It was a bit of an easy target and using the same arguments that come up every time there is an incident so there was really nothing new.
It was made even worse with the song.
I like Katherine Ryan and thought she had some good points and lines in the show but I do find it hard to get outraged over halloween fancy dress outfits.
I roll my eyes when companies like ASDA and Tesco withdraw and outfit from sale because someone is offended by it.
The number of guns per head is not the issue. It's the rules surrounding how you can obtain guns and use them that matter. It's not the American psyche but the ease which unsuitable people can get weapons and ammunition.
They're not. But, as I said, would they have afforded the same courtesy to a right-wing politician? I doubt it. Because they'd get far more laughs playing to the crowd by using the misinterpreted comments as a stick to beat the Conservatives/UKIP/Republicans/etc with.
Even the very act of clarifying Corbyn's comment was a means to focus the attention back on their usual targets and start making jokes about the right-wing media etc.
I would not be too sure about this. I remember that all the way through the election they poked merciless fun at Ed Miliband and reinforced people's perception of him as being weird and thus unfit to govern the country.
I do not remember a single poster complaining about that. So why can the right not have the mickey taken out of them too? Surely they are not fragile flowers that cannot take a little joshing!
That's basically the point they were making; there are a number of Americans who claim it would be against the constitution to change the gun laws when it's quite clear they're simply hiding behind that so they can keep their guns. The entire section on US gun control was essentially pointing out how ludicrous it is for anyone to use that as an argument for not tightening gun control laws.
Yes that's correct. The gun nutters state as an excuse/reason for them having gun is that it's in the constitution and that shouldn't be amended when the actual gun law IS and amendment to the original constitution!
So basically if they changed it once, (and they have in fact changed it many times) then it's not the sacred thing that can never be changed as they are making it out to be.
Many Americans seem to make out that the constitution is something above just some laws that they decided on and can in fact be changed whenever they like. The whole gun lobby are doing exactly that as an excuse: They try to make out that the constitution is something sacred that can't be amended.
The Bill of Rights that they hold so sacred are in fact the first 10 (there were more) AMENDMENTS to the Constitution that just wasn't working for them at that time.
The number of guns per head is not the issue. It's the rules surrounding how you can obtain guns and use them that matter. It's not the American psyche but the ease which unsuitable people can get weapons and ammunition.
But the point that MIchael Moore makes in Bowling for Columbine - is that you will have many more "unsuitable people" around if you have no welfare system whatsoever.
Lose your job in the US, and you have no money whatsoever, no healthcare, no nothing.
There is no safety net.
I personally know several Americans that have used the phrase "It's our constitutional right to bear arms". So I agree it was a fair target to highlight that the "right" was given to them in an amendment, and could be removed the same way. If your only argument is that its in the constitution, you haven't really got an argument.
But I also agree with the previous poster that the singing was horrible and not funny.
Yes, I was surprised to learn that the right to bear arms was an amendment too.
I like the show, to me they really get to the bottom of a story, as in the case of the Jeremy Corbyn issue.
The Bill of Rights that they hold so sacred are in fact the first 10 (there were more) AMENDMENTS to the Constitution that just wasn't working for them at that time.
The 2nd amendment doesn't actually even give every American the right to have a cupboard full of firearms if he wants to. It states that the population should have a well-drilled (i.e. properly trained) militia which is outside the control of the government, so the government can't use their guns (i.e the army) to threaten the population as a whole into a military dictatorship. That's a world away from Billy-Bob having the right to own an M60 if he wants to. There are lots of ways to organise a population militia (see a couple of the Scandinavian countries for a start) that aren't basically just a free for all.
That interpretation of the 2nd amendment was popularised by, hold your surprise, the companies that make billion of dollars a year selling guns to Americans, which they never use for anything other than shooting up wrecked cars. Unless they happen go crazy and shoot up a school full of kids. which hardly ever happens.
Aside from the obvious fact (as stated in the video linked above) that the second amendment was fine when a musket was the state of the art of military technology. Nowadays the US army has smart bombs, tanks, jet strike aircraft, cluster munitions, armed UAVs and christ knows what else - probably lasers. The population still only has what, in military terms, would be described as 'small arms'.
The whole 'militia' argument is bunk. As the video says, the only valid argument for owning guns unless you're the army is 'I want to own a gun because I like guns'. And that's a fine argument, but it doesn't necessarily mean you should be allowed to have one.
Yeah, terrible that, ranting about innocent people being murdered on live television. I mean, why can't they talk about important things?
Well if you watch any of Michael Moore's output (Bowling for Columbine) you would see that actually both Canada and Germany have more guns per head of population than the USA.
May have been true at the time, certainly isn't now (or in 2014 at least). The USA has roughly 3 times as many guns per head of population than Canada or Germany. Wow, they must have been buying a lot of guns recently. Also, I think Germany and Canada have much bigger restrictions on what sort of guns you can own and how they have to be licensed and secured. Buying a .22 handgun or an automatic rifle with an extended magazine and armour piercing bullets both count as 'one gun' but you can do a heck of a lot more damage with the latter.
The main difference for the high murder rate (in Moore's view) was that Canada and Germany have welfare systems so there are safety nets in society, where America does not.
The original definition of 'going postal' doesn't require one to get sacked, just to lose your grip on rationality. That can happen for a number of reasons. And anyway, if Moore's figure were that wrong, I think it's fair to question his conclusion thereof.
The reason there are more murders in America is that there are more angry, helpless people
who have easy access to guns.
whose only hope of making a living is robbing or selling drugs. The fact that these people can easily get hold of guns does not help, but actually having the guns - like Canada or Germany - does not automatically mean a high murder rate.
Well pretty much every country has 'some number' of guns in circulation - maybe except the vatican . But if you're going to argue there's no causality between number of guns in public circulation and number of murders by gun, you're going to need some fairly strong evidence to convince people.
Personally I do think culture is a factor. Basically put both Canada and Europe are more 'socialist' (small s) than the USA, ethic partly due to it's pioneer history sio very much more individualist. if you feel more part of a society you're less likely to take up arms against that society, because it's partly attacking 'yourself'. If your society is very individualist, it's very much easier to things as 'you' and 'them' where 'them' is pretty much everyone else.
But the point that MIchael Moore makes in Bowling for Columbine - is that you will have many more "unsuitable people" around if you have no welfare system whatsoever.
Lose your job in the US, and you have no money whatsoever, no healthcare, no nothing.
There is no safety net.
Michael Moore may well have been trying to make a social justice point, but the issue isn't social justice. The people who tend to go shooting others in the USA aren't unemployed and desperate. There are a lot of people in that situation in the USA for sure but they don't go around killing people en masse.
The problem is easy access to gun ownership and lack of control over who has it.
Even the title of the Moore film is based on an untrue report, that the killers had been at a school bowling class, when in fact they hadn't been at school at all. The bowling theme is then continued on various points. Michael Moore is not a reliable source. His claims abut gun ownership are wildly wrong.
It's not like there haven't been shootings in Canada either, there was one last year in the parliament building in Ottawa and there have been school shootings and college shootings as well, per population I bet it's not far behind the U.S.
That's basically the point they were making; there are a number of Americans who claim it would be against the constitution to change the gun laws
Which is true. But I don't know of any Americans claiming the constitution is immutable. They aren't saying the constitution can't be changed. On the contrary, they are pointing out that it must be changed before you take their guns away.
And changing the constitution would be hard, partly because so many people don't want to change it. It would take decades. As it should for such an important document. So for the show to point out that it can be changed isn't helpful. Everyone knows, and everyone (apart from the show, perhaps) also knows how hard it would be to do, meaning that it's not a practical solution.
A better approach might be to leave the constitution text alone, and re-interpret it. Arguably it is talking about a "Militia", and not ordinary citizens, and arguably the "well-regulated" phrase supports more regulations around gun ownership (such as mental health checks, proficiency exams etc). The former point has been argued and defeated, most recently in the Heller case in 2008, which again shows that this isn't a simple problem that the show can just wade into and solve.
This episode has to be the apotheosis of right-on hectoring, the show has lost it's way.
I turned off just now on +1 as soon as the issue of Syria came up. As soon as Adam Hills started saying that they'd "had a discussion before the show" about whether to show the picture of the poor little Syrian boy then I knew that this week's show was just going to be an unbearable, self-righteous, sentimentalized lecture on the migrant crisis.
Forgive me, but I'll stick to Newsnight and other serious news programmes for discussion on the migrant crisis. I don't need a comedy show shoving a cynically partisan viewpoint down my throat.
Hopefully by the next season they'll have remembered that they're meant to be a topical comedy entertainment show and give the self-righteous hectoring (great choice of word) a rest.
shows that this isn't a simple problem that the show can just wade into and solve.
And this week they attacked Cameron for doing exactly that: for wanting to solve the root causes of the refugee crisis when those causes will be hard to solve. I'm not a fan of Cameron, but I think his approach of collecting refugees directly from Syria is a better approach than letting them in at Calais. We don't want to encourage them to cross oceans in dodgy boats or pay people smugglers or hang off lorries. We should provide an alternative so they don't have to do that.
Overall it was one of the weaker episodes, which is shame being the last one in the series. Despite all the complaints it's still one of the funnier things on TV.
This weeks (it's usually bad but this stuck in the throat more than past weeks) was like comic relief turned up to 11!
Words are cheap - especially when a well off celebrity is looking down the camera lecturing on how simple it is to fix a situation.
Amongst things he pointed out, my main query would be, in the more than one house this man owns at home and here, how many refugee families is his going to house with him? .... i'm going to guess ... none!
In the world of the well off, these situations will not effect them whatsoever, living in their ivory towers etc etc - yet their lecturing words are always the ones heard.
Action by those way more capable in these situations, not words .... no action? ... then shut up!
Josh Widdicombe just seems so out of place, and (to my eyes) very uneasy.
I reckon if he got a sniff of his own show, he would be off.
Lee Mack was CLEARLY not being sucked into the right-on refugee rant, despite being asked to - forcefully - several times.
I can see them finding it hard to get guests in the future, apart from card-carrying left wing comedians like Jeremy Hardy or Mark Steele.
Any other comedian - with a broad appeal - would be so fearful of saying one word out of place, that it might alienate a sizeable chunk of their audience.
Would Michael McKintrye or Dara O'Brien be comfortable sitting there with Hills in a full scale "ComicRelief turned up to 11" rant
There seems to be a history of left-wing Australians coming over here and telling us what to think, starting with Germaine Greer and John Pilger, then Peter Tatchell and now Natalie Bennett and Adam Hills, personally I think they should "do one".
Comments
It was made even worse with the song.
I like Katherine Ryan and thought she had some good points and lines in the show but I do find it hard to get outraged over halloween fancy dress outfits.
I roll my eyes when companies like ASDA and Tesco withdraw and outfit from sale because someone is offended by it.
I would not be too sure about this. I remember that all the way through the election they poked merciless fun at Ed Miliband and reinforced people's perception of him as being weird and thus unfit to govern the country.
I do not remember a single poster complaining about that. So why can the right not have the mickey taken out of them too? Surely they are not fragile flowers that cannot take a little joshing!
Yes that's correct. The gun nutters state as an excuse/reason for them having gun is that it's in the constitution and that shouldn't be amended when the actual gun law IS and amendment to the original constitution!
So basically if they changed it once, (and they have in fact changed it many times) then it's not the sacred thing that can never be changed as they are making it out to be.
Many Americans seem to make out that the constitution is something above just some laws that they decided on and can in fact be changed whenever they like. The whole gun lobby are doing exactly that as an excuse: They try to make out that the constitution is something sacred that can't be amended.
The Bill of Rights that they hold so sacred are in fact the first 10 (there were more) AMENDMENTS to the Constitution that just wasn't working for them at that time.
But the point that MIchael Moore makes in Bowling for Columbine - is that you will have many more "unsuitable people" around if you have no welfare system whatsoever.
Lose your job in the US, and you have no money whatsoever, no healthcare, no nothing.
There is no safety net.
Yes, I was surprised to learn that the right to bear arms was an amendment too.
I like the show, to me they really get to the bottom of a story, as in the case of the Jeremy Corbyn issue.
#Is it ok that I like Adam Hill too?!
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/australian-comedian-jim-jefferies-perfectly-skewers-the-progun-lobby-in-america--gkj8i36nCe
It's also very funny.
That interpretation of the 2nd amendment was popularised by, hold your surprise, the companies that make billion of dollars a year selling guns to Americans, which they never use for anything other than shooting up wrecked cars. Unless they happen go crazy and shoot up a school full of kids. which hardly ever happens.
Aside from the obvious fact (as stated in the video linked above) that the second amendment was fine when a musket was the state of the art of military technology. Nowadays the US army has smart bombs, tanks, jet strike aircraft, cluster munitions, armed UAVs and christ knows what else - probably lasers. The population still only has what, in military terms, would be described as 'small arms'.
The whole 'militia' argument is bunk. As the video says, the only valid argument for owning guns unless you're the army is 'I want to own a gun because I like guns'. And that's a fine argument, but it doesn't necessarily mean you should be allowed to have one.
May have been true at the time, certainly isn't now (or in 2014 at least). The USA has roughly 3 times as many guns per head of population than Canada or Germany. Wow, they must have been buying a lot of guns recently. Also, I think Germany and Canada have much bigger restrictions on what sort of guns you can own and how they have to be licensed and secured. Buying a .22 handgun or an automatic rifle with an extended magazine and armour piercing bullets both count as 'one gun' but you can do a heck of a lot more damage with the latter.
The original definition of 'going postal' doesn't require one to get sacked, just to lose your grip on rationality. That can happen for a number of reasons. And anyway, if Moore's figure were that wrong, I think it's fair to question his conclusion thereof.
who have easy access to guns.
Well pretty much every country has 'some number' of guns in circulation - maybe except the vatican . But if you're going to argue there's no causality between number of guns in public circulation and number of murders by gun, you're going to need some fairly strong evidence to convince people.
Personally I do think culture is a factor. Basically put both Canada and Europe are more 'socialist' (small s) than the USA, ethic partly due to it's pioneer history sio very much more individualist. if you feel more part of a society you're less likely to take up arms against that society, because it's partly attacking 'yourself'. If your society is very individualist, it's very much easier to things as 'you' and 'them' where 'them' is pretty much everyone else.
The problem is easy access to gun ownership and lack of control over who has it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Canada
And that anthem thing was cringeworthy, I felt embarrassed for the guy.
Brilliantly right on I'd say.
And changing the constitution would be hard, partly because so many people don't want to change it. It would take decades. As it should for such an important document. So for the show to point out that it can be changed isn't helpful. Everyone knows, and everyone (apart from the show, perhaps) also knows how hard it would be to do, meaning that it's not a practical solution.
A better approach might be to leave the constitution text alone, and re-interpret it. Arguably it is talking about a "Militia", and not ordinary citizens, and arguably the "well-regulated" phrase supports more regulations around gun ownership (such as mental health checks, proficiency exams etc). The former point has been argued and defeated, most recently in the Heller case in 2008, which again shows that this isn't a simple problem that the show can just wade into and solve.
Bet he won't mention his own Country's policy of preventing migrants getting anywhere near Australian territorial waters, by force.
On Jeremy Vine's radio show it was mentioned that Japan took 6 refugees last year.
Not 6,000 - SIX !!
But then Adam Hills doesn't set the immigration policy for Australia either and this has nothing to do with Australia.
Thats playground/DailyMail politics.
"He only took 6 so why should we take 7? Ner ner na ner nerrr!"
PLUS.. to be fair... Japan didn't invade Iraq thus creating ISIS thus causing this huge mess in the first place.
I turned off just now on +1 as soon as the issue of Syria came up. As soon as Adam Hills started saying that they'd "had a discussion before the show" about whether to show the picture of the poor little Syrian boy then I knew that this week's show was just going to be an unbearable, self-righteous, sentimentalized lecture on the migrant crisis.
Forgive me, but I'll stick to Newsnight and other serious news programmes for discussion on the migrant crisis. I don't need a comedy show shoving a cynically partisan viewpoint down my throat.
Hopefully by the next season they'll have remembered that they're meant to be a topical comedy entertainment show and give the self-righteous hectoring (great choice of word) a rest.
Overall it was one of the weaker episodes, which is shame being the last one in the series. Despite all the complaints it's still one of the funnier things on TV.
Words are cheap - especially when a well off celebrity is looking down the camera lecturing on how simple it is to fix a situation.
Amongst things he pointed out, my main query would be, in the more than one house this man owns at home and here, how many refugee families is his going to house with him? .... i'm going to guess ... none!
In the world of the well off, these situations will not effect them whatsoever, living in their ivory towers etc etc - yet their lecturing words are always the ones heard.
Action by those way more capable in these situations, not words .... no action? ... then shut up!
I reckon if he got a sniff of his own show, he would be off.
Lee Mack was CLEARLY not being sucked into the right-on refugee rant, despite being asked to - forcefully - several times.
I can see them finding it hard to get guests in the future, apart from card-carrying left wing comedians like Jeremy Hardy or Mark Steele.
Any other comedian - with a broad appeal - would be so fearful of saying one word out of place, that it might alienate a sizeable chunk of their audience.
Would Michael McKintrye or Dara O'Brien be comfortable sitting there with Hills in a full scale "ComicRelief turned up to 11" rant