Dear Fat People...

[Clint]

For someone that believes obesity isn't caused by the consumption of fatty fast foods, I dont understand why you'd be against this...

Eating too much fatty foods without burning off the energy you're taking in is a cause of obesity, but there is no singular cause. I went over that many times. I guess everybody is just ****ing stupid?

I'm against this because people who don't get paid what they're worth are paying close to 70% of their annual income in taxes already, and what you're proposing is a tax on top of a tax. It doesn't make sense.

[01habbo]

I don't think a tax will encourage people to eat healthier the goverment put a minium (sp?) price on alcohol here and that has done nothing. Those who are obese because of the wrong diet is mostly caused by a food addiction, a tax wont stop that.

[Rowan]

I didnt really explain myself properly. An extra 5c tax on every item of fast food can amount to over 60 million (even more because of the industry in this scenario) of revenue per year that could be put toward much needed things like medical and healthcare. You can complain about tax but you cant complain about a few cents when its completely optional to purchase fast foods in the first place. The tax is more about gaining revenue than it is for encouraging people to make healthier choices. Hell, the fact you can die from a thousand different ailments from being fat you would think be encouragement enough?

@clinty

I never claimed there was a single source of obesity, but its been studied and without doubt the number 1 cause of obesity in america is over consumption of food, in particular saturated fats found in fast foods.

[Clint]

Instead of taxing for stupid shit, people could always just take responsibility for themselves, and pay for their own medical expenses. Nobody's business to begin with. Also what does it matter to you what the number one cause of obesity in America is? You aren't American, so it's not your business.

[Rowan]

Instead of taxing for stupid shit, people could always just take responsibility for themselves, and pay for their own medical expenses. Nobody's business to begin with. Also what does it matter to you what the number one cause of obesity in America is? You aren't American, so it's not your business.

Then its also not my buisiness to have an opinion about your second ammendment, which I think can go to hell.

But people should take responsiblity for themselves, 100% agree with that. But at the same time, its not fair if someone needs life saving surgery but they cant afford bceause your health care system is probably one of the worst in the world. I use to hate the fact that I was paying taxes for people to recieve medical care who did not contribute/work , but sometimes people get dealt shit cards in life and they need help, im glad that we have the means to provide it and noone has to worry if they get attacked and need to pay tens of thousands of dollars on medical bills, which is likely in such a dangerous country where every is slinging guns. Yep lets see... yep thats 17 minutes, someone has been shot and killed in the USA.

[Clint]

Since you're going on about the second amendment, let me just say, the banning of firearms hasn't worked out very well for Australia. Armed robberies are up 69%, assaults with firearms are up 28%, and gun homicides are up 19%. With those kinds of statistics, I'd rather be armed than dead.

Also, socialized healthcare is stupid. I pay for my own health care. Or rather, I choose not to have health care because I don't need it. People who need surgery based on poor life choices such as overeating, can pay for it themselves. They are grown ass adults who are responsible for their own actions and decisions. If they can't afford their procedures, they can figure something else out. And you're right, sometimes people do get handed shit cards in life, but you could always compost that shit and grow a beautiful garden from it. Bad luck doesn't exist, just people who've given up.

[Rowan]

Since you're going on about the second amendment, let me just say, the banning of firearms hasn't worked out very well for Australia. Armed robberies are up 69%, assaults with firearms are up 28%, and gun homicides are up 19%.

Those statistics are utter bullshit. Since the inception of restrictions on guns (contrary to belief, they are not banned) Overall levels of homicide and suicide have been in decline for several decades, while the proportion of these crimes that involved firearms has consistently declined since the early 1980s. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of firearm-related deaths in Australia declined 47%. According to a 2011 report from the Australian government, "...the number of victims of homicide has been in decline since 1996". There were 354 victims in 1996, but only 260 victims in 2010, a decrease of 27 percent. Also, "The proportion of homicide victims killed by offenders using firearms in 2009–10 represented a decrease of 18 percentage points from the peak of 31 percent in 1995–96 (the year in which the Port Arthur massacre occurred with the death of 35 people, which subsequently led to the introduction of stringent firearms legislation)."

Firearm suicides have fallen from about 22% of all suicides in 1992 to 7% of all suicides in 2005.

The number of guns stolen has fallen from an average 4,195 per year from 1994 to 2000 to 1,526 in 2006–2007. Long guns are more often stolen opportunistically in home burglaries, but few homes have handguns and a substantial proportion of stolen handguns are taken from security firms and other businesses; only a tiny proportion, 0.06% of licensed firearms, are stolen in a given year. Only a small proportion of those firearms are recovered. Approximately 3% of these stolen weapons are later connected to an actual crime or found in the possession of a person charged with a serious offence.


We have also never had a massacre since the inception of stricter gun laws after the port arthur massacre in 1996. The usa has had over 250 massacres this year alone.

[Clint]

That's exactly what your government wants you to believe. The fact is that your country spent a lot of money changing the law in order to disarm the people, yet crime hasn't seen any significant decrease. That's not even mentioning that a gun ban is in essence tyrannical. Disarming a populace is the denial of a human right to self-preservation.

If the statistics that I looked at are wrong, and there hasn't been that much of an increase in crime, that doesn't change the fact that what your country did is tyranny, and now you have no way of combating that, because you are disarmed. If you are ever in danger and in need of a firearm, you're ****ed. If an armed intruder breaks into your house in the middle of the night with an assault rifle, you have no way of protecting your family other than hiding or trying to combat the guy at close quarters, whereas if you had a gun, you could just take cover and shoot the mother****er. That is why the right to bear arms is so important, and it is absolutely ridiculous that anybody would ever support a firearms ban.

Your country got lucky that it hasn't had another mass shooting. A ban on firearms has nothing to do with that, however, because a ban on firearms doesn't stop criminals from having firearms. Criminals don't care about the law. The fact of the matter is that by allowing your government to disarm you, you've submitted yourself to slavery. They can do whatever they want, and you guys can't stop them.

[Heartless Angel]

Our crime rate has also been in decline over the past several decades. So has pretty much every first world country's. Everything I've researched shows that the decline following your gun laws wasn't significantly different from the rate of decline before.

The UK saw a temporary increase in violent crimes before returning to their previous rate of decline.

The evidence doesn't reflect strongly on the success of gun control. Also consider, Australia and the UK do NOT share a border with a leading supplier of illegal drugs and firearms.

[Rowan]

Usa = 250 gun massacres this year.
Aus = 0 since 1996

nothing more really needs to be said. The fact that you think you need a gun to protect yourself is a problem in of itself.

This is now a dear gun people thread.

[Clint]

Guns aren't the problem. Poverty is a strong contributor to crime. There's about 2.2 million people below the poverty line in Australia, as opposed to the United States, which has 50 million people below the poverty line. So of course there would be more crime in America. Criminals need weapons. Even if guns were illegal, they'd still have guns. You can't blame an inanimate object for the acts of criminals. That's just nonsensical.

[Rowan]

Well yeah thats true, a person should always be held accountable. I think the fundemental point for me is that I dont see how owning a gun could help you in any situation, ive only recognized the grief caused by them, havn't seen anything positive.

[Pete]

To be fair, if you remove Detroit, Chicago, DC and New Orleans from the map, the US would actually have the fourth lowest rates for gun violence in the world. Just throwing that out there.

Also, there's a difference between gun crime and gun violence, and also that gun related suicides are lumped into the category of gun violence and not their own category.

Not to derail this thread anymore

[Rowan]

Not to derail this thread anymore

[Heartless Angel]

Mass shooting account for less than 1% of our homicides. Even if gun control laws removed 100% of them it wouldn't have made a statistically significant difference. Our police kill more people than our mass shooters.

[Rowan]

Mass shooting account for less than 1% of our homicides. Even if gun control laws removed 100% of them it wouldn't have made a statistically significant difference. Our police kill more people than our mass shooters.

While that may be true, its hardly relevant. Just because the 250 gun massacres this year only amount to 1% of the USA's homocide, it doesn't make it any less of any issue. I also happen to think trivilaizing this way is a little harmful considering that majority of these homocides occured using weapons that were bought legally, as opposed to being stolen and that each life should matter to some degree. I have read that a person is killed by a gun in the USA every 17 minutes, which equates to 87 people being killed within 24 hours on an average day, majority of which are from handguns.
source

If this is true, than I do not believe police could rival this statistic, even still, the people police are shooting dead are most likely not inoccent people and are just defending themselves in the line of duty? Im assuming a little bit here, but I just find it hard to see how police can kill more inoccents than a maniac with an assault rifle at a primary/high school.

[Heartless Angel]

More than overall gun deaths, no. More than mass shootings, absolutely. Did you also read that 2/3 of the firearm deaths in the US are suicides? And that people are killed in the US by cars more frequently by guns? I'm not trivializing it, it's just that it's actually trivial. Over 150,000 people die each day. 87 is so insignificant, changing their fates wouldn't even make a noticeable impact on the world.

[Rowan]

More than overall gun deaths, no. More than mass shootings, absolutely. Did you also read that 2/3 of the firearm deaths in the US are suicides? And that people are killed in the US by cars more frequently by guns? I'm not trivializing it, it's just that it's actually trivial. Over 150,000 people die each day. 87 is so insignificant, changing their fates wouldn't even make a noticeable impact on the world.

Perhaps it doesn't represent as large a statistic as I thought or proposed, but certainly in comparison to other nations around the world (with varying populations i'll admit), but a death that is preventable should never be considered insignificant. Its not even a case of highlighting the 'rare occasion someone shoots up somewhere'. Its a constant issue in the USA and there needs to be an appropriate response.

I wonder why some people defend the right to own guns so much though? It almost seems like a patriotic thing, hence the frequent references to the 2nd ammendment. Not that theres anything wrong with being patriotic... I saw the movie the patriot and that shit moved me, despite the cheese.

Also pete said

if you remove Detroit, Chicago, DC and New Orleans from the map, the US would actually have the fourth lowest rates for gun violence in the world.

That's interesting. Why is that?

[Heartless Angel]

No death is preventable, only delayable. A variation of a few decades in the duration of a life is not significant on the scale of nations, and as such can't reasonably be the basis for a change to policy.

It's a constant issue only because we have an enormous sample size. 320 million people with 24 hours every day to find something stupid to do, the odds are about 100% that someone is going to do something stupid. The only appropriate response is to stop focusing so much on the 87 who died, and more on the 320 million that didn't, and the more than 10,000 that were born to replace them. Not only are gun homicide deaths insignificant compared to life, it isn't even significant compared to death. Nearly 7000 people die in the US each day. That means guns, killing about 90 only barely account for more than a percent... but again, only if you fail to remember the fact that 2/3 of them were suicides. With that figured in, gun homicides account for less than half of a percent. a variation of .5% isn't even distinguishable from sampling error in a population of 320 million. It really can't be any less significant.

Seriously, think about cars. Car companies make sales on the basis of promising safety. Safety is a key selling point. Safety is a part of their advertisement campaign. They're praised for innovations in safety. They're still killing more Americans than guns, total. And again, 2/3 of those gun deaths are suicides. Presumably 2/3 of fatal car accidents were not intentional on the part of the deceased. 2/3 of gun death victims died intentionally. They give companies who make it one of their primary objectives to prevent needless deaths ****ing awards for safety, when cars are killing more people than weapons designed and optimized over the course of almost 7 centuries solely for the purpose of killing things.

I can't speak for others, but I can explain why I defend MY right. Estimates put the number of guns in the US pretty close to 350 million. About 30000 people are killed by guns in a year. 2/3 of them are suicides, so 10000 murdered by guns each year. If I'm extremely optimistic and assume I'm going to live for another 60 years, taking my gun away would save about .0017 people from homicide, or about .14kg of living cells given the average human weight of 80.7. I eat more than 1kg of meat in the average day. Over the course of my entire life, giving up my gun wouldn't even save the equivalent of one of my hamburgers. So, the question then becomes, would I give up the right to have a small chance of being able to defend myself in the unlikely event my home was ever broken into, all the trips I'll ever make to a shooting range, all the hunting trips I'll ever go on, and all the resulting deer jerky for a small hamburger? No. I wouldn't. .0017 people are no more meaningful to me than a burger, and certainly isn't even worth briefly considering giving up any of my rights.

Those 4 cities? Probably has a lot to do with the fact that they're overrun by unemployed welfare dependents and have been run by democrats for the better part of a century. Those cities are all gang infested shitholes. Gangs account for the vast majority of gun homicides in all 4 of those cities. And if you just removed that, we'd be beating most of the planet. If THAT doesn't demonstrate that what we have is much more a culture problem than a gun problem, nothing will.

[Pete]

Those 4 cities? Probably has a lot to do with the fact that they're overrun by unemployed welfare dependents and have been run by democrats for the better part of a century. Those cities are all gang infested shitholes. Gangs account for the vast majority of gun homicides in all 4 of those cities. And if you just removed that, we'd be beating most of the planet. If THAT doesn't demonstrate that what we have is much more a culture problem than a gun problem, nothing will.

Pretty much exactly this. Not to mention, I guarantee that obesity rates are equally abnormally high in these areas. It's an unfortunate cycle but it exists. Could you blame systematic racism as the impetus? I guess but that's a lazy reach.

A lack of education, no matter the reason will always lead to poor choices.
A lack of education also prevents the ability to have better economic opportunities.
When you tell your kids collectively that their only options in life to escape poverty are to become sports stars or rappers, you're immediately putting them at a huge disadvantage. Very few make it to the top.
A lack of education leads to less economic opportunities, and combined with the typical sense of entitlement that we as Americans seem to have, minimum wage jobs are seen as beneath us. For whatever reason, no job is better than a shitty job in their minds.
Combine that with a lack of income, and you can't do much socially. Sex is free, but condoms or the pill cost money, so lots of babies.
A salad is expensive, but you can eat a few thousand calories for a few dollars with the dollar menu.
More babies thrown into the same environment, where education isn't emphasized, and after a while, crime seems to be the best option. Guns aren't hard to get illegally, and you're poor, dumb and angry.

Truth be told, we did this to ourselves. Not with racism, but with corporate greed. I guarantee that if you brought back manufacturing jobs and paid a fair living wage, you could easily reduce poverty. Teach people how to work and give them incentives and rewards for hard work well done.

[Rowan]

I guess I finally see your points.

So why do I feel so empty?

[Heartless Angel]

Because within every cynic lies a defeated idealist.

[Rowan]

Well my view on the impact of guns in the USA has been changed, astonishingly.

Now that you can all see I am open to reason, try and convince me that obesity is not self incflicted again?

[Pete]

Now that you can all see I am open to reason, try and convince me that obesity is not self incflicted again?

But it is, just like drinking, smoking and using drugs. Sure it's not the same self harm that we think of, with cutting and whatnot, but it's harmful for the adverse effects.

[Rowan]

But it is, just like drinking, smoking and using drugs. Sure it's not the same self harm that we think of, with cutting and whatnot, but it's harmful for the adverse effects.

Like the adverse effects of not using propane to cook with. You wanna taste the meat, not the heat, right?

[Heartless Angel]

[Clint]

Now that you can all see I am open to reason, try and convince me that obesity is not self incflicted again?

It's not always self-inflicted. For example, Bardet–Biedl syndrome is a genetic disorder of the cells which can cause obesity, among other things. Prader-Willi syndrome can cause loss of function of certain genes within chromosomes and can cause obesity. It can't be self-inflicted if you're born with it.