, democracy will be the enemy of peace in the middle-east.
Hows this for a powerful idea: an AA-12 shotgun.
JDAM’s. Lots of them. With a few MOP’s thrown in for giggles
CBU-87’s would be a better show
Dirk owns stock in Boeing.
http://www.boeing.com/history/products/joint-direct-attack-munition.page
He’s gonna shill for them…
🙂
Shiller’s gotta shill.
When I heard those words spill from his lips I knew there was going to be a lively response, thank-you TTAG. You’re far more controlled than I was when I first heard him speak.
Who doesn’t want a diplomatic solution, but Mr. President, the bus left the station some time ago. Unless I missed most of the last several years due to a self-induced anti-progressive coma, ISIS has made it clear they are not interested in diplomacy.
This my fellow citizens is our Commander in Chief. Excuse me, I have to run for the bathroom.
True or not, it’s irrelevant… This so-called president is the last place you’re going to find any ideas, much less “better” ideas… He’s a complete fucktard.
The anti gun ideology is being defeated by a better idea, and that better idea is guns.
Yep, I’m sure that’s how we must have won WWII. Of course, since we didn’t have the internet or WiFi, old FDR had to telegram the Axis into surrendering.
The struggle against radical Islam is going to be a very difficult, multigenerational fight. There are no quick fixes. We’ve got to get smart and start playing the long game here, and yes that includes winning hearts and minds, along with containment, and buying influence with local governments, and occasionally using narrowly-tailored military force (not knee-jerk invasions of random countries), and frankly waiting them out until it becomes obvious to their potential supporters around the world what an evil, unworkable society they’re trying to build.
The American Revolution and WW2 are not good analogies for the current struggle. The containment of communism is much closer to what we’re dealing with.
The other thing we need to realize here, is that ISIS, Al Qaeda, and their clones are not an existential threat to the US. Lone wolf attacks, 9/11, and even a few nukes going off in our cities, no matter how horrible they are, won’t mean the end of our civilization.
911 sent us, and the world, into a financial tailspin.
A nuke would trigger a worldwide depression as the how world clamps down on all facets of life to try to avoid a repeat.
“911 sent us, and the world, into a financial tailspin.”
But our civilization survived and recovered, albeit with some scars.
“A nuke would trigger a worldwide depression as the how world clamps down on all facets of life to try to avoid a repeat.”
We’d survive the depression. The clamp down would be our fault, not that of the attacker.
My point is not that these are good things, I’m just saying that we need to keep ISIS in perspective. They’re evil (and I rarely use that word), but they are not an existential threat to the US.
Ideas are defeated by better ideas, this is true.
But, historically speaking, by-and-large that can only happen if those ideas are held by people with guns, or if those people can readily rely on others who share those ideas who have guns to protect them — and their ideas.
SEE: The Deacons For Defense and the Civil Rights Movement
Then again it’s not like the militarists have had any better ideas in the last 50 years.
Enlighten us with your wisdom.
Lost in Vietnam, created ISIS. Excellent track record indeed.
Muh honor
Muh service
Muh sacrifice
LOL!
So, you have no real answers. Troll gotta troll I guess.
Actually the idea is self-evident: capitalism has already brought down communism in most countries without a shot fired. But naturally, dumb military animals hungry for taxpayer funded paychecks refuse to recognize this fact.
Welfare queens gonna parasite, as always.
What idea do you need? Bad guys wanna kill you, kill them as they try. Give it back. This is a simple concept. Even dumb people can get it right.
It’s hard to justify “bad guys want to kill you” when “you” are the one invading their country and deliberately inciting a hostile, defensive response.
In any honest historical assessment, the US military were the bad guys in most wars they’ve fought in, and are definitely so in the current wars.
Yeah, That’s what you bleedin america blokes needs more guns to terrorize the civilized populace..
How many more incidents till ya dafties realize that guns aren’t the solution to your problems.
These deaths are two more of about 32,000 gun deaths which will occur in the US this year – there have been about 16,000 so far and we can expect another 16,000 starting now through December. Of those, around 60% are suicides. About 3% are accidental deaths (between 700-800 deaths). About 34% (just over 11,000) make up the remainder of gun deaths and are classified as homicides. There are lots of crazy suicidal, violent and careless people out there with mental health issues who have easy access to guns. We should be used to it by now, so why is this even making the news?
The real terrorists are the NRA that spoonfed you wankers with some horribly debunked beliefs that more guns equals less crime.
How many families and innocents have to mourn endlessly for the loss of their loved ones and friends cause some bloody nutter with a gun murders innocent people.
I’m glad I live in a country that guns aren’t easy to get.
Heck, I’m glad I can walk safely outside my house at night without the fear of some bogan with a gun.
I hear license and registration works mates, You should try it.
You gun-nut yanks aren’t really “free” or “safe” if your allowed to own deadly weapons and at the same time have a very high crime right because of said weapons.
But naw, Screw the innocent folks that have to suffer, Your “right” to own a instrument of cock replacement is more important than the lives of men, women and children.
Either this is purely satirical or willful stupidity.
In case it’s the latter, gun control has less than nothing to do with the relative peace Australia enjoys.
Many Australians (and people from all around the world in general) think that your country (among others) is a role model that the U.S. should follow. However, two very important studies of your 1996 National Firearms Agreement completely disagree with this statement.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/buyback-has-no-effect-on-murder-rate/2006/10/23/1161455665717.html
A ten-year study, lead by Dr. Samara McPhedran and published in the British Journal of Criminology, found that the $500M AUD spent on the mass confiscation and destruction of previously-legal firearms had absolutely no effect whatsoever on homicide or suicide rates.
https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2008n17.pdf
Yet another five-year study, produced by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi from your University of Melbourne and published in the Melbourne Institute’s Working Paper series, confirmed Dr. McPhedran’s conclusions and no others.
Dr. McPhedran even testified to this fact before a recent Australian Senate Inquiry, which had looked into – among other things – banning semi-automatic handguns. Needless to say , gun control advocates were rightly and completely humiliated.
Before that same Senate Inquiry, Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Julian Slater had freely admitted that not only do they have no clue what exactly what kinds of contraband were getting through, but they only know about what manage to intercept. As I’m sure you may be well aware, and even if you’re not you will be now, Australia’s porous borders and low population density – coupled with deeply corrupt postal and customs services – make it a veritable smuggler’s paradise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjPEdEaS8eY
A Deputy Director fro the Australian Institute of Criminology also testified before the Senate Inquiry, and explicitly stated that only 5 of the 48,000+ handguns in the Australian state of Victoria had been stolen. To complicate matters further, the AFP even admitted they had not even bothered to examine the AIC’s report on gun thefts at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P3Etjp_WK0
After the Port Arthur shooting, there were also the Quakers Hill and Childer’s Palace arson attacks, the Black Saturday Brush Fires – which were deliberately lit in case you needed a reminder, the Cairns Stabbings, and the Monash University Shooting. The 1996 NFA didn’t stop the massacres from happening, but only changed the methods in which they are carried out. Especially not when many thousands of guns handed over to the government for destruction in 1996 were then illegally resold to criminals – many of which have still never recovered, and have very likely been used in crimes since. Some were indeed recovered though, in the private collections of police officers.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-big-sting/2007/02/09/1170524303995.html?page=fullpage
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/ravenshoe-police-sergeant-resigns-after-discovery-of-surrendered-guns-in-his-private-collection/story-fnihsrf2-1226705185355
Guns are taken from Melbourne’s own ‘Red Zone’ every two days – all from “prohibited” persons – and by the thousands every single year — and that’s just one metropolitan area in one city.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/gun-found-every-two-days-in-melbournes-red-zone-20150618-ghrak9.html
Even police and military armories are broken into with mind-boggling regularity, to the tune of dozens of times – and that’s just in the state of Victoria and the port of Sydney.
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/local/melbourne/2015/05/12/vic-gun-thieves-eavesdrop-on-cops.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/no-sign-of-stolen-rocket-launchers/story-e6frg6o6-1225787746734
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-30/navy-base-security-breach-larrakeyah-darwin/4400646
Isn’t it any wonder that the states of Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania were excluded from all crime statistics reports by both the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Criminology from 2010 onwards, and around that time there begins an appreciable drop in Australia’s violent crime rates across the board?
Indeed, wonders never cease. Especially when criminals receive hundreds of pistols at a time through the mail and several times every year, made especially easy by Australia’s institutionalized corruption of its Customs services – not to mention that of individual officials, as well.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/guns-imported-through-sylvania-waters-post-office-linked-to-crimes-in-sydney/story-fnpn118l-1227252669241
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/customs-staff-charged-over-alleged-drug-smuggling-ring/story-e6frg6nf-1226576397568
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/03/24/cocaine-customs-cop-caught/
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3675337.htm
Even if criminals couldn’t receive their guns through the Sunday Post, they can just as easily make them or have them made-to-order. These aren’t those shoddy rusticles of zip-guns you’d expect to find in a jail cell, either, but finely machined MAC-11 sub-machine guns – complete with 32-round magazines and silencers.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/homemade-gun-factory-shutdown-by-police-in-sydneys-southwest-20140618-zsd4a.html
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/jeweller-angelos-koots-admits-to-making-submachine-guns-at-his-seven-hills-home-and-supplying-them-to-bikie-groups/story-fni0cx12-1226760983916
In conclusion, no, America would not benefit from Australia’s gun control laws. (Even Australia didn’t seem to benefit from them.) This is for a wide variety of reasons. Given the level of sophistication of the criminal enterprises that were created by Prohibition in the U.S., and now during the morbidly hilarious failure of the “War on (Some) Drugs” around the world, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn about a prohibition on guns – which is what you have by-and-large in Australia – is that equally large and sophisticated criminal enterprises will arise to fulfill the demand for guns. This can, as quite thoroughly demonstrated above if I do say so myself, can accomplished in a number of ways: clandestine domestic manufacture, surreptitious importation from abroad, and widespread theft.
Australia is plagued by the first and the second.
To give you an example of the futility of banning an item to which is attached very high demand, some 1.6 million pounds of marijuana was seized by the U.S. DEA in 2010 – and that’s only a very small percentage of what is believed to have made it across the border. It is reasonable to assume that the shear amount of arms, ammunition, and accoutrement that can occupy the same space as 800 tons of plant matter is quite sufficient to arm a significant portion of the U.S. criminal element.
These dreadful shortcomings demonstrate a basic and willful failure of Prohibitionists to understand or even acknowledge the market forces governing anything for which there is significant demand. It is the primary reason why central economic planning has only proved an unmitigated disaster everywhere it’s been tried. More basically, they fail to realize or consciously ignore the fact that when people want something, someone will get it for them. The harsher the ban, the higher the profit motive. The higher the profit motive, the more risks criminals will be willing to take to satisfy their market. There are deeper reasons for this failure than simply flat-out flunking ECON 101. Those who trade in prohibited goods are, by definition, criminals who are engaged in a criminal enterprise without the benefits of redress the courts or any other avenue of dispute resolution or of police protection. When an enterprise can’t: take out a loan, open a bank account, establish credit, file a lawsuit, or have police respond to an alarm, it becomes necessarily more violent to protect its financial and territorial interests and to affect resolutions over contractual disputes. Essentially, prohibition of highly desirable goods can only function to increase overall violence and disregard for the law as a basic factor of prohibition. One must accept this as a basic premise and then try to reconcile the increased violence and criminality coupled with the inevitable encroachment on individual liberty with any perceived utility of the prohibition.
As the world lowly comes to the realization that prohibition of drugs, with the focus now being primarily on marijuana and cannabis, has very little if any utility in the face of extremely high demand we begin to move away from banning it.
Considering that those who smuggle, steal, and manufacture weapons and their customers will obviously still be armed, the level of violence in the wake of an Australian-style prohibition would be unprecedented. Once one factors in the unique culture surrounding guns and civil rights in the U.S., the increasingly ubiquitous support for the Second Amendment and the right it protects, and American’s historical resistance to tyranny, the violence may very well escalate into that of armed insurrection.
http://rt.com/usa/269362-assault-guns-control-ny/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3115418/posts
Mass civil disobedience is already the order of the day, and police departments are already realizing the logistical absurdity of such an endeavor in actually enforcing registration or, Heaven forbid, a mass confiscation. In fact, many law enforcement officials have already announced their intentions to not enforce such laws at all.
http://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sheriffs/articles/6435415-NY-sheriffs-We-wont-enforce-gun-laws-magazine-limits/
http://www.newswithviews.com/NWV-News/news437.htm
http://www.examiner.com/article/conn-police-refuse-to-enforce-new-gun-laws
Also given that firearms are very durable items, with many examples lasting 500 years or more with proper care and maintenance, and that upwards of 347 million (as of 2012) are already thought to be present in the hands of 124 million Americans, it’s highly unlikely that any prohibition would succeed at all as confiscation must immediately follow – as it did in Australia – to realize any utility at all.
http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/Clics2013A/commsumm.nsf/b4a3962433b52fa787256e5f00670a71/c4b73dc817da609e87257b24005ef7f8/$FILE/13SenState0304AttachC.pdf
All this having been said, advocacy for prohibition of firearms can only be seen as either ill informed (as in being simply unaware of the consequences) or malicious (aware of the inevitable and invariable failure of the prohibition and the increased criminality and violence and potential to destabilize society and government and possibly to result in violent revolution).
So,there’s no violent crime in Australia because you cowards bent over and let the government take your guns right mate. The only wankers here are people like you who need to grow a pair to replace the pair you gave to your masters. Stay in Australia and learn to spell. It’s you’re not your. Idiot
Hey, you spelled your name right this time!
He didn’t spell his name right. He shortened it. No wonder he’s homeless. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.
“aussie dude”
You are behind the times. US gun control groups are now running away from using Australia as a comparative example. Here is why:
1. Australian homicide rate change since its draconian gun control and confiscation: Down 34%
US homicide rate change during the same period as gun sales increased: Down 60%
2. Australia originally claimed drop in overall suicide since its draconian gun laws: 38%
Actual drop in overall Australia suicide rate during this period: 0% *
3. Almost all of Australia current murder victims are innocent non criminals. 30 studies across the US show 90%of US homicide victims are criminals or gang members.**
Risk of being murdered if you are not a criminal in Australia: 0.87/100,000
Risk of being murdered if you are not a criminal in the USA 0.38/100,000
By the way you are faking being Australian. Throwing in “bloke” when you use several spellings that are American and different from Austrailian spellings shows you are a desperate liar. Of course when you started posting here you claimed US gun murder is up when it has plummeted.
*
aph.GOV.AU/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/clac_ctte/completed_inquiries/2008_10/suicide/submissions/sub42_pdf.ashx
smh.COM.AU/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/revealed-australias-suicide-epidemic-20090820-es3p.html
**
usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-31-criminal-target_N.htm
The microphone must have got cut off just before he said, “… and drone strikes.”
That’s the ONLY thing that came to mind when reading the tagline and after listening to it.
Anybody else getting a suicide prevention hotline add? Or do they just think I’m about to do myself in?
Might be someone else on your connection (same router, different pc/device).
While I have no doubt rolling in and opening a can of Made in the U.S.A. whoopass would eliminate ISIS in a year or two (or ten), education and eliminating poverty is the only way to stop muslim extremism for good. When you actually have the facts and truth on your side, ideological warfare is nothing more than education. When the facts are not on your side, all you’re doing is propagandizing and brainwashing.
relevant Eric Holder video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nM0asnCXD0
Pretty hard to defeat muslim extremism with education and defeating poverty when you continue to prop up an ideology bent on keeping a medieval monarchy in power.
Seems to me it was Bernie sanders who recently said it was time for the Saudis (who were up to their necks in 911) and Jordan et al to fight their own damn war. We can give lots of support like bombing the crap out of isis but no American boots on the ground.
Guns can’t defeat an ideology?
And exactly how many Nazis still exist? Worked pretty well on them, didn’t it.
He’s right, ideologies are not defeated with guns. The thing is, it isn’t the ideologies that really bother me, so much as the screaming maniacs bent on murder and conquest.
“Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas. It just so happens my better ideas are Drones. Which, as you know, Drones are not guns.”
At least, I believe that was the subtext he followed with.
Says the man who uses millions of guns to lord over others through the state apparatus.
I think the press conference would have been better if he had just said, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and announce my amateur hour policy team and I have no good ideas, and we’re all out of bubblegum,”
ISIS is no business of the US government or responsibility of the US taxpayer. Let the three nations who created ISIS: Turkey, Saudi, and Israel join with Syria and Iran in dealing with ISIS. It is not our fight. Close our borders, deport all non citizens and dual citizens, and bring all our troops home.
War is too profitable and humans are collectively too stupid.
Unfortunately, ISIS has heard Obama’s ideas, and they still think theirs are better.
Wonder when Michelle is going to tweet a pic of her holding a sign saying, “Bring Back Our Heads”. Cause it worked so well for the girls.
Only if those better ideas and principles motivate folks to pick up guns and defend them…
Do not be chumps.
ISIS is a creation of US, British, Israeli, and Saudi intelligence services. They are the new “Al-Qaeda”, created in the weeks following the US military’s rejection of Obama’s proposed air strikes against Assad. Remember all the servicemen and women holding up signs: “I will not be Al-Qaeda’s Air Force”? Al-Qaeda promptly went away and ISIS was created (It’s actually called ISIL but the Israelis like to call it ISIS because ISIL sounds too much like Israel).
Funny how ISIS has Hollywood-level production values and CGI special effects for their videos. Funny How ISIS has all these Facebook and Twitter accounts, but if you or me posts anything controversial on Facebook we get BANNED. Funny how ISIS publishes beautiful glossy magazines and mints their own gold coins. Funny how they have fleets of brand new Toyota trucks and US Hummers. Funny how they can run a 30-mile convoy down a highway but we can’t seem to locate them. Funny how they operate within a mile of huge US bases in Iraq but we never engage them. Funny how they never attack Israel or Saudi Arabia.
Do not be chumps.
Good luck explaining your “better ideas” to them. Good luck to the victims of ISIS in them trying to explain “better ideas” to ISIS as they pound on their doors.
Only thing that can stop Islamist Jihadists are Muslims. Everyone else is an infidel and our opinions are irrelevant in their minds and hearts. They truly believe in going to Paradise for killing infidels and dying for the Jihad. Only way to change that point of view is more and more Muslim leaders condemning this activity. Take away Paradise you take away the motive to kill and die for Islam. Bombs and guns have gotten us where we are today, with IS being a bigger problem than it ever was before. Don’t need more collateral damage all you do is help their cause.
Dying from a bomb or a suicidal gun battle it all leads to the same destination; Paradise. Only Muslims can halt IS. And maybe an AK47 for the really nutty ones who refuse to stop the killing.
How can the People be so happy?
I don’t know. But the soldiers are very happy shooting the peoples who say they aren’t happy.
What Obama doesn’t “get” is that ISIS uses the same type of blind, inflexible ideology as he and his devotees use. So, to their minds, as to his, there are no “other” or “better” ideas to be had anywhere at anytime from any source. We have a case of like-minds clashing and there is no resolution between the two to be had, except that one side exterminates the other. Given that Obama has chosen to take an apparently “non-aggressive” tack, those of us forced to comply with his “strategy” are in the unenviable position of being the potentially exterminated rather than the exterminators.
Where ISIS is concerned, everyone in the world who is “not-ISIS” needs to be exterminated without exception. Period. ISIS is, and has, taken the meaning of the phrase, “If you are not with us, you are against us.” to its most irrational extreme. The only appropriate response to ISIS is an iteration of another well-known catchphrase, “Kill (them) or be Killed (by them)”.
As it stands now, Obama’s perception of the situation constitutes aiding and abetting ISIS’ goals and agenda, rather than any sort of opposition. Someone above said, “Do not be Chumps.” Well, the Chump in Chief has already done that for all of us because he is so convinced of his own infallibility that he can no longer see reality.
I am a little disappointed by the comments here and possibly even the post that generated it.
“Not simply a military effort”
that is what he said right before this
“Ideologies Are Not Defeated With Guns. They’re Defeated By Better Ideas”
He is right about that and his statements do not take away from the fact that DoD planes have bombed Isis and that we can use force again. He also said we are not at war w/ Islam and he is right about that too.
What he is wrong about is that we are not at war w/ Islam but it is at war w/ us (Dar Al-Harub) and we should be at war w/ it. He is wrong about the timeline when it comes to ideologies too. We are in this mess because of ideas started anywhere from decades to millenia ago. Ideas take a long time to take hold but once they do they are very difficult to swap out.
The pen is mightier than the sword but there is no reason you cannot have both and a glock and a few hundred H-bombs 🙂
* About 2 years ago this community organizer wanted to bat on the rebel team, which included Al-Qaida/ISIS, against team Assad. Now we are working on the Hezbollah/Iran/Assad/Shia militia team against ISIS. Am I the only one making this connection?
So what’s his better idea? Shovel ready jobs funded by American taxpayers?. No thanks rather just bomb them back to the stone age.
Ideas are often beaten by better ideas, but ideas with guns cannot be countered by rhetoric alone.
Y’all misread the intent.
The idea isn’t to bring sanity to ISIS/ISIL; it’s to convince a bunch of people who don’t particularly like or trust us (now why might that be?) that supporting/joining the “Caliphate” isn’t their best option.
Civilisation is not going to defeat these monsters unless we can reduce the number of volunteers.
“Ideologies Are Not Defeated With Guns.”
Says the clown hiding behind a cordon of armed security.
And the Khmer Rouge went after who and with what first?
Agree with one exception: good ideas sometimes have to be pushed at the point of a gun just like bad ideas. I you disagree, then let’s get rid of law enforcement agencies and the military and let’s see what happens. So my “idea” about ISIS is too kill as many as you can while getting others to embrace “good ideas” and finish the job. You cannot lead those who refuse to be lead at any cost so you must get rid of them; then “good ideas” can take hold.
On the domestic side: Good ideas are relative, as long as they protect the body politic as a whole without undue infringement of personal liberties, and respect my individuality and show a measure of trust, I am agreeable. Let’s not go the way of the UK that is now a police state disguised as a liberal enclave. In this country the vast majority of people are law abiding and I see no reason to be treated just like those who do not. Obama is an idealist, and I voted for him, but I do not agree with his policies on guns for a millions reason but essentially because it is not doable. He is farting against thunder, he is forgetting that Americans are a different breed from Brits, Canadians, Australians and Europeans or the rest of the world as a whole regardless of apparent similarities (we are all human bipeds). He should make a better effort and adapt accordingly.
Hey Dumbo pack your golf clubs and head on over to the sandbox without your security team. Take their leadership out for a couple rounds of golf and have a frank discussion with them. Let us know how it works out for you. We wouldn’t mind a bit.
“George Washington didn’t use his right to free speech to defeat the British. He shot them.”
As always, this stupid line ignores the ideological legwork required to get people to pick up their muskets to begin with.
Maybe with there supposed drone strikes on ISIS leaders and them in need of new leaders is it possible to pool a few cents each from American gun owners and send them this countries president? I’m sure with his leadership and organizing skills he maybe able to help in ways most have never imagined. It would be a very interesting scene to watch play out having seen the miracles he has provided this country with. At least we would get to see what his brothers think of him and his sponsorship of there muslim faith.
Oh really. Tell that bullshit to:
The Americans who gave their lives _in 1776 to defeat British rule and ideology.
The thousands of Americans, north and south, who gave their lives over ideologies in the Civil War.
The thousands of US troops who gave their lives in World War 2 to defeat German and Japanse ideologies and aggression.
The thousands of innocent Jewish men, women and children murdered by Hitler and his ideology of genocide.
The over 3000 innocent Americans who lost their Libes to terrorist ideologies on 9/11.
The thousands of US troops who have given their lives or suffered horrible injuries in an effort to defeat the Taliban and Isis terrorist ideologies.
You do a terrible disservice and demonstrate a significant lack of respect for these hero’s Mr. President when you say that guns do not defeat idiologies. I guess we can assume it is this belief of yours that has led to a continuing reduction in our military capabilities and declimng worldwide respect for America. Your actions Mr. President are putting our Country at risk and frankly border on treason.
gy
This is why we defeated the Nazis by simply dropping pamphlets onto Germany and not icky bombs,
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