Not me, everybody who isn't American. Even the arch-Conservative Atilla the Hen (Margaret Thatcher) didn't attempt to dismantle the British NHS - the other Poms would have lynched her if she had. Stephen Hawking is on record as having said that if he was American, he'd be long dead by now. The NHS saved his life, multiple times.
That's Attila the Hun. Since you admit that you don't know what's best for Americans and you live 3/4s of the way around the world, how are you qualified to opine on our politics and system, or England's for that matter? I'd never presume to think I could speak with any authority about what goes on in Australia.
Also, considering that Australia has about 24 million people in a land area similar to that of the US, which has about 323 million people, what works in one place isn't going to work in the other.
This post was edited by Stu Spelling Bee at December 21, 2017 8:56 PM MST
No, Atilla the Hen - a disparaging nickname bestowed on Baroness Thatcher by a Fleet Street wit. I'm not qualified to comment on the British (not English - Scotland, Wales and Ulster count) system from personal experience, but anyone can quote others who ARE qualified - Hawking is a Brit. The proof of the pudding is in the eating - simple math is enough to demonstrate that a system which allows untrained civilians to wander at large armed to the teeth doesn't work ANYwhere. Las Vegas. Sandy Hook. Columbine.
It's not about the system, it's about market, supply, and demand - simple economics. In a community like the US, which has nearly 14 times more people than Australia, there will naturally be more conflict, crime, and violence. Those bent on breaking the law and getting firearms don't care about the law and they can and will get them, on the black market if necessary. No law can stop them, and you're just naive if you don't realize that. It's not that different from making marijuana illegal - there's a strong demand which creates a black market.
This post was edited by Stu Spelling Bee at December 22, 2017 11:33 AM MST
Black market weapons are expensive. Extremely so. Almost all perpetrators of mass gun murders aren't organized crminals, they're random nutters who find it far too easy to obtain high powered weapons. Adam Lanza didn't even own a gun, he stole his mother's - what reason could she possibly have had to possess assault rifles that in all probability she'd barely be able to lift, never mind aim properly? Had sensible gun controls been in place, Sandy Hook would NOT have happened.
Your ignorance is staggering. "Assault rifle" is accurately defined as a semi-auto rifle that looks really, really scary to people who are ignorant. I could easily lift, and accurately aim, a weapon that weighs less than 10 pounds.
.223 is neither a large bore nor is its recoil bad. Perhaps you could not handle it, but it's no problem for me.
This post was edited by Bozette at December 23, 2017 6:59 PM MST
I owned a .22 hunting rifle. Took quite a lot of practice to get the aim right, particularly at long range. Had to allow for wind, drop (fairly low muzzle velocity) and had just enough kick to throw my aim off until I learned to correct for it. Not an "assault" weapon by any stretch of the imagination and no automatic or semiautomatic function at all. Handed it in when laws tightened, registration fees skyrocketed and I no longer hunted often enough to justify the expense. Calicivirus cut down the availability of rabbits (my usual game), too.
Again, "assault rifle" = really, really scary looking. Semi-auto simply means one shot per trigger pull. You assumed it to be a large-bore rifle, it was not. And again, I have no problem handling such a weapon...one that you claimed "in all probability she'd barely be able to lift, never mind aim properly".
Black market prices for anything are expensive. That's basically the definition of a black market. It exists because of the strong demand for an illegal good or service - prostitution, guns, recreational drugs, etc. Black markets exist and work because buyers are always willing to pay the higher price caused by limited supply.
It's very easy to sit back and say that if A were true, then B wouldn't have happened. Hindsight is always a perfect 20/20. However, in a nation as vast as Australia with only 24 million people, there aren't the same realities as there are in one with 323 million living much closer together and with more large urban centers. Sydney, with only four million, is your largest city and is dwarfed by at least five or six US ones.
Have you ever studied economics and learned about the laws of supply and demand, that markets, legal or illegal, will ALWAYS exist to raise supply to meet demand? No law or other action by any government can counteract that economic reality, and it takes either a lack of knowledge about basic economics and/or a high level of childlike naivete to believe that it can.
It's unwise at best and intellectually dishonest at worst for you sit there in your relatively tiny country and prescribe what's best for a much larger, more urbanized, more ethnically and racially diverse, more complex, more highly developed, and more sophisticated nation that you've probably never visited and certainly never lived in.
You really are a rather naive individual, aren't you?
If you spend a considerable amount of money and effort to obtain an illegal good or service, it behooves you to conceal its existence, right? You certainly wouldn't leave it in plain sight, accessible by anyone. The vast majority of crazed individuals (or disgruntled teenagers) who perpetrate these kinds of atrocities generally lack the resources, network of contacts and as often as not the intelligence to access the market. The vendors don't advertise, for obvious reasons. The weapons used in the multitude of US massacres were purchased openly, legal as breathing and quite cheap. Couldn't happen anywhere else - like Britain, 60 million people squeezed into an area the size of California and every bit as "urbanized, complex, developed and sophisticated" as the US or more so. They have sensible gun controls and socialized health care, too.
They were purchased legally because there weren't laws that would have done nothing other than create a black market. Remember Prohibition? That's all that law did.
And socialized medicine? How high are people's taxes to support that? And how high would they need to be to support that and the level of military technology and preparedness that US allies such as Britain expect so that they don't have to finance it?
Apparently, you've never learned that government cannot solve all of society's problems. Maybe you've studied neither government nor economics.
Sitting there in your relatively tiny, simple country, you should've quit while you were ahead. You just showed that you're even more naive than I already thought, if that's even possible.
This post was edited by Stu Spelling Bee at December 23, 2017 7:18 PM MST
Good! I never agreed with it to begin with. Forcing someone to buy an overpriced service that they can't afford smells bad to me. If you don't buy it we will fine you, this is too close to dictating our lives for my comfort. Most could only afford the lowest tiers, and they provided crappy coverage. Hopefully, this will pave the way for something better to take its place. I'm blessed to have insurance through work and never had to depend on this communistic mandate.
People will no longer be penalized for not having insurance, and that is a good thing. Fining people for not being able to afford insurance in the first place is just wrong.
Not only that the coverages got way worse. Obama care really ducked things up to unrepairable levels and only helped a very select few at the very very bottom.
Yes, the 'help' people got for the premiums only lasted a few years and the increase was horrific. Several insurance companies pulled leaving some people with no choices at all. It was a fluster cuck from the beginning.
That is so true. It caused a lot of hardships, especially for small business owners who had to foot the bill for their own insurance. I remember a lot of companies made their employees part-timers so they didn't have to pay the un-Godly amount of insuring them. My favorite part of it was, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." Yeah, how did THAT play out?
It really screwed people who already had coverage, needlessly grew government, wasted a massive amount of money and resources, and was a gift for the insurance companies.
Slartibartfast 