Looting, cohesion & gun control

[Kagemusha]

If you can land a helicopter near the superdome why your goverment doesnt start land some Chinooks there and start evacuoting people the hell out from the superdome?

[Adrian II]

Thats why I started the hypocrisy thread

Having fun with Katrina, Gawain?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Having fun with Katrina, Gawain?

You cannot have fun with such a disaster.

[Petrus]

From Reuters:

"These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said on Thursday night of one group of 300 National Guard troops being deployed here after recent duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

I know 50.000 troops on hte ground could have made a huge difference, as it probably did in Turkey even though nearly all of them were employed in rescue and logistics operations there and practically none in policing, let alone 'combat'.

I do not think it is possible to estimate the situation with the elements we possess, at least concerning violence.

The images and reports are catastrophic but it does not appear someone knows what's happening.

So are street warfare, rapes, free shooting really happening in the New Orleans now?

And if it is the case, at which scale?

Those elements remain to be verified before any statement can be made in my opinion.

What can be noted is the total disorganization and the absolute lack of reaction of the authorities in charge.

Thats is what i think to be the most 'strange', i can think of no other words : how can they, after several days of absolute mess and lack of initiative, take the decision to send the army into a devastated city, while making understand the soldiers are there to make war 'if necessary'?

This is a real gap of culture concerning fire arms and the use of violence in my opinion, what can they hope of this type of decision?

Is there really in the US a kind of general idea that big guns with men ready to use them is the ultimate solution, or something like that?

Is it possible that US citizen will accept that the only concrete decision taken by their representants can be to use violence against persons that do not have anything to drink and that have been living a hell since several days?

The term is not appropriate but isn't it a glorification of violence and weapons to mask the inability to react in a positive manner?

[Adrian II]

Your choice of words to make a point was taking the governor's statement out of context. However if you chose to believe I am just nit-picking - that is fine but ask yourself this question.

'more than willing to kill if necessary'

or did she state

These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

OK, I finally found the quote I saw this morning but couldn't retrieve afterwards. It is from CNN:

On Thursday she [Blanco] warned lawbreakers that extra troops had arrived in the city -- with more on the way. "These are some of the 40,000 extra troops that I have demanded," Blanco said. "They have M-16s, and they're locked and loaded ... I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will."

So much for my 'spin'. Everybody happy now?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Is it possible that US citizen will accept that the only concrete decision taken by their representants can be to use violence against persons that do not have anything to drink and that have been living a hell since several days?

Thats not what thier talking about and you know it. Robbing jewlery stores and clothing stores doesnt keep you alive or is it needed to do so. No one is advocating harming people for the reasons you stated.

Thats is what i think to be the most 'strange', i can think of no other words : how can they, after several days of absolute mess and lack of initiative, take the decision to send the army into a devastated city, while making understand the soldiers are there to make war 'if necessary'?

If they could have sent them in sooner things wouldnt be as bad as the are now. I heard a guy from the 82nd airborn on the radio just back from Iraq the otherday saying he wished they would send him down there as he knew how to treat looters. These are criminals not some poor person trying to survive.

[Adrian II]

If they could have sent them in sooner things wouldnt be as bad as the are now. I heard a guy from the 82nd airborn on the radio just back from Iraq the otherday saying he wished they would send him down there as he knew how to treat looters. These are criminals not some poor person trying to survive.

One person's deserving poor is another person's looter. I have a better idea. Why don't you have those Chinook helicopters dump guns and ammo from Army stocks all over New Orleans so everybody can defend themselves against everybody else?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

One person's deserving poor is another person's looter

Aperson stealing food or drink to survive is one thing. A peron stealing 50 pairs of Nike sneakers is just a plain criminal.

[Adrian II]

Well, this is it. After the images of cops joining looters in NO, FEMA's boss is now blaming the victims for their own misery. Full circle. I'm signing off for the weekend on the sad note that this situation looks, sounds and (judging by some reports) smells like a Third World country in disintegration. I hope that the next days and weeks will prove me wrong.

[Petrus]

Robbing jewlery stores and clothing stores doesnt keep you alive or is it needed to do so.

Robing an innocuped clothing store does not kill anyone, either, and i think american citizen are dying in the New Orleans now, so what is necessary, taking decisions to save lifes or take decisions to protect clothing property?

If they could have sent them in sooner things wouldnt be as bad as the are now. I heard a guy from the 82nd airborn on the radio just back from Iraq the otherday saying he wished they would send him down there as he knew how to treat looters. These are criminals not some poor person trying to survive.

I have no doubt that might a military deployment have occured sooner, cloth shops would have been better protected but i thought this situation mainly concerned citizen's life - do you have some sort of special feeling with clothing?

My questions in the previous post are serious, your are wrong to treat them as a debate, they reflect impressions i have and things i would like to understand, i am not trying to play the game of who has the biggest dick, you know.

If you can be honnest and can answer a question without looking for bolchevist statement, don't you think it would be better to have, instead of wild supermaket looting, an organized distribution of supermaket goods under the protection of the authorities?

[Aenlic]

Why don't you have those Chinook helicopters dump guns and ammo from Army stocks all over New Orleans so everybody can defend themselves against everybody else?

Only if they dump Charleton Heston out of a Chinook as well. Just because he's an ass and I want to see how many people he can take out before they take the rifle from his cold dead hands.

But the problem isn't guns. The violence would be occurring without the guns. Less violence, probably; but the reasons for the violence aren't the guns. The guns are just a tool for the use of the violent. They're a symptom, not the disease itself. The problem is a complete and total lack of authority in the situation, for people who are used to authority. The people at the Convention Center were left to sit for 4 days before anyone even bothered to drop by and tell them that help was on the way. No one in charge to tell people what to do and when to do it. When a society which thrives on someone being in charge suddenly finds itself lacking direction, the society breaks down.

My solution, of course, would be to create a society in which people are educated to think for themselves and rule themselves and organize themselves. But that isn't going to happen in my lifetime, if ever. So, when the children are left without a parental figure to say "No!" then some of them will take advantage and they will go wild. What happened in New Orleans can happen in any city in the world. It's a feature of our apparent need to be ruled, brought on by millenia of unnecessary rule.

[Petrus]

Well, this is it. After the images of cops joining looters in NO, FEMA's boss is now blaming the victims for their own misery. Full circle. I'm signing off for the weekend on the sad note that this situation looks, sounds and (judging by some reports) smells like a Third World country in disintegration. I hope that the next days and weeks will prove me wrong.

Yes, it is really ugly it makes think to Bangladesh or Haiti - despairing.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

I have no doubt that might a military deployment have occured sooner, cloth shops would have been better protected but i thought this situation mainly concerned citizen's life - do you have some sort of special feeling with clothing?

Oh cpme on thats not what I was reffering to and you know it. How about the snipers firing at hospital workers? How about the women being raped?

If you can be honnest and can answer a question without looking for bolchevist statement, don't you think it would be better to have, instead of wild supermaket looting, an organized distribution of supermaket goods under the protection of the authorities?

So they should have sent in the military to occupy all the grocery stores?

[Devastatin Dave]

If the Administration, Federal or Local, had deployed troops immediatly, the same people bitching right now about the lack of the military would be bitching about the "military occupation". Some people can only sit on the sidelines and bitch. Yawn....

Freaking hypocrites, I only hope that in between of pointing fingers and blaming whomever they hate, they are sending a check, clothes, or water,etc at some point.

[Petrus]

Oh cpme on thats not what I was reffering to and you know it. How about the snipers firing at hospital workers? How about the women being raped?

I do not know what's the level of violence in the city now but i know that a huge mass of your own citizen are let to themselves and have basic needs that cannot be satisfied.

So they should have sent in the military to occupy all the grocery stores?

The best would have been to send food and watter and to organize it's distribution but if it is impossible then yes i think it is the police role to assume the security of the citizen to access what they need and it is the legal authorities role to allow access to those goods.

What else can it be?

[Tricon]

Oh man, is this ugly.

It'll be interesting to see how hollywood reacts to this.

[Devastatin Dave]

BTW, Bush is down there, where the heck is the city's Mayor? Shouldn't he be there? I haven't seen one bit of criticism for the local government.

[Tricon]

BTW, Bush is down there, where the heck is the city's Mayor? Shouldn't he be there? I haven't seen one bit of criticism for the local government.

Oh, there is plenty. At least on the radio. In the end, probably everybody will have been accused of one failing or another.
I'll be interesting to see who- if anybody- will be held responsible though.

[yesdachi]

We had a major flood risk in 1995. It was considered serious enough to justify mass evacuation. In a couple days 250,000 people, 300,000 cattle, a million pigs and millions of poultry birds were moved from an area bounded by the Lower Rhine, the Waal and the Maas. As it turned out, the flood didn't happen. In the (deserted) evacuation areas only some police patrolled, no army. There was no looting, no shooting.

But then, we are really a midget country compared to the United States. Everything is ten times bigger there, and not just fridges...

Interesting, that is a lot of livestock to evac!

The 2 issues I am struggling with about your comments…

1 there was no disaster. People act different in tense situations, and you also mention having a couple of days.

2 there is definitely a different culture, way of life, mood of the people, whatever you want to call it between people in NO and the Netherlands. It has been my experience that there is a lot of crime and unhappy people in NO, combined with the total lack of leadership in the area I’m not surprised the situation has turned into a soup sandwich. Anyway, my point is that the people make a difference. Many of the people in NO could barley handle their daily lives, throw a disaster at them and *poof* they are acting like cavemen except with guns vs. clubs.

There’s still no excuse and I have no sympathy for malicious looters.

Anyway, there are similarities but not enough to make a fair comparison.

[PanzerJaeger]

After I read how Bush should be imprisoned and the US is a horrible country I ignored the rest of this thread. Real classy guys.

To Adrian's first point.

Those people in New Orleans do not have those guns legally. You cannot make a gun control argument based on a situation where laws are not enforced.

It would be like me saying "Well all buildings should have batter-resistent windows because all of society might break down during a natural disaster, and that will prevent looting".

To me, that is the basic flaw of your assertion that we need better gun control. There is no control, but this is an anomoly. You cannot legislate on the assumption that there may at some time in the future be no control, so we should disarm the populace so they can only beat eachother with sticks.

Id like to say again that this whole thread is disgusting. The left has wasted no time in trying to score cheap political points off of this human tradgedy. Shame on you.

[Ser Clegane]

Those people in New Orleans do not have those guns legally.

How do you know?

[Del Arroyo]

Lets put it this way - the city is somewhere close to 75% black when I last saw a racial makeup statistic.

It has a major history of corruption in the city law enforcement and even in its administration.

There is still a lot of racial tension between the whites and the blacks. From my experience its done at all levels of the society - not only the rich but the poor.

And coupled with the emotions of likely feeling abandoned by their government (and I do mean all three levels of government - city, state, and federal) which I would have to agree with them - some would have a tendency to go to an extreme in a crisis situation like they are facing.

Honestly, I think we're going on all over all different sides of the issue and missing one critical factor in the current chaos-- New Orleans is full of black people. And not your up-and-coming, move-out-to-the-suburbs, comb-your-hair-nice black people. We're talking hard-core, ghetto-style, kept-down-by-the-man black people.

The upside is great music and local "flavor"-- right now we're witnessing the downside.

Not that they're all violent trouble-makers-- far from it-- but it only takes a few, and anyone thinking logically about New Orleans would have realized there would be more than enough.

And no, you'd have to be stupid to think that this kind of behavior is characteristic of mainstream America. This is simply the price we all (and a number of other nations in the hemisphere) pay for past slavery and segregation.

Interestingly, the current situation actually does make a pretty good argument for gun control-- if you think it's full-time criminals who are doing the bulk of the current looting and raping, you're deluded. It's people who before the disaster were ordinary, employed, peaceful citizens. Poor maybe, occasional thiefs maybe, but not career criminals.

Gun control DOES work to the extent that it limits guns only to the most determined, professional criminals. Houligan rabble in Britain don't bring guns to the party.

And as far as shooting to kill the looters, I say shoot away. After only three days you're not hungry enough to NEED to steal. And if you're doing it armed, you're asking to be shot regardless.

I doubt the National Guard will be taking too many shots at hapless mothers trying to scrounge a morsel for their suckling babes. I would wager such women are probably more concerned right now with finding a good place to hide.

DA

[Devastatin Dave]

New Orleans is full of black people. And not your up-and-coming, move-out-to-the-suburbs, comb-your-hair-nice black people. We're talking hard-core, ghetto-style, kept-down-by-the-man black people.

DA

Now its a race thing!?!?!? Are you saying that because someone has a darker pigment in their skin they are somehow genetically engineered to be criminals? That is about as an irresponsible response as saying that this all Bush's fault, or its all the liberals fault, or this is God punishing the United States for her policies, blah, blah, blah, unbelievable...

[Goofball]

Those people in New Orleans do not have those guns legally. You cannot make a gun control argument based on a situation where laws are not enforced.

No, they don't have them legally. They looted them from stores like Walmart who had hundreds of guns on their shelves legally.

Do the math about how that relates back to gun control.

[Proletariat]

Updated: 7:20 p.m. ET Aug. 18, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Last year, university researchers conducted an experiment in which police fired 700 blank rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood in a single afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire.

New Orleans residents are reluctant to come forward as witnesses, fearing retaliation. And experts say that is one of several reasons homicides are on the rise in the Big Easy at a time when other cities are seeing their murder rates plummet to levels not seen in decades.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8999837/

There isn't a more volatile place for this to have occured in the US.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Gun control DOES work to the extent that it limits guns only to the most determined, professional criminals. Houligan rabble in Britain don't bring guns to the party.

And it completely eliminates citizen's ability to defend themselves. Considering that, in a one on one, unarmed fight with a criminal, the criminal, due to size and strength, will nearly always win. In a situation like this, you're leaving the poor people defenseless against the looters and criminals.

And gun control doesn't even limit guns to the 'most hardened' criminals. Consider Jamaica, were it's illegal, on penalty of life imprisonment, to illegally own a firearm, and the only people who don't own an illegal gun are those who don't want one. A rudimentary firearm is very easy to construct. The only reason more crooks in Britain don't have them is they haven't put forth the effort to get or make them, perhaps because they don't need them because the populace is disarmed, so a knife will do.

Crazed Rabbit

[Gawain of Orkeny]

New Orleans residents are reluctant to come forward as witnesses, fearing retaliation. And experts say that is one of several reasons homicides are on the rise in the Big Easy at a time when other cities are seeing their murder rates plummet to levels not seen in decades.

OK when is Pat Robertson going to come forward and claim "Its the hand of the lord punishing these sinners" Thank god it was mostly bad people that died.

[Proletariat]

OK when is Pat Robertson going to come forward and claim "Its the hand of the lord punishing these sinners" Thank god it was mostly bad people that died.

That is sure as hell not why I brought that article up.

[Goofball]

OK when is Pat Robertson going to come forward and claim "Its the hand of the lord punishing these sinners" Thank god it was mostly bad people that died.

It's funny you mentioned that. I've been expecting either Robertson or Falwell to come out with some sort of ridiculous "flooding from God to smite the sinners" proclamation for some time now.

I guess even those two idiots realize that saying something like that right now might incite a backlash among the faithful that could cost them money, and God for-fricking-bid that should ever happen.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

That is sure as hell not why I brought that article up.

And sure as hell realized that I just figured I would beat them to the punch.