Why 60 - Olympics?

[Buzzer]

Like the bumper sticker says: "If guns are outlawed, only criminals will have then"...
To have or have not is a real Catch 22, eh?

Viva Annika

[dangerbob]

[dangerbob]

Originally Posted by gxer

Will this situation be worse or better in 7 years?
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Faced with an increasingly well-armed enemy, Rio's police are also investing heavily in military equipment. They now have a bulletproof helicopter, while local journalists wear bulletproof vests when working in the slums. Each year, Rio's police kill around 1,000 people "resisting arrest". Nearly 90 officers have been killed this year.


Twelve dead and helicopter downed as Rio de Janeiro drug gangs go to war | World news | The Observer

I fully expect Rio to be able to give the necessary security guarantees to be able to hold the Olympics.

Anyway - I never expected this thread to develop into a discussion on gun control!

The argument that gun control doesn't stop the criminals getting guns is not the point. In Britain - we have really strict gun laws. It is simply illegal to have a hand gun. This came about as a result of the Dunblane massacre in 1996.

There's a complete contrast in the reaction to the school massacre in Britan and the USA. In the UK - it was "never again" and we banned guns. Touch wood - we haven't had another Dunblane since althgough a plot to blow up a school was foiled. We also still have a problem with knives - but the random shooting can inflict so much more at a distance. In the US - the gun lobby is so powerful and the right to have a firearm is so entrenched - they have gone the way of lockdown drills at schools and I don't know what they think when these massacres happen.

It's not the genuine criminals - it's the perfectly normal people who suddenly flip. The road rage driver, or someone who's just got too drunk, or someone normal the neighbours say was the most pleasant person on earth who suddenly flips. I don't want them pulling out a firearm.

Not to mention the fascination kids have with guns if they go over to play with a boy who is fascinated with guns. An accident can so easily happen.

Mind you - when I was in Mass this summer - there seemed to be just as many people who were anti guns as pro guns. But the pro gun lobby was just so much more powerful and influential.

Incidentally - I was also in New York this summer. Obviously limitted in where I was - but I never felt in danger of being attacked. A pleasure travelling on the air conditioned trains in the subways and walking in Central Park - that place that is so scary in the movies. Obviously I wasn't carrying a firearm and I'm sure it's safer than it used to be and not because of the right to bear arms.

[MarinePaul]

The actual criminals are the ones who are robbing business establishments, shooting clerks and customers who are only guilty of shopping in that particular store. It's also the actual criminals who are hijacking cars in broad daylight.

[Blue]

The Olympics have been held in some notoriously high crime areas: Athens, pre-revolutionary Sarajevo, Hitler's Berlin, for example.

However, the biggest violence to happen in Olympic games happened in locales that everyone considered relatively safe: Atlanta, Georgia USA and Munich Germany.

[Oliver Chettle]

Are you kidding me? Your perceptions appear to be seriously screwed up by political prejudices. Hitler's Berlin was a low crime area, like many other dictatorships with massive security apparatus, and Atlanta is a high crime area like everywhere else in the southern U.S. Outbreaks of political violence - of which there was no risk whatsoever during the 1936 Olympics in any case - are not correlated to general crime rates. I wouldn't be surprised if you've put all the others in the wrong category too. E.g. there was probably more crime in Munich in the 1970s than in Berlin in the 1930s because crime rose in almost every Western society after WWII.

[Oliver Chettle]

To answer the original question, the golf authorities didn't have a free hand to decide how many players should be in the tournaments. The IOC has an overall limit for the number of athletes at the games. The more places the International Golf Federation asked for, the smaller its chances of gaining admittance.

[Blue]

Originally Posted by Oliver Chettle

Are you kidding me? Your perceptions appear to be seriously screwed up by political prejudices. Hitler's Berlin was a low crime area, like many other dictatorships with massive security apparatus, and Atlanta is a high crime area like everywhere else in the southern U.S. Outbreaks of political violence - of which there was no risk whatsoever during the 1936 Olympics in any case - are not correlated to general crime rates. I wouldn't be surprised if you've put all the others in the wrong category too. E.g. there was probably more crime in Munich in the 1970s than in Berlin in the 1930s because crime rose in almost every Western society after WWII.

I guess it depends how you define crime and which side of Aryan divide you fell in under Hitler's regime. You might want to google the word "pogroms" or "Kristallnacht" and then get back to us. Also, you're painting with a very broad brush if you claim that the the entire southern U.S. is a high crime area.