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Post by tingramretro on Nov 6, 2016 7:55:31 GMT -5
Sorry, but I live here and that's total bollocks. You can skew a poll to give any result you want, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that something like the Express would claim such a thing, but please don't be so credulous as to believe it. I'm only surprised it was the Express and not the Daily Mail, though they'd more likely have claimed it was 95%... We never needed the police to be armed when the I.R.A were active, and they were a more real and immediate threat to most of us than ISIS. Yeah, that is total b*****ks. I can honestly say that in all my years, I don't remember ever having met anyone over here who seriously thinks that arming all police is necessary, let alone a being a sensible idea. Two things to bear in mind though, is that, even if we don't just assume that the survey and those results have been pulled out of the air to create a story (which, given the source, I'd say is likely), is that the survey was conducted mere days after the Paris Bataclan attacks, which will obviously skew people's responses. Secondly, that survey wasn't conducted by some serious research and statistical body -- it was done by ITV's This Morning program, a lightweight, celeb gossip and general news magazine program. It's hardly the News at Ten! Even the phrase "80% of Britons" is nonsense, since the actual number of respondents to the poll is minuscule. 80% of 13, 000 people who responded is not quite the same as 80% of a population of 64 million, and it's pretty much inevitable that the majority of the few who responded would be those in favour of the radical solution.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 6, 2016 2:28:21 GMT -5
No, he isn't; he's just better than that. As I said earlier, it's an attitude genuinely shared by most British police officers, who'll more often than not spend twenty to thirty years on the streets without ever carrying a gun. I find it sad you don't seem to believe that attitude is realistic. Of course it isn't. You are aware that support for unarmed British police is not unanimous. REVEALED: 80% of Britons want all police armed with guns to tackle ISIS threat, poll findsSorry, but I live here and that's total bollocks. You can skew a poll to give any result you want, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that something like the Express would claim such a thing, but please don't be so credulous as to believe it. I'm only surprised it was the Express and not the Daily Mail, though they'd more likely have claimed it was 95%... We never needed the police to be armed when the I.R.A were active, and they were a more real and immediate threat to most of us than ISIS.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 6, 2016 2:24:35 GMT -5
Right, I'm going to learn life-lessons from a fictional psychopath who puts under-aged boys in costumes and dangerous situations. I don't think you can apply the term psychopath to someone who clearly has too much respect for life to risk endangering it by carrying a gun. It's a word that I would say is more appropriate to describe someone who would seriously consider keeping such a weapon around in order to end a human life in the highly unlikely event that a situation would arise in which they could halfway justify such an action.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 6, 2016 2:09:02 GMT -5
I like Batman but he is a pussy with guns. No, he isn't; he's just better than that. As I said earlier, it's an attitude genuinely shared by most British police officers, who'll more often than not spend twenty to thirty years on the streets without ever carrying a gun. I find it sad you don't seem to believe that attitude is realistic.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 6, 2016 2:05:04 GMT -5
And how does it actually make your life better? Hypothetical situation. Four armed guys (knives) are about break into your bedroom. Mrs Tin is there too. You have time to reach into your drawer. One has a gun. One has your...voice of reason. What would you reach for? They've just broken into your room and one has pulled down his zip. I know what my guy would do. And what do you think the statistical likelihood is of such a situation ever arising? High enough to justify keeping a lethal weapon in our bedroom? I highly doubt it. And even if it were, a swinging cricket bat or Golf iron would have just as much chance of stopping them, without making me a murderer.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 5, 2016 13:19:04 GMT -5
But why? It's not actually safer, as has been pointed out, quite the reverse. And how does it actually make your life better? Quite so, ting. This is what I was gonna say: it's perceived safety that guns provide, not actual safety, as the statistics prove. The only way to legitimately be safer from firearms is for American to be like the UK, where basically no one has a gun at all. Although, as previously noted, I think the idea of the U.S. ever becoming like the UK in that respect is a pipe dream. Edit: America influences Britain in so many, many ways, but gun control is definitely an area where the U.S. could learn a thing or two from us Brits, I think. Quite agree. I personally feel a lot safer living in a country where even the majority of the police don't need to carry firearms, and don't want to either.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 5, 2016 12:21:58 GMT -5
In practice, nobody really needs to have a gun in their home, as pretty much the entire population of the UK can attest. Maybe that's in the UK, but we feel a bit safer having one around, and we do. Perfectly legal too. It doesn't mean I borrow it when I go to the mall. I go to the local rifle association ever so often. Fully supportive of the NRA too. But why? It's not actually safer, as has been pointed out, quite the reverse. And how does it actually make your life better?
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 5, 2016 10:24:32 GMT -5
Totally agree with what you're saying, ting. I think the abundance of firearms in the hands of ordinary people in America is ridiculous. In practice, nobody really needs to have a gun in their home, as pretty much the entire population of the UK can attest. And as we've seen, the potential for killing ordinary Americans that they represent is hard to justify. However, there's a logistical problem with disarmament in the U.S., as far as I see it, and that is that guns are so ubiquitous and so fundamentally enshrined in what many Americans believe it is to be American, that any legislation designed at bringing U.S. gun ownership in line with the UK, for instance, would just result in driving those firearms underground. I genuinely think that most Americans would baulk at the idea of giving up their firearms, so what you'd end up with is a country awash with illegal guns in the hands of ordinary people, essentially criminalising large parts of the population. I hate to say it, but I don't see how disarmament in the U.S. could ever work. Disagree with the bolded, only because there are a large number of folks in this country to hunt both for sport and for food. It's not for me, but others enjoy it or rely on it to supplement their food supply, and as they aren't exactly handy for carrying around on the street, I personally feel they are an acceptable item. IRT handguns, I do think that, while target shooting at pistol ranges is a legitimate activity, there are too many of those in circulation. However, disarmament is all well and good as long as the biggest effort is made to get the guns out of ALL hands, not just those that the government can find because the gun owners are law-abiding citizens. The city of Chicago, for instance, has some of the strictest gun control measures in the country, but they have a huge amount in homicides because gang members are killing each other. Now, if you take all of the guns away from the folks who legally bought and control them, you create a situation where they are now at risk from those individuals who choose not to follow the laws. Aren't they already at risk from those individuals?
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 5, 2016 3:04:58 GMT -5
I'm really a night person anyway, so vampire every time. Only trouble is, I quite like to drink...wine.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 5, 2016 2:58:08 GMT -5
Don't forget the second amendment, responsible for fifteen thousand violent deaths every year, plus a comparable number of suicides and accidental deaths. ISIS must drool when thinking of such numbers. Yeah, no. I'm not a gun guy (never fired one, never held one, have no interest in owning one), so I'm not here rah-rahing the NRA and the Second Amendment, but this isn't even close to being right. Most of those violent deaths you reference are not the result of the actions of law-abiding citizens who legally own their guns, whose right to own them legally is guaranteed by that amendment, but rather by individuals whose guns are acquired through theft or purchased through illegal means on the blavk market. Getting rid of the Second Amendment will do nothing to stem the tide of criminal acquisitions of firearms and the deaths caused by those who don't follow the laws of the land anyway, so to attribute all or even the majority of those violent deaths to the existence of that amendment is disingenuous. It really isn't. Here in the UK, it is very difficult to legally acquire a gun. As a result of this, there are fewer guns in circulation. Which means that it is also very difficult to llegally acquire a gun. The rate of gun crime here is, unsurprisingly, considerably lower than in the US. In fact, it's been estimated that you are around 30 times less likely to be killed by a gun in the UK than in the US. Isn't that a good enough reason to review the situation?
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 5, 2016 2:48:10 GMT -5
Just saw an email with the subject line "Very simply: How we turn the Senate blue." The most obvious way is to cut off its oxygen, but I'm betting the message has something to do with organizing & voting & all that dull stuff. *sigh* Amusingly enough, Canadian Primer minister Justin Trudeau did turn our senate blue by making all the Liberal senators sit as independents from now on. He doesn't want senators to be beholden to specific political parties. That leaves only Conservative senators. (Yes, I know it's confusing... our Liberals are red and our conservatives are blue. Must be the metric system). Why is that confusing? Ours are, too! Is it different in the US?
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 4, 2016 14:13:15 GMT -5
Also, why did they have to bring back Adam Warlock?
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 4, 2016 13:59:58 GMT -5
I thought bringing Barry and Hal back from the dead was dopey also, but It just keeps the story going along for other readers. Tony Stark was killed in the terrible Crossings Storyline , but they sort of disavowed all knowledge of that story. Whatever works to keep the stories moving forward, I guess. I still think bringing Barry back was a mistake. It was totally unnecessary, it just irritated a generation of readers who were invested in Wally as the Flash, and Barry was always a pretty one dimensional character anyway-the only interesting thing about him was the fact that he'd died! He was, in my opinion, far more valuable to the DCU as a martyr than he ever was as an ongoing character.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 4, 2016 10:42:39 GMT -5
My questions will build off of that (thanks for that explanation!) 1. What Avengers issue (or issue in general) do they find Jean? 2. How was her resurrection received? Generally fans tend to be split on the revival of a character thought to be gone or dead. Jean's cocoon was found in Avengers #263, but we found out what it contained in Fantastic Four #286 both were dated Jan '86). The Avengers initially thought the cocoon was another creation of the Enclave, like Him and Her. As for the reaction...split just about covers it. There were comments from some who were pleased as they thought she should never have been killed off in the first place, and from others who were angry as they thought her resurrection cheapened a classic storyline, but it certainly got people talking, which was probably the point! One thing nobody seemed to be was ambivalent...
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 4, 2016 8:32:53 GMT -5
Just been reading a late 1986 issue of Amazing Spider-Man, guest starring X-Factor. I'm really not an X-Men fan, but, as I understand it, X-Factor brought the original five X-Men together into their own spin-off group - seperate from the regular X-Men. My question is how come the members of X-Factor seem to have regressed. For example, why does Beast look like he did in the Silver Age, instead of being blue and hairy, and why is Jean Grey being referred to as Marvel Girl, rather than Phoenix or Black Queen or whatever she was called after she was resurrected? OK, this is a little complicated, but here goes... The Avengers found a cocoon at the bottom of Jamaica Bay which, when Reed Richards managed to get it open for them, proved to contain Jean Grey, Marvel Girl, who had been in there in stasis for some years (ever since Uncanny X-Men #100). She had no memory of having been Phoenix for the simple reason that Phoenix, we were told, was actually a cosmic entity which had made a deal with the heavily irradiated Jean: save her life, in return for temporarily usurping it. Phoenix was never the real Jean Grey, she just believed she was. Later, we found out Jean still had a connection to the Phoenix force, but that came much later. At this point, as far as she was concerned, she was still Marvel Girl. The Beast is simpler: Hank MCoy was captured by an old enemy who tried to steal his mutant powers but was interrupted halfway through, succeeding only in reverting him to his former appearance. A few years later, the mutant Infectia restored him to his blue, furry form.
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